Former New York gubernatorial candidate Lew Lehrman has written a book about Abraham Lincoln entitled, "Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point" about his 1854 speeches on anti-slavery that redefined Lincoln's political direction.
"Less well-known are the two extraordinary speeches given at Springfield and Peoria two weeks apart in 1854. They marked Mr. Lincoln’s reentry into the politics of Illinois and, as he could not know, his preparation for the Presidency in 1861."
"The importance Lehrman finds in the Peoria speech cannot be exaggerated.... Lehrman not only elaborates, carefully and precisely, its political and philosophical doctrines, but he traces their presence through the other speeches, as well as into the presidency. It is a book on the whole of Lincoln..."
Lehrman was a successful businessman and fiscal conservative whose own quixotic journey/campaign against Mario Cuomo in 1982 helped shaped our state's political climate during the Reagan years. Being a fiscal conservative in New York during the Reagan administration was a foreign language to many voters in 1982 -- but Lehrman nearly won. More notable, Ronald Reagan's "Morning In America" re-election campaign two years later was victorious across the state -- the last Republican Presidential candidate to win New York State.
Could the same point of departure for today's candidates on controversial social issues be compared to Lincoln's leadership against the issue of slavery? Perhaps that is a stretch, especially since few Democrats or Republicans seem willing to articulate their true feelings on any social conservative issue without posturing to a lobby or a poll.
As for the author's own experience, Lehrman would never resurface as a statewide candidate but it would take Republicans twelve years to come even close to what Lehrman did in 1982.
The History Channel had more on Lincoln at Peoria.
The book came out of the The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, also supported greatly by financier Richard Gilder.
Recent Comments