speeches and writings · lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's speeches, from the Lyceum address of 1838 to his last public address in 1865, are the most important body of American political writing after the founding. They argue that the Declaration's equality principle is the nation's creed, that slavery contradicts it, and that the Union must be preserved, in a prose that reaches its height at Gettysburg and in the Second Inaugural.

Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, edited by Roy Basler (Da Capo Press, 2001). Read in Junior Fall at Torrey Honors: The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions; Fremont, Buchanan, and the Extension of Slavery; The Dred Scott Decision; A House Divided; the Address at Cooper Institute; the First Inaugural Address; the Proclamation of a National Fast Day; the Final Emancipation Proclamation; the Proclamation for Thanksgiving of October 3, 1863; the Address at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg; the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction; the Proclamation of Thanksgiving of October 20, 1864; the Annual Message to Congress; the Second Inaugural Address; and the Last Public Address. Read again in the Roots of American Order summer seminar, June 2026, with the Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857) and the Fragment on the Constitution and the Union (1861) added.