Lincoln’s Rhetoric

In the first of a series of public lectures that William H. Herndon delivered on Abraham Lincoln after his assassination, he called attention to his law partner’s “peculiarity,” a topic he would return to in subsequent writings. “The true peculiarity of Mr Lincoln has not been seen by his various Biographers,” Herndon said, “or if seen they have failed—wofully failed to give it that prominence which it deserves.”1 Speaking in December 1865 to an audience composed of Lincoln’s Springfield friends and neighbors, he went on: “As an Evidence of this especial peculiarity of Mr Lincoln let me ask one question & it is this—Were not Mr Lincolns Expressions and language queer—odd—fresh—and origional, standing out odd & peculiar from the language and Expressions of all other men.”2 Herndon’s question assumed that, among people long familiar with Abraham Lincoln, there would be little dispute about the peculiarity and oddity of his language and way of expressing himself.If the people of Springfield thought as Herndon did on this point, they were not the only ones. Before his assassination, Lincoln’s presidential writings were frequently characterized in the same way, even by his defenders.

The friendly New York Times, for example, commenting in 1863 on the series of successful public letters the president had produced, allowed: “In his own independent, and perhaps we might say very peculiar, way, he invariably gets at the needed truth of the time.” And again: “His letter to Mr. Greeley, odd as it seemed at first blush, was, as everybody now admits, perfectly adapted to that stage of the war.”3Abraham Lincoln’s famous letter to Horace Greeley “odd”? His distinctive way of expressing himself “peculiar”?

This sounds strange to twenty-first-century ears. Lincoln’s words are by now among the most familiar of all American writings and sayings. What, we might ask, was “odd” and “peculiar” about a mode of expression that we have come to regard so highly?Perhaps the obvious thing to notice is what has happened since Lincoln’s time.

When he was president, he was not in any sense a great national hero, but he became one almost overnight after he was assassinated. It was in the meteoric light of his martyrdom that his writings began to be reread and reappraised. Although eventually it would be widely known and admired, the Gettysburg Address, like the Declaration of Independence before it, was not immediately an object of widespread special attention.

But seen in the perspective of the changing American language from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, it has taken on a new meaning. Garry Wills noted that “Lincoln’s remarks anticipated the shift to vernacular rhythms that Mark Twain would complete twenty years later. Hemingway claimed that all modern American novels are the offspring of Huckleberry Finn.

It is no greater exaggeration to say that all modern political prose descends from the Gettysburg Address.”4What seems reasonably clear in retrospect is that there was a general movement in American writing away from the prevailing language of formal address and in the direction of the vernacular, which Wills calls “a revolution in style.” And Lincoln’s example, like that of other writers of his age, was helping to bring it about. This is surely the most obvious sense in which writing that seemed odd and peculiar in the mid-nineteenth century no longer seems so, but there are other noteworthy aspects of Lincoln’s peculiar use of language that contributed to his distinctive rhetoric, which is to say, his persuasive mode of expression, especially in writing.A prime consideration is that Lincoln was self-taught. His rhetoric, like so many other things about him, was strictly a home-grown affair, and its roots go back to his earliest childhood.

Except for a few brief stints at extremely primitive country schools, Lincoln had no formal instruction, certainly nothing in the art of effective writing. Public speaking, such as could be heard in churches or in local courthouses, had an early attraction for him, but that would not have been uncommon. What was uncommon, especially in a community that was largely subliterate, was the intense interest he took in writing.

Lincoln’s boyhood reading is justly famous, a familiar part of the legend that surrounds him, and it was undoubtedly critical in his intellectual development, but for a consideration of his rhetoric, it is arguably more revealing to focus on his writing.For one thing it is difficult if not impossible to judge with any certainty what books Lincoln read or what he took from them. Even with texts that he is supposed to have recommended to others, such as Lindley Murray’s Reader, we can’t be sure precisely when he read it or what parts made a significant impression. That he seems to have read and mastered Kirkham’s famous Grammar in his early twenties tells us much, but we can’t assume that he then and there adopted Kirkham’s formal precepts about rhetoric.

This early reading was undoubtedly important and should not be minimized or underestimated, but as Ronald C. White suggests, while we have no indication that Lincoln read Aristotle, the important thing is that Lincoln’s rhetoric “embodies the principles” of Aristotle, whose definitions can in turn be helpful in analyzing certain aspects of the subject.5Another reason for emphasizing Lincoln’s youthful affinity for writing over his reading in this regard is that it has deeper roots. There is good evidence his interest in writing was keen from the very beginning and that it preceded his interest in reading.

John L. Scripps, a Chicago Republican newspaper editor who knew Lincoln, interviewed him for a campaign biography in 1860, and one of things Lincoln told him that is often overlooked had to do with his earliest schooling. “In his seventh year,” Scripps wrote, “Abraham was sent for short periods to two of these [Kentucky] schools, and while attending them progressed so far as to learn to write. For this acquirement he manifested a great fondness.

It was his custom to form letters, to write words and sentences wherever he found suitable material. He scrawled them with charcoal, he scored them in the dust, in the sand, in the snow—anywhere and everywhere that lines could be drawn, there he improved his capacity for writing.”6 What Scripps drew from what Lincoln told him was apparently a picture of a small boy, in the process of learning his letters, becoming fascinated with the act of shaping them and eventually with stitching them together into words and then into phrases and sentences. It probably only added to this young boy’s pride in the process that he was learning to do something important that his father and mother couldn’t do.Also commonly overlooked is that Lincoln’s stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, whose recollections of Lincoln’s boyhood are so informative, placed more stress on his writing than his reading.

She told Herndon: “Abe read all the books he could lay his hands on—and when he came across a passage that Struck him he would write it down on boards if he had no paper & keep it there till he did get paper—then he would re-write it—look at it repeat it—He had a copy book—a kind of scrap book in which he put down all things and this preserved them.”7Sarah Bush Lincoln also revealed the salient fact that, even as a boy, Lincoln had a passion for clarity of expression. “Sometimes,” she said, “he seemed pestered to give Expression to his ideas and got mad almost at one who couldn’t Explain plainly what he wanted to convey.”8 Note that this statement is in two parts: she tells us first that the boy was “pestered” to find the right words for his own ideas, but also that he was impatient with other people who had the same problem. Directly confirming this recollection is something that Lincoln told the Rev. John P.

Gulliver who, during a chance meeting in 1860, had complimented him on the “clarity” of his statements. Gulliver reported that Lincoln told him “among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when any body talked to me in a way I could not understand.” For his part, Lincoln said he himself was never satisfied “until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend.”9 Just as his stepmother had suggested, what Lincoln told Gulliver connected his obsession with clarity to his writing, which he says he actively employed as an aid to understanding.Lincoln’s continued pursuit of clarity in later life was not lost on those associated with him. His longtime political associate and friend at the bar, Joseph Gillespie, is a good example. “If Mr Lincoln studied any one thing more than another and for effect,” he wrote, “it was to make himself understood by all classes He had great natural clearness and of statement and this he with is revealing in Lincoln’s clarity as a natural one that he did not for but Herndon the same in a letter to his emphasizing the to the thing or the and to that in such language as to that he used to me by his Mr.

Lincoln would things to me that needed no Lincoln’s in this was wanted to be understood by the president, this very who had Lincoln and him when other were reported in that own were with his and that had been made to get Lincoln to let more hands do that kind of writing for him. She reported that he all of with his important and on writing them Lincoln as I write them The people not was the great the that Lincoln clarity of expression from boyhood and continued for it as president, this us to another important of his of This was far more in his own than it is in for he in an in which and was an part of public and writing. was the of learning and when those were almost with or But Lincoln’s passion for clarity and for his ideas and understood by if not a in his own to use words and that audience was not familiar with made little it was to and an audience by over was for his that But if wanted to the of and and and them to new ideas and new Lincoln’s was that his book on Lincoln as a that the the president with had which he and have been of but his was the and plain became his His law Herndon reported that Lincoln frequently him not to and the people The first Lincoln for which we have a complete his of is in language that is for the of that but of it sounds for example, what is perhaps the Abraham Lincoln wrote, the of the Gettysburg and years on this a new in and to the that all are this with a statement in the address that very the same Speaking of the he was the they to and of this and to its and its a political of and sounds more like than Abraham Lincoln, but not long after he delivered this the and of Lincoln’s began to This was, for example, the he would for these two with a great many from the from his did not his but the of which we have a complete his two years is for the of the words that the of the the he was his friends with a in an In down to he on in language such as the the is to be and in the it for the people of the use of it, while the not it, and while the is no than that of in The natural of this of one is to the of in can a of Lincoln’s prose in the he came to the his prose was but this was not or made little to those who knew little about him, the who were of his to be For like the another with a for expression, and one who was critical of the the plain his When in Lincoln with to a of was especially since the president had seemed to put the for the on In the meeting and the president in his out at Lincoln’s might also the so plain and as to make the that Mr. had such a of the of his as to any but the phrases and would be of Mr. Lincoln in all his writings has manifested a in the of the we do not there is any in this but only the to do this in and before he had any with the of the by two in the and a at the White the became an not of Lincoln but of his use of “In my with him, I found him as I have him, a plain There was about him.

His were His like was plain and as it in his He as he wrote, but never I never a who could more and what he to make of Lincoln’s prose of a great more than plain that surely something to his in the and that frequently in his presidential writing was the of what are in the form of In his to of which out the on which the would be Lincoln used this to good In his of in for example, to the of the in were and he the and by a question that was the question more are all the but to go and the go to that one be to his question another a of Lincoln’s rhetoric that was certainly and probably in a Lincoln knew the the right of at his When Horace Greeley him in his newspaper in in a that he out his Lincoln with something he had that was would the In another of his public letters, he began by his are those who are with such I would and me that we do not have But can we There are but to the by of I to for so far we are are not for it, a way to give the I This is surely a of the the is to the as as the and a the way he his only known law not an This is but not It by its can be helpful in the actively in and there can be a than that of the for this Lincoln to by beginning his What could be more and than this The Lincoln in the act of an for he out the words and a that was even more have been of of the and all these is found in Lincoln’s to his of the P. who, in the president, for political to certain in the he thought that couldn’t that what he was was or he that him to such a a was what had in Lincoln with a series of that “If I the I not do so, the of and so, any the one that I the and I not give all or I not be in the of this or it to be that any I might do the same in and and even any law in any not many of own friends away it not us the and with the very we to The with which Lincoln and out to would to little the or his This this letter is and his to his of a Lincoln that did not from the use of but from the that from The same might be said of Lincoln’s the are undoubtedly a years an American of at to then the of to a in true with him the of Lincoln’s and letters to he an and The Lincoln was also to as an to the object of his of the put it after a of the of in the what could be more than a into book with any form of found when he from the to the American was that Lincoln’s writings of the very with a whose had been by as of and And that the Gettysburg Address, for example, had of of phrases and Lincoln’s famous letter to Horace Greeley was even more “In lines we have of of Even the in of to tells not so in its something important about Lincoln’s and the same that have been since as of and are to many of Lincoln’s most In especially to an audience in formal rhetoric, they have not only not the in they of His is of that of Gillespie, P. and many on the more for his thought than for his but he so for his thought that he studied with the of it and of Lincoln’s rhetoric often to the by and and almost that Lincoln’s most writing is and has with P. the of perhaps the most of the the question of Lincoln’s are of of and or of the of and which The is but himself to what Lincoln told his law about the of reading to Herndon’s it was Lincoln’s to do his reading which he by that and what he read him to remember it get the and of his rhetoric, we come to with the and of Lincoln’s seems to have had an early and to the sounds of to read in schools, all the read at the same have been in him in this this would that it was perhaps as as his early with letters, and with words have been an from the beginning that became in his thought are to be but there is evidence that Lincoln had long made a of reading his writings to them. of his law him as early as write by When I have got my on I read it and if it sounds all right I let it certainly by to the of John who a to the from the Lincoln sent to the president it was his to one of his read his over it as he could judge of a thing by reading The to these and other recollections is that he couldn’t on the of what he had composed he had heard it In we have evidence that he read one of his presidential writings to a before or affinity for the of was also of very long back to his when he the attention of his as a of The of a he in his of a in his but what be even more is what to be the of an to what would if were of all and out like He by writing out a of boyhood found in his in “Abraham Lincoln his and he be good but perhaps to this would with a of he as the first two of an “Abraham Lincoln his and he be good but When What an and they are as an or like a the Just then away in that we never say but seems that this passage is an by a with the to to the mere and and perhaps more to an of the and would have him to a consideration of of this is that the young Lincoln who this probably knew those two by if not from the in the they would have been out by the and then by the The out and the would have the same as would reading on the It is that any of this would have been lost on this boy, by the sounds of words and age, Abraham Lincoln was a a one who out of public a few of his but they that he had and as a He seems to have the writing of about the he went to in but his prose writing would have a and often sense of as by the passage from his letter to had what might be thought of as a kind of something that in all the most in and for which he had a special use of the This is not to say that Lincoln was a or but that he an of the of in language and and was at that to and has out that the is found in but is strictly a one of the things that He also that is connected to sense of if not for it, so that as he it, by the and he are all the of the the This is one way of for the that the undoubtedly has in language and is this that Lincoln into in the of his most writings. with or of had a this be an of Lincoln’s but with him it something to his so in the important of his in from an early age, he was in out in the of as an of Lincoln as a but was his in the political of his political the of the the the the of the the the of and the of the This is not to say that he was a in all such as and the of the but to a political and of his also be that the in Lincoln’s political was no political of the to be a that the on all Lincoln a and that with the of the of into the in he found himself as he had never been that almost all of Lincoln’s rhetoric was in the of and the of the of the of this was to the into his rhetoric and give the a “If is not he wrote, is of the that Lincoln use of the the is a good to the and are a natural and he himself a true of the address the of public in a he first on paper and then said in the first of the with public nothing can it nothing can In his in the he the his had so to “The of the people to I have The right of to with in the I have In writing down a of his Springfield after he the of that who him I that I In to at the of his first he have no in to the while I have the most one to and the is if not the which the expression but the is that such a calls attention to which can the for a whose turn at in his Lincoln’s into this perhaps in part of the of his is often employed to is not claimed or not to be When he of his in his public letter to he said, was in the I took that I to the of my and the of the I could not the the was it my that I might an to get and the in that In this he was at to in the he had with in the of the that had so and his of this is the letter that with the not to have but plainly that have the of the in Lincoln’s writing is by no to the expression of of his most lines is we It was as a to and of its from what John would a the that the most use of the was also something of a to Gettysburg The sentences a this is who we this is what has this is we are and this is all very but That the way for what is surely the most in all of American can not can not can not in as is to the and but also to in the is this the only use of the to its “The little long remember what we say but it can never what they did these not have in It in this that the and most of all is in the of the by the for the not from the these to Lincoln’s special affinity for the use of the it is little that he to be with a what like his can of the people all of the and all of the people of the but can’t all of the people all of the by his as Lincoln’s distinctive way of expressing himself has since so familiar and as to be Lincoln who are to to the president, commonly like This an important most of the do turn out to be Lincoln’s like that of other great to have a of its It is a that had its in the of Lincoln’s boyhood and was a in the It the of his early as a and the of a plain and it is a that to the and the It on of rhetoric, as as language and it is and a of with for with in the as us to the let us on to the we are to the to for him who have the and for his and his do all which and a and among and with all