(HOST) We’re about to mark the anniversary of a spectacular speech by a little-known Illinois politician that, according to commentator Peter Gilbert, made him president.
(GILBERT) In the afternoon 150 years ago this Saturday, Abraham Lincoln, a former one-term Congressman, sat in photographer Mathew Brady’s New York studio and had his picture taken; the result was an iconic portrait. That evening, at Cooper Union Hall, Lincoln gave a brilliant speech with just the right message, at just the right moment. He would later say that Brady’s photo and the Cooper Union speech made him President. The photo appeared everywhere, and the speech positioned Lincoln as an alternative if, before Republican national convention in Chicago, the frontrunner for his party’s nomination faltered, which New York’s Senator William Seward did.
Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech was quite different from what would make for a hugely successful speech today: the speech was long – ninety minutes – reasoned, learned, tightly argued with heavy reliance on historical detail.
But Lincoln did use as a refrain Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas’s assertion that the Founding Fathers understood slavery "as well as, or better, than we do," – with devastating rhetorical effect. While he acknowledged that the Constitution barred the government from tampering with slavery where it existed, he examined the views of the 39 signers of the Constitution, and noted that 21 of them clearly believed that slavery could be barred – and should be barred – from the territories; indeed he added that probably all but three of the signers agreed. And so, as Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer notes, Lincoln argued that it was Republicans, not Democrats, who were the true heirs to the founding fathers. Lincoln asserted that his position on slavery was the same as the founders’, who considered slavery "an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only" where it had to be.
Lincoln chastised Southerners for saying that if a Republican were elected President, they’d secede, and it would be Republicans’ fault – and for insisting that they have their way in interpreting the Constitution – or they’d dismantle the Union. "Rule or ruin," he called it.
Finally, he encouraged fellow Republicans to accommodate the South where they could. But, he said, only one thing will convince the South that the North will let them alone – and that was that the North "cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right." That Lincoln was unwilling to do, either in word or deed. He concluded his speech, saying, "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."
When he finished, the audience went crazy; an immediate success, the speech was widely printed in newspapers and as campaign literature. He had proven himself a sophisticated thinker, forceful advocate, and compelling moderate candidate – a Presidential contender.