[Pg 13]The persons in the audience, and their city, as well, were antagonistic to Lincoln's party associates. The negro-haters had seemingly pre-empted the hall. Stories of negro brutality had been published in the papers of that week. Lincoln was regarded as an adventurer from the "wild and woolly West." He was expected to be an extremist. He was crude, unpolished, having no reputationin the East as a scholar. He was not an orator and had the reputation of being only a homely teller of grocery-store yarns. His voice was of a poor quality, grinding the ears sharply. He seemed to be a ludicrous scarecrow rival of the great gentleman, scholar, and statesman, William H. Seward. Even Lincoln's own party in New York City bowed religiously to Seward, the idol of New York State. The Quakers and the adherents of the pro-slavery party were conscientiously opposed to war, especially against a civil war.
We now know that Lincoln's speech had[Pg 14] been written in Illinois. As I saw him, on its delivery, he himself was trebly chained to his manuscript, by his own modest timidity, by the dictation of his party managers, and by the fact that when he spoke his written speech was already set up in type for the next morning's papers.
In the chair on the platform as presiding officer sat the venerable poet of the New England mountains and the writer of keen political editorials. The minds of the intelligent auditors began to repeat "Thanatopsis" or "The Fringed Gentian" as soon as they saw the noble old man. His culture, age, reputation, dignified bearing, and faultless attire seemed in disparaging contrast to the appearance
of the young visitor beside him. In addition to Mr. Bryant, the stage setting included, on the other side of the slender guest, a very ponderous fat man, whose proportions, in their contrasting effect upon the speaker of the evening, made his thin form so tall as to bring to mind Lincoln's story of the[Pg 15] man "so tall they laid him out in a rope walk."
Lincoln himself was seated in a half-round armchair. His awkward legs were tied in a kind of a knot in the rungs of the chair. His tall hat, with his manuscript in it, was near him on the floor. The black fur of the hat was rubbed into rough streaks. One of his trousers legs was caught on the back of his boot. His coat was too large. His head was bowed and he looked down at the floor without lifting his eyes.
Somebody whispered in one of the back seats, "Let's go home," and was answered, "No, not yet; there'll be fun here soon!"
The entrance of the stranger speaker was greeted with neither decided nor hearty applause. In fact, the greeting for Mr. Bryant was far more enthusiastic. But there was a chilling formality in the effect of the whole of Mr. Bryant's introduction. Nothing worth hearing was expected of the lank and uncouth stranger--that[Pg 16] was the impression made upon me. And when young Lincoln made an awkward gesture in trying to bow his thanks to Mr. Bryant, the audience began to smirk and giggle. Lincoln was evidently disturbed and felt painfully out of place. He seemed to be fearfully lacking in self-control and appeared to feel that he had made a
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ridiculous mistake in accepting such an invitation to such a place. One singular proof of Lincoln's nervousness was in the fact that
he had forgotten to take from the top of his ear a long, black lead pencil, which occasionally threatened to shoot out at the audience.
When I mentioned the pencil to Lincoln nearly five years later, he said that his absent-mindedness on that occasion recalled to him the story of an old Englishman who was so absent-minded that when he went to bed he put his clothes carefully into the bed and threw himself over the back of his chair.
When Mr. Bryant's introduction was[Pg 17] concluded, Lincoln hesitated. He attempted to rise, and caught the toe of his boot under
the rung of his chair. He ran his long fingers through his hair, which left one long tuft sticking up from the back of his head like an Indian's feather. He looked pale, and he unrolled his manuscript with trembling fingers. He began to read in a low, hollow voice that trembled from uncertainty and nervousness--so low, in fact, that the crowd at the rear of the hall could not hear, and shouted: "Louder! Louder!"
At this the speaker's voice became a little stronger, and with this added strength came added confidence, so much so that there came suddenly a slight climax. The speaker looked up from his manuscript as though to note the effect of his words. But his eyes quickly dropped again to the paper in his shaking hands. The applause was fitful, and from the corner where the hoodlums were assembled came several distinct hisses.
[Pg 18]When the audience finally began to make out what he was endeavoring to say about the signers of the Declaration of Independence and their opposition to the extension of human slavery, there was for a time respectful silence.
How long the painful recital might have been permitted to continue no one can tell. The crowd, even that portion inclined to favor Lincoln's views, was growing increasingly restless. Half an hour had passed. The ordeal could not go on much longer. Suddenly a leaf from the speaker's manuscript accidentally and without his knowledge dropped to the floor. The moment he missed the leaf he turned a little paler than he had been and hesitated awkwardly.
For a moment the audience felt keenly the embarrassment of the situation. But the pause was brief. With an honest gesture of impatience and a movement forward as if he were about to leap into the audience, Lincoln lifted his voice,[Pg 19] swung out his long arms, and, as my brother remarked, "let himself go."
Disregarding his written speech,[1] Lincoln launched into that part of the subject that was nearest his heart. In a voice that no longer was hollow or sepulchral, but rich and ringing, he denounced the institution of slavery. Yet he spoke of the South in the most affectionate terms. He said he loved the South, since "he was born there," but that he loved the Union more for what it had done united and what it was destined still to do united.
Wave after wave of telling eloquence rolled forth from this uncouth, gaunt figure and literally dashed itself against[Pg 20] the hard, resisting minds of that prejudiced audience. Already the feeble wits were engulfed in the overwhelming verbal torrents that came now like avalanches, and little by little even the most biased minds began to relent under the mystic persuasiveness of his voice and the unanswerableness of his logic, until nearly everybody in that throbbing and excited audience was convinced that slavery was one
of the blackest crimes of which man could be found guilty. And even before the last words of his impassioned eloquence had passed his lips the audience was on its feet, and those most bitterly opposed to him politically arose too and applauded him.
Naturally, no verbatim report of that address can be recalled after sixty years. But the impression it made almost surpasses belief when told to those who were not there. There is no clearer descriptive term which could be applied to the speaker than to state,
as some did, that "the orator[Pg 21] was transfigured." No one thought of his ill-fitting new suit, of his old hat, of his protruding wrists or the disheveled hair, of his long legs, his bony face, or the one-sided necktie. The natural Abraham Lincoln had disappeared and an angel spake in his place. Nothing but language which seems extravagant will tell the accurate truth.
All manner of theories were advanced by those who heard the speech to account for the gigantic mystery of eloquent power which he exhibited. One said it was mesmerism; another that it was magnetism; while the superstitious said there was "a distinct halo about his head" at one place in the speech. No analysis of the speech as he wrote it, nor any recollection of the words, shows anything remarkable in language, figures, or ideas. The subtle, magnetic, spiritual force which emanated from that inspired speaker revealed to his audience an altogether different man from the one who began to read a different speech.[Pg 22] He did not approach the delicate sweetness of Mr. Bryant's words of introduction, or reach the imaginative scenes and noble company which characterized Beecher's addresses. Lincoln was less cutting than Wendell Phillips and had no definite style like
