So began Abraham Lincoln's address to a “Young Men's Association” in Illinois. Speaking in 1859, Lincoln felt the benefit of hindsight. He knew that the era of the New Democracy had passed, and that the slavery issue now took center stage. Sectional politics had for several years eclipsed the spirit of Young America, as battles on the Kansas plains, assaults on the Senate floor, and the reorganization of political parties amply demonstrated.

As an obscure Whig legislator Lincoln had disparaged Young America. He opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, refusing to advance the blustery romantic nationalism that inspired Stephen Douglas and his circle. By 1859, when he delivered this address, Lincoln was still a relative nobody. He lost a high-profile U.S. Senate race to Douglas and had only served one unremarkable term in the federal House of Representatives during the late 1840s. But his speech betrays a poignant, almost-tragic understanding that the Young America moment had passed and that the future lay on his, not Douglas's, side. Lincoln ridiculed Young America Democrats, but in some ways he admired them.