The Courage of Conviction: When Having Opinions Was a Moral Obligation

Definitive positions as unwise?

The small Illinois town of Ottawa witnessed something remarkable on August 21, 1858. Three thousand people gathered in the public square, many having traveled for hours by wagon and on foot, to watch Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas argue about the expansion of slavery for three uninterrupted hours. No microphones amplified their voices.

No screens displayed their faces. The crowd stood in the summer heat, straining to catch every word of complex constitutional arguments about popular sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision. They came not for entertainment but for the serious business of democracy: watching two men stake their reputations on ideas they believed worth fighting for.

This scene feels almost incomprehensible today. We live in an era where the phrase “everyone is entitled to their opinion” has morphed from a defense of free speech into an excuse for intellectual laziness. The modern citizen scrolls through curated feeds, absorbing pre-digested positions that require no wrestling with contradictions or uncomfortable truths.

We mistake the ability to repeat clever phrases for the hard work of thinking. Where nineteenth century Americans understood opinion formation as a civic duty requiring preparation and courage, we treat it as a consumer choice, selecting viewpoints like items from a menu based on what feels comfortable or makes us appear virtuous to our chosen tribe.