Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered Briggs, John Channing Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Briggs, John Channing. Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.72307. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/72307 [ Access provided at 1 Oct 2021 06:09 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS John Channing Briggs Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3747-7 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3747-3 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3745-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3745-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3746-0 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3746-5 (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page i Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page ii briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page iii LINCOLN’S SPEECHES RECONSIDERED John Channing Briggs the johns hopkins university press baltimore & london briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page iv Title page illustration: Chicago Historical Society. Glass negative DN-0007097A, photographed by Chicago Daily News © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2005 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Briggs, John Channing, 1948– Lincoln’s speeches reconsidered / John Channing Briggs. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8018-8106-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Literary art. 2. Speeches, addresses, etc., American—History and criticism. I. Title. E457.2.B835 2005 973.7'092—dc22 2004021139 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page v For my children briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page vi briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page vii CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Note on Sources xi introduction. The Mind of the Persuader 1 1 • Rhetorical Contexts 12 2 • The Lyceum Address “On the Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” 29 3 • The Temperance Address Moral Reform and Emancipation 58 4 • The Speech on the War with Mexico and the Eulogy for Zachary Taylor Injustice and Heroic Virtue 82 5 • The Eulogy for Henry Clay Persuasion and/or Principle 113 6 • The Kansas-Nebraska Speech Popular Sovereignty and Self-Government 134 7 • The “House Divided” Speech The Logic of Hopeful Resolve 164 8 • Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions Self-Government and Arts of Literacy 184 9 • The Milwaukee Address Thorough Farming and Self-Government 221 10 • The Cooper Union Address The Empirical Wager 237 briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page viii 11 • Presidential Eloquence and Political Religion Governing “in the Providence of God” 257 12 • The Farewell Address “Let us confidently hope” 281 13 • The First Inaugural, the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural Providence and Persuasion 297 postscript. The Letter to Mrs. Bixby Secular Scripture 328 Notes 337 Index 363 briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful for the sabbaticals and other research assistance afforded me over the years by the University of California. To the students and faculty in my department of English at the University of California, Riverside, I give my thanks for encouraging me to pursue a project I hoped would restore to the field of English a love of great nonfiction prose. To Scott Crider and the faculty of the University of Dallas, I owe a debt of gratitude for the op- portunity to try out my ideas before lively, demanding audiences in Rome, Italy,and Dallas, Texas. My appreciation goes as well to Douglas L. Wilson, who read a primitive draft of chapter 9 with remarkable patience, and who should bear no responsibility for any defects in the final version. I would also like to thank the Johns Hopkins University Press for its early interest, and especially the anonymous senior historian who prepared many thought- ful suggestions for the final stage of revision. To my family, who were in my thoughts as I wrote these pages, I tender this book as a token of what is be- yond words. ix briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page x briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page xi NOTE ON SOURCES For the sake of standardization and ease of reference, all citations from Lincoln’s works, unless otherwise specified, refer to volume and page num- ber in Basler’s edition: The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953). All biblical references are taken from the ubiquitous King James Ver- sion. All citations of Shakespeare draw from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed- ited by G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). xi briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page xii briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page xiii Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered briggs-FM(14) 3/15/05 9:46 AM Page xiv Briggs~1-58 3/15/05 9:53 AM Page 1 introduction The Mind of the Persuader It is plain that [Lincoln] was not innocent of the subtle arts of the pub- lic speaker. He cared more for his thought than for his style; but he cared so much for his thought that he studied with care the means of making it incisive and effective. —Charles Smiley,“Lincoln and Gorgias” Lincoln’s power of speech served and elucidated his thought as he found his way into American history. In reconsidering his speeches, this book joins the work of historians and other scholars who, amid the riches of modern secondary scholarship, continue to be attracted to Lincoln’s words. Concentrating on the best evidence we have of the motions of Lincoln’s mind, these pages seek to complement historical research by directing atten- tion to the interplay of form, substance, and context in the most primary records available. The prepresidential speeches, which tend to be overshad- owed by the greatness of the presidential oratory, are the first subjects for investigation, for here Lincoln’s art of oratory emerges to test itself against increasingly difficult challenges. When several of the great presidential speeches take our attention in the final chapters, we can approach them with the benefit of a gradual preparation in the woods and fields of Lincoln’s ear- lier works. Within an immensely promising, hazardous, and problematic environ- ment, Lincoln achieved an oratorical distinction in the prepresidential years that may yet be underestimated. Confronting him were the seemingly intractable problem of slavery and the profound sectional and social frag- mentation that followed the Era of Good Feeling. He began his rise toward oratorical prominence in a time when Jacksonian democracy and rapid ex- pansion had put new demands on public rhetoric, simultaneously inflating and diminishing expectations for public speech. Any attempt to create an ed- 1 Briggs~1-58 3/15/05 9:53 AM Page 2 2 • LINCOLN’S SPEECHES RECONSIDERED ifying eloquence for the new era—to compose and deliver oratory that would engage and raise the faculties of citizens in the growing republic—had to cope with newly emerging ideas of democratic citizenship, increasingly con- tentious debates over slavery, and the resultant sectional differences that seemed to be mollified (and yet were profoundly aggravated) by economic growth and the creation of new states. In one sense, the situation rewarded silence and oratorical vacuity. It fos- tered a congressional gag rule, while encouraging a habit of issuing implicit threats. Jackson’s Farewell Address and Martin Van Buren’s First Inaugural both warned against raising issues, especially the slavery question, that would threaten the peace. The circumstances promoted legalism at the ex- pense of deliberation and fostered irresponsible hopes for technological and territorial solutions to deeply human and political dilemmas. The conditions Lincoln referred to in his Lyceum Address of 1838 were the twin dangers of mob rule and political apathy.The very success of the American experiment, he believed, had begun to lure overconfident free men toward tyranny. Pub- lic rhetoric was under extraordinary pressure to subdue or inflate itself, to abandon its offices of genuine persuasion and edification. The Lyceum Address drew attention to an additional danger: the ideas and aspirations that had so recently moved the country into its new circum- stances were gradually losing their connection with the original (and most credible) actors in the drama of self-government. With suddenness and final- ity, the death of each Founder tolled the end of the republic’s opening era and signaled the need for an untested generation to acknowledge these new circumstances and take up the responsibilities of self-government.