ABRAHAM LINCOLN: PORTRAIT OF A SPEAKER.

By Earl Wellington Wiley '09New York: Vantage Press, 1970. 563 pp.$7.50.

This is a book for all those who want to enlarge their knowledge of Lincoln's political career, especially those most interested in his forensic ability. It tells the story of the years between his arrival in Springfield in 1837 and his election to the Presidency in 1860. It gives accounts of and quotations from many speeches as a guide to his intellectual development and political skill. It recounts his rise from being a well-liked story teller to becoming an accomplished orator as well as his struggle to overcome ungainliness and roughness of manner. The General Assembly of Illinois provided a good schooling; his campaigns as a Whig elector in several contests preceding his own perfected him.

Details of the debates with Douglas are given as are many proofs of his progress from acceptance of slavery where it already existed to his opposition to it anywhere. His stand on the Missouri Compromise, the Nebraska Question, and the Dred Scott decision are shown as being clearly involved in this progression.

The author gives in great detail the content, importance, and effect of Lincoln's speech at Cooper Institute in New York in February 1859. This was probably his greatest before his White House years and played a great part in winning him tenancy there. Next day the New York papers eulogized the address which had made him nationally famous. But the best comment to quote came from an admirer in Norwich, Connecticut, during the brief New England tour that followed: "Sir, your speech last night was the most remarkable I ever heard." When Lincoln asked him why, he replied, "The clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style of your reasoning and especially your illustrations which were romance and pathos, fun and logic, all welded together."

In the later great speeches, at Gettysburg and at his two Inaugurations, the element of fun could find no place but the other distinctive qualities shine forth from them forever.

Mr. Haile has had a long and distinguishedcareer as lecturer in this country andabroad.