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Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point
- The pivotal speech that changed the course of Lincoln's career and America's history - Complete examination of the speech, including the full text delivered in 1854 in Peoria, Illinois To understand President Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the extraordinary antislavery speech Lincoln delivered at Peoria on October 16, 1854. This three-hour address marked the turning point in Lincoln's political pilgrimage, dramatically altering his political career and, as a result, the history of America.Lincoln opposed any further extension of slavery in the American republic, holding to the Declaration of Independence's universal principle that "all men are created equal." In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln launched his antislavery campaign, delivering speeches in Springfield and Peoria.The Peoria address was rigorous, logical, and grounded in historical research. It marked Lincoln's reentry into politics and his preparation for the presidency in 1861. The speech catapulted Lincoln into the national debates over slavery and into national politics for the rest of his life.Though historians and biographers have noted its importance, Lincoln's speech at Peoria has not received the attention it deserves. Lincoln at Peoria offers a complete examination of the speech that changed the course of our nation.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published June 13, 2008
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April 28, 2022
“Lincoln’s Greatest Speech,” “Lincoln and American Slavery,” “The Making of the President” - all the good titles are already taken. So this book about the antislavery speech that arguably helped make Abraham Lincoln president, ended up with the prosaic title “Lincoln at Peoria.”
It doesn’t exactly grab your attention from the bookshelf. But neither is the book as dryly academic as its unadorned title suggests.
Lehrman is either a Renaissance man or a dilettante, depending on your point of view and perhaps your politics. “I am not a scholar,” the businessman, investment banker, economist, politician and historic document collector admits in the book’s introduction. His many other interests and activities allow him only “irregular hours to research, study, and write.”
But his interest in Lincoln is sincere, as is his desire to bring attention to one of Lincoln’s more underappreciated speeches. When entire books have been written about Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech, his Gettysburg Address, his second inaugural, and others, Lehrman aims to give similar treatment to Lincoln’s 1854 antislavery speeches given at Springfield and Peoria, Illinois. The Springfield one went unrecorded, so the Peoria one that was said to be substantially the same is the one that’s remembered, since the transcript of that one survives.
As a “counterattack on the Kansas-Nebraska Act,” the Peoria speech marked Lincoln’s return to the political arena after devoting years to his law practice. The speech "forms the foundation of his politics and principles," Lehrman writes, as it featured themes that he later adapted for use during his debates with Stephen Douglas, his Cooper Union address and his presidency.
While the Peoria speech was undoubtedly an important turning point in Lincoln’s political career, it was not necessarily his most eloquent, inspirational or influential speech. So it’s more difficult to give it book-length treatment, as compared to some of his later speeches that warrant more intensive study.
But Lehrman gives it a shot. Early chapters provide good background on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, how it originated, how it was passed, how it inflamed the slavery debate and how it drew Lincoln back into politics. It all leads up to the Peoria speech, in which Lincoln spelled out his objections to Kansas-Nebraska, which is recounted in roughly the middle of the book. Then the narrative starts to peter out a bit, as later chapters attempt to show, in a somewhat more scattershot way, how Lincoln applied the themes he introduced in Peoria to his presidency and his policies.
I initially overlooked the part in Lehrman’s introduction in which he says his aim is to “let the exact words of Lincoln himself, of his contemporaries, and of six generations of scholars tell the tale. They speak very well for themselves.” And he wasn’t kidding. It's clear that he read a lot of others' work in preparing his own, because he seems to quote from every single one of them, at length. It became increasingly distracting to me as the book progressed, as large parts of the text consisted of direct quotes, some nearly paragraph-length, from other writers, biographers and historians, all introduced by name within the narrative. The last chapter goes all-out in this regard, as Lehrman traces the historiography of the Peoria speech, by spending 20 pages quoting what virtually every historian has had to say about it over the past nearly two centuries.
So while the book fulfills Lehrman’s desire to call attention to what he considers one of Lincoln’s most underappreciated speeches, he doesn’t have a whole lot to say about it himself, at least as compared to the multitude of others he quotes. When he does try to present his own conclusions, he can get rather conjectural, as when he speculates that had the Peoria speech not helped Lincoln become president, the Union would not have been saved and we would not have been able to go on to defeat Imperial Germany, the Nazis or Communism!
Peoria may not have been Lincoln’s greatest speech, though it was an important turning point. Lehrman doesn’t quite succeed in elevating it to something that is deserving of book-length treatment. Had he attempted to offer more of his own analysis, rather than merely providing a platform for the observations and insights of others who can “speak very well for themselves,” perhaps he could have made a stronger case that a book about Lincoln’s Peoria speech was really needed. But if nothing else, since all of Lincoln’s major speeches already have books devoted to them, then it can now be said that this one does, too.
It doesn’t exactly grab your attention from the bookshelf. But neither is the book as dryly academic as its unadorned title suggests.
Lehrman is either a Renaissance man or a dilettante, depending on your point of view and perhaps your politics. “I am not a scholar,” the businessman, investment banker, economist, politician and historic document collector admits in the book’s introduction. His many other interests and activities allow him only “irregular hours to research, study, and write.”
But his interest in Lincoln is sincere, as is his desire to bring attention to one of Lincoln’s more underappreciated speeches. When entire books have been written about Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech, his Gettysburg Address, his second inaugural, and others, Lehrman aims to give similar treatment to Lincoln’s 1854 antislavery speeches given at Springfield and Peoria, Illinois. The Springfield one went unrecorded, so the Peoria one that was said to be substantially the same is the one that’s remembered, since the transcript of that one survives.
As a “counterattack on the Kansas-Nebraska Act,” the Peoria speech marked Lincoln’s return to the political arena after devoting years to his law practice. The speech "forms the foundation of his politics and principles," Lehrman writes, as it featured themes that he later adapted for use during his debates with Stephen Douglas, his Cooper Union address and his presidency.
While the Peoria speech was undoubtedly an important turning point in Lincoln’s political career, it was not necessarily his most eloquent, inspirational or influential speech. So it’s more difficult to give it book-length treatment, as compared to some of his later speeches that warrant more intensive study.
But Lehrman gives it a shot. Early chapters provide good background on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, how it originated, how it was passed, how it inflamed the slavery debate and how it drew Lincoln back into politics. It all leads up to the Peoria speech, in which Lincoln spelled out his objections to Kansas-Nebraska, which is recounted in roughly the middle of the book. Then the narrative starts to peter out a bit, as later chapters attempt to show, in a somewhat more scattershot way, how Lincoln applied the themes he introduced in Peoria to his presidency and his policies.
I initially overlooked the part in Lehrman’s introduction in which he says his aim is to “let the exact words of Lincoln himself, of his contemporaries, and of six generations of scholars tell the tale. They speak very well for themselves.” And he wasn’t kidding. It's clear that he read a lot of others' work in preparing his own, because he seems to quote from every single one of them, at length. It became increasingly distracting to me as the book progressed, as large parts of the text consisted of direct quotes, some nearly paragraph-length, from other writers, biographers and historians, all introduced by name within the narrative. The last chapter goes all-out in this regard, as Lehrman traces the historiography of the Peoria speech, by spending 20 pages quoting what virtually every historian has had to say about it over the past nearly two centuries.
So while the book fulfills Lehrman’s desire to call attention to what he considers one of Lincoln’s most underappreciated speeches, he doesn’t have a whole lot to say about it himself, at least as compared to the multitude of others he quotes. When he does try to present his own conclusions, he can get rather conjectural, as when he speculates that had the Peoria speech not helped Lincoln become president, the Union would not have been saved and we would not have been able to go on to defeat Imperial Germany, the Nazis or Communism!
Peoria may not have been Lincoln’s greatest speech, though it was an important turning point. Lehrman doesn’t quite succeed in elevating it to something that is deserving of book-length treatment. Had he attempted to offer more of his own analysis, rather than merely providing a platform for the observations and insights of others who can “speak very well for themselves,” perhaps he could have made a stronger case that a book about Lincoln’s Peoria speech was really needed. But if nothing else, since all of Lincoln’s major speeches already have books devoted to them, then it can now be said that this one does, too.
November 16, 2021
Lehrman is a very odd duck, with his very peculiar politics and economics
history wise he's a bit less of a crank
---
H-Net review
Chandra Manning
Manning on Lehrman, 'Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point'
Lehrman narrates these events with verve, doing an especially nice job of bringing the Lincoln-Douglas relationship to life, and of tracing Lincoln’s road from Peoria through Illinois politics. In February 1856, Lincoln was the only non-editor of a newspaper to make it through a snowstorm to a meeting in Decatur during which attendees drafted moderate antislavery resolutions that would form the foundation of Illinois’s Republican Party. In May, delegates of the new party convened in Bloomington, where Lincoln closed the proceedings with a spicier version of the Peoria speech to such good effect that his name entered into consideration for the vice presidency at the Republican national convention the following month.
The book compellingly illustrates echoes of Peoria in later, more famous works, such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, the “House Divided” speech of 1858, and the Cooper Union Address of 1860. Lehrman also shows that specific characteristics, such as Lincoln’s distinctive speaking style, his habit of editing speeches for newspaper publication, his regard for public opinion, and his recognition of the global ramifications of U.S. politics, were also in place by the October 1854 Peoria speech. In sum, Lehrman makes a compelling case that “President-elect Lincoln would go to Washington, but he would take with him the antislavery principles first defined at Peoria”
Yet Lehrman seeks to show not simply that the Peoria speech foreshadows later events, but rather, that it helped cause them, and here the book opens the door for discussion. Tantalizing links between Peoria and subsequent events do appear; for example, Lehrman retells a delightful anecdote in which a skeptical Mary Livermore’s doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the 1860 presidential nomination were quieted when a reporter handed her a copy of the Peoria speech.
But it is not clear that the Peoria speech or its author explain everything all by themselves. Lincoln’s ideas mattered, but there were particular reasons why they got the responses that they increasingly did as the 1850s progressed, and the bright spotlight trained solely on Lincoln throughout the book relegates many of the events and ideas necessary to his rise so deeply into the shadows that it is not clear how Lincoln got onto that stage in the first place.
In particular, the book gives short shrift to growing northern fears of a slave power conspiracy, going so far as to write, “Lincoln generally dismissed the intimidating threats of the slave power” (p. 214).
On the contrary, had Lincoln and other Republicans not taken very seriously the possibility that elite slaveholders would and could spread slavery throughout the United States despite their small numbers, there is no way a Republican Party committed to stemming the spread of slavery could have gelled so fast.
Further, the book’s attention to violence in Kansas is too scant to adequately account for the party’s growth. Lehrman notes John Brown’s massacre of proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie, but does not link it to the sack of the abolitionist town of Lawrence that prompted Brown’s murders, and that, by occurring within hours of South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks’s caning of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, made Republican claims of a slave power conspiracy credible and electrifying.
No credible Republican Party would have meant no President Lincoln, no matter how splendid a speech he delivered at Peoria in 1854. In short, the book opens the door to fruitful discussions about the interplay between individual leaders and events.
In addition, the book opens opportunities for discussion of the Civil War’s impact on Lincoln’s thinking with its claim that “Lincoln’s essential antislavery policy can be traced from the Peoria court house in 1854 to Ford’s Theatre in 1865” (p. 140). Lehrman plainly shows that what Lincoln in 1864 called his “primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery” was in place by 1854, but questions remain about whether that “primary abstract judgment” and Lincoln’s later willingness to use federal power to end slavery immediately without compensation or colonization are truly the same thing.
At Peoria, Lincoln expressed willingness to admit “Utah and New Mexico, even should they ask to come in as slave States,” which contrasts with his instructions to Republicans in December 1860 to “entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery” anywhere, which itself contrasts with the categorical abolition of slavery effected by the Thirteenth Amendment (pp. 303, 220).
Further, at Peoria, Lincoln insisted that slavery was a strictly local, not national, institution, whereas by 1862, Lincoln insisted that slavery “is a part of our national life” and must be eradicated nationally, a point reiterated in the second inaugural address (p. 243).
The logical question is what accounts for these changes, and the logical answer seems to be the progress of the war. Insisting on October 1854 as the date at which Lincoln emerged fully formed obscures important questions about precisely how the war altered Lincoln’s thinking.
Certainly, one could argue that disliking slavery is disliking slavery, whether expressed by limiting slavery’s extension in the hopes that non-extension might end slavery someday, or by championing a Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution immediately abolishing slavery. But to four million people who were slaves in 1860, the difference between a “primary abstract judgment” and immediate emancipation was more than just semantics.
Moreover, the important question of how the Civil War made it possible for Lincoln to get from abstract judgment to immediate emancipation goes away if we insist on seeing no difference between Lincoln’s ideas in 1854 and 1865, for in that interpretation, the war did not change anything for Lincoln, it simply provided him with a useful tool.
In sum, Lincoln at Peoria adroitly establishes that Lincoln’s response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was formative for both Lincoln and the United States. Whether Lincoln’s Peoria speech is best understood as one of several important milestones or as the turning point remains a question that will continue to animate debate. But if the book cannot fairly be said to offer the last word, it surely can be praised for stimulating ongoing conversation, a worthy accomplishment for any book.
history wise he's a bit less of a crank
---
H-Net review
Chandra Manning
Manning on Lehrman, 'Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point'
Lehrman narrates these events with verve, doing an especially nice job of bringing the Lincoln-Douglas relationship to life, and of tracing Lincoln’s road from Peoria through Illinois politics. In February 1856, Lincoln was the only non-editor of a newspaper to make it through a snowstorm to a meeting in Decatur during which attendees drafted moderate antislavery resolutions that would form the foundation of Illinois’s Republican Party. In May, delegates of the new party convened in Bloomington, where Lincoln closed the proceedings with a spicier version of the Peoria speech to such good effect that his name entered into consideration for the vice presidency at the Republican national convention the following month.
The book compellingly illustrates echoes of Peoria in later, more famous works, such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, the “House Divided” speech of 1858, and the Cooper Union Address of 1860. Lehrman also shows that specific characteristics, such as Lincoln’s distinctive speaking style, his habit of editing speeches for newspaper publication, his regard for public opinion, and his recognition of the global ramifications of U.S. politics, were also in place by the October 1854 Peoria speech. In sum, Lehrman makes a compelling case that “President-elect Lincoln would go to Washington, but he would take with him the antislavery principles first defined at Peoria”
Yet Lehrman seeks to show not simply that the Peoria speech foreshadows later events, but rather, that it helped cause them, and here the book opens the door for discussion. Tantalizing links between Peoria and subsequent events do appear; for example, Lehrman retells a delightful anecdote in which a skeptical Mary Livermore’s doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the 1860 presidential nomination were quieted when a reporter handed her a copy of the Peoria speech.
But it is not clear that the Peoria speech or its author explain everything all by themselves. Lincoln’s ideas mattered, but there were particular reasons why they got the responses that they increasingly did as the 1850s progressed, and the bright spotlight trained solely on Lincoln throughout the book relegates many of the events and ideas necessary to his rise so deeply into the shadows that it is not clear how Lincoln got onto that stage in the first place.
In particular, the book gives short shrift to growing northern fears of a slave power conspiracy, going so far as to write, “Lincoln generally dismissed the intimidating threats of the slave power” (p. 214).
On the contrary, had Lincoln and other Republicans not taken very seriously the possibility that elite slaveholders would and could spread slavery throughout the United States despite their small numbers, there is no way a Republican Party committed to stemming the spread of slavery could have gelled so fast.
Further, the book’s attention to violence in Kansas is too scant to adequately account for the party’s growth. Lehrman notes John Brown’s massacre of proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie, but does not link it to the sack of the abolitionist town of Lawrence that prompted Brown’s murders, and that, by occurring within hours of South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks’s caning of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, made Republican claims of a slave power conspiracy credible and electrifying.
No credible Republican Party would have meant no President Lincoln, no matter how splendid a speech he delivered at Peoria in 1854. In short, the book opens the door to fruitful discussions about the interplay between individual leaders and events.
In addition, the book opens opportunities for discussion of the Civil War’s impact on Lincoln’s thinking with its claim that “Lincoln’s essential antislavery policy can be traced from the Peoria court house in 1854 to Ford’s Theatre in 1865” (p. 140). Lehrman plainly shows that what Lincoln in 1864 called his “primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery” was in place by 1854, but questions remain about whether that “primary abstract judgment” and Lincoln’s later willingness to use federal power to end slavery immediately without compensation or colonization are truly the same thing.
At Peoria, Lincoln expressed willingness to admit “Utah and New Mexico, even should they ask to come in as slave States,” which contrasts with his instructions to Republicans in December 1860 to “entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery” anywhere, which itself contrasts with the categorical abolition of slavery effected by the Thirteenth Amendment (pp. 303, 220).
Further, at Peoria, Lincoln insisted that slavery was a strictly local, not national, institution, whereas by 1862, Lincoln insisted that slavery “is a part of our national life” and must be eradicated nationally, a point reiterated in the second inaugural address (p. 243).
The logical question is what accounts for these changes, and the logical answer seems to be the progress of the war. Insisting on October 1854 as the date at which Lincoln emerged fully formed obscures important questions about precisely how the war altered Lincoln’s thinking.
Certainly, one could argue that disliking slavery is disliking slavery, whether expressed by limiting slavery’s extension in the hopes that non-extension might end slavery someday, or by championing a Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution immediately abolishing slavery. But to four million people who were slaves in 1860, the difference between a “primary abstract judgment” and immediate emancipation was more than just semantics.
Moreover, the important question of how the Civil War made it possible for Lincoln to get from abstract judgment to immediate emancipation goes away if we insist on seeing no difference between Lincoln’s ideas in 1854 and 1865, for in that interpretation, the war did not change anything for Lincoln, it simply provided him with a useful tool.
In sum, Lincoln at Peoria adroitly establishes that Lincoln’s response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was formative for both Lincoln and the United States. Whether Lincoln’s Peoria speech is best understood as one of several important milestones or as the turning point remains a question that will continue to animate debate. But if the book cannot fairly be said to offer the last word, it surely can be praised for stimulating ongoing conversation, a worthy accomplishment for any book.
January 15, 2018
3.5 stars, but I rounded up because this book gave me a lot of new insight to the start of Lincoln’s political revival and how the Kansas-Nebraska Act shaped his opinion of slavery and his Presidency. I thought the book relied a little too much on quotes from Lincoln scholars, but it was well written otherwise and very informative.
May 12, 2011
Fantastic read, but be prepared for a very, very dry read. It took me forever to get through this book but it was a read that I knew I had to do to understand Lincoln.
March 2, 2016
If you are a true Lincolnphile, then this book is for you. I thought I knew a lot about the man, but I didn't know the extent and lengths he took to begin preparing himself for his true life's work. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 would energize Lincoln and eventually catapult him into the national limelight a full four years before the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. It would help launch the Republican Party and land Lincoln into the White House. The Peoria speech of 1854 is everything and Lehrman expertly guides you through the historic events, places and people that culminates with Lincoln's speech in Peoria. I highly recommend this book for the Lincoln history buff. And as a further note, the reader can't help but compare how these extraordinary gentlemen prepared and conducted themselves in real debates as compared to the sideshows of today that attempt to masquerade as such.
May 29, 2009
A little too thin a topic, plus other writers don't see Peoria as anything more than more of the same
August 16, 2021
Very informative regarding Lincoln's thinking/writing/speaking on slavery in the years before becoming president. A bit repetitive, but did include different perspectives.
November 29, 2022
This whole book reminds me of Scott Lang just saying, "You're repeating yourself, you're repeating yourself."
So yea it's rather repetitive. I read this for class and it's alright (don't tell my classmates- I'm supposed to hate this book more than Founding Brothers). It's not bad, it's just long and repetitive and full of information I have only one use for: passing AP US History.
So yea it's rather repetitive. I read this for class and it's alright (don't tell my classmates- I'm supposed to hate this book more than Founding Brothers). It's not bad, it's just long and repetitive and full of information I have only one use for: passing AP US History.
October 24, 2018
A very long book, not in pages but as afar as to how long it takes. Its is very factual and full of information. If just interested in history, or doing any sort of report this book would be wonderful for you!
October 11, 2018
Lucid analysis, the politics, law, and Lincoln's thought and development.
May 22, 2025
By the description, this is a through examination of one particular speech Abraham Lincoln gave at the start of his second career in politics.
That's actually a very incomplete description. This book is much more about all the history surrounding it.
Lehrman's contention is that a speech Lincoln gave in October 1854 should be as well remembered as some of his later speeches, like Cooper Union, and the Second Inaugural. That's not really going to happen, but he does have good things to say about how it is foundational to most anything he said later.
The book is generally at its best recounting the history directly related to Lincoln and his speeches in the 1850s. You get the set up with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and all the political conflict that set in motion. Something Lehrman is quite clear about, but lets get a little overshadowed in other parts of the book is that the speech discussed here was given, apparently in largely the same form, just a few days before in Springfield. His words there were not recorded, and there's not enough to even begin to reconstruct exactly what he said there, and it's assumed that Peoria was basically a repeat of it. I'm tempted to think that Springfield may be more of first draft that had been polished afterward at Peoria. But we'll never know. We do know that Lincoln was directly involved in making sure this version got out for people to read.
And while it's not as well known, it has been read, and Lehrman leans a lot on existing commentaries on the speech in his book. Enough so that this book is not really able to into a very deep dissection of what Lincoln said, instead presenting more of what others have said. Which is fine enough for me, as that kind of textual analysis beyond my endurance. At the same time the second strength of this book is his look at where the thoughts presented in Peoria would echo in many further statements from Lincoln.
Despite the limited scope, this is not a fine combing over of the subject, and more of a general introduction to it. That is certainly fine for me, and it was a reasonably good read, if tending towards long-form repetition, and ignoring things just outside the spotlight.
That's actually a very incomplete description. This book is much more about all the history surrounding it.
Lehrman's contention is that a speech Lincoln gave in October 1854 should be as well remembered as some of his later speeches, like Cooper Union, and the Second Inaugural. That's not really going to happen, but he does have good things to say about how it is foundational to most anything he said later.
The book is generally at its best recounting the history directly related to Lincoln and his speeches in the 1850s. You get the set up with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and all the political conflict that set in motion. Something Lehrman is quite clear about, but lets get a little overshadowed in other parts of the book is that the speech discussed here was given, apparently in largely the same form, just a few days before in Springfield. His words there were not recorded, and there's not enough to even begin to reconstruct exactly what he said there, and it's assumed that Peoria was basically a repeat of it. I'm tempted to think that Springfield may be more of first draft that had been polished afterward at Peoria. But we'll never know. We do know that Lincoln was directly involved in making sure this version got out for people to read.
And while it's not as well known, it has been read, and Lehrman leans a lot on existing commentaries on the speech in his book. Enough so that this book is not really able to into a very deep dissection of what Lincoln said, instead presenting more of what others have said. Which is fine enough for me, as that kind of textual analysis beyond my endurance. At the same time the second strength of this book is his look at where the thoughts presented in Peoria would echo in many further statements from Lincoln.
Despite the limited scope, this is not a fine combing over of the subject, and more of a general introduction to it. That is certainly fine for me, and it was a reasonably good read, if tending towards long-form repetition, and ignoring things just outside the spotlight.
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September 6, 2012If you are interested in history, folk lore or news stories about the greater Peoria area, then please join the Will It Play In Peoria discussion group:
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February 1, 2013
This detailed look at how Lincoln's life was shaped by his Peoria speech was fascinating. I hadn't realized that Lincoln was so firmly in the anti-slavery camp from the beginning.
May 29, 2013
Got about halfway through. The reading seemed rather repetitive. It probably could have been written well in half the space.
August 4, 2014
Digs into the events prior to the Peoria speech and then show the progression of Lincoln's case for emancipation after the speech.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews