Lewis E. Lehrman

Lincoln at Peoria tells the tale of a hardworking lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, at a major crossroad in American history. To understand President Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the private citizen who gave the extraordinary antislavery speech at Peoria on October 16, 1854. This three hour address marked the turning point in his political pilgrimage. It dramatically altered the political career of the speaker and, as a result, the history of America.

Lincoln at Peoria examines the seminal Peoria speech and the historical context in which Lincoln delivered it. While some may argue that Lincoln underwent a transformation after assuming the presidency in 1861, the book’s author Lewis Lehrman contends, “The great divide between the statecraft of his presidential years and his early legislative years originates with the speech at Peoria in 1854.” The book emphasizes the unmistakable wholeness of character, genius, and enterprise to Lincoln’s public life from 1854 to 1865. Lincoln’s comprehensive antislavery case made at Peoria inspired his subsequent speeches, public letters and state papers.

The Peoria speech is also Lincoln’s primary statement about the nature of early American history and its “peculiar institution” of slavery. All of his moral and historical arguments opposed any further extension of slavery in the American republic, founded, as he argued, upon the Declaration of Independence. That “all men are created equal,” with the “inalienable right to liberty,” was, for Lincoln, a universal principle that Americans must not ignore. Lewis E. Lehrman, the author of this book, insists that “Lincoln believed America must get right with the Declaration of Independence.” In 1876, the centennial year of the Declaration, the great black abolitionist, Frederick Douglass summarized Lincoln’s achievement: “…measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”

Admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1837, at the age of twenty eight, having served four terms in the State Legislature and a single term in Congress (1846-1848), Abraham Lincoln substantially withdrew from politics between 1849 and 1854. During these five years, his Springfield law practice prospered. Traveling often by horse and buggy, he became a well-respected litigator on the 8th judicial circuit of Illinois.

Then, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, one of the most explosive congressional statutes of American history, burst upon the Illinois prairie with its passage in May of 1854. Sponsored by the famous Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, this legislation repealed the prohibition on slavery in that section of the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30' parallel — a restriction on the spread of slavery agreed by North and South in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Kansas-Nebraska Act inaugurated an incendiary chapter in the slavery debates of the early American Republic.

In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln launched his antislavery campaign. He delivered the substance of his arguments at Springfield on October 4, 1854, for which there are only press reports. A longer version came twelve days later at Peoria. The Springfield remarks did not survive, but by preparing them meticulously for publication, Lincoln made sure the Peoria text endured.

The Peoria address was rigorous, logical, and grounded in thorough historical research — marking Lincoln’s reentry into politics and, as he could not know, his preparation for the presidency in 1861.

To understand President Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the Peoria speech of October 16, 1854. It forms the foundation of his politics and principles, in the 1850s and in his presidency. The Peoria speech, delivered in three hours and ten minutes and composed of more than 17,000 words, is reprinted in full in an appendix. It is a rhetorical and literary masterpiece. This speech is the primary statement by Abraham Lincoln about the nature of early American history and its “peculiar institution” of slavery. A quotation from the Peoria Speech introduces each chapter of this book. Lincoln’s arguments at Peoria were a comprehensive repudiation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of May 1854. Sponsored by Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, this legislation reversed the congressional prohibition on slavery in that section of the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30' parallel, a restriction on the spread of slavery agreed to in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Lincoln was appalled by this reversal of three decades of settled policy. He was opposed to any further spread of slavery in the American republic, founded as it was upon the Declaration of Independence. That “all men are created equal”, with the “inalienable right to liberty”, was, for Lincoln, a universal principle that Americans must not ignore.

With research and study conducted in the State Capitol, the forty-five-year-old attorney carefully prepared a counterattack on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Years of studying Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, preparing for jury trials, litigating in the courts of Illinois, and researching American political history had prepared Lincoln’s mind and speech to argue the issues raised by the new legislation. To his natural aptitude for learning, Lincoln now joined a mature intellect, a driving instinct for political organization, and a masterful grasp of the facts and logic of the case against Kansas-Nebraska.

How do the United States, and other countries, get from here to there? That is, how we get from the present unstable paper dollar to a stable dollar as good as gold. This question has been raised and debated at crucial junctures over the last hundred years.

After almost a century of manipulated paper- and credit-based currencies, how do nations--which need the benefits of free trade in order to prosper—terminate the anarchy of volatile, depreciating, floating exchange rates?  How do the same nations stage the resumption of a true gold standard, without the escalating debt and leverage of official reserve currencies?

Since the inauguration of Bretton Woods in 1944, so-called free trade has been maintained and subsidized by the especially open market and overvalued reserve currency dollar of the United States.  In a word, since World War II, free trade has often been at the expense of United States businesses, manufacturing, and labor.

How, therefore, may America now lead other nations toward an equitable and renewed world trading system based on a new monetary order, stable exchange rates, and reciprocal free trade inuring to the mutual benefit of all? How do the same nations stage the resumption of a true gold standard, without the escalating debt and leverage of official reserve currencies?

The United States is now in the most serious recession since the 1930s. The most staid and sober magazines and newspapers are writing openly about the possibility of depression. Sectors of the economy have already entered the depression stage; more are threatening ...

The gold standard, in a word, is democratic money. The sovereign American people should regulate the quantity of money and credit, not the Federal Reserve, a government agency. Gold is also the money of the Constitution as stipulated in Article I, Sections 8 and 10.

First July 1944 and then August 1971: the dog days of summer have been momentous for the American dollar.  It was 67 years ago that 44 nations from around the world gathered at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to plan the post-war framework for international money and trade.

On the afternoon of Friday, Aug. 13, 1971, high-ranking White House and Treasury Department officials gathered secretly in President Richard Nixon's lodge at Camp David. Treasury Secretary John Connally, on the job for just seven months, was seated to Nixon's right. During that momentous afternoon, however, newcomer Connally was front and center, put there by a solicitous president. Nixon, gossiped his staff, was smitten by the big, self-confident Texan whom the president had charged with bringing order into his administration's bumbling economic policies.

While the Chinese financial system has been corrupted primarily by tyranny, deceit, and reckless expansionism, it is also destabilized by the workings of the world dollar standard.

Neither the United States nor China has come to grips with the perverse effects of the world dollar standard.

China is an important trading partner of America. But it may also be a mortal threat. And not for the conventional reasons usually cited in the press. Ironically, it is a threat because China is in fact a financial colony of the United States, a colony subsidized and sustained by the pegged, undervalued, yuan-dollar exchange rate.

The world is in economic crisis. Quite understandably, much attention has been given to cutting runaway government spending, a fundamental cause of the crisis. Much less attention has been given to the fundamental defects of the monetary system. These defects are at the heart of the economic collapse. Both budgetary and monetary issues must be examined and resolved.

There is little new in this latest cycle of economic boom, panic, and bust. All of these cycles are linked to the life and death of the unstable post–World War II Bretton Woods monetary system. First came the crisis-ridden gold-dollar system from 1944 to 1971. Then came the rise of floating exchange rates and the world paper dollar standard from 1971 to the present—associated with regular booms, panics, and busts—bringing us down to this very day.

Today the economic crisis we endure is only the latest chapter in the century-long struggle to restore financial order, the success (or failure) of which is inextricably bound up with American prosperity and the promise of the American way of life.

THE most disturbing aspect of the current financial crisis is that no U.S. official has correctly identified its primary cause. Experts variously attribute the economic reverses to subprime lending, derivative trading, excessive leverage, and regulation that was either too lax or too strict (take your pick), but these are symptoms rather than causes.

Since the beginning of 2009, oil prices have almost tripled, gasoline prices are up about 50 percent, and basic food prices, such as corn, soybeans, and wheat, have almost doubled around the world. Cotton and copper prices have reached all time highs; major rises in sugar, spice, and wheat prices have been creating food riots in poor countries, where basic goods inflation is rampant.

Between 2009 and 2010 we have experienced a major, emerging market equity and economic boom -- but at the very same time, sluggish growth in the United States. Foreign authorities are now reacting to inflation, raising interest rates, just as relative growth shifts to the U. S. I believe we will witness during this year, a Fed-fueled economic expansion, above consensus, in the United States.

No man in America is a match for House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on the federal budget. No congressman in my lifetime has been more determined to cut government spending. No one is better informed for the task he has set himself. Nor has anyone developed a more comprehensive plan to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, the federal budget deficit than the House Budget Resolution submitted by Mr. Ryan.

The Democratic victory in upstate New York on Tuesday seemed to be about the unpopularity of the Republican Medicare plan. Democrat Kathy Hochul beat Republican Jane Corwin 47 percent to 43 percent to win the open seat in New York’s 26th Congressional District, a shocking turn of events in a district that long had been a Republican beachhead in a blue state.

The missing issue of this Presidential election is monetary policy -- America's need for a stable dollar. But massive Federal Reserve credit expansion, QE1 and QE2, has forced the volatile dollar down to such a depreciated level on the foreign exchanges that, absent QE3, a reversal of trend should appear with rising interest rates by the upcoming Presidential election.

This is the seventh in a series of strategic-issue essays by "good thinkers" that have been published on subjects ranging from gold, supply-side economics, to world debt problem. In this paper, Lehrman argues that the record of the last decade makes clear that floating exchange rates create monetary anarchy.

Since gold is uncorrelated, rather than negatively correlated, with financial assets, it is not surprising that the addition of gold to a financial portfolio can have very different effects. This Investment Research Strategy paper discusses these effects.

Forerunners of man lived upon the planet several million years ago. But the unique social order of man – civilization – emerged only four to five thousand years ago. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that the institution of money evolved coterminously with civilization among all the institutions of life on earth; therefore, civilization and money are but young and fragile reeds. Their growth and development occurred only recently and today their very existence is threatened with extinction.

Lewis Lehrman talks with Washington Times columnist John Lofton about the Reagan administration's handling of monetary policy-and he tells what he would do to solve economic problems. This includes a program that would re-establish the gold monetary standard in the United States.

Those of us who believe in the goals of the Reagan revolution had better face up to the consequences of the last two years. We called for boom and got something very close to bust. We called for a balanced budget and got record-shattering deficits. We called for a restoration of capital markets so business could borrow money for long periods at reasonable interest rates, and we got a devastating credit crunch.

This essay presents the economic and political issues of the 1970's and 1980's, similar to the present, including the complex interrelationship between Federal Reserve Bank policy, inflationary expectations, the financial markets, and the price of gold.

The lagged correlation between the rise and fall of Federal Reserve Bank credit and the rise and fall of gold is not perfect, but there is compelling association between the two. For example, almost every reacceleration of Federal Reserve Bank credit between January 1977 and January 1980 tends to be accompanied by an acceleration in the price of gold.

There is intellectual combat going on in Governor Reagan's camp. Some call it a struggle for Reagan's soul. The subtle arguments of the opposing sides make a battle ground of many editorial pages, for it is clear that Governor Reagan may be our next President.

The world economy of the nineteenth century was, above all, characterized by the gold standard. Each great power defined its currency by a weight unit of gold and guaranteed convertibility, at that rate, of cash into gold. The international gold standard was the impartial arbiter and balance wheel of the world financial system.

The Presidential election was a political avalanche. There are many ways to interpret it, but the significance of the vote is unequivocal. President Reagan clearly has a mandate to change the direction of public policy in America. It is true that much of the vote was an anti-Carter vote. It is also true that the House of Representatives remains in Democratic hands. But the Senate is a Republican body today for the first time since the early Eisenhower years (1954).