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By the description, this is a through examination of one particular speech Abraham Lincoln gave at the start of his second career in politics.

That’s actually a very incomplete description. This book is much more about all the history surrounding it.

Lehrman’s contention is that a speech Lincoln gave in October 1854 should be as well remembered as some of his later speeches, like Cooper Union, and the Second Inaugural. That’s not really going to happen, but he does have good things to say about how it is foundational to most anything he said later.

The book is generally at its best recounting the history directly related to Lincoln and his speeches in the 1850s. You get the set up with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and all the political conflict that set in motion. Something Lehrman is quite clear about, but lets get a little overshadowed in other parts of the book is that the speech discussed here was given, apparently in largely the same form, just a few days before in Springfield. His words there were not recorded, and there’s not enough to even begin to reconstruct exactly what he said there, and it’s assumed that Peoria was basically a repeat of it. I’m tempted to think that Springfield may be more of first draft that had been polished afterward at Peoria. But we’ll never know. We do know that Lincoln was directly involved in making sure this version got out for people to read.

And while it’s not as well known, it has been read, and Lehrman leans a lot on existing commentaries on the speech in his book. Enough so that this book is not really able to into a very deep dissection of what Lincoln said, instead presenting more of what others have said. Which is fine enough for me, as that kind of textual analysis beyond my endurance. At the same time the second strength of this book is his look at where the thoughts presented in Peoria would echo in many further statements from Lincoln.

Despite the limited scope, this is not a fine combing over of the subject, and more of a general introduction to it. That is certainly fine for me, and it was a reasonably good read, if tending towards long-form repetition, and ignoring things just outside the spotlight.