In 1856, in Bloomington, Illinois, Lincoln speaks extemporaneously at the convention where the Republican Party is being created. Some in attendance say later that this speech had such power, was limned with such divine fire, that no one who heard it was unchanged. “In a brief moment every one in that . . . assembly came to feel as one man, to think as one man and to purpose and resolve as one man. Rarely if ever was so wonderful an effect produced by an oration. It was the speech of his life in the estimation of many who heard it,” Judge John M. Scott wrote. He was quite safe in saying so, since no text survives to trouble the matter. Those reporters charged with transcription claim they were so transported they forgot to take notes.

Or else the speech’s disappearance was calculated. It seems that Lincoln, speaking off the record, allowed himself to express a more radical form of anti-slavery than his usual. It seems to have been an angry speech. Lincoln apparently argued that no compromise with slavery was possible—that the nation must either be all slaveholding or all free.

Friends tell him later that he has gone too far and they believe he’s been persuaded. But in two years he will repeat himself and this time for the ages—“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he will say.

The speech establishes him as a leader in the Republican Party and soon he is being asked to speak so often and in so many places it becomes tiresome. He begins to hear from people who want him to run for the presidency.

xiii

Despite Mother’s obstruction, Asia has managed to amass a fair collection of materials for Father’s biography. She and John work together to wrestle it all into order. The manuscript is always open, always in Asia’s thoughts.