Abraham Lincoln's Most Important - and Least Well Known - Speech on the Eve of the Civil War

Abraham Lincoln’s September 30, 1859, speech to the Wisconsin Agricultural Society is not well known, but it is arguably his most important speech on the eve of the Civil War.  In the address, Lincoln countered James Henry Hammond’s “Mud Sill Theory” (that there must always be a lower class for the upper classes to rest upon) with his paean to “useful labor” and “cultivated thought.”

Location: Liberty Hall, 325 W. Benton, lecture room