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It was an "ill-kept and dirty rickety concern," according to presidential secretary John G.Nicolay. "I wonder how much longer a great nation, as ours is, will compel its ruler to live in such a small and dilapidated old shanty, and in such a shabby-genteel style." A Nicolay associate in the President's office was less critical, describing the White House as "a very respectable building of brick and stone, painted white, built in the form of a parallelogram, two stories high fronting north; but, owing to the declivity, three stories fronting south toward the Potomac."

President Abraham Lincoln himself once called it "this damned house," and when he was besieged by office seekers and afflicted by bad news from the war front, the White House must have seemed truly damned. But, despite its drawbacks, the White House was a clear improvement on the family's previous living accommodations. Indeed, the President also declared it was "better than any house they have ever lived in." For the four years and one month of Mr. Lincoln's presidency from March 1861 to April 1865, it was home to the Lincoln family and the center of efforts to restore the Union and abolish slavery.

From the Founder of the Lincoln Institute

Lincoln at Peoria
The Turning Point
by Lewis E. Lehrman

Excerpts on Lincoln at Peoria by Lewis E. Lehrman from essay in Fall 2009 Claremont Review of Books by Harry V. Jaffa, a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute, who is the author of numerous articles and books, including his widely acclaimed study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (University of Chicago Press, 1959).

"[W]e are indebted to Lewis Lehrman for focusing our attention on what the angels have always known...Now, Lehrman has given us in Lincoln at Peoria a full-length treatment of the 1854 speech that marked Lincoln's initial confrontation with the fateful question of slavery expansion...The subtitle of Lew Lehrman's book is The Turning Point. The Peoria speech was a turning point in Lincoln's life and career because it represented a turning point in the life of the nation...Lincoln at Peoria is a salutary, forceful reminder of the future president's powerful entry into the political struggle that led into the Civil War. The importance Lehrman finds in the Peoria speech cannot be exaggerated.... Lehrman not only elaborates, carefully and precisely, its political and philosophical doctrines, but he traces their presence through the other speeches, as well as into the presidency. It is a book on the whole of Lincoln…. As Lew Lehrman so convincingly shows, there is nothing virtually present at Gettysburg that is not actually present at Peoria…. It is part of Lehrman's achievement to make us aware of the extent of what Lincoln accomplished at Peoria...We are greatly indebted to Lewis Lehrman's superb book for helping us to understand why no list, however short, of the greatest speeches of all time could omit Lincoln at Peoria."

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Mr. Lincoln's White House Daily Feature

Andrew G. Curtin (1817-1894)

Pennsylvania Governor, Andrew G. Curtin, was a determined supporter of President Lincoln's war efforts.
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