If Americans are feeling gloomy as the nation’s 250th birthday approaches, they might look back to what Abraham Lincoln thought about the condition of the country in 1838 to get some perspective on present discontents. That was the year a young Lincoln, then just a state senator, delivered a speech at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, on “the perpetuation of our institutions.” Lincoln perceived trouble ahead, but not exactly of the sort that would lead to the Civil War.

He was already concerned about the lawlessness arising from racial strife, and there’s a hint of his future insistence upon the truth of the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal.” “In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism,” he said on this occasion, “one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments…”

‘The perpetuation of our institutions’ has never been something we could take for granted

‘The perpetuation of our institutions’ has never been something we could take for granted

But in the Lyceum address Lincoln warns of a danger arising from “outrages committed by mobs” even when race and slavery were not involved. Such outrages “have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana… among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving........

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