The Speech That First Made Lincoln [Some Sunday Context]
This Day (An America 250 History Show)
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For our "Sunday Context" episode, we look at another speech by Abraham Lincoln, one he gave in 1860 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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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, Jody Avergan here. Welcome to our Some Sunday context series where we are bringing you |
| 0:10.1 | conversations new and from the archives that try and give you a little context for what we are up to here in |
| 0:15.8 | 26. Now this past week, as you likely heard, we ran a two-parter on Abraham Lincoln's second |
| 0:22.4 | inaugural address, and one of the things we tried to get at was Lincoln's evolution over the |
| 0:27.3 | course of the war. His views on slavery, his views on the war, his views on the moral reckoning, |
| 0:32.7 | all evolved from his first inaugural in 1861 to his second in 1865. Well, here is another episode |
| 0:40.7 | from our archives about another Lincoln speech, about five years before his second inaugural |
| 0:46.0 | when he was in the very early days of even being a candidate for president. And in that speech, |
| 0:51.4 | we also catch him at a moment of evolution. It's a much lesser-known speech |
| 0:55.9 | than Gettysburg or the second inaugural. This one's not inscribed on any memorials, but it does |
| 1:00.8 | kind of serve as a fascinating opening bracket to a man who was wrestling with his own views |
| 1:06.2 | and asking the country to trust him with leading them through these questions. |
| 1:11.8 | Now, of course, |
| 1:15.5 | this isn't the only other episode we've done about Lincoln over the years. We've done tons of stories, including ones about the Emancipation Proclamation. We've done a story about this guy, |
| 1:20.1 | Boston Corbett, who is the man who killed John Wilkes Booth. That is an absolutely crazy story. |
| 1:25.8 | We've even done an episode about the little girl |
| 1:28.1 | who convinced Lincoln to grow a beard. You can go ahead and search for those in the archives. |
| 1:32.5 | If you are on a Lincoln kick, we will also round up links to all of them in the newsletter. |
| 1:37.3 | Speaking of which, a reminder to subscribe to the This Day newsletter. And if you are a paid |
| 1:41.8 | subscriber, that unlocks all sorts of benefits. You get the full newsletter on Thursdays. You get access to a special podcast feed with early ad-free episodes of our 50 weeks that shaped America series, as well as all of our bonus conversations throughout the year. Plus, of course, you are supporting the show. So sign up now as a paid subscriber, and this Sunday afternoon you will get our next two-parter. |
| 2:04.7 | It's about Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, and Fox News. |
| 2:08.3 | You can sign up at thisdaypod.com. |
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