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Lincoln Agrees to Speak at Cooper Union, And the Rest is History

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Lincoln at Cooper Union, Mathew Brady photographOn this date, November 13, 1859, Abraham Lincoln agreed to give a speech at Cooper Union in lower Manhattan in New York City. History suggests this is the speech that made Lincoln president.

Except he wasn’t actually agreeing to a speech at Cooper Union. In his letter to James A. Briggs, with whom he has previously corresponded about the event, he agreed to give a political speech at what he thought would be the famous Plymouth Church across the river in Brooklyn. Under the leadership of its first minister, Henry Ward Beecher, Plymouth was a center of anti-slavery activism at this time, and speaking there was sure to raise Lincoln’s profile as the still new Republican party moved toward picking its presidential nominee. If the Beecher name sounds familiar, it’s because his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, authored perhaps the most influential book of the time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Originally invited to speak in late fall 1859, Lincoln agreed if the date could be pushed off until February to accommodate his political and legal schedule. The final date was set for February 27, 1860. Briggs eventually realized that coaxing an audience across the potentially frigid East River in the dead of winter may be problematic and thus sought to pass off sponsorship of the speech to the Young Men’s Central Republican Union, which moved it back to Manhattan. Considerable confusion arose in communicating this fact and it was only after he arrived in New York that Lincoln understood he would speak at Cooper Union instead of Plymouth Church. He hurriedly edited his speech for what he assumed would be a less religious audience.

I discussed the content of the speech here but suffice to say it went well for Lincoln. Earlier that day he had his photo taken at the studio of Mathew Brady, later acknowledging that the speech and Brady’s photograph made him president.

Having already planned to visit his son Robert at Phillips Exeter Academy after Cooper Union, he graciously accepted an offer to give a speech in Providence, Rhode Island on his way to New Hampshire. That idea quickly escalated into at least a dozen speeches in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut before he could make his way back to Illinois. This was Lincoln’s second, and last, trip to New England, having stumped through eastern Massachusetts for the successful Whig presidential nominee Zachary Taylor in 1848. This time Lincoln was stumping more on his own behalf and promoting the now Republican party view that slavery must not extend into the western territories. Again, he was well-received, and this time the New England electoral votes were comfortably in Lincoln’s corner (as they would be also in 1864).

As they say, the rest is history. Cooper Union, the Brady photograph, and the release of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in book form all contributed to making Abraham Lincoln the best candidate for president in 1860.

And the war came.

For those looking for more information on the Cooper Union speech, I highly recommend the 2009 book by Lincoln historian Harold Holzer called, aptly enough, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President.

[Photo by Mathew Benjamin Brady – US Library of Congress, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25065667]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Cooper Union – The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President

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Lincoln at Cooper UnionOn February 27, 1860, a tall, lanky lawyer from Illinois gave a speech at a place called Cooper Union in New York City. The speech would make Abraham Lincoln president. Sounds a bit hyperbolic to say such a thing, and there were many other factors that contributed to Lincoln’s success that election season, but the speech did more to make his name in eastern society than any other event.

While Lincoln was renowned in Illinois, his stories and jokes the highlight of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, he was virtually unknown in the rest of the country. In early 1860 his name was not on anyone’s lips as a possible nominee for the Republican party. And then came Cooper Union.

Lincoln had been invited to speak at Henry Ward Beecher’s church in Brooklyn. He spent months researching his topic in preparation, only to find after arriving in New York that the event had been moved to the larger Cooper Union building in Manhattan. Retouching his speech for a more connected political audience, he stood up on the stage and began with his surprisingly high-pitched voice, which warmed up to a commanding presence after a few minutes.

Eminent Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer in his book, Lincoln at Cooper Union, describes the painstaking research and effort Lincoln put in to prepare for the most important speech of his life. He parses the intricate language of the 90-minute speech, then goes into its structure – three main sections.

The first section provides a historical accounting of the founder’s beliefs regarding slavery. And by accounting I mean in the literal sense, counting up the various votes and statements of the founders as indications of their views on slavery. In short, they didn’t approve of slavery (even though many were slaveholders) but as slavery already was firmly entrenched, they saw not how to eliminate it in one fell swoop. So they opted for a piecemeal approach under the, perhaps naïve, belief that slavery would die under its own immoral weight. Lincoln documents this in great detail.

In the second section, Lincoln directs his words at the people of the South. “You say you are conservative…while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservative? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?” Lincoln notes that being conservative would mean adhering to the beliefs of the founders that slavery was wrong and inconsistent with a nation where “all men are created equal.”

In his final section, the shortest, he asserts that Republicans cannot relinquish their principle that slavery is wrong just to placate the South. He ends with words that have become as famous as his later Gettysburg Address:

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

As one looks back on this speech 159 years later we see how Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party were progressive in their views while remaining true to the Declaration that “all men are created equal.” Southern Democrats of the age were the conservatives in that they sought to preserve an aristocracy-based Southern society where a few rich plantation owners controlled an economy based on inequality.

Oh how the parties have switched places in the intervening years to get us to today.

All Americans would benefit from reading the full Cooper Union speech and learning more about this singular era in American history.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Book Review – Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer

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Harold Holzer Lincoln at Cooper UnionOne would think the book’s subtitle “The speech that made Abraham Lincoln President,” would set up an unattainable expectation of greatness.  After all, how could a book hold a candle to a great speech?  Or perhaps the speech wasn’t so great after all and the author merely wanted to sell more books.  And yet, I was wonderfully surprised to see that this really was an exceptional book about an exceptional speech.

Harold Holzer is a world renowned expert on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.  He has won several awards for the numerous books he has authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited on this the most widely studied President in our history.  Holzer takes us back to February 1860, a few months before the convention that would nominate Abraham Lincoln on the Republican ticket for President.  He examines the opportunity given to Lincoln to speak in New York City, where powerful men like Horace Greeley are looking to put forth an alternative to New York’s favorite son, William Seward.  Through the negotiations of when and where – and the ultimate surprise upon arrival to find the location had been moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan – Holzer shows a remarkable ability to build tension and anticipation leading to the actual speech itself.  He gives us a taste of a time, that in the days before movies and television and 24-hour internet, men were drawn to great speakers, especially of the political variety.

And a great speech it was.  With several chapters leading up to the speech, Holzer helps us see the intricate research and effort Lincoln exerted over several months to preparing what he felt, presciently so, was to be the most important speech in his life.  One chapter is assigned the duty of parsing the intricate language of this 90-minute magnum opus.  As Holzer so captivatingly relates, the speech consists of three main sections: the first a historical accounting of the founder’s beliefs regarding slavery.  Lincoln takes a line from a speech given by his long-time rival from Illinois, Senator Stephen Douglas, in which he says “Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”  With these words repeated over and over in his speech at Cooper Union, Lincoln cleverly recounts the votes that in toto demonstrate convincingly that the founders of our country believed that the federal government did, in fact, have the right and the obligation to restrict the spread of slavery into the new territories.  In the second section, Lincoln addresses himself directly to “the Southern people,” whom he knows will not hear his speech, all while cleverly speaking to northern Republicans whose support he needs.  The third, and shortest section, asserts that Republicans cannot relinquish their principle that slavery is wrong just to placate the South, and ends with his now famous line: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

I read the full speech in the appendix before reading the rest of the book, then again – this time out loud, as if giving it myself – after finishing the chapter explaining its significance.  While the speech as read is superb in itself, it is when spoken out loud as an oration that it gains its ultimate power.  Holzer has captured this masterpiece with his own masterpiece.  This book is a must read for anyone interested in Abraham Lincoln, history, or simply the power of a well prepared speech.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Abolitionist John Brown Hanged

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John BrownJohn Brown was hanged today, December 2, 1859, just a year before Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the 16th President of the United States. History has a love/hate relationship with John Brown. There were many abolitionists in the antebellum Union. To them not only was slavery wrong, but it must be abolished immediately and for all time. So Brown was not alone in that belief.

But as a radical abolitionist John Brown took this conviction to its extremes. He believed in taking definitive action – including violent action – to erase slavery from this Earth. On this date he was hanged for a raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. His goal was to start an armed insurrection. It didn’t work. Abraham Lincoln in his epic Cooper Union Address given in February 1860 put it like this:

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate.

Harpers Ferry was not the first time John Brown sought to stimulate an uprising. In 1856 he joined with others in attacking a military detachment in the Battle of Black Jack, perhaps one of the first incidents of what came to be known as Bleeding Kansas. Brown then hacked to death five pro-slavery supporters in the town of Pottawatomie, Kansas. So by the time of the failed Harpers Ferry raid John Brown was largely seen as a persona non grata by those who both agreed and disagreed with his views on slavery.

The Smithsonian Museum of American History looks at slavery and John Brown as part of its The Price of Freedom exhibition (Flash needed to view slideshow). In addition, the museum addressed how John Brown should be remembered by history as part of their Time Trial of John Brown. The YouTube video below introduces the series.

Expand the text below the video to find links to the various parts of this fascinating program. So, how should John Brown be remembered? As a violent murderer or as someone who felt the need to abolish slavery merited extreme action?

More on Abraham Lincoln.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!