Radicals and All

As the Whig Party withered away in 1855, Abraham Lincoln found himself pulled toward the new Republican Party -- an organization that not only stood foursquare against slavery's expansion, but brought an economic vision that reflected northern attitudes and explicitly rejected the Southern way of life.

Sources used:

Blumenthal, Sidney: All The Powers of Earth. Simon and Schuster, 2019.

Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life. (Vol. 1). The John Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 1953 Edition hosted by the University of Michigan.

Davis, Rodney and Wilson, Douglas, ed. Herndon on Lincoln: Letters. Knox College Lincoln Studies Center, 2016.

Donald, David Herbert, Lincoln: A Biography. Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. Oxford University Press, 1995.

Foner, Eric, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. W.W. Norton and Company, 2011.

Holt, Michael, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. Oxford University Press; 1999.

Sumner, Charles, "Equality before the law, unconstitutionality of separate colored schools in Massachusetts : argument of Charles Sumner, Esq., before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in the case of Sarah C. Roberts vs. The City of Boston, December 4, 1849." hosted on the Library of Congress website.

Wilentz, Sean, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. W.W. Norton and Company, 2005.