Answer: Through the 1830s and 1840s, Abraham Lincoln’s primary political focus was on economic issues. However, the escalating debate over slavery in the 1850s, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act in particular, compelled Lincoln to change his emphasis.
In this manuscript, a fragment from one of Lincoln’s speeches during the 1858 Illinois Senate race against Stephen Douglas, Lincoln advances the fundamental truth to which all creatures are entitled, declaring that even a slave kept in ignorance "does constantly know that he is wronged." And he uses economic logic against slavery, arguing that in freedom "the weak . . . grow stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better, and happier together." Lincoln also says of those who strive "to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself."
In these twenty-seven lines, Lincoln invokes the nation’s founding principles to stress the injustice of slavery, and in the course defines the American Dream, declaring, "Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of the equal rights of men, as I have, in part, stated them; ours began, by affirming those rights."
Step-by-step explanation: