All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. III, 1856-1860 by Sidney Blumenthal. Simon & Schuster, 2019.
Where did Abraham Lincoln come from, and how did he rise from near obscurity to become President of the United States?
In this volume, Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal describes the politician’s incredible ascent to power during 1856-1860, a period of political chaos in the United States only rivaled by current events.
After losing his bid for re-election after a single two-year term in the House of Representatives in 1848, Lincoln questioned whether he would ever amount to much more than a backcountry Illinois lawyer. Enraged by Senator Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 which exacerbated the issue of slavery in the nation, he challenged the most powerful demagogue in the country for his Senate seat and their debates drew him national attention.
"Lincoln’s reinvention required that he invent a whole new politics," Blumenthal explains. "He would temper his melancholy and disappointment into the base metal of his determination. He had to break free from past political bonds, focus his concentrated intellectual powers entirely self-taught to reframe political argument, forge a completely new party from the wreckage, draw together in a common enterprise men who hated and distrusted each other, from abolitionists to Old Whigs, from Democrats to Know Nothings, overcome after suffering defeat after defeat and one famous and powerful opponent after another, and through his mastery in the whirlwind create new 'powers of earth' to struggle against the greatest power in the country, the Slave Power, 'all the powers of earth.'"
This book describes how Lincoln achieved the presidency by force of strategy, of political savvy and determination.