not follow an attack from abroad. What follows is an ominous and foreboding statement. "As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide" (Lincoln, 80). Herein lies part of the essay's historic weakness for America was not yet a country entirely composed of freemen. Slavery had not yet been abolished. In less than thirty years America would be embroiled in a protracted bloody civil war. Over its duration America would begin to take on the ghostly pallor of one who has attempted suicide and failed.
Lincoln did correctly predict that an "ill-omen" presently blighted the country. This ill-omen took the form of an "increasing disregard for law . . . the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of the Courts" (Lincoln, 80). The vigilante activity of mobs pervaded America ranging from New England to Louisiana. Lincoln felt that this was a turn for the worse and that this troublesome activity should be acknowledged and curbed
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