Speech on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise at Peoria
The Peoria Address represents the most comprehensive expression of Lincoln’s political thought and statesmanship on slavery. It provides a multifaceted critique of the institution on moral, political, legal, and historical grounds and a corresponding vindication of the Union dedicated to the twin covenants of the Declaration and the Constitution. Hereupon, Lincoln would consistently invoke the “ancient faith” of the Declaration of Independence as the moral cornerstone of the Union.
As Lew Lehrman has aptly noted, Lincoln’s Peoria speech marked a “turning point” in Lincoln’s life and that of the nation. In an 1859 campaign autobiography, he explained, “I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise [by the Kansas-Nebraska Act] aroused me again.” The three-hour speech took place as a reply to an earlier speech by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who was touring Illinois in support of the newly enacted Kansas Nebraska Act (1854), which he had steered through Congress. As the architect of this measure, Douglas had acquiesced to southern demands to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which hitherto had restricted slavery North of the latitude line 36° 30’. This repeal now opened the remaining territory of the Louisiana Purchase to slavery. The core principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was popular sovereignty, the right of territorial settlers to decide for themselves, without the interference of the federal government, whether or not to have slavery. Douglas championed popular sovereignty as the most democratic way to resolve the slavery question. However, the Kansas-Nebraska Act polarized sectional tensions as never before, leading to a political realignment of antislavery Whigs and northern Democrats, who formed the nucleus of the Republican Party. Lincoln became the new party’s first president in 1860.
The purpose of Lincoln’s speech was three-fold: 1) to repudiate the Kansas-Nebraska Act as inconsistent with the principles and practices of the founding; 2) to reveal popular sovereignty as a dangerous political heresy and a thinly disguised pretext to make slavery national; 3) to reclaim the authentic moral justification of the American Union. In support of these goals, Lincoln produced a rhetorical masterpiece in both substance and style. He would repeat many of the arguments he made against slavery at Peoria in the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 and throughout the remainder of his public life.
The Speech may be divided into four main parts: 1) an introduction that disclaims radicalism and positions Lincoln as an antislavery moderate; 2) an historical overview of federal precedent restricting and interfering with slavery in the territories; 3) a consideration of whether or not popular sovereignty and its “avowed principle” of moral neutrality is “intrinsically right;” 4) a rebuttal to Douglas’s claim that the historical and congressional record sanctioned popular sovereignty, thereby superseding earlier compromises and policies on slavery.
Lincoln introduces his speech by establishing himself as a pro-Union, antislavery moderate in contrast to radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who endorsed disunion and stigmatized the Constitution as a proslavery “covenant with death and an agreement with hell” (Isaiah 28: 18). Lincoln begins by making a clear legal distinction between the existing institution of slavery in the southern states, and its extension into new territories where it did not yet exist. This distinction is crucial to understanding Lincoln’s statesmanship in regard to slavery. At the time, antislavery moderates conceded that under the federal division of power the Constitution barred the federal government from interfering with slavery where it was already established. The territories, however, were a different matter, since they fell under the jurisdiction and control of the federal government. As such, slavery could be lawfully restricted there.
In the second part of the speech, Lincoln provides a masterful legal and historical overview of the federal policy of restricting slavery from the time of the Founding until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Lincoln adduces the Father of the Democratic Party against Douglas, emphasizing that “the policy of prohibiting slavery into new territory originated” with Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. This policy led to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, a crucial federal precedent that barred slavery in the vast territory west of the Appalachian Mountains and north of the Ohio River. With lawyerlike precision and clarity, Lincoln amasses overwhelming evidence of the federal government’s restriction of slavery in its territories, from the Northwest Ordinance (1787), to the Louisiana Purchase (1807), the Missouri Compromise (1820), the Wilmot Proviso and the Compromise of 1850. This policy ended, however, with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Lincoln’s concise narrative is an invaluable source for understanding the sectional debate over slavery extension.
Lincoln concludes this narrative with a strong condemnation of “the monstrous injustice” of slavery, repeatedly and atypically using the strong language of “hate” to characterize his feelings about the institution. It undermines sectional peace at home and undermines moral credibility abroad. Most insidiously, it places well-meaning citizens in an “open war with the fundamental principles of the civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.” By characterizing the struggle over slavery extension as an underlying conflict between self-interest and moral right, Lincoln displays his mettle as a philosophical statesman who demands a legitimate standard to judge federal policies.
Before transitioning to the next section of the speech, Lincoln tempers his remarks by considering the constraints and difficulties of dealing with “the existing institution.” The tone now shifts to sympathy for the moral and political dilemmas faced by southerners of good will. Lincoln notes that his own first impulse would be to return the slaves to Africa, the policy of colonization. However, he immediately raises questions about the practicality of this plan. He then considers the scenario of freeing the slaves and making them fully the social and political equals of whites, a status that was actually prohibited under Illinois law. He notes that his own feelings would not permit this, but that even if they did, others would object. Lincoln’s use of conditional language in regard to his “own feeling,” combined with his observation that “a universal feeling” (that African Americans cannot be the social or political equal of whites), “whether well or ill founded, can not be safely disregarded” raises questions about whether he actually shared—or was merely accommodating—the common racial prejudices of the time.
The third section of the speech considers whether or not the principle of popular sovereignty is intrinsically right. Here Lincoln integrates a number of cogent arguments against slavery. Addressing southerners as if they were in the audience, he asks a series of rhetorical questions about their own actions in punishing the international slave trader with the death penalty, despising the domestic slave dealer, and manumitting slaves at great cost. In each case, the actions of southerners themselves testify to their own intuitive recognition of and sympathy for the common humanity of the enslaved person.
Next Lincoln turns to the principles of self-government. Consent among equals is the only legitimate principle of governance, according to what Lincoln calls his “ancient faith,” as expressed in the Declaration. Without consent, the alternative is to rule another by either force or fraud. Here Lincoln contrasts the nation’s “ancient faith” with the “new faith” of popular sovereignty, which he likens to an idolatrous abandonment of the nation’s moral covenant. In sum, slavery is tantamount to the retrograde doctrine of the divine right of kings rejected by the Founders.
Lincoln then turns to the Constitution. An inspection of its language reveals the deliberate absence of the term “slave” or “slavery.” According to Lincoln, the Founders substituted euphemisms like “persons held to labor” as a mark of their disapprobation. In explaining the gap between the principle and practice at the time of the Founding, Lincoln uses the analogy of a sick man with a cancerous tumor. Slavery is a cancer that could not be removed at the time of the Founding without killing the patient, the Union. However, once the patient’s viability has been established, the cancer must be removed before it spreads. Slavery was thus tolerated only as a necessary evil. The Declaration, was, in effect, a promise that slavery would eventually be extirpated from the land.
Lincoln ends this section of the speech by defending American exceptionalism with an allusion to the Book of Revelation (7:13–14). He urges a recurrence to the spirit of the Revolution to purify the nation’s republican robe. The Union must be “worthy” of saving in view of the principles and practices that harmonize with its “ancient faith” in the Declaration.
In the final section of the speech, Lincoln rebuts Douglas’s claim that popular sovereignty was both anticipated and affirmed by the historical and legislative record. Neither the presence of slaves at one time in Illinois nor the territorial settlements of Utah, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon repealed the earlier principle of restriction, he says. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a proslavery innovation inconsistent with prior compromises and settlements.
While the shorter Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address are both inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial, the more discursive Peoria Address should also be included in the ranks of Lincoln’s greatest speeches for its enduring vindication of the moral meaning of America and the principles of the Declaration. The strenuous path demanded by the “ancient faith” at Peoria would ultimately lead to “new birth of freedom” Lincoln spoke of at Gettysburg.
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