THE REPUBLICAN PARTY VINDICATED - THE DEMANDS OF THE SOUTH EXPLAINED. SPEECH OF HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, OF ILLINOIS, AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, N.Y. CITY, FEBRUARY 27, 1860.
[np: 1860]. 8pp, caption title [as issued]. Untrimmed and uncut. A single folio leaf, folded. Very Good plus.
Lincoln's great Cooper Union Address argues that the Framers and early Congresses contemplated a narrow and ever-diminishing role for slavery. Examining Constitutional and early Congressional debates, he demonstrates that contemporary statesmen viewed slavery "as an evil, not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity."
Lincoln's argument, fusing the interests of all anti-slavery men, whether abolitionists or not, ranks among his greatest contributions to American political thought. It received wide press coverage, catapulting him into presidential contention, for it transported the new Republican Party into the center of American constitutional and legal thinking. He thus made it easy for moderate Northern Democrats, Whigs, and Know-Nothings to vote Republican in 1860.
Monaghan 55. LCP 5944. Item #41018
Price: $1,500.00