A deficit of intelligent and persuasive speech is one of the signs of cultural decline. Inspired by the eloquence and statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln, the Lincoln Lectures will explore the great speeches of Western civilization: from The Apology of Socrates to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to Winston Churchill’s “We Will Never Surrender” speech at the start of the Second World War.
It was in 1860 in New York City, at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, that Abraham Lincoln delivered the political speech that won him the Republican nomination for president. In his “Cooper Union Speech,” Lincoln exposed the intent of pro-slavery lawmakers: “Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us.”
Great speeches embody the highest ideals and aspirations of the human spirit. Yet the moral and religious ideals that lay at the heart of these speeches are often neglected. They need to be recovered.
