Diana Schaub - His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation

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For Lauren and Jameer

Abraham Lincoln authored undeniably great speeches. Yet, especially in his presidential addresses, he often downplayed words, stressing instead the need for action. Mere words could not bring forth the new birth of freedomonly battlefield victories could do that. As Aristotle told us long ago, the special virtue required of those in political office is prudence or practical wisdom; making the right decision amid the press of events is crucial. Lincoln had that capacity for political judgment. But Aristotle also asserted that politics is inextricably linked to the human faculty of speech. Especially in democratic regimes, political figures rely heavily on the spoken and written word; through persuasion they inspire the action of citizens. Lincoln was attentive to this necessary sequence of logos and praxis, the way in which our saying leads to our doing. At each step of his political career, the actions of Lincoln were preceded and supported by extraordinary speechspeech that by the compelling quality of its grammar, logic, and rhetoric moved the nation.

Think of the most solemn form that words can take: a promise or an oath binding oneself through words to action. The nations founding charters were solemn speech of that sort. Promises, however, can be broken, and Lincoln believed that was precisely what was happening in his day. He often used speech to expose the sophistic and demagogic misuse of speech by his contemporaries who weresometimes knowingly, sometimes notundermining and overturning the founding promise of the nation. Unlike those who trusted in inevitable progress, Lincoln feared that retrogression and digression were just as likely. He observed how the principle of human equality, which had been clearly articulated in the beginning (despite its egregious violation in practice), was being lost to sight, covered over, distorted, repudiated, and forgotten (perhaps because of its too-long-permitted violation). Lincolns speeches were directed toward recovery of the nations integrity, re-conjoining word and deed, promise and performance.

My conviction is that Lincolns greatest speeches matter as intensely today as when first delivered. Although civil war may not be looming, the republic does not stand as sturdily or as undivided as all would hope. To the extent that Americans are confused about, ignorant of, andwhether consciously or notdeparting from the timeless principles of self-government, Lincolns speeches can once again restore the promise of America by reminding us of the promises we have made as democratic citizens.

As markers of the events that shape collective experience, dates are important in the life of a nation. Especially important are the dates associated with revolutions and foundings; invasions, wars, and conquests; discoveries and inventions; plagues and disasters; the births and deaths of significant figures. We have days that will live in infamy and days of national celebration and thanksgiving.

Abraham Lincoln can lay claim to an outsized number of these dates. There are the LincolnDouglas debates of 1858, ranked in the same league with the FederalistAntifederalist contest over the Constitution. There is Lincolns victory in the election of 1860, which triggered the Civil Warof all our wars the most costly in American lives and most profound in its consequences. In the world-altering year of 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and delivered the Gettysburg Address. The year 1865 brought at least four historic events: the passage of the 13th Amendment, Lincolns Second Inaugural Address, and the victory of the Union, followed quickly by Lincolns assassination. Seen in retrospect, his deeds, speeches, and death are unequaled in their entwinement with the fate of the nation.

It seems to me significant that Lincoln himself sought to understand the United States through its chronological milestones. On his analysis, three punctuation points stood out: 1787, the date of the writing of the Constitution; 1776, the date of the nations Declaration of Independence; and 1619, the date of the beginning of slavery on the North American continent. I list them in reverse order because that is the layered sequence through which Lincoln conceptualized the meaning of America over time. His thinking about these landmarks can be traced in three speeches: the Lyceum Address, the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural. Two of these are his best-known expressions; the other is, for most readers, a much less familiar performance dating back a quarter-century before his presidency, the work of a second-term Illinois state legislator who was all of twenty-eight years old.

Each of these speeches is keyed to one of the foundational dates. Perhaps as befitted a young politician who had taken an oath to support the U.S. and Illinois constitutions, the Lyceum Address grounds itself in 1787, the date associated with the original form of our government and our political institutions, which have been maintained, Lincoln says, for more than fifty years. Worried about growing lawlessness, mob action, and the breakdown of democracy, Lincoln calls upon citizens to swear a blood oath to the support of the Constitution and Laws.

Lincolns textual horizon shifts fairly dramatically in the 1850s, beginning with his 1852 Eulogy on Henry Clay, which opens On the fourth day of July, 1776 and includes an attack on John C. Calhoun as the first American, of any note who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, began to assail and to ridicule the declaration that all men are created free and equal. As the repudiators of the principle of equality grew in number and strength, Lincoln set about demonstrating their error. Throughout that contentious decade, Lincoln not only appeals to the Declaration but presents interpretations of it in nearly every major speech. Only by re-adopting the Declaration could the challenge posed by slaverys expansion be met. Lincolns decade of reflection on the meaning of the nations self-evident truths reaches its culmination in the Gettysburg Address, whose touchstone is clearly that charter from four score and seven years ago. Post-Gettysburg, Lincoln makes no further statements about the Declaration; his thoughts on the founding principles had there achieved their final form.

Other dilemmas still loomed, however. Although Lincoln had been addressing slavery as a matter of public policy since 1837, it is the Second Inaugural that deserves to be considered his 1619 address. Lincolns reference to the bond-mans two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil in the penultimate sentence returns one almost exactly to the date of the arrival of the first slaves on American shores. Acknowledgement of the significance of this datea date that precedes by more than a century and a half the nations foundingdid not occur for the first time in 2019 as a result of the 1619 Project of the New York Times. Historians like William Grimshaw, whom Lincoln read as a youngster, had highlighted both the far-reaching effects of 1619 and its immorality. As well see, Lincolns reasons for reminding his listeners of 1619 reach well beyond either the facts of history or a desire to assign moral blame. In quest of national amendment, he laid a path through divine reparations to human charity.