They Said He Was A Lousy Speaker

By Douglas L. Wilson

No American writer's words are more admired than those of Abraham Lincoln. By the time of his assassination in 1865, he had written passages by which everything that followed would be measured. But such an ability was the last thing the American public expected from the obscure prairie lawyer who took office just four years earlier. "We have a President without brains," wrote the country's leading historian, George Bancroft. Bancroft was, admittedly, a Democrat, but many self-respecting Republicans were also concerned about the implications of having an untried, self-educated "rail splitter" as a leader in time of grave national crisis. Charles Francis Adams, a leading Republican and the son and grandson of Presidents, wrote of the new President-elect in his diary: "Good natured, kindly, honest, but frivolous and uncertain." The doubts and fears of many Americans were expressed by a newspaper editor who asked, "Who will write this ignorant man's state papers?"

The Northern intelligentsia was initially blind to Lincoln's writing ability for at least two reasons. First, there was the strong impression, reinforced by his unkempt appearance and awkward demeanor, that he was a rube. His obvious discomfort in formal clothes on ceremonial occasions and his constant fidgeting with his ill-fitting kid gloves did little to dispel those misgivings. Moreover, he insisted on entertaining sophisticated visitors by telling country stories in a broad hoosier accent. Wall Street lawyer George Templeton Strong wrote in his diary after their first meeting that the President was a "barbarian," a "yahoo." And Strong liked him.

Another reason Lincoln's writing ability was underrated was that his typically plain diction and straightforward expression were at odds with the public's expectations. The recognized standard for a statesmanlike address in mid--19th century America called for considerably more formality and pretension. The prose of acknowledged masters of that kind of writing--such as Lincoln's fellow orator at Gettysburg, Edward Everett, or Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner--generally featured elevated diction, self-consciously artful expression and a certain moral unction. Lincoln's insistence on direct and forthright language, by contrast, seemed "odd" or "peculiar," as in this passage from a public letter he sent to Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, an antislavery paper: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

When discerning observers noticed that his words had power, they often assumed that someone else must have written them. His Secretary of State, William H. Seward, was a noted orator and wordsmith who was thought to have had a hand in Lincoln's first Inaugural. That was in fact true, but few of Seward's suggested changes were stylistic improvements, and we know from the manuscript that his chief contribution--a more conciliatory ending--was brilliantly rewritten by Lincoln. The Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, was sometimes thought to be responsible for Lincoln's best work, and occasionally it was credited to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. But when approached with such a suggestion by a friend, Stanton told him bluntly, "Lincoln wrote it--every word of it. And he is capable of more than that."

In the hindsight of history, we can see that Stanton knew what he was talking about. But how was it that Lincoln turned out to be so exceptional a writer and that it was so little apparent to his contemporaries? Studying Lincoln's writing over the years has convinced me that most of the factors that contributed to Lincoln's extraordinary literary achievement were invisible to his public and were even contrary to its general sense of who he was. As a child, he was fascinated with words and meanings and obsessed with clarity, both in understanding and in being understood. He wrote all his life for local newspapers, although mostly anonymously, and harbored a lifelong tendency to meet provocation with a written response. By the 1850s, when he came to political prominence, he had already formed the habit of making notes on scraps of paper of ideas and phrases as they occurred to him, which he then used in composing speeches. And perhaps his most valuable and most unsuspected trait as a writer was his devotion to revision.

We know, of course, how it all turned out. Nowhere is that more evident than in the contrast between two speeches given on November 19, 1863. Everett, who had been a president of Harvard, a Congressman, a Senator and a Governor of Massachusetts as well as a Secretary of State and a minister to England, was chosen to deliver the principal address at the dedication of the new national cemetery on the battlefield at Gettysburg. Lincoln was invited almost as an afterthought. One man spoke for two hours, the other for two minutes. One speech was printed and distributed in advance and has rarely been read since. The other is one of the most famous compositions in the American language.

Wilson is a co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill.