As historian James McPherson has written in endorsing this book: "The first political confrontation between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas occurred not in the famous debates of 1858" but four years earlier. This book is the first complete account of those 1854 debates. As that year dawned, Lincoln's political future looked dim. His single term in the House of Representatives six years earlier seemed to have marked both the beginning and the end of his national political career. But the unexpected repeal of the Missouri Compromise's prohibition of slavery in the western territories...
As historian James McPherson has written in endorsing this book: "The first political confrontation between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas occ...