In Murder on the Mississippi, award-winning historian Saladin Ambar unearths the horrors that shaped a young Abraham Lincoln’s worldview, pushing him to find his political voice in one of the earliest and most pivotal speeches of his career–the Lyceum Address–in which we referenced each of these three crimes. Confronted by lawlessness, racial terror, and his own inner demons, Lincoln’s battle was political, deeply personal, and reflective of a nation already at war with itself. Amid a string of murders that shocked the American frontier, Lincoln faced the devastating loss of his first love, crippling debt, a dangerous brush with illness, and a descent into suicidal despair. Yet from this darkness, he emerged with a renewed purpose–one that would define his leadership in the fight for democracy, human freedom, and the rule of law. Through gripping storytelling and meticulous research, Murder on the Mississippi sheds new light on Lincoln’s transformation from a struggling young legislator to a man ultimately willing to risk everything to save a nation from itself. The forces that shaped him then–violence, division, and the specter of tyranny–are forces we still reckon with today. This is not just a story of Abraham Lincoln. It is a story of America.
