The Speech That Made The Man (Winter 2010 | Volume: 59, Issue: 4)

The Speech That Made The Man

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Authors: Harold Holzer

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Winter 2010 | Volume 59, Issue 4

On the frigid and stormy evening of February 27, 1860, so the newspapers reported, Abraham Lincoln climbed onto the stage of the cavernous Great Hall of New York’s newest college, Cooper Union, faced a room overflowing with people, and delivered the most important speech of his life.

Or so the myths maintained. In truth, a quarter of the hall’s 1,800 plush seats remained empty for the evening’s vigorously advertised political lecture. But not because of the weather—which was clear and balmy. Some eyewitnesses, and most historians since, would stubbornly report that a blizzard raged that night (“the profits were so small . . . because the night was so stormy,” insisted one organizer). But Lincoln supporters may have created that legend to explain away the empty seats. Chalk up the less-than-sold-out house to indifference and competition from other events and attractions.

Certainly the venue did not lack for appeal. Cooper Union, a $600,000 brick wonder on Manhattan’s Astor Place, had opened only months earlier to rave reviews. The New York Times praised the college’s auditorium as “not equaled by any room of a similar nature in the city or the United States.” Dozens of gas-fed crystal chandeliers illuminated its mirrored walls and red-leather swivel chairs. The sole complaint (now, as then) was that cast-iron pillars obstructed clear views of the stage.

But was the orator of the evening worth seeing? The Republican politician from Illinois, veteran of the widely reported Senate campaign debates with Stephen A. Douglas two years earlier, was making his first speech in the big city. Could he withstand the scrutiny of the fastest-talking, best-dressed, and most demanding audience on the planet? Other politicians had declined invitations to speak in the lecture series Lincoln was now bravely concluding. His decision to accept—to painstakingly research a lawyerly brief defending federal authority to regulate slavery, then undertake an exhausting journey from Springfield to New York—proved the savviest move of his political life. And it arguably changed history. Most in the crowd applauded when he appeared onstage that night and took his seat shortly before 8 p.m. Others gasped at the ungainly giant. “At first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing about him,” admitted one eyewitness. “His clothes hung awkwardly on his gaunt and giant frame; his face was of a dark pallor, without the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle. His deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious.”

The evening’s master of ceremonies, erudite poet-editor William Cullen Bryant, worked hard to soothe the apprehension. “To secure your profoundest attention,” he pleaded, “I have only, my friends, to pronounce the name of”—and here he likely paused for full dramatic effect—“Abraham Lincoln of Illinois.”

With that, the speaker slowly unfolded himself from his chair, rose to his towering height, and shambled toward the lectern. To one alarmed onlooker, he appeared “rather unsteady in his gait.” Then, in that harsh, high-pitched trumpet tone with which he unavoidably launched his orations, he uttered his first