Abraham Lincoln, Public Speaker

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My adventure through Lincolniana has extended over approximately twenty-five years, and I have sensed the spirit of Abraham Lincoln at the various shrines, historical displays, and specialized libraries devoted to him. In pursuing my research and developing insights, I have incurred many obligations to mentors, friends, and helpers who have guided me and provided encouragement and inspiration. Toall who assisted me I wish to express my deep appreciation. The Lincoln researcher has the advantages of a vast accumulation of materials and publications assembled by eyewitnesses and earwitnesses , archivists, biographers, collectors, critics, historians, dramatists , poets, psychologists, theologians, artists, and photographers. Most valuable are the compilations found in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P.Easier and his staff, and Lincoln Day By Day: A Chronology, 1809-1865, edited by Earl Schenck Miers. The Warren L. Jones Lincoln Library, deposited in the Louisiana State UniversityLibrary Special Collections (through the good offices of T. Harry Williams), has made readily available many fugitive Lincoln books and pamphlets. I am much in the debt ofthe Lincoln Herald, published by Lincoln Memorial University, its editors, Joseph E. Suppiger and Edgar G. Archer, and itsprevious editor, WayneTemple, now deputy director of the Illinois State Archives and a good friend. R. Gerald McMurtry and Mark E. Neely, Jr., and their staff at the Louis A. Warren Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana, have been helpful. I am grateful to the late Donald H. Ecroyd of Temple Universityfor invitingme to participate in the Gettysburg Conference on Rhetorical Transactions in the Civil War Era, held on June 24 and 25, 1983, at Gettysburg College. Bernard Duffy of Clemson Universityand Halford Ryan ofWashington and Lee Universityprovided me with critical insights on some of my research. vii ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PUBLICSPEAKER Owen Peterson and Harold Mixon, colleagues at Louisiana State University, served as sounding boards and faithful listeners to my conversations about Lincoln, Likewise, Robert Gunderson of Indiana University and Herman Cohen of Pennsylvania State Universityhave encouraged me. I have had the advantages of assistance from Helen Braden Atkinson , who served as graphic artist, and the typists of PTS Word Processing, who cheerfully translated my difficult handwriting into beautiful typed copy. The staff of the Louisiana State University Press, including my copy editor, Michael Bounds, have skillfully guided me in the preparation of my manuscript and have improved my presentation. viii ...