Abraham Lincoln and the Shaping of Public Opinion

Wednesday, November 5, 2008
7 p.m. at the Jepson Alumni Center
Presented by Douglas L. Wilson

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, it was widely doubted that he possessed the necessary background and experience to be a successful leader. Lincoln had almost no formal schooling. One of the tools it was thought he conspicuously lacked was a facility for writing. But Douglas L. Wilson shows that Lincoln’s unsuspected literary ability worked to his advantage as a hidden asset, enabling him to communicate effectively with his constituents and to persuade them to accept difficult measures and decisions.

“Public opinion in this country,” Lincoln once said, “is everything.” He realized that to change public opinion demanded more than rhetorical devices. Wilson illustrates in his prize-winning book, Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, that Lincoln was an exacting literary craftsman, whose important writings went through many revisions, and whose aim was to create “the impassioned tone that comes from sincerity and conviction.”

It was almost as if he knew that his words would resonate throughout time. “Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. . . . The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.” Crafted to meet the immediate contingencies of the Civil War, Lincoln’s writings continue to be read and to affect the nation’s sense of itself and of its history.