Chapters 7-8 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 7 is called "There Are No Whigs" and continues to follow Lincoln in "retirement" from politics as he builds his successful legal practice. Lincoln is not absent from politics for long, however, and takes an active role in campaigning for Whig candidates, delivering speeches in favor of Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate for president in 1852. His support is lackluster, however, Donald writes.

The galvanizing issue that returns Lincoln to politics, Donald explains, is the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by Lincoln's longtime Illinois Democrat opponent Stephen Douglas, who is serving as a US Senator. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, also called simply the Nebraska Act, calls for "popular sovereignty" in the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska that would allow the people of those territories to decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed.

The issue of slavery and its spread...