Summary of Heather Cox Richardson's To Make Men Free

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The story of the Republican Party starts in the late eighteenth century with Abraham Lincoln, who left his family to travel to the American West and settle there. He built a successful community, but was killed by Indians in 1786. #2 The West was a land of opportunity for everyone, but this was not the case for the Lincolns. Their father had done well in Kentucky, but his sons would not share his fortune. The land in what is now Kentucky had not been carefully surveyed, which meant that no one had a clear deed to their property. #3 Lincoln moved his family to Indiana in 1816, but he never managed to get his feet under him there. In 1830, he gave up on Indiana and moved to Illinois to start again. #4 In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act threatened to overturn the Missouri Compromise and open the fertile western plains to slavery. Men across the North recoiled from this attempt to inject slavery into land that had been free for more than thirty years.