Abraham Lincoln, prior to the Kansas struggle, stood out from hundreds of Midwestern lawyer-politicians only by a reputation for complete honesty, and a habit of prolonged, abstracted contemplation. He had played the usual game of Illinois politics, and not too well. Elected to Congress as a Whig, he was defeated for a second term owing to his opposition to the Mexican War. Slavery he regarded as an evil thing from his first contact with it on a raft trip down the Mississippi; but the abolitionist agitation seemed to him mischievous and unrealistic. He was an antislavery man, but willing to let slavery alone where it was established. About the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, some new force began to work in Lincoln's soul. He began to preach a new testament of antislavery, without malice or hatred toward the slave-owners.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Abraham Lincoln, prior to the Kansas struggle, stood out from hundreds of Midwestern lawyer-politicians only by a reputation for complete honesty, and a habit of prolonged, abstracted contemplation. He had played the usual game of Illinois politics, and not too well. Elected to Congress as a Whig, he was defeated for a second term owing to his opposition to the Mexican War. Slavery he regarded as an evil thing from his first contact with it on a raft trip down the Mississippi; but the abolitionist agitation seemed to him mischievous and unrealistic. He was an antislavery man, but willing to let slavery alone where it was established. About the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, some new force began to work in Lincoln's soul. He began to preach a new testament of antislavery, without malice or hatred toward the slave-owners." in the context of "Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (1965). New York: Oxford University Press, p. 594" to mean that wisdom is timeless.