What is Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speech? An obvious case can be made for the Gettysburg Address, which distills the essence of the American creed and has come to represent the catechism of our civil religion, “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Others claim that the honor belongs to the Second Inaugural Address. In that national sermon, Lincoln pondered the meaning of the Civil War in view of God’s providence. The speech culminates in a magnanimous call to righteousness and reconciliation: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.” Still others argue that the Cooper Union Address was Lincoln’s greatest since it was “the speech that made him president”: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

Notwithstanding these others, if one were placed in the unenviable position of having to choose Lincoln’s greatest, I would cast my vote for the Peoria Address of October 16, 1854. At Peoria, Lincoln cogently articulated the core antislavery convictions that would guide his statesmanship for the rest of his life. This articulation involved a corresponding vindication of self-government and the Union. In a word, the Peoria Address constituted the most mature and vivid expression of Lincoln’s political faith or ultimate moral justification of American public life based upon the principles of the Declaration. Indeed, Lincoln’s subsequent speeches and writings drew upon the comprehensive and foundational antislavery teachings he expounded at Peoria.

It is therefore surprising that in the voluminous Lincoln literature there has been no full-length, single-volume treatment of this critical speech. Though it was recognized by Lincoln’s contemporaries as a tour de force, it has since been eclipsed by attention given to his other major speeches. In Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point, Lewis Lehrman remedies this omission by persuasively showing us why the Peoria Address deserves its rightful place as one of Lincoln’s greatest statements. Lehrman’s meticulously researched and elegantly written book makes a significant contribution towards enhancing our understanding of the moral dimensions of Lincoln’s political thought and statesmanship. It is highly recommended for students and scholars alike.

Lehrman’s outstanding study integrates and builds upon insights from the fields of history, political science, and political philosophy. He begins by tracing the historical and political context of the Peoria Address as a response to the infamous Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This latter measure had maintained a fragile sectional peace for more than thirty years by drawing a line through the remaining territories of the Louisiana Purchase: slavery was banned north of 36˚30’ but tolerated south of it. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise stirred Lincoln to reenter politics in response to a new militancy of the proslavery forces that threatened both the moral and territorial integrity of the Union. “I was losing interest in politics,” he declared, “when the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.”

The Peoria Address can be seen as a prelude to the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It was at Peoria in 1854 where the two titans first crossed swords over slavery and popular sovereignty. At Peoria, in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln offered his first comprehensive indictment of slavery and defense of America’s free institutions. After Peoria, he would emerge as the standard-bearer of the antislavery Republican Party in Illinois and ultimately the president of the United States in 1860. “The three-hour Peoria speech was a magisterial tour of antislavery principles, their constitutional and legislative history, and the antislavery policies of the federal government from the Founding through the Kansas-Nebraska Act,” Lehrman writes. “At this turning point in American history, Lincoln queried whether America was destined to become a free-soil republic or a slaveholding nation. Throughout his remarks, he celebrated the intent of the Founders to put slavery in the course of ultimate extinction.”

Lehrman tells the story of this turning point in an engaging narrative that brings to life the cast of characters of the Civil War era: Lincoln, Douglas, Chase, Seward, Stevens, Davis. Though much has been made of Lincoln’s ambition or melancholy as a spur to his greatness, Lehrman reminds us that more principled motives were at work as well. Those who would deny the sincerity and depth of Lincoln’s hatred of slavery and his corresponding patriotic devotion to the American experiment are confronted in Lehrman’s superb book with a mountain of evidence to the contrary, as when Lincoln exclaimed:

This declared indifference [of popular sovereignty to the evil of slavery], but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.