Imagine the setting. Since soon after the close of World War II, the United States had been engaged in a heated Cold War with the Communist Soviet Union. Within the previous four years, Soviet tanks and troops had crushed a democratic revolt in Hungary and threatened...
![[Dividing the] National [Map]. [Cincinnati], 1860. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-33122)](http://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/aggregate-208x148/essay-images/33122u.synop_.web_.jpg "Political cartoon depicting the four presidential candidates in the election of 1860 tearing the country apart. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)")
‘A house divided against itself can not stand’ I believe this government can not endure permanently, half slave, and half free . . . I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided . . . Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and put it in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old, as well as new.
—Abraham...
When Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860, his experience in politics and government included serving in the Illinois legislature and the US House of Representatives. He had also studied law and was licensed to practice law in Illinois at age twenty-seven. This seems like scant experience for a man who would lead a country through the greatest internal challenge to its existence. However, Lincoln found a way to draw on his life experience and his professional...