Lincoln and the Problem of Western Expansion
The national debate in the years leading up to the Civil War concerned
the question of whether the United States should expand beyond
its borders, and, if so, how should it expand. This question
opened up when Abraham Lincoln was a Whig Congressman and he
opposed the Mexican-American War; Lincoln opposed Stephen
Douglas’s attempt to provide territorial governments for Kansas and
Nebraska on the principle of popular sovereignty; and Lincoln provided
a strident and seemingly pessimistic critique of “Manifest Destiny,”
seeing the expansion of manifest destiny as linked to the expansion
of slavery. Western Expansion was a problem for Lincoln,
one that could be solved on terms other than those of Douglas’s
platform. This talk helps us to see Lincoln’s establishment of the
Idaho territory as part of his vision for how Western Expansion
would proceed, and it explores the conditions that made it possible
for his policy to become the national policy.

Lincoln and the Problem of Civil Rights during Wartime
Today’s concerns about the Patriot Act and the status of our combatants
in the War on Terrorism raise perennial issues of democratic
governance in a liberal society. No president faced these issues more
clearly and stridently than Abraham Lincoln. Responding to arguments
from Erastus Corning and other New York Democrats, Lincoln
defended his decisions with respect to civil rights as being humane
and respectful of the goals of union. In this talk, Dr. Yenor
discusses Lincoln’s arguments and then transfers the principles of his
arguments to contemporary issues. Today’s issues may be as complicated
as, or even more complicated than, those faced by Lincoln, but
our resolution of those issues favors civil rights much more than the
Great Emancipator’s view.