Lincoln's Legacy: The Eloquent President

Library of Congress

President Abraham Lincoln died in a first-floor bedroom at the Petersen Boarding House at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865. In the moments after he took his last breath, his friend, and the country’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton said:

“Now he belongs to the ages.”

Today, we understand these words to be the perfect thing to say in that moment. They indicate an immediate understanding by Stanton that Lincoln’s impact and legacy would be for the benefit of all future generations, something that modern generations see very clearly.

 

Library of Congress

There are countless reasons for this, and this article is intended to provide a few highlights of just one component of Lincoln’s legacy: his writings. This is an important and relevant aspect to Lincoln’s legacy for modern audiences because it is a part of him that we still have today. His written words give us a tangible measure of the breadth and depth of his many exceptional characteristics, such as his leadership, empathy, strength, capacity, savvy, and patience.

Even today, more than 155 years after his death, his words help us to define and to understand our America, an America of the 21^st Century. The timelessness of his words has eternalized a written legacy that has endured long since his voice was silenced.

Abraham Lincoln is considered one of the most eloquent presidents, crafting beautifully-flowing passages that helped guide a broken nation through a Civil War. His writing struck the right balance of literary artistry and simple language, enabling him to connect his ideas to the masses during an age of print.

 

Library of Congress

Unlike today’s presidents that have a myriad of ways to communicate with the world, Lincoln’s main avenue for reaching large audiences was through newspapers. In 1800, there were approximately 250 newspapers in the United States. By 1860, that number had surged to over 2500: this was more than the rest of the world combined. The desire for more immediate information about the Civil War created an even larger newspaper market during Lincoln’s presidency. It was this medium that played a significant role in Lincoln’s writing style.

Because newspapers were often shared and read aloud as a form of entertainment, Lincoln “wrote for the ear.” He would whisper or talk out loud as he wrote, to hear how the sentences sounded. He wrote and edited, and then listened to hear how the words blended, how the inflections of the sentences helped to enforce a point. Lincoln used alliteration, repetition, metaphors, contrasts, he would be selective about the use of syllables, choosing words based on an overall melody within a sentence, that was within a paragraph, in the context of the entirety of the work.

William Stoddard, assistant to Lincoln’s personal secretaries John Hay and John Nicolay, wrote about this in his diary. He recounted a time when he entered the president’s office to find him at a long table that was cluttered with a variety of newspapers, maps, and “assorted odds and ends” of letters, notes, and orders. Lincoln asked Stoddard if he would be his audience, while he read his work out loud. Stoddard reported that Lincoln said, “I can always tell more about a thing after I’ve heard it read aloud, and know how it sounds.”

Clerks in the telegraph office of the War Department reported the same phenomenon. Lincoln hunched over a desk in the quiet corner of the large office, reading under his breath as he wrote, as he often did, in a place away from the distractions of the White House.

 

Library of Congress

There are plenty of examples of Lincoln’s great talent as a writer. And because Lincoln often thought in terms of large concepts and ideas, that he would run through over and over again in his mind, and on paper, sometimes over the period of many months, there are gems of literary eloquence in even his lesser-known addresses and letters.

Here are just a few highlights:

At the time of this First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, the nation was on the verge of a Civil War. When Lincoln arrived in Washington, DC, seven southern states had already seceded from the Union. No presidential inaugural address had ever been given during such uncertainty and tumult. Lincoln appealed to the sensibilities of the country when he said “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors.” Lincoln concluded by reminding us of our connections when he very poetically and memorably said “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Lincoln’s December, 1862 Annual Address to Congress. Submitted just one month before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln masterfully articulated his belief that the abolition of slavery was not only the right thing to do, it was critical to the survival of the nation, and democracy. Considered his (or perhaps any president’s) finest message to Congress, this one showcases his eloquence while also directly and honestly assessing the myriad of problems the country was facing.

This is the poetic conclusion to his nearly 8400-word address:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”

 

The Gettysburg Address: On November 3, 1863, Lincoln went to Gettysburg, PA to give “a few appropriate remarks” at the dedication ceremony for one of the country’s first national military cemeteries. Gettysburg had been the site of a three-day battle in July of that same year; a turning point in the American Civil War. The Battle of Gettysburg was a hard-fought victory for the north that came at a collective cost of more than 45,000 killed, wounded, or missing.

These 272 words helped the nation make sense of the loss of life throughout the war, and also framed the purpose of the war. Today this speech is a reminder of the sacrifices made for the benefit of our freedoms, and for the preservation of American democracy. The Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches in history, and is prose that reads like poetry, written by our eloquent President.

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

Lincoln goes back in time to the Declaration of Independence, signed “four score and seven years” before he gave this speech. This founding document defines our national values, which Lincoln summarizes here as liberty and equality for all.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated can long endure.

Lincoln says that the United States is unique: no country had ever been founded on such high ideals. He says that the Civil War is a test of whether this nation, based on these standards, could survive.

We are met here on a great battlefield of that war.We have come to dedicate a portion of it, 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 cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot 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.

Lincoln uses this moment to help the country make sense of the severe loss of life. Why did so many have to die? It must be for the purpose of allowing so many others to gain their freedom. These brave soldiers died to protect American democracy and to provide permanent emancipation for the 4 million enslaved people throughout the nation. Lincoln is attempting to give proper tribute to those who perished and says that their actions speak louder than any words ever could. So, it is ironic that Lincoln’s words from Gettysburg have been so well-remembered. Within a month of giving the Gettysburg Address, school children were memorizing the speech. Today, these words are immortalized in the Indiana Limestone on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on.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 here 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.

In the end, the Union won the Civil War and slavery was abolished. And so, as Lincoln said, the values of liberty and equality were given a “new birth.” However, he also correctly anticipated that it would be an ongoing struggle for the country to reach a point of true liberty and equality for everyone. It is up to all generations to make sure that the United States remains a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” And to ensure that this government of, by, and for the people “shall not perish from the earth”. Lincoln challenged us. He said that this “unfinished work” is the “great task remaining” for every generation.

 

Library of Congress

“More than perhaps any other president, Lincoln led and persuaded through the words of his speeches and writings,” said historian James McPherson. His words moved people both then and now. They reflect his intellect, his creativity, his firm understanding of the critical issues of the time, and his evolving understanding of the meaning and purpose of the war, and his nation.

In his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865, as the brutal four-year Civil War was coming to a close, the reelected president wanted to unify a broken nation. But many northerners felt anger toward the South. However, instead of placing blame, or rejoicing in the sanctity of the northern cause, Lincoln instead offered conciliatory words to citizens from both the North and the South. The address was a blueprint for what reconstruction could have been had Lincoln not been assassinated just six weeks later:

"Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."