Writing Lincoln's first inaugural address

Doris Kerns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals, tells an interesting story about the writing of the first inaugural address by Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln's second inaugural gets a great deal of attention from historians, but the circumstances of his 1861 speech made it one of the most important addresses ever given to that point in American history.

Lincoln's election had provoked widespread feelings through the South that session was the only option left for the slave-holding states. The voices advocating a separate nation thundered loudly and in states like Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina had overtaken any expression of moderation.

The president-elect had not spoken to the nation since his nomination because campaigning for the presidency after one received the nomination of a party was thought to be undignified. Consequently, Lincoln's words carried great import for the immediate future of the country. Different factions projected different attitudes onto the upcoming speech. Anti-slavery supporters expected Lincoln to stand up to the Southern firebrands. Moderates on all sides urged conciliation. Hard-line Southerners expected little from Lincoln that could change their minds, and many of them did not want to change their minds.

Still, the president had to try to hold the country together with this speech

He showed drafts of it to several people including William Seward, his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination and now his nominee for Secretary of State. Seward suggested changes throughout, but he was most disturbed at Lincoln's ending. Seward had counseled moderation, and Lincoln's draft, he thought, was far too harsh to give moderation any hope.

Instead, he suggested this ending:

I close. We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but fellow countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battle fields and so many patriot graves pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation.

Lincoln took those words and ideas and made them his own:

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthsone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Lincoln's sharp thinking and succinct writing took Seward's good words and turned them into what Doris Kerns Goodwin calls "powerful poetry."

The words did not, unfortunately, prevent disunion and four years of bloody battles. But when that was done, they gave voice to the enduring sentiment of American unity.

Lincoln at 200; Lincoln the writer

Once Americans get through Christmas, they will be faced with two important dates that inter-weave themselves politically and historically: the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States on Jan. 20 and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 12.

For the moment, the Writing Wright will set Barack aside and deal with Abraham.

A good place to start our considerations of Lincoln is at the Reading Room of the New York Times, where a few short essays about the 16th president now reside. The essays are written by Ed Rothstein and Charles (Chip) McGrath, and they are drawing some interesting responses through the Times' moderated forum.

When I think of great presidents -- truly great -- I think of three: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Their greatness, to be fair to other presidents, is not defined by just personal characteristics but also by the times and crises they faced.

Of those three, only Lincoln produced any significant amount of important writing. In fact, a new biography, Lincoln: the Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan, has recently been published. I have not read the book yet, but getting a copy for Christmas or during post-Christmas shopping is not out of the question. So what's written here will be second-hand comments. At the Times, McGrath devotes one of his essays to Lincoln the writer, and Rothstein also deals with this aspect of Lincoln in "The Literal Powers of Words."

Not only did Lincoln write well, he actually wrote about writing. Rothstein writes:

But look at what Lincoln says in his Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, delivered in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1859, the year before he was elected President. The lecture is not terribly gripping, but it builds to a climax when it comes to the invention of writing. Lincoln describes what a remarkable innovation writing was, and how much it has advanced the societies that have cultivated it.

So what did he say? Here is an exerpt:

Writing -- the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye -- is the great invention of the world. Great in the astonishing range of analysis and combination which necessarily underlies the most crude and general conception of it -- great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and of space; and great, not only in its direct benefits, but greatest help, to all other inventions.

Get ready for lots of Lincoln over the next couple of months.

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The Writing Wright
Kill the Quarterback
A larger version of the pen and ink drawing of Abraham Lincoln (above) can be found at First Inning Artworks.