At just 28 years old, Abraham Lincoln delivered a startling warning about the future of American self-government. In this UATX lecture, Diana Schaub uncovers the deeper argument of Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address, and why its diagnosis of political passion, ambition, and democratic decline feels uncannily relevant today. What does it really take to preserve liberty? And are Americans still capable of it?
Diana Schaub is Professor Emerita of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland and a non-resident Senior Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She was the Garwood Teaching Fellow at Princeton University in 2011-12 and Visiting Professor of Political Theory in the Government Department at Harvard University in 2018, 2020, and 2022. She is the author of a book on Montesquieu, along with numerous articles in the fields of political philosophy and American political thought. She is a coeditor (with Amy and Leon Kass) of What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. A member of the Board of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, she also sits on the publication committee of National Affairs. Her book on Lincoln’s rhetoric and statesmanship, His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, appeared in 2021 from St. Martin’s Press.
Recorded: February 17, 2026 at UATX.
00:00 — Preview
00:57 — A young Lincoln
02:42 — Should unjust laws be obeyed?
06:40 — The threat of time
09:52 — Lincoln’s favorite rhetorical technique
13:50 — The incident Lincoln stepped around
15:14 — Civic discourse
17:25 — Do the direct consequences matter?
19:30 — How Lincoln linked self-interest to rule of law
21:05 — What the vigilantes really did
23:03 — Regime change
24:27 — Obedience not from fear but from reverence
26:41 — Are there exceptions to the first commandment of democratic life?
28:56 — "Slaves remain in a state of war”
32:01 — Why Lincoln refused to accept civil disobedience
37:56 — Why America is in danger
41:02 — Resistance requires the people
42:10 — Will passion destroy us?
46:32 — Q&A: Does passion have any place in war?
49:03 — Q&A: How to handle partisanship
51:56 — Q&A: What would have happened if a runaway slave came to Lincoln’s door?
57:29 — Q&A: Habeas corpus
1:01:23 — Q&A: What is the place of mercy?
1:05:08 — Q&A: Lincoln: “The insidious debauching of the American mind”
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