Ronald C. White.
The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words.
Random house. 448 pages. $26.95
Ronald C. White’s new study of Abraham Lincoln’s rhetoric, The Eloquent President, is surprisingly timely. America bitterly divided over its future and the meaning of its ideals in the midst of great tumults; the law itself made an instrument of partisan contest; a president increasingly championing a radical reinterpretation of American principles and asking his countrymen to follow him; enraged Democrats and sanctimonious Republicans: Is it Washington in 1865 or Washington in 2005? White’s book highlights one glaring difference — Lincoln’s rhetoric was unique, and it is a sparkling model of the art of republican persuasion.
White’s last book, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech, was an exposition of the Second Inaugural Address; this book charts the development of Lincoln’s rhetoric over the course of his presidency. White analyzes and provides context for various speeches and public letters from Lincoln’s election to his Second Inaugural, a month before his assassination in April 1865. He hews closely to the speeches themselves in order to show how Lincoln used public speaking to lead the country through its most “fiery trial.”
His book basically assembles close readings of 11 Lincoln texts, and it includes some real gems, well-known and not. A private meditation, which he calls Lincoln’s “Meditation on the Divine Will,” is one of the more fascinating selections. It is a short thought Lincoln jotted down for his eyes only — it was discovered after his death — concerning the role of Providence in the Civil War, and its ideas would reappear in the Second Inaugural address. White’s discussion of the “Meditation” contributes to the ongoing scholarly inquiry about the importance of religion in Lincoln’s political thought and how genuine his religious convictions were (quite genuine, it seems). But it also will fascinate a general public itself wrestling with how much religion to allow in political life, and the plain faith of Lincoln’s Christian religiosity cannot but be moving. This is just one of the many themes and historical observations that run throughout this absorbing monograph.
But The Eloquent President argues most forcefully and convincingly the importance of Lincoln’s rhetoric in his politics, and of rhetoric in general to all republican politics. This is the basis of the book. “It cannot be denied,” White admits in his epilogue, “that the modern shibboleth ‘It’s only words’ has sometimes seemed to win the day. This portrait of Lincoln has turned on the axis that words matter. . . . Many today might complete the shibboleth by adding ‘. . . as opposed to actions.’ In this account of Lincoln, words are actions.” Not exclusively a Lincoln scholar, White seems to have been drawn to Lincoln studies largely by the sixteenth president’s speeches and how they all fit together.
That focus, and the accompanying conviction that “words are actions,” seems particularly appropriate to a republican statesman in a time of civil strife. After his election, Lincoln had only the power of persuasion to keep the country together. Once the South seceded and the battle was joined by arms, the president could retain the support of his rump Union — a support frequently in doubt — only by his words. White’s eagerness to take Lincoln’s speeches as a major part of his political arsenal is an intelligent recognition of an essential democratic reality: One cannot lead people without persuading them. Rhetoric is often a dirty word in modern-day political parlance, but White shows how Lincoln developed a kind of rhetoric that our American republic both needs and can be proud of.
Over the course of his presidency, White argues (taking Aristotle as his inspiration), Lincoln developed what one might call his capacity for persuading sympathetically. Trained as a lawyer, Lincoln had always been a rigorously logical thinker, and even his earliest speeches show his orderly, legal method of argument. But only as president did he learn two aspects of rhetoric that White sees as crucial to Lincoln’s eloquent presidency. First, he learned to understand his audience, its concerns and its desires, and therefore to speak to his listeners in terms they could understand. Second, he strove to project a certain moral character that gave his words authority. White likens this to the credibility we give to those whom we trust — family, teachers, and friends. A speaker must have it in order to convince skeptics.
White charts this rhetorical development through Lincoln’s speeches. In the First Inaugural address, for instance, Lincoln defended his position based on his legal obligations under the Constitution, asking the southern states not to secede because he would not exceed his legal constitutional authority. But they already didn’t trust him, and his appeal failed. By his immortal Second Inaugural, in contrast, he sought to reunite the country by declaring the wrong of slavery — “American slavery” — to be the wrong of all Americans and the work of reconstruction — to “bind up the nation’s wounds” — the work of all citizens. He shared the blame for the past and shared the healing task ahead because he had learned how important it was to earn the trust of all his audience — to prove his moral character.
Similarly, Lincoln came to believe that saving the union, for which he first prosecuted the war, required emancipating the slaves. This was not the understanding under which many in the union had supported the president, and Lincoln had to lead his skeptical countrymen to a vision of the union that few shared. Just as he could not keep the loyalty of southerners who refused to trust him, he would not secure his “new birth of freedom” without first securing the trust of northerners. He could do this only by listening to them, assessing their minds, and addressing their concerns. Most politicians rally their base or speak to strategic constituencies. White shows how, in several crucial speeches after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln instead responded forthrightly to the misgivings of Americans about emancipation and their desire for a compromise peace.
All of this points to White’s central observation: that Lincoln developed an art of rhetoric, of speaking to his fellow citizens, in which he listened to and sympathized with his audience and addressed them as he would a trustworthy friend. It was only when Lincoln learned to understand the thoughts and feelings of his audience and then spoke in such a way as to render himself trustworthy that his fellow countrymen would actually listen to his arguments instead of suspecting them. This, for White, is at the heart of Lincoln’s rhetoric.
One often hears commentators bemoan the scarcity of great speakers and stirring debate in American politics today. The debates in the 2004 election, though they highlighted some policy differences, showed again the poor quality of contemporary American political conversation. Casting about for reasons to explain this unfortunate circumstance, some blame the use of speechwriters, others the rise of televised, “sound-bite” media, still others the growing semi-literacy of the public. All of these are doubtless contributors, but in The Eloquent President, White offers a compelling comment on the problem and suggests why it matters.
Rhetoric becomes a dirty word only when public speaking is less about communication than about “strategy” — untruthfulness approaching trickery. Politicians rally the base, co-opt a policy position, triangulate, or otherwise cynically say what an audience wants to hear. They seem to prefer strategically manipulating the public into accepting change rather than persuading it
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Such political strategy was probably as common in Lincoln’s day as today, but Lincoln spoke to people in order to communicate honestly with them. He listened to his fellow citizens — White observes that Lincoln’s door was open daily to any visitors so he could hear and understand the voice of the people. Once he understood how people felt, however, he did not parrot back what they wanted to hear, which would be “strategic.” Instead, he spoke as one who knew the mind of people so he could better persuade skeptics among them. Whereas most politicians seek to show that they think just like their audience, Lincoln sought to be trustworthy enough that his audience might dare to think with him. Thus do leaders persuade their citizens to make great sacrifices.
Second, and perhaps more important, Lincoln spoke not as a distant governor, but as a trusted friend. Though he spent a career in politics, he nonetheless believed that a democratic republic has no ruling class. Without pandering, Lincoln addressed his audience as a friend among friends, acknowledging uncomfortable differences but still asking for their trust to follow him.
It is worth quoting at length from one of his best, but mostly forgotten, pieces of presidential rhetoric, the “Letter to a rally at Springfield.”
At a rally — a rally, of all occasions — Lincoln acknowledged and challenged his detractors:
But, to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself on that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose you do not. . . . You dislike the emancipation proclamation. . . . You say it is unconstitutional — I think differently. I think the constitution invests the Commander-in-Chief, with the law of war, in time of war. . . . You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time, then, for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.
After explaining why he thought a compromise peace impossible, Lincoln plainly stated what the disagreement was between him and his unionist detractors. He was coming to believe that the war could not end without also ending slavery, for practical and moral reasons. It was too divisive an issue to leave festering, and the prospect of so much blood shed only to leave the union still a house divided seemed morally repugnant. But many clung to the idea that the war was only about the union. Were they content, then, to leave some people slaves? Lincoln openly declared his ultimate wish that all be free, challenging his audience. Perhaps they believed the Emancipation Proclamation to have been illegal? Lincoln reminded them that it was a military measure (he quoted several generals on its military effectiveness) that he issued as commander-in-chief. And finally, to those insisting they fought only for the Union, Lincoln suggested they could pursue their dissent once the Union was restored. Such an honest, conversational tone is remarkably powerful because it forces an audience to think through the matter at hand plainly, without any sophistical obfuscation.
Going farther, in the following lines Lincoln raised a picture of the whole Union as it could be. He spoke poetically of “the great North-West, New England, Empire, Key-Stone, Jersey,” and even “the Suny[sic] South, in more colors than one,” all working to restore the sundered country. “Thanks to all,” he declared. “For the great republic — for the principle it lives by, and keeps alive — for man’s vast future — thanks to all.” Having plainly laid out the differences between himself and those who fought only for the Union, Lincoln then conjured a more perfect Union for which to fight, one “worth the keeping in all future time.” Because he first acknowledged and honestly presented their differences, Lincoln was able to offer his fellow citizens a part in his vision on equal terms.
White’s book shows us how Lincoln developed his rhetoric and reminds us why a genuine art of rhetoric matters: It enables the honest communication without which democratic politics becomes a partisan struggle of veiled coercion. In Lincoln’s time the suspicion and distrust got so bad that the veil lifted “and the war came.” At a time when great changes are again afoot, Americans must find ways to speak to each other as Lincoln once spoke to us. Perhaps the American for whom this is most important is President Bush. He has shown repeatedly his penchant for great plans and wants his countrymen to re-imagine with him what kind of nation we should be. But it is hard to see how he can lead the country by his vision when so many suspect that he is pulling the wool over their eyes. Of course, many of the president’s interlocutors face the same problem and bear the same responsibility to communicate.
The Eloquent President is not a didactic history, and one ought not to read it as such. But the portrait it gives of a great political communicator cannot but provide a stirring model for those who hope for a softening of America’s polarized politics. Many politicians stress the unity of the country and refer to differences of opinion only obliquely. Lincoln’s example shows that straightforward acknowledgement of serious divisions can make the choices much clearer and force both sides to admit where they stand. White’s portrait of Lincoln evokes an understanding of republican citizenship as a conversation among friends, doubtless an ideal but one that deserves more than lip-service. Without indulging in the histrionics of many commentators after the election, we should recognize that we are divided over what kind of Union we want to be, at home and abroad. A president who would unite us must state the division plainly and as a disagreement between friends. Then he can ask us which Union we choose, and we will have to give our honest answer.
