Lincoln At Cooper Union, The Speech That Changed Everything (1860)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s February 27th. This day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at the Cooper Union in New York City. Before the speech, he was relatively unknown and not considered a viable candidate for president in that fall’s election. This speech changed everything.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss how the speech both boosted Lincoln as a candidate, but also laid out his intellectual vision — one that was as much about continually evolving ideas on slavery as anything.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:09.0	This day, February 27, 1860, in New York City, Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech at the Cooper
0:18.1	Union, a private college and society of letters that was established actually just the year
0:22.2	before.
0:22.8	So I suppose this is a good get, as they say, for the new college,
0:26.7	but it was also a boon for Lincoln.
0:28.9	He was relatively unknown at that point.
0:31.9	Listen to this, just about a month before a newspaper in
0:34.6	Philadelphia had published a list of 21 prominent candidates for president in
0:38.7	that fall's election and Lincoln was not even on that list. So maybe he's 22nd on the list of possible candidates.
0:45.8	But in that speech at the Cooper Union,
0:48.6	he put himself on the map.
0:50.4	He would of course go on to win the presidency in the fall of
0:53.1	1860 and many credit that Cooper Union speech with not just introducing him as
0:57.2	a viable candidate but also really laying out his intellectual vision, his
1:02.3	blueprint for how he thought about the major issues of the day, of course the main issue,
1:07.6	slavery and the looming fracturing of the country.
1:11.6	So here to discuss Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union
1:14.7	speech are as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of
1:18.2	Wellesley. Hello there. Hi Jody. Hey there.
1:20.9	Kelly you have a lot of Lincoln on the brain these days.
	...

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