Lincoln's "Lost Speech" was a speech given by Abraham Lincoln at the Bloomington Convention on May 29, 1856, in Bloomington, Illinois. Traditionally regarded as lost because it was so engaging that reporters neglected to take notes, the speech is believed to have been an impassioned condemnation of slavery.
Lincoln's Lost Speech was given at the since demolished building at the corner of East and Front Streets in downtown Bloomington, Illinois, known as Major's Hall on May 29, 1856. [1] Lincoln gave the speech at the Anti-Nebraska Bloomington Convention that culminated with the founding of the state Republican Party. [1]
In 1856, a then young lawyer, H. C. Whitney, took notes of the speech. After a lapse of fourty years, Ida M. Tarbell urged Whitney to publish these notes, which he did, being published in "McClure's Magazine" for September in 1896. In a book, limited to 500 copies and bound in white boards, the speech was reproduced by the Republican Club of the City of New York as a souvenir for its annual Lincoln Dinner on the 12th of February, 1897. There are no other printings of the speech. Some Lincoln students are skeptical of the Whitney version of this speech with their opinion being that the speech is still lost. Eyewitnesses have offered snippets of some of Lincoln's content that day. William Herndon asserted that some of Lincoln's House Divided Speech was not based on new concepts at the time of its delivery. He wrote that Lincoln's "house divided against itself cannot stand" originated with the famous Bloomington speech of 1856. [2] Editor of the Chicago Tribune Joseph Medill claimed that Chicago lawyer Henry Clay Whitney's transcript of the speech was accurate; Whitney's version was later debunked. [3] [4]
It is thought that the speech was a strongly worded derision of slavery. [5] [ unreliable source? ] It is known that Lincoln's condemnation of the expansion of slavery was strong. [6]
The traditional reason given for the lack of any written recollection of the Lost Speech is that Lincoln's skilled and powerful oration had mesmerized every person in attendance. Reporters were said to have laid down their pencils and neglected note taking, as if hypnotized by Lincoln's words. When the speech ended no notes existed, so media reports of the day simply recorded the fact that the speech had been delivered. [4]
There is evidence in Herndon's recollections that the fact that the speech was "lost" may not have been an accident. So strongly worded was Lincoln's oration [7] that others in attendance feared the words might lead to a crumbling of the Union and that Lincoln consented to suspending "its repetition" for the duration of the 1856 campaign. [2]
In 1896, Chicago attorney Henry Clay Whitney published his account of the speech in an issue of McClure's Magazine . [8] [9] Whitney claimed he had taken notes during the speech and based his version of the speech upon those notes. [9] Initially, Whitney's version was given some credibility. Ida Tarbell sought out Joseph Medill, who was present at the Lost Speech, and he claimed that Whitney's version displayed "remarkable accuracy". [3]
Tarbell was unwittingly carried away by the story, but others were skeptical. Former Lincoln private secretary John George Nicolay declared Whitney's version devoid of Lincoln's style and a fraud. [4] Robert Lincoln, Abraham's son, agreed with Nicolay's assessment. [4] In 1900, the McLean County Historical Society [10] declared their skepticism. [11] In modern times, Lincoln researcher and Director of the Chicago Historical Society Paul M. Angle exposed Whitney's version of the speech and his claims of its validity as a "fabrication". [4]
Lincoln's Lost Speech was famous, with a status considered legendary by the time Tarbell became enamored with Whitney's version of it. [4] [ when? ] Lincoln was said to have spoken "like a giant inspired" and the tale of how the speech came to be lost was well known. [4] Many who attended the speech considered it the greatest of Lincoln's life. [12] Given at the first state convention, which essentially founded the Illinois Republican Party, the speech thrust Lincoln into the national political limelight. [6] [12]
Though it was known as the Lost Speech, its content influenced people nonetheless. Those who heard it were often asked to repeat what they heard and a frenzied group of supporters spearheaded Lincoln's drive toward a second-place finish among U.S. vice presidential candidates in 1856. [13]
Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer, and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers and reformers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was a pioneer of investigative journalism.
William Henry Bissell was the 11th Governor of the U.S. state of Illinois from 1857 until his death. He was one of the first successful Republican Party candidates in the U.S., winning the election of 1856 just two years after the founding of his party. In addition to being the first Republican governor of Illinois, he was also the first Catholic and also the first to die in office.
The Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of seven debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. Until the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides that senators shall be elected by the people of their states, was ratified in 1913, senators were elected by their respective state legislatures, so Lincoln and Douglas were trying to win the votes of the state legislature of the two chambers of the Illinois General Assembly meeting at the state capital town of Springfield for their respective political parties.
The 1860 Republican National Convention was a presidential nominating convention that met May 16–18 in Chicago, Illinois. It was held to nominate the Republican Party's candidates for president and vice president in the 1860 election. The convention selected former representative Abraham Lincoln of Illinois for president and Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for vice president.
Lyman Trumbull was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1855 to 1873. Trumbull was a leading abolitionist attorney and key political ally to Abraham Lincoln and authored several landmark pieces of reform as chair of the Judiciary Committee during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, including the Confiscation Acts, which created the legal basis for the Emancipation Proclamation; the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished chattel slavery; and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which led to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The House Divided Speech was an address given by senatorial candidate and future president of the United States Abraham Lincoln, on June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's US senator. The nomination of Lincoln was the final item of business at the convention, which then broke for dinner, meeting again at 8 pm. "The evening session was mainly devoted to speeches", but the only speaker was Lincoln, whose address closed the convention, save for resolutions of thanks to the city of Springfield and others. His address was immediately published in full by newspapers, as a pamphlet, and in the published proceedings of the convention. It was the launching point of his unsuccessful campaign for the senatorial seat held by Stephen A. Douglas; the campaign would climax with the Lincoln–Douglas debates. When Lincoln collected and published his debates with Douglas as part of his 1860 presidential campaign, he prefixed them with relevant prior speeches. The "House Divided" speech opens the volume.
Mordecai Lincoln was an uncle of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. He was the eldest son of Captain Abraham Lincoln, a brother of Thomas Lincoln and Mary Lincoln Crume, and the husband of Mary Mudd. He is buried at the Old Catholic or Lincoln Cemetery near Fountain Green, Illinois.
The Illinois Republican Party is the affiliate of the Republican Party in the U.S. state of Illinois founded on May 29, 1856. It is run by the Illinois Republican State Central Committee, which consists of 17 members, one representing each of the state's congressional districts. Once the dominant party in Illinois, the state GOP has become a minority party within the last few decades, holding little power in the state. The current chairman is Kathy Salvi, who has served since 2024.
The Cooper Union speech or address, known at the time as the Cooper Institute speech, was delivered by Abraham Lincoln on February 27, 1860, at Cooper Union, in New York City. Lincoln was not yet the Republican nominee for the presidency, as the convention was scheduled for May. It is considered one of his most important speeches. Some historians have argued that the speech was responsible for his victory in the presidential election later that year.
Archibald Williams was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. Williams was a friend and political ally of President Abraham Lincoln.
This bibliography of Abraham Lincoln is a comprehensive list of written and published works about or by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. In terms of primary sources containing Lincoln's letters and writings, scholars rely on The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, and others. It only includes writings by Lincoln, and omits incoming correspondence. In the six decades since Basler completed his work, some new documents written by Lincoln have been discovered. Previously, a project was underway at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln to provide "a freely accessible comprehensive electronic edition of documents written by and to Abraham Lincoln". The Papers of Abraham Lincoln completed Series I of their project The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln in 2000. They electronically launched The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, Second Edition in 2009, and published a selective print edition of this series. Attempts are still being made to transcribe documents for Series II and Series III.
John Hanks was Abraham Lincoln's first cousin, once removed, his mother's cousin. He was the son of William, Nancy Hanks Lincoln's uncle and grandson of Joseph Hanks.
Henry Clay Whitney was an American lawyer who was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, and later a biographer of the president.
William Trabue Major (1790–1867) was a prominent religious leader in Bloomington, Illinois in the mid-19th century. He founded the First Christian Church and built the city's first public meeting hall, Major's Hall, which hosted an early convention of the Illinois branch of the Republican Party and became best known as the site of "Lincoln's Lost Speech".
The Chicago Lincoln is a statue of a standing, beardless Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Square Chicago. The statue was designed by Lloyd Ostendorf for a city contest and modeled by sculptor Avard Fairbanks. The statue was erected on October 16, 1956.
Robert Boal was an American politician and physician from Pennsylvania. After schooling in Ohio, Boal moved to Lacon, Illinois, where he practiced medicine for thirty years. Boal was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1844, serving for four years. He returned to the General Assembly with an 1856 election to the Illinois House of Representatives. After serving a pair of two-year terms, he was made a trustee of the Illinois Institute of the Deaf and Dumb. During the Civil War, Boal examined soldiers from his congressional district. He later directed the Peoria State Hospital.
In the 1857 Chicago mayoral election, Republican John Wentworth defeated Democrat Benjamin F. Carver by a ten-point margin.
This article documents the political career of Abraham Lincoln from the end of his term in the United States House of Representatives in March 1849 to the beginning of his first term as President of the United States in March 1861.
The presidential transition of Abraham Lincoln began when he won the United States 1860 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect of the United States, and ended when Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861.
