Cooper Union speech

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The Cooper Union.

The Cooper Union Speech, or Address of American President Abraham Lincoln was delivered on February 27, 1860, at Cooper Union, in New York City. It is considered one of his most important yet little known speeches, even to be responsible for making him President.^[1]

In it, Lincoln elaborated his views on slavery, affirming that he did not wish it to be expanded into the western territories and claiming that the Founding Fathers agreed with this position. The New York Tribune hailed it as "one of the most happiest and most convincing political arguments ever made in this City ... No man man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience." ^[2]

[edit] The Speech

Photo of Abraham Lincoln taken February 27, 1860 in New York City by Mathew Brady, the day of his famous Cooper Union speech.

Lincoln's speech has three major parts, each building towards his conclusion. The first concerns the founders and the legal positions they supported on the question of slavery in the territories. The second is addressed to the voters of the southern states, clarifying the issues between Republicans and Democrats, arguing that the Republican position on slavery is the 'conservative' policy. The final section is addressed to Republicans.

In the first, he asks rhetorically "What is the frame of government under which we live?" and answers that it "must be: 'The Constitution of the United States.'" From there he begins his reasonings on why the federal government can regulate slavery in the federal territories (those that were not states), especially resting on the character of the founders, and how they thought of slavery:

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The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one - a clear majority of the whole - certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories...

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In the second part, he denies that Republicans are a "sectional" party, only representing interests in the Northern part of the country, and help incite slave rebellions. He rebukes the Southern accusation that Republicans helped John Brown by saying "John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise." He addressed the single-mindedness of the Southerners, saying:

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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. You will rule or ruin in all events.

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He also tried to show that the Southern demand to secede from the Union if a Republican (Abraham Lincoln) was to be elected president was like robbing a man with a gun: "the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle" from that robber.

The third section, addressed to fellow Republicans, encourages level-headed thinking and cool actions, doing "nothing through passion and ill temper."

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We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them.

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He states that the only thing that will convince the Southerners is to "cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right" and to support all their runnaway slave laws and the expansion of slavery. He ends by saying that Republicans, if they cannot end slavery where it exists, must fight through their votes to prevent its expansion. He ends with a call to duty:

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Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

”