Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis

Chapter three shows how in October of 1854, Lincoln gave a speech denouncing America's new policy regarding slavery in new western territories. Although Lincoln no longer held, nor appeared to aspire to, any political office, he blasted the Kansas-Nebraska Act in numerous public venues in an attempt to restore the Missouri Compromise. During this time period, Lincoln used stronger language than he had ever used before to discuss his opinion that slavery was a monstrous injustice.

The Whig party began to fracture in the early 1850s, forcing Lincoln to find a new party. The emergence of the Republican party in 1856 provided Lincoln with a new party that supported his beliefs, but included a more radical faction that Lincoln would find himself attempting to both appease and calm as the party grew in the late 1850s.

The presidential election of 1856 would prove to...