When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated into his
first term, the country did not know much about its new president.
Asked to describe his education for a biographical sketch in the Dictionary of Congress,
Lincoln replied with one word: “defective.” Members of
the cabinet and Congress worried that Lincoln’s backwoods
education and inexperience as an administrator offered little hope
on the brink of civil war. Their fears were further fueled by
off-the-cuff speeches Lincoln gave on his extended train trip from
Springfield to Washington before the swearing-in. His Farewell
Address has gone down in history as a masterpiece. But his telling
the crowds in Philadelphia “I would rather be assassinated on
the spot than to surrender it [the Union]” lacked the
circumspection most felt was a prerequisite to his office.
In his book The
Eloquent President, Ronald C. White Jr.
illustrates Lincoln’s political maturation, tracing his
trajectory in the simplicity and grace of his words. White believes
that the quality of the president’s rhetoric was no less than
the thread that held the Union together. He laments that we have no
recording of Lincoln’s voice. By contemporary accounts, it
was a high falsetto and carried for long distances, an asset that
would be necessary as the crowds swelled to hear him. More than
1,000 people came to bid him farewell at the Springfield train
station on Feb. 11, 1861. He hadn’t written a speech but had
been thinking about what to say to those with whom he had lived for a
quarter-century. When the train left the station, a reporter asked him
to write out the remarks he had just delivered.
Echoes of the precision and poetry in those
152 words will appear in the speeches Lincoln would deliver as
president. He was fond of parallel structures: “Here my
children have been born, and one is buried.” He knew that
alliteration helps a listener remember what has been said; in his
Inaugural Address he would speak of not breaking the bonds of affection, and
shortly thereafter of battlefields and the “better angels of our nature.” Assonance lent
his words a poetic quality: Instead of simply saying “I
close,” he said, “I am loth to close.” Lincoln
knew about sound long before the advent of the sound bite.
It is now commonplace for presidents to rely
on cadres of speechwriters to put their (or at least what we hope
are their) thoughts
into words. Although we may like to think that Lincoln wrote every
word himself, this is not the case. Men such as Secretary of State
William H. Seward were extremely important in helping Lincoln shape
his ideas. White shows us the process of draft and revision. If
Seward is on target with a particular tone that needs to be taken,
however, it is Lincoln who tunes the sentiment to exactly the right
pitch.
All of Lincoln’s major speeches are
here. White suggests that we read them aloud. Doing so, we
realize the powerful, visceral potential words possess, and we
can almost hear that high falsetto voice ringing in our ears.
The event begins at 9 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 12.
For more information on the series, contact Tim Townsend at 217-492-4241, ext. 241. White is also
scheduled to appear Sunday, Feb. 13, at First
Presbyterian Church, 321 S. Seventh St.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2005.
