For Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered. In Lincoln, acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan explores the life of America's sixteenth president through his use of language as a vehicle both to express complex ideas and feelings and as an instrument of persuasion and empowerment. Like the other great canonical writers of American literature - a status he is gradually attaining - Lincoln had...

"Brief and inspiring, the Gettysburg Address is one of the best-known and most revered speeches in American history. Given on the battlefield at Gettysburg by US President Abraham Lincoln, the speech reaffirms the cause of liberty at a crucial turning point in the Civil War. Readers are introduced to the social and political circumstances of the time, the significance of the bloody battle at Gettysburg, and Lincoln's masterful skill at writing memorable...

"'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.' The prophetic words of abolitionist, writer, and social reformer Frederick Douglass live on in his speeches and books of autobiography. This speech, delivered on July 5, 1852 was an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass grew up enslaved and deprived of rights and liberty and argued that the American values of freedom and liberty for some, but not...

"An expert analysis of Abraham Lincoln's three most powerful speeches reveals his rhetorical genius and his thoughts on our national character. Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, believed that our national character was defined by three key moments: the writing of the Constitution, our declaration of independence from England, and the beginning of slavery on the North American continent. His thoughts on these landmarks can be traced through...

Historian Ronald White examines Lincoln's astonishing oratory and explores his growth as a leader, a communicator, and a man of deepening spiritual conviction. Examining a different speech, address, or public letter in each chapter, White tracks the evolution of Lincoln's rhetoric from the measured, lawyerly tones of the First Inaugural to the haunting, immortal poetry of the Gettysburg Address. As a speaker who appealed not to intellect alone, but...