Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President Book

A few months back I had finished Harold Holzer's "Lincoln: President-Elect" and therefore anticipated another five stars. I was not disappointed. If I were to read these two books again however, I would read this book first.

Lately, I have been trying to better familiarize myself with some of the most important documents and speeches of our nation's history, and Lincoln's Cooper Union ranks pretty close to the top. Lincoln basically summarizes the north/south conflict with slavery, and presents his viewpoint on how to best deal with it as a moderate Republican abolitionist candidate for President. Because of Lincoln's simple, solid, and convincing logic, it was hugely successful. The text of the speech was therefore reprinted many times in the papers, and later sold quite well in annotated pamphlet form. In short, his speech catapulted him to become one of the leading contenders for the Republican nominee for President in 1860, and later to become our nation's 16th President.

Harold Holzer presents the story of Lincoln's Cooper Union speech very well. He doesn't examine it line-by-line like I expected him to, (probably because this speech is so long) but instead, he dissects the most important aspects of it, and also examines the history of how those ideas evolved. My only criticism is that Holzer could have added another chapter or two in examination of the speech itself, but decided to concentrate more on it's history instead. But all-in-all Holzer does a superb job of presenting Lincoln's Cooper Union, and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about Lincoln's most famous pre-presidential speech.