Abraham Lincoln

Herndon refers to a predilection for scribbling verses which began when Abraham Lincoln was a youth in Indiana, and expresses the opinion that it is just as well none are extant. Perhaps during this period also Lincoln began a practice of writing pseudonymous political letters to the Sangamo Journal, which he continued until 1842, when one of them resulted in a challenge to a duel. The problem of assigning pseudonymous or anonymous letters and editorials to Abraham Lincoln is, however, a dangerous one, and requires more careful study than has sometimes been given to it. Of these writings one may say that Lincoln's authorship has not been finally established for any except those included in this volume. Several political letters which appeared in the Journal in 1837-1838, signed variously 'Sampson's Ghost," "Old Settler," and "A Conservative," seem certainly to have been written by Lincoln, but in no instance do they add to his literary accomplishment. In racy idiom, satire, and humor they are distinctly inferior to the second "Rebecca" letter, which will be discussed later.

Lincoln's move from New Salem to Springfield in April, 1837, brought a further extension of his social and intellectual horizon. Springfield became the State Capital in 1839, Abraham Lincoln having largely directed the legislative maneuvering that deprived Vandalia of this distinction. But before this event Springfield was a thriving town in its own right, containing among other advantages "a State Bank, land office, two newspapers... the Thespian Society, the Young Men's Lyceum, a Colonization Society and a Temperance Society.

Yet one can scarcely agree with Daniel Kilham Dodge's summary opinion expressed in his monograph, Abraham Lincoln: The Evolution of His Literary Style, that "Lincoln's figures almost always serve a useful purpose in making an obscure thought clear and a clear thought clearer." The implication of a purely utilitarian motive hardly does justice to Lincoln's imaginative quality of mind.

Herndon insisted, and others have agreed, that Lincoln had "no sense of the beautiful except in a moral world." Such a limitation means nothing in an experimental or scientific sense, but even if we grant it we need not presume that Lincoln was oblivious to all but the utilitarian advantage in analogy and metaphor. All of Lincoln's contemporaries did not agree with Herndon. Stephen A. Douglas, as we shall see, thought Abraham Lincoln loved figurative language for its own sake.

Lincoln's figures are of two kinds: those which he uses as a method of explanation or a basis for drawing inference, and those which he uses as rhetorical assertions for purposes of persuasion. Only the first type are primarily utilitarian, and then seldom in the sense that Dodge supposes. If Abraham Lincoln had been writing scientific treatises, such an employment of analogy might have been very useful, though its usefulness would have diminished as the inferences drawn tended to escape from the realm of unquestioned fact. But, since Lincoln was making political speeches, this type of figure often became more effective in discomfiting his opponent, as the inferences drawn from it tended farther from the unquestioned facts. In Abraham Lincoln's speeches the inferential values of such figures nearly always seem to outweigh their explanatory alues, and as this is more or less evident in any particular figure, Dodge's comment seems less or more true.

Abraham Lincoln's repeated use of the figure in later speeches leaves no doubt as to his reason for making it. The pressure which this figure brought upon Douglas, through constant repetition, set the scene for the "Freeport Heresy." Douglas had no rhetorical technique other than sarcasm with which to combat the implication, and sarcasm was insufficient. Then came Lincoln's question: "Can the people of a United States Territory ... exclude slavery from its limits ...?"