Document B: October 16, 1854 -Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois
-Abraham Lincoln Speech at Peoria Illinois by Kathryn on Scribd
How Historians Interpret
“Lincoln’s October 1854 speech at Peoria would be, perhaps, his most ringing condemnation of popular sovereignty. Carwardine says that the speech ‘contained most of the essential elements of his public addresses over the next six years.’ At Peoria, Lincoln deplored the Kansas-Nebraska Act for resuscitating, not calming, slavery agitation. He avowed suspicions that popular sovereignty really intended to spread slavery. He condemned slavery as both a “monstrous injustice” and a betrayal of ‘our republican example.’ He asserted that if blacks are men, which he considered self-evident, they were entitled to equality under the Declaration of Independence. He denied that ‘there can be MORAL RIGHT in the enslaving of one man by another.’ Douglas drew legitimacy for popular sovereignty from the supremacy of self-government in the ideology of nineteenth-century Americans. Lincoln, seeking to deny that self-government applied in this case, turned to the prestige of the Revolutionary generation. ‘The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska, are utter antagonisms, and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter.'”
—Nicole Etcheson, “‘A living, creeping lie’: Abraham Lincoln on Popular Sovereignty”, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 29, 2008.
—Nicole Etcheson, “‘A living, creeping lie’: Abraham Lincoln on Popular Sovereignty”, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 29, 2008.