Extra Credit Questions

[RJNorton]

Apparently the energy Lincoln put into this speech made it most noteworthy to the onlookers. Lincoln's passion rubbed off on the audience, and there were numerous interruptions when the folks in Major's Hall stopped him with thunderous applause. When this happened, Lincoln's enthusiasm grew even more, and his voice continued to rise as the interruptions grew even louder. Crissey writes, "The effect was electrical, almost frightening." Lincoln would retreat to the back of the stage and then slowly walk toward the front edge with his voice rising as he moved. When he was at the stage's edge his huge height and thundering voice seemed to have an overpowering effect on the people at the convention.

Writing in the Chicago Democrat, reporter John Wentworth said, "Abraham Lincoln for an hour and a half held the assemblage spellbound by the power of his argument, the intense irony of his invective, the brilliancy of his eloquence. I shall not mar any of its fine proportions by attempting even a synopsis of it."

William Herndon was present for the speech and concluded, "His speech was full of fire and energy and force. It was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, and right set ablaze by the devine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, backed with wrath."

Not every speech Lincoln gave during his life has a known text, but the overall "rousing nature" of both the speaker and the audience seems to put the Lost Speech in a special category. I have read that Thomas' explanation for the lost text is not really correct; rather Lincoln's anti-slavery oratory was so strong that he himself asked that it be kept off the record.