History Commons^™

Lincoln The Profiler: Combining A Poet’S Voice And A Rhetorician’S Argument To Unite A Nation And Strive For Progress, Maelee Fleming

The Student Researcher: A Phi Alpha Theta Publication

“Lincoln acquired his power by exacting obedience from words, and this discipline he acquired in only two ways known to man – by reading and writing,” asserts Jacques Barzun in his Lincoln: the Literary Genius.1 While from humble farming beginnings, President Abraham Lincoln cultivated his writing abilities into a tool for satisfying his ambitions, which far exceeded those of his forefathers, and those ambitions would eventually lead him to the White House. Complimentary to his success was Lincoln’s ability to write in a way that catered to the auditory, as well as the logical, senses, thus producing works that left …