Darya Plemeshova nº48961
American Political Theory
Copper Union Address
Background
* As Lincoln took the stage that evening at Cooper Union, he faced an audience of 1,500 spectators. Most of them were active in the Republican Party, and among them were such luminaries as the editor of the antislavery New York Tribune, Horace Greeley. * Lincoln was able show that the founding fathers had intended Congress to regulate slavery. He named the men who had signed the Constitution and who had later voted, while in Congress, to regulate slavery. He also demonstrated that George Washington himself, as President, had signed a bill into law that regulated slavery. * The New York City newspapers carried the text of his speech the next day, with the New York Times running the speech on the front page. The favorable publicity was astounding, and Lincoln went on to speak in several other cities in the East. * That summer the Republican Party held its nominating convention in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln, beating out better known candidates, received his party's nomination. And historians tend to agree that it would never have happened if not for the address delivered months earlier.

Main ideas of the speech

* An idea being floated by pro-slavery advocates at the time was that Congress had no right to regulate slavery in new territories. * Lincoln's speech can be divided into three parts. In the first, he showed that twenty-one of the thirty-nine signers of the Constitution were on record that the Federal Government could prohibit slavery in the national territories. * In the second, Lincoln explained to the South that Republicans were no threat to slavery where it already existed. * Finally, Lincoln spoke to the North. They must fearlessly persist in excluding slavery from the national territories, and therefore, confine it to the states where it already existed.