Lincoln

Lincoln towers over American oratory

Seldom is a style of rhetoric an individual invention. We have associated various styles of discourse with particular communities. It is practically impossible to identify any one speaker with the development of those styles. Individuals could perfect the style -- Patrick Henry or Daniel Webster -- but usually they are stylistically identified with others.
Lincoln seemed to absorb the styles of American oratory to his time and transform them into his own style. It is as it the strains of American oratory flowed into Lincoln, and the influence of the style he seemed to invent dominate speaking to our day.

The Ungenteel on the stump and in the law courts
The Sentimental in his younger years in speaking clubs
The Argumentative-Political in Congress, the Lincoln Douglas Debates and his famous Cooper Union Address

It had the Common Sense of the ungenteel, but with a quality of logical orderliness rather than tall tales.
It had the argumentative's characteristic as a clash of positions, but transformed the clash into a meeting of (1) actions rather than abstract positions, and (2) a clear address to an audience rather than an opponent.
It had a religious quality to it. The American audience of the 1850s and 1860s had just gone through the 3rd Great Awakening. They knew their bible and they believed in a religiously based mysticism that saw the evidence of religions mystery all around them. Lincoln called upon that diety, a God that showed Himself in the world in mysterious ways.
There is no sentimental dictation, but a mystical emotion of caring and connection. Lincoln connected with his audience.

The division between North and South was as old as American colonization. We have studied two different traditions and two different origins in New England and Virginia. The colonies really did not cooperate before the French and Indian War. Washington became Commander-in-Chief of an essentially New England army to cement the alliance of North and South during the revolution. The Constitution was a patchwork compromise between North and South.

At least since radical abolitionism, a polarized wedge had created a gulf between the two sections. Issues of tariff, land policy, slavery, trade, internal improvements, and a hundred others had divided the sections.

Each came to believe that the other wished to impose its will. The South believed the North wished to eliminate slavery; the North believed that the South wanted to force slavery on the free states.

Lincoln's election was viewed in this context and the succession began shortly after the 1860 election.

Lincoln's task became preparing the rhetoric of the country for war without starting the war. He said nothing between the election and his inauguration, even in the face of the succession of states.

He approached Washington in the midst of succession and with threats to his life.

Authority: His national audience seemed to see Lincoln as one of them, capable of their emotions and sensibilities. But, at the same time, he had a distant quality to him. There was something mystical about him.
Habits of Speaking: He spoke seldom. He was not in the habit of giving interviews to newspapers, did write letters to the papers occasionally. Speeches were at key times.
His transformation during the war to a rhetoric of abolition. By 1862, Lincoln had decided to motivate the war as a war to free the slave. To do so, he adopted the rhetoric of evangelical abolition and embraced the jeremiad as the major form for the war.