(03-17-2019 07:44 PM)Anita Wrote:  I agree with Holtzer.

"Of the actors who have played Lincoln, “Waterston catches it for me,” says Holzer. “Although he is from Massachusetts, he gets that twang down, and he’s got a high voice that sometimes lapses into very high.”

Actor Sam Waterston has played Lincoln on screen, in Ken Burns’ The Civil War and Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, and on Broadway, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. To prepare for the role in the 1980s, he went to the Library of Congress and listened to Works Progress Administration tapes of stories told by people from the regions where Lincoln lived. (Some of the older people on the tapes were born when Lincoln was alive.) Lincoln’s accent was a blend of Indiana and Kentucky. “It was hard to know whether it was more Hoosier or blue grass,” says Holzer. The way he spelled words, such as “inaugural” as “inaugerel,” gives some clue as to how he pronounced them."

Read Holtzer's Ask an Expert: What Did Lincoln's Voice Sound Like?" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ask-an-expert-what-did-abraham-lincolns-voice-sound-like-13446201/

(09-02-2019 04:08 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Thanks, Amy. There is an excellent source for folks interested in Lincoln's voice. The book is entitled Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker by Waldo W. Braden. Chapter 8, entitled "Penetrating and Far Reaching: Lincoln's Voice," covers pages 96-103 of the book, and it includes numerous earwitness accounts of what Abraham Lincoln sounded like.