The Party of Idolaters
On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln stood before a simple wooden lectern in New York City’s Cooper Union and delivered one of the most consequential speeches of his life. He offered a ringing condemnation of slavery, an unapologetic appeal to the righteous position of the free states, and a clear-eyed assessment of the dark and dangerous years ahead.
When the tall prairie lawyer began this speech, he was to many little more than a failed candidate for the U.S. Senate. By the end of his 56-minute oration before New York’s GOP grandees, Lincoln was on track to win the 1860 Republican presidential nomination.
[Read: The place of Abraham Lincoln in history]
For Lincoln, and the Republican Party of his day, there was no moral compromise to be sought or attained on slavery.
