Lincoln's Young Men's Lyceum Speech

Lee Deppermann

English 150

Rhetorical Analysis Draft

Lincoln’s Young Men’s Lyceum Speech: A Passionate Appeal Against Passions

In November of 1837 a proslavery mob burst in to Elijah P. Lovejoy’s house and printing office. They killed Lovejoy, destroyed his abolitionist printing press and shocked the nation. Two months later a young lawyer and sometime Whig politician, Abraham Lincoln, gave a stirring address extolling the rule of law and the legacy of the founding fathers. Lincoln declared that there were no circumstances that justified mob action, and that any measure that subverted the rule of law endangered the future existence of the United States. Abraham Lincoln’s Young Men’s Lyceum speech carefully illustrates the logic of self-control, while at the same time uses passionate appeals against the use of unrestrained passion.

Lincoln’s audience included both the people who attended the speech it’s self as well as a much broader readership. Significantly, he realized that his speech would be delivered in a time where tensions between the North and South were never lurking far away. Several times during the speech Lincoln carefully casts himself as a moderate, thus broadening his appeal. Early on in his address Lincoln clearly states that mob tendencies are not unique to any region or social class: “they have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding states. Whatever, then, their cause may be it is common to the whole country” (29).

Lincoln’s effort to include both North and South in his denunciations was intended to enhance not only the accuracy of his message, but his credibility as a speaker. Any effort to cast the slaveholding South as the primary perpetrators of tyrannical violence would have branded Lincoln a radical, thus alienating him from his more conservative audience. Further, by including the South in his characterization of mob violence Lincoln produces the same effect in relation to the North. These differences, although insignificant to the modern reader, were sensitive issues at the time. By casting himself as a sectional moderate and distancing himself from a moral debate on slavery, Lincoln made himself more credible.

Lincoln’s most famous speeches, especially his presidential letters and addresses, are characterized by persistent appeals to logic. Lincoln, perhaps calling on his frontier story-telling background, was always able to relate a complicated moral or political issue with a saying or image familiar to the common person. Although Lincoln’s Young Men’s Lyceum address primarily features appeals to passion, the speech contains several prominent arguments that appeal to logic. Lincoln uses logic to decry mob violence by both giving specific examples and broader assumptions.

Lincoln was careful not to mention the Lovejoy murder because it was still a national scandal, and thus by mentioning it Lincoln would have alienated part of his audience. He does, however, bring up several prominent examples designed to illustrate his point. Lincoln’s first example involved the hanging of several gamblers in Mississippi. Concerning the gamblers Lincoln stated: “a set of men, certainly not following for a livelihood a very useful or very honest occupation; but one which . . . was actually licensed by an act of the [state] Legislature” (29). Here Lincoln is acknowledging the gamblers base character while at the same time appealing to the authority of the state legislature. Lincoln next cited the illegal lynching of both whites and blacks accused of fermenting slave insurrection in St. Louis (29-30). Lincoln’s most poignant example was the “most highly tragic” story of a free black seized in his home and murdered in public (30).

Lincoln’s use of specific examples shows the violent results of disregarding law, while at the same time showing his audience that the crisis of mobocracy was not a distant problem. When Lincoln gave graphic descriptions of the lynchings he connected those individual murders to all other instances where the rule of law is replaced by passionate law breaking. Lincoln’s audience would have had no illusions about what mob action really entailed after hearing those examples. Also, by choosing examples that occurred on America’s frontier Lincoln showed his listeners and readers that disregard for law both pervaded their community and could be stopped in their communities.

Although Lincoln built up his ethos by appearing moderate and used specific examples as logical appeals, most of his argument was supported by passionate appeals to common morals, civic virtue and the legacy of the American Revolution. As he opened his speech Lincoln extols both the American landscape and government: “We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth . . . under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the end of civil and religious liberty” than any other in history (28). Later in the address Lincoln appeals to the mores of gratitude, justice, duty and love (28-29). When Lincoln appealed to American exceptionalism and virtue he was connecting his argument with his audience’s beliefs. The desire Lincoln’s readers would have had to be moral and exceptional would have connected them emotionally to Lincoln’s argument.

The majority of emotional appeals in the Young Men’s Lyceum speech deal with preserving the legacy of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. Although fifty-two years had passed since the signing of the Declaration of Independence the American Revolution still figured strongly in America’s historical memory. Both Lincoln and his audience would have grown up hearing stories and experiences from Revolutionary War veterans themselves. Along with memories of sacrifice, honor and duty Lincoln’s contemporaries would also have remembered the violence and rebellion of the Revolution. In appealing to his audience’s passions Lincoln had to connect the Revolution with law and order.

After identifying the problem of mobocracy through logical examples and arguments, Lincoln talked at length of how to resist those tendencies. Lincoln’s answer was passionate: “Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others” (32). Again, Lincoln stirred his audience by appealing to the universal values of liberty and posterity. “As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Constitution and laws, let every American pledge his life, his property and his sacred honor . . . to his own and his children’s liberty” (32). Here, and throughout the speech, Lincoln equates the Revolution with law, order and morality. Lincoln’s audience would not have missed the symbolism.

Ironically, Lincoln’s main strategy to combat unrestrained passion was to passionately appeal to common values and America’s revolutionary heritage. In doing this Lincoln surely recognized that although logical appeals to reason would support his argument, only passion would evoke emotion and action in his audience. The Young Men’s Lyceum speech is a masterful example of using language symbols to achieve a specific effect. Lincoln’s moderate use of logical examples, combined with passionate appeals to the Revolution, combined to produce the effective argument that the rule of law must always be supreme over our passions.

Works Cited

Lincoln, Abraham. “Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield Illinois”. Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858. Speeches, Letters and Miscellaneous Writings. The Lincoln Douglas Debates. Ed. Don Fehrenbacher. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1989. Print.