Lincoln's Speeches ReconsideredOriginally published in 2005. Throughout the fractious years of the mid-nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln's speeches imparted reason and guidance to a troubled nation. Lincoln's words were never universally praised. But they resonated with fellow legislators and the public, especially when he spoke on such volatile subjects as mob rule, temperance, the Mexican War, slavery and its expansion, and the justice of a war for freedom and union. In this close examination, John Channing Briggs reveals how the process of studying, writing, and delivering speeches helped Lincoln develop the ideas with which he would so profoundly change history. Briggs follows Lincoln's thought process through a careful chronological reading of his oratory, ranging from Lincoln's 1838 speech to the Springfield Lyceum to his second inaugural address. Recalling David Herbert Donald's celebrated revisionist essays (Lincoln Reconsidered, 1947), Briggs's study provides students of Lincoln with new insight into his words, intentions, and image. |
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... argument . In seriousness then , the facts of this proposi- tion are not true as stated . God did not place good and evil before man , telling him to make his choice . On the contrary , he did tell him there was one tree , of the fruit ...
... argument of their public records . It is worth the attempt to paraphrase these ideas in a compact list : 1. The men who made the Constitution and who deliberated the Northwest Ordinance ( and related legislation ) acted consistently ...
... argument , though he has now " left off " the " habit " of doing so . The handbill concedes , even specifies , much of the sub- stance of the accusation ; but it does not apologize for Lincoln's having held a belief in a complex ...
Contents
Rhetorical Contexts | 1 |
On the Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions | 29 |
The Temperance Address | 58 |
Copyright | |
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