Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President, by Harold Holzer.

The Way to Win (see my prior book review) confirmed that despite the criticism presidential campaigns get for concentrating too little on substantive ideas, it is critical for a candidate, particularly an unknown candidate, to put forward a powerful message on the electorate’s most pressing problem.

Lincoln at Cooper Union makes clear that Lincoln’s eventual election to the Presidency owed a great deal to a speech he gave that tackled the central problem of the electorate.

The foremost issue of the day was whether slavery should be allowed to expand to the territories. Democrats held it to be fine and proper. Abolitionists held it to be an abhorrent evil and felt it should be stamped out everywhere. Republicans, a newly formed party, agreed it should be limited from spreading further, but contained both abolitionists and those who sought merely to limit slavery from spreading. The Democrats painted the Republicans (”Black Republicans”, as the Democrats called them) as an outlandish and fringe group, who would support the rights of blacks over whites.

Although somewhat renowned for his debates during his campaign for Illinois senator (against Stephen Douglas, who lost the popular vote to Lincoln but won the office), Lincoln was still a relatively unknown lawyer from the backwater state of Illinois (in what was then considered the West) until he gave the speech that electrified the audience at Cooper Union in New York city, energized the 5 year old Republican party, and seized the attention of the country.

In 1860, it was considered unseemly for candidates to actively campaign any time near election day, so his speech at Cooper Union was particularly powerful because it was published across the country by newspapers and its themes were picked up by others campaigning on his behalf. Why was the speech so powerful? It addressed the central issue of the day in a new and persuasive way.

Lincoln’s famous rival, Democrat and Senator Stephen Douglas, had argued that as America expanded westward each new territory should choose for itself whether it be slave or free, a doctrine called popular sovereignty. This argument actually splintered the Democrats, many of whom felt Douglas did not go far enough in defending slavery. As part of his defense of the idea of letting each territory decide for itself whether to be slave or free, Douglas argued that this is what the founders had intended, and they knew best.Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union flipped this statement by Douglas on its head.

Lincoln’s speech, backed up by Lincoln’s own thorough research, stated that the vast majority of the founding fathers were in favor of containing and eventually eliminating slavery. Rather than the Republican party being an outlandish and radical group, Lincoln aligned the Republican party with the conservative will of the founding fathers, the core of America’s secular faith. Lincoln’s thorough examination of what the founders had intended impressed many with him personally, and energized the Republican party faithful.

Lincoln carefully avoided a strong abolitionist stance, arguing that although slavery is wrong it is also improper to abolish it immediately as that would cause strife, which made him a far more acceptable a candidate than a pure abolitionist would have been.

Although in a prior speech Lincoln had suggested a civil war was inevitable, that a “house divided must soon fall”, in his Cooper Union speech he argued that the country could be held together if the founder’s intent was followed, and even the South should recognize this and avoid war.

He famously concluded that “right makes might”, that the new Republican party must stand by its principles and its duty on this important issue. The speech was perfectly targeted for its time, thrusting Lincoln onto the path of history.

In our current political environment it will be intriguing to see if any of the candidates can similarly address the issues most Americans care about. Foremost among those may be the war in Iraq, and particularly what our role as a nation should be in foreign affairs.

It is interesting to see that the two most prominent candidates who are for withdrawal in Iraq, Barack Obama (a Democrat with a sophisticated speaking style and a strong respect for Abraham Lincoln) and Ron Paul (a libertarian Republican) have somewhat opposing views on the value of foreign entanglements, with the Republican being in favor of them to an even lesser extent than the Democrat.