The changing political geography of the United States during Abraham Lincoln's lifetime is the constant theme of this book. When Lincoln was born in 1809 there were seventeen states and when he died, twice as many. Admitting a new state meant bitter debate in the United States Congress, reflecting the conflicting interests of the Northern and Southern states - the former with its sights on the total abolition of slavery and the latter intent on retaining it at all costs. This conflict lies behind such events in antebellum America as the Missouri Compromise, the Mexican war. and the admission of Texas and California as new states, each of which radically changed the American political scene - at the cost of intensifying the animosity between North and South. As president, Lincoln lived against a backdrop of steamboats on the great inland waterways, a continually expanding railroad network that opened up the new states beyond the Appalachians, supported by the electric telegraph, and with cities lit by gas and homes by whale oil. In the process, the foundations of America as an industrial state began to be laid, at least in the north of the country. Thomas Crump explores the life of Abraham Lincoln within the context of his revolutionary age, and by the time of Lincoln's death in 1865 presents .an America on the verge of a great breakthrough into the modern era.