Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point
By Lewis E. Lehrman
(January 2009 Civil War News)

Illustrated, notes, maps, 412 pp., 2008. Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Rd., Mechanicsburg, PA 17055, $29.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: James A. Percoco
James A. Percoco teaches U.S. and Applied History at West Springfield High School in Springfield, Va. He is author of A Passion for the Past: Creative Teaching of U.S. History and Divided We Stand: Teaching About Conflict in U.S. History. Percoco is a USA TODAY All-USA teacher and is an adjunct professor in the School of Education at American University where he serves as History Educator-in-Residence.

Review:
“The speech is distinguished above all others,” wrote Lincoln friend and early biographer, Isaac N. Arnold, “by its full, accurate, and exhaustive knowledge of the history of the legislation relating to slavery.

“He demonstrates that under the policy of prohibition [of slavery extension] there had been peace, while the repeal of [this] prohibition [in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854] had brought agitation.”

The speech to which Arnold referred was Abraham Lincoln’s October 1854, Peoria Speech. Historians, Lincoln buffs, and aficionados are well-versed with Lincoln’s comment, “I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again,” but they may not know the total story behind this seminal moment in Lincoln’s life.

Thankfully Lewis E. Lehrman provides readers a look at not only this critical speech in Lincoln’s catalog, but also at this crucial juncture in his and the nation’s history.

Had Lincoln not made a great politician he could have easily become a great historian and perhaps herein lays the genius of Lehrman. Like Lincoln, who spent hours doing his homework poring over all manner of primary documents to bolster his cause, so, too, has the author.

Lincoln was a fastidious researcher. He used his “cold calculating reason” within the context of the documents that he believed established the United States, specifically the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Northwest Ordinances.

Like Lincoln Lehrman builds his case for the place of the Peoria Speech within the rough and tumble of mid-19th century Illinois and Midwestern politics, as well as with a keen eye towards legal language. The cast of characters, like the founding generation, includes giants of their age, Stephen Douglas, Salmon P. Chase and Charles Sumner, to mention a few. All come to life in a panorama at which Lincoln seizes, for a moment, center stage.

The Peoria Speech will begin Lincoln’s road to the presidency and become a stepping stone for future rhetoric he will use to attack the expansion of slavery as well as its morality in a nation dedicated to the self-evident truths of all men being equal.

Cleverly organized, Lehrman traces a variety of themes tied to Lincoln and the speech. His presentation is not so much a chronological examination of cause and effect as it is a reflection of the speech within a larger context of the times and the issues of the day.

Instead of just addressing the speech and its significance, Lehrman views the speech in a light that juxtaposes Lincoln’s philosophy and anti-slavery argument against Bleeding Kansas, the 1858 Illinois Senate race and subsequent Lincoln-Douglas Debates and the Dred Scott Decision.

What Harold Holzer did for Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union Address, in Lincoln at Cooper Union, Lewis Lehrman has done for the Peoria Speech.  Lincoln at Peoria is sure to rank as one of the most important books released during the Lincoln Bicentennial commemoration and it will remain beyond that as an important fixture in the coda of Lincoln literature.