Lincoln's Lost Speech - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

's "Lost Speech" was given on May 29, 1856, in Bloomington, Illinois

Bloomington, Illinois

Bloomington is a city in McLean County, Illinois, United States and the county seat. It is adjacent to Normal, Illinois, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington-Normal metropolitan area...

. Traditionally regarded as lost because it was so engaging that reporters neglected to take notes, the speech is believed to have been an impassioned condemnation of slavery. It is possible the text was deliberately "lost" owing to its controversial content.

Circumstances

Lincoln's Lost Speech was given at a since demolished building at the corner of East and Front Streets in downtown Bloomington, Illinois

Bloomington, Illinois

, known as Major's Hall on May 29, 1856. Lincoln gave the speech at an Anti-Nebraska

Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through Popular Sovereignty if they would allow slavery within...

convention in Bloomington that culminated with the founding of the state Republican Party

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

Content

There are no known transcripts or written accounts of the Lost Speech, other than a brief summary in the local press. Eyewitnesses have offered snippets of some of Lincoln's content that day. William Herndon

William Herndon (lawyer)

William Henry Herndon was the law partner and biographer of Abraham Lincoln.-Biography:Born in Greensburg, Kentucky, Herndon and his family moved to Illinois in 1820, and they settled in Springfield when he was five. Herndon attended Illinois College from 1836-1837. In 1840 he married Mary J....

asserted that some of Lincoln's House Divided Speech

Lincoln's House Divided Speech

The House Divided Speech was an address given by Abraham Lincoln on June 16, 1858, in Springfield, Illinois, upon accepting the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's United States senator. The speech became the launching point for his unsuccessful campaign for the Senate seat...

was not based on new concepts at the time of its delivery. He wrote that Lincoln's "house divided against itself cannot stand" originated with the famous Bloomington speech of 1856. Editor of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

Joseph Medill

Joseph Medill

Joseph Medill was an American newspaper editor and publisher, and politician. He was co-owner and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, and was Mayor of Chicago.-Biography:...

claimed that Chicago lawyer Henry Clay Whitney

Henry Clay Whitney

Henry Clay Whitney was a United States lawyer who was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, and later a biographer of the president.-Life:...

's transcript of the speech was accurate; Whitney's version was later debunked.

It is thought that the speech was a strongly worded derision of slavery. It is known that Lincoln's condemnation of the expansion of slavery was strong.

Why it was lost

The traditional reason given for the lack of any written recollection of the Lost Speech is that Lincoln's skilled and powerful oration had mesmerized every person in attendance. Reporters were said to have laid down their pencils and neglected note taking, as if hypnotized by Lincoln's words. When the speech ended no notes existed, so media reports of the day simply recorded the fact that the speech had been delivered.

There is evidence in Herndon's recollections that the fact that the speech was "lost" may not have been an accident. So strongly worded was Lincoln's oration that others in attendance feared the words might lead to a crumbling of the Union and that Lincoln consented to suspending "its repetition" for the duration of the 1856 campaign.

Whitney version

In 1896, Chicago attorney Henry Clay Whitney

Henry Clay Whitney

Henry Clay Whitney was a United States lawyer who was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, and later a biographer of the president.-Life:...

published his account of the speech in an issue of McClure's Magazine. Whitney claimed he had taken notes during the speech and based his version of the speech upon those notes. Initially, Whitney's version was given some credibility. Ida Tarbell sought out Joseph Medill, who was present at the Lost Speech, and he claimed that Whitney's version displayed "remarkable accuracy".

Tarbell was unwittingly carried away by the story, but others were skeptical. Former Lincoln private secretary John George Nicolay

John George Nicolay

John George Nicolay was an American biographer and secretary of Abraham Lincoln. In 1838, he immigrated to the United States with his father, attended school in Cincinnati...

declared Whitney's version devoid of Lincoln's style and a fraud. Robert Lincoln, Abraham's son, agreed with Nicolay's assessment. In 1900, the McLean County

McLean County, Illinois

McLean County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois. McLean County is included in the Bloomington–Normal, Illinois Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 169,572, which is an increase of 12.7% from 150,433 in 2000. Its county seat is...

Historical Society declared their skepticism. In modern times, Lincoln researcher and Director of the Chicago Historical Society Paul M. Angle exposed Whitney's version of the speech and his claims of its validity as a "fabrication".

Importance

Lincoln's Lost Speech was famous, with a status considered legendary by the time Tarbell became enamored with Whitney's version of it. Lincoln was said to have spoken "like a giant inspired" and the tale of how the speech came to be lost was well known. Many who attended the speech considered it the greatest of Lincoln's life. Given at the first state convention, which essentially founded the Illinois Republican Party

Illinois Republican Party

The Illinois Republican Party is the state-level affiliate of the Republican Party in Illinois. Since August 20, 2009, it has been chaired by Pat Brady...

, the speech thrust Lincoln into the national political limelight.

Though it was known as the Lost Speech, its content influenced people nonetheless. Those who heard it were often asked to repeat what they heard and a frenzied group of supporters spearheaded Lincoln's drive toward a second place finish among U.S. vice presidential candidates in 1856.

External links

Abraham Lincoln's Lost Speech