Put plainly, Lincoln was a politician, building a public life on points that could be sustained by popular opinion-or, in extreme cases, sustained despite popular opinion. Doing good depended on winning elections. Not incidentally, his work as a lawyer nurtured this perspective, bringing him before panels that decided guilt and innocence, truth and falsehood. Lincoln had to constantly keep in mind the predilections and prejudices of ordinary people in Illinois-especially central Illinois, a region thick with hostility to antislavery agitation. But
( Joshua Wolf Shenk )
[ Lincoln's Melancholy: How ]
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