Prior to the 1850s, the North was confident that slavery would never spread into the free states or the free territories. People living in these states and territories where slavery did not yet exist believed that slavery was a uniquely Southern problem that would never hurt them.

But in the 1850s, a series of events convinced more and more people that America could not exist half slave and half free. In the words of Abraham Lincoln (quoting a proverb of Jesus), a house divided against itself cannot stand. Therefore, Lincoln predicted that America would either become all slave or all free.

If you’re interested in these series of events, please read the sections “Abraham Lincoln versus Stephen Douglas” and “Fort Sumter” in my book Visions of America (published with Visions of the Church) at pages 68-82.

The purpose of this blog is to describe the transformation of Abraham Lincoln by his moral outrage at the growing power of the Slavocracy.

The term “Slavocracy” referred to the system of laws and customs that sustained slavery in the South and was spreading to the rest of America.

In light of the recent arguments about the existence of “systemic racism”, it is important to note that slavery (and the racism that buttressed it) could only be sustained by a system of laws and customs.

It was Abraham Lincoln’s moral outrage at this system of laws and customs that transformed Abraham Lincoln from a typical politician into one of the greatest orators and statesmen that America—and all Humanity—have ever known!

Fired up by the threat to the soul of America, Lincoln’s speeches became impassioned and inspiring.

In 1854, he spoke at the Illinois State Fair for three hours.

Although he started a bit awkwardly with a voice that was “sharp, shrill, piping and squeaky,” the pitch of his voice “became harmonious, melodious, musical” as he warmed to his task.

The intellectual substance of his arguments wasn’t new.

What was new was Lincoln’s “tone of moral outrage when he discussed the ‘monstrous injustice of slavery’”

Lincoln reviewed how the Founding Fathers had set slavery on the road to extinction because they “hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.”

They were so ashamed of slavery that they did not even use the word “slavery” in the Constitution!

In contrast, changes in the 1850s to preserve and spread the system of laws and customs of slavery meant that America was openly tolerating this monstrous evil of slavery.

“Lincoln reached a new oratorical height in denouncing the claim” that these changes were taken in the spirit of the Founding Fathers.

As Lincoln defended the good intentions of the Founding Fathers from this heresy, he “quivered with feeling and emotion.” “His feelings once or twice swelled within and came near stifling utterance.”

And no wonder!

From his earliest years, Lincoln read history books in which the Founding Fathers were portrayed as infallible demigods.

Lincoln himself was a self-made man. He became a successful lawyer despite being raised in grinding poverty with little formal education.

Therefore, the bedrock of Lincoln’s political faith was that all men are created equal—that all men must have an equal opportunity to succeed as he had succeeded.

Slavery denied such equal opportunity to blacks directly. Its system of laws and customs kept them from enjoying the fruits of their labor!

Furthermore, slavery was beginning to deny such equal opportunity to whites indirectly. The spread of its system of laws and customs was going to make white people compete against slave labor!

Lincoln worried that the spread of slavery would drive wages lower for white workers, making many white people as poor as black slaves.

Lincoln also came to realize the worldwide implications of America tolerating slavery. In a eulogy in 1852 to his mentor, Henry Clay, Lincoln echoed Clay’s feeling “that the world’s best hope depended on the continued Union of these States.”

Accordingly, in 1854, Lincoln warned the crowd at the Illinois State Fair that we are “proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world” because we are “fostering human slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of human freedom.”

Lincoln had been a loyal member of the Whig political party. But now—in this battle for the soul of America—he joined with other politicians to form a new political party.

This new political party drew support from people of both existing political parties—the Democrats and the Whigs.

Why?

To oppose the system of laws and customs that preserved and spread slavery!

The name of this new political party?

The Republican Party!

In 1856, Lincoln attended the convention that organized the Republican Party in Illinois.

Now forty-seven years old, he bought his first spectacles while waiting for the convention to begin.

The unwitting symbolism was perfect. Because, at this convention, his stirring speech showed that, better than anyone else, he heard, saw and understood slavery’s evils and the only hope for America—the only hope for all of Humanity!

As Lincoln’s law partner recalled later: “His speech was full of fire and energy and force; it was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth and right set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, backed with wrath.”

In this speech, Lincoln revealed the passion—and the Vision of America—that would carry both himself and the Union through four bloody years of civil war.

Lincoln pledged that he was “ready to fuse [politically] with anyone who would unite with him to oppose slave power.” And, if the South dared to raise “the bugbear [of] disunion,” the answer should be that “the Union must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the integrity of its territorial parts.”

The legendary orator and U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Daniel Webster, said much the same thing in 1830 during a Senate debate over the future of the Union.

Now, Lincoln quoted Webster’s eloquence to forge the motto of the newly-founded Republican Party: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

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This blog is based on passages in my book Visions of America, at pages 70-75 (first published in 2004, together with Visions of the Church). For the supporting sources, please see the endnotes to those pages of my book.

For more of my thoughts inspired by Juneteenth, please read “Juneteenth: George Washington”, “Juneteenth: Frederick Douglass Learns To Read”, “Juneteenth: Frederick Douglass Denounces America’s Hypocrisy”, “Juneteenth: Harriett Beecher Stowe Writes Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Juneteenth: Frederick Douglass Urges an Earnest Struggle for Liberty”, “Juneteenth: Sojourner Truth and Harriett Tubman”, and “Juneteenth: Harriett Beecher Stowe Prophesied Doom for America”.

For my thoughts on related themes, please read my blogs “Raising the Star-Spangled Banner—Americans”, “Racism Is America Gone Astray”, “The 500-Year Marathon To Overcome Racism”, “The ‘United States’ Compared to ‘America’”, “George Washington Refuses To Become a King”, “Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—Unifying Americans”, “Martin Luther King, Jr.—Restoring Hope and Giving a Vision”, “Nationalism Is Patriotism Gone Astray”, “How Do We Build a Civilization That Is Good—That Is Very Good?”, “We Need Inspiring Visions of a Bright Future. Why?”, “Speaking Up”, “Irresistible Hurricanes of the Holy Spirit”, “Parking Cars”, “St.  Francis of Assisi Made the Way of Jesus Great Again”, “Hypocrisy: Taking Away What You Gave”, “Pandemic Wisdom: Visions of America”, and “Pandemic Wisdom: Scattering the Church”.