February 27, 1860—Abraham Lincoln—a railroad lawyer with a couple of terms in the Illinois state legislature, one term in Congress and no executive experience whatsoever—redefined his image over the course of 24 hours with an electrifying speech at the Grand Hall of Cooper Union and a photographic session with Mathew Brady. After the election, the candidate who had once been dismissed as a regional phenomenon would say, “Brady and the Cooper Union made me President.”
The Cooper Union speech was delivered in New York, a city that would resolutely turn its back on him until five years later, when the President’s funeral procession was viewed by thousands of grief-stricken Gothamites (including six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt) who finally understood what he stood for.
The Cooper Union speech was delivered in New York, a city that would resolutely turn its back on him until five years later, when the President’s funeral procession was viewed by thousands of grief-stricken Gothamites (including six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt) who finally understood what he stood for.
“Death has suddenly opened the eyes of the people (and I think of the word) to the fact that a hero has been holding high place among them for four years,” observed diarist George Templeton Strong, “closely watched and studied, but despite and rejected by a third of this community, and only tolerated by the other two-thirds."
Strong was referring to the fact that the city and state of New York tended to vote Democratic. At least in early 1860, whatever Republican sympathies New York possessed went to favorite son William Seward, the state’s former governor and current U.S. Senator.
Nonetheless, Lincoln felt correctly that the city, as the growing media capital of the United States, could not be ignored. To make a good impression, he was willing to research his speech for months in the law library in the Illinois state house, take five different trains over three days to get to New York—then fidget while Brady lifted his collar and smoothed his unruly hair as far as possible before taking his picture.
And that was all before the speech.
I have been terribly remiss in not writing before about the terrific exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, "Lincoln and New York". The exhibit has been running since last October, but it will still be around for three more weeks before closing, and it’s eminently worth seeing. It highlights the circumstances behind the speech, as well as the President’s evolving relationship with the city that, then as now, is a) overwhelmingly Democratic, and b) fervently anti-war.
The venue for the event, originally Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, was changed at the last minute to Cooper Union (then known as Cooper Institute).
This was not an address, or a speaker, that would have gone over well in today’s 30-second soundbite, image-conscious rhetorical environment. Brady’s photograph, soon widely reproduced, gave the lanky Midwestern a physical dignity that many did not see upon first beholding him, including many in the audience. And that voice, when first heard, was high and shrill.
Even in the context of Lincoln’s subsequent career as perhaps the greatest of President-writers, this address is not filled with memorable phrases or sentences. But it fit in very well with a technique he had learned as a circuit lawyer in his state: play to the audience.
The Republican audience, in this case, needed convincing and reassuring—convincing of his credibility as a candidate, and reassuring that, contrary to Democratic charges, theirs was not a sectional party, that they were not guilty of instigating John Brown’s attempted slave insurrection, and that they had not engaged in historical fraud by insisting that the federal government had the right to ban slavery from the territories.
For two hours, Lincoln employed several means to make his case:
*set at work at once to go after the presumed Democratic nominee—his former rival for the U.S. Senate, Stephen A. Douglas—who had insisted that "Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now." Lincoln showed that, Douglas’ notion of “popular sovereignty” to the contrary, the federal government had banned slavery in the Northwest Ordinance.
Strong was referring to the fact that the city and state of New York tended to vote Democratic. At least in early 1860, whatever Republican sympathies New York possessed went to favorite son William Seward, the state’s former governor and current U.S. Senator.
Nonetheless, Lincoln felt correctly that the city, as the growing media capital of the United States, could not be ignored. To make a good impression, he was willing to research his speech for months in the law library in the Illinois state house, take five different trains over three days to get to New York—then fidget while Brady lifted his collar and smoothed his unruly hair as far as possible before taking his picture.
And that was all before the speech.
I have been terribly remiss in not writing before about the terrific exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, "Lincoln and New York". The exhibit has been running since last October, but it will still be around for three more weeks before closing, and it’s eminently worth seeing. It highlights the circumstances behind the speech, as well as the President’s evolving relationship with the city that, then as now, is a) overwhelmingly Democratic, and b) fervently anti-war.
The venue for the event, originally Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, was changed at the last minute to Cooper Union (then known as Cooper Institute).
This was not an address, or a speaker, that would have gone over well in today’s 30-second soundbite, image-conscious rhetorical environment. Brady’s photograph, soon widely reproduced, gave the lanky Midwestern a physical dignity that many did not see upon first beholding him, including many in the audience. And that voice, when first heard, was high and shrill.
Even in the context of Lincoln’s subsequent career as perhaps the greatest of President-writers, this address is not filled with memorable phrases or sentences. But it fit in very well with a technique he had learned as a circuit lawyer in his state: play to the audience.
The Republican audience, in this case, needed convincing and reassuring—convincing of his credibility as a candidate, and reassuring that, contrary to Democratic charges, theirs was not a sectional party, that they were not guilty of instigating John Brown’s attempted slave insurrection, and that they had not engaged in historical fraud by insisting that the federal government had the right to ban slavery from the territories.
For two hours, Lincoln employed several means to make his case:
*set at work at once to go after the presumed Democratic nominee—his former rival for the U.S. Senate, Stephen A. Douglas—who had insisted that "Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now." Lincoln showed that, Douglas’ notion of “popular sovereignty” to the contrary, the federal government had banned slavery in the Northwest Ordinance.
* employed logic repeatedly to rebut emotional charges by slaveholders. After failing to win re-election to Congress, Lincoln, in an effort to improve his skills as a lawyer, mastered Euclidean geometry. The skill enabled him to reduce an argument to simple propositions that could be tested, proved or discarded. You can see it in the following passage from the Cooper Union speech:
“Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle [restricting slavery in the territories], put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which ‘our fathers who framed the Government under which we live’ though so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration.”
* used historical precedent to buttress his case. Lincoln cited not only George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—crucially, Southerners (and Southern slaveholders)—in support of his claims, but also alluded to Nat Turner’s insurrection in Southampton and even England’s Gunpowder Plot of the early 1600s.
* poured scorn on the opposition. To Southern Democrats who claimed they were supporting constitutional principles, but were prepared to leave the Union if a Republican were elected President, he noted: “In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’”
Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech might have been delivered in a different age—one willing to listen for a couple of hours to politicians spouting, yet regard the whole spectacle as entertainment—but he made sure it directly addressed voters’ concerns and respected their intelligence. It did not, however, try to compromise on principle.
In an interesting piece for the Huffington Post, Joseph Margolick argues persuasively that President Obama can use the same rhetorical strategies in rescuing his health-care program. Let’s see how that turns out.
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