Abraham Lincoln: "C" List Speaker?

I hold a grudging admiration of Abraham Lincoln. His personal story inspires and amazes. A fitting emblem of a hardier time, he knew the cost of physical labor, the importance of self-improvement, and the value of reasoned explication of the principles to which he adhered. At the same time, he held an odious opinion regarding the ability of whites and blacks to co-exist. Worse, in pursuit of saving the Union, he undertook a regrettable assault on civil liberties, adopted a program of involuntary servitude, and imposed an unconstitutional income tax.

Still, this autodidact was a master rhetorician. Consider, for example the profundity of his 272 word address at the dedication of a battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But,in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln was not the marquis speaker that day in Gettysburg. That honor fell to Edward Everett, a renowned American orator, Massachusetts governor, member of Congress, and President of Harvard University. His oration, which preceded Lincoln’s, extended two hours. Lincoln’s remarks, by contrast, extended two minutes. Everett recounted the battle of Gettysburg, illuminated its causes, costs, and consequences, and likened this act of State – the dedication of a national battlefield cemetery – to the solemn and somber honors by the Athenians to noble and honored war dead.

In modest self-deprecation, Lincoln suggested that the world would “little note nor long remember” their dedication of the cemetery. Everett immediately recognized, however, the suasion of Lincoln’s stunning, brief remarks. In a letter the following day, he observed the “eloquent simplicity and appropriateness” of Lincoln’sspeech. Moreover, he plainly expressed, by comparison, his admiration of Lincoln’s speech: “I should be glad,” he wrote, “if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

For all its force, emotion and power, Lincoln’s 272 words are, to this day, among the most recognized of public remarks. Brevity, however, was not his only rhetorical tool.

Lincoln, a lawyer, mastered facts, sifted principles, and spoke plainly. Among his extended speeches, his speech at the Cooper Institute in 1859 is my favorite. Lincoln’s address is often referred to as the Cooper Union address. It was one of a series sponsored by the Brooklyn, New York church of leading abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. When Lincoln agreed to give a speech on the condition that it might be a political one, the Young Republicans of New York assumed sponsorship of the event and the venue was moved to the Cooper Institute.

In the Cooper Union address, line by line, precept by precept, Lincoln built a case that soundly and completely refuted the two year old decision of the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford. In Dred Scott, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress lacked power under the Constitution to restrict slavery in the federal territories. Lincoln’s scholarly refutation built the case that the majority, at least, of the Framers of the Constitution expressly held the view that Congress would have power to regulate and restrict slave-holding in the territories.

But Lincoln did more than refute the contemptible Dred Scott decision (contemptible for its miasmic contention that blacks were not, nor could ever be, citizens within the meaning of that term as used in the Constitution). He set in sharp relief the severe conflict that would fulminate and then culminate in the War between the States:

[T]hey do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone - have never disturbed them - so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care- such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists,reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Lincoln’s Cooper Union address, and others made on the same East Coast and New England tour, was the equivalent in Lincoln’s day to modern politicians’ trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. As it turned out, the October 1859 address likely set in motion Lincoln’s nomination as the Republican candidate for President.

In the immediate aftermath of the speech, a small scandal threatened.

It was alleged that Lincoln was paid to give the speech. In his correspondence, in fact, he acknowledges receiving the sum of Two Hundred Dollars for expenses and the like. By today’s standards, that seems a modest sum. Allowing for inflation and the change in the value of the dollar between 1859 and today, he received then the equivalent of about $5700.00 in 2015 dollars for the address (although, as it seems, he also made substantial inroads to the Republican nomination with the speech).

Imagine that! Fifty seven hundred dollars paid in order to host, and to hear from, an attorney not then leading in polling inside his own political party. Second-, even third-tier, colleges and universities could afford such a speaker. But with such a discount rate, such a speaker would likely have been priced out as insufficiently lucrative to be managed by any self-respecting speakers’ bureau, according to this post from Nick Morgan.

In fact, as it turns out, Lincoln’s $200.00/$5700.00 speech marks him as quite the piker. In contrast, according to this post, Bill and Hillary Clinton each price out at about $200,000.00 per speech. Another way to think about those numbers is their value in 1859 dollars. It turns out to be a less-than-flattering comparison for Mr. Lincoln. Lincoln speaks for $200.00; Bill and Hillary can only be had for about $7,000.00. Even a time-traveling Karl Rove, the Republican operative, would have drawn a more princely sum than Lincoln, his current draw of about $25,000.00 per speech would have cost $825.00 in 1859 dollars.

And there you have it. Whether tyrant, or savior of the Union … the Great Emancipator or jackbooted thug. The most polarizing and passionate and reasoned man of his, and of many other, generations, a C List speaker!