ABSTRACT

Lincoln’s native style – the one that he mastered fi rst and perhaps most completely – was the frontier stump. In political gatherings and frontier courtrooms throughout Illinois, he excelled. But Lincoln worked to master other styles as well. Lincoln studied oratory through models. His cousin Dennis Hanks reported the teenage Lincoln, after attending church, amused his peers by repeating the sermon from a wilderness stump (Herndon & Weik, 1888/2006, p. 104). We know he borrowed The Kentucky Preceptor (Donald, 1995, p. 30; Berry, 1943, p. 834) and The Columbian Orator (Cmiel, 1990, p. 59) to study historical examples. Then he experimented. His 1838 “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” (Lincoln, 1838/1953, Vol. I, pp. 108-115) is much admired by conservatives today for its theme, but as an attempt at the high epideictic style there is little to admire. When Lincoln penned his public lecture “On Discoveries and Inventions” (Lincoln, 1858/1953, Vol. II, pp. 437-442) around 1858, he sought to exploit political celebrity to earn lecture fees for lyceum-style speaking. He gave the lecture an undetermined but small number of times in central Illinois before turning down further requests with a note that “I am not a professional lecturer” (Lincoln, 1860/1953, Vol. IV, p. 39). His law partner and biographer William Herndon agreed: “If his address in 1852, over the death of Clay, proved that he was no eulogist, then [the ‘Inventions’ speech] demonstrated that he was no lecturer” (Herndon & Weik, 1888/2006, p. 271). These efforts, spread over the years of his youth and into early middle age, present a Lincoln seeking to master the speaking arts of his day with mixed success.