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The Eloquent President. By Ronald C.White Jr. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005; pp. xxiii + 448. $26.95.
Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered. By John Channing Briggs. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005; pp. xi + 370. $35.00.
In 2003 I published a review of approximately 15 books on Abraham Lincoln that had implications for rhetoric. Since that time, the output of Lincoln literature has continued apace. Included are David Herbert Donald's 2003 We are Lincoln Men and Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 Team of Rivals that address Lincoln's interpersonal persuasion with his friends and his cabinet, respectively. There also have been at least three new books devoted to specific rhetorical texts: one by James Tackach on the Second Inaugural Address (Lincoln's Moral Vision, 2002), one by Allen Guelzo on the Emancipation Proclamation (Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, 2004), and one by Harold Holzer on the Cooper Union address (Lincoln at Cooper Union, 2004). In addition, there have been books, such as Michael Lind's 2005 What Lincoln Believed, that draw heavily on Lincoln's speeches and writings for their evidence. This continued attention to Lincoln's discourse is welcome, since this body of texts captures his understanding of principled and prudent action. Lincoln articulated his views on the great issues of his time and he adapted those views to the constraints of audience and situation.
Scholars of rhetoric will find two books, published almost simultaneously, worthy of special attention because they examine a number of Lincoln's speeches and writings chronologically. John Channing Briggs's Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered is devoted predominantly to the pre-presidential years (although it does include a chapter on the "canonical" addresses of Lincoln's presidency), and Ronald C. White's The Eloquent President begins with Lincoln's Farewell Address to the townspeople of Springfield and focuses entirely on the years 1861-1865. The orientations and apparent purposes of the two books are different, but they complement each other very well. Taken together, they offer analyses of several of the important but understudied Lincoln texts, as well as the obvious ones.
A central theme of Briggs's book is that Lincoln articulated his antislavery views throughout his rhetorical career. This stands at odds with the view that, at least publicly, he was not aroused by this issue until the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in...