Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom - US Department of State

y 1854, Abraham Lincoln could be forgiven for believing his political career
had reached an end. Lincoln had secured his party’s congressional nomination
in part by pledging to serve only one term, thus allowing other members of
the local Whig Party the chance to serve. Lincoln came to regret this pledge,
I happen
temporarily to
occupy this big
White House.
I am living
witness that
any one of your
children may
look to come
here as my
father ’s child
has.
advising his law partner, William
Herndon, “If it should so happen
that nobody else wishes to be
elected, I could not refuse the people
the right of sending me again.”
Lincoln had enjoyed his two years in
Washington and had begun to make
a name for himself as an opponent of
the Mexican War, but there was no
great public clamor for his continued
service. Disappointed, he returned to
Springfield and began rebuilding his
legal practice.
But 1854 also saw new fissures in
the delicate sectional compromises
over slavery. Increasingly the free
North and slaveholding South each
saw the other’s customs and practices
as a lethal threat to its own way
of life. Lincoln was drawn to this
debate, and thus gradually back to
public life. Whether Lincoln seized
events or they instead propelled him
forward, there can be little doubt
over the nation’s good fortune: In its
time of greatest need, America found
its greatest leader.
Free Labor
Abraham Lincoln had always
championed “free labor,” the principle
that a man — and in Lincoln’s day
this meant males only — could work
how and where he wanted, could
accumulate property in his own
name, and, most importantly, could
rise freely as far as his talents and
abilities might take him. Lincoln
himself was a model of this self-made
man. As he wrote in 1854:
There is no permanent class of hired
laborers amongst us. Twenty-five
years ago, I was a hired laborer. The
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