Photoessay #1075 - I wanna write like Abraham Lincoln

This book (clearly borrowed from the library) promises to teach me about writing brilliance as well as insight into the increasingly enigmatic figure of Abraham Lincoln. (We have have one of his letters, written to William Seward).

The country elected Lincoln as a relative unknown. The southern states were threatening secession, maybe seceded already. Lincoln felt that the First Inaugural Address would set the tone of his presidency. He sequestered himself in Springfield and came up with a draft which he kept closely held. His critics felt he would be too weak and he wanted to show his strength and capability.

His ending paragraph from his first draft (italics his):

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you unless you first assail it. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend" it. You can forebear the assault upon it; I can not shrink from the defense of it. With you and not with me is the solemn question of "Shall if be peace or a sword?"

Subsequently he traveled to Washington and conferred with his previous rival and future cabinet member William Seward. Seward felt that the tone was too harsh, advised conciliation and a more indirect loftier message at the end.

He sent this back to Lincoln as a closing paragraph:

I close. We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but fellow countrymen amd brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection; I am sure they will not be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves pass through all the hearts and all the hearts in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed up by the guardian angel of the nations.

Lincoln decided to follow Seward's advice and drop his strong authoritative tone. But he transformed Seward's prose in a cleaner more elegant paragraph.

I loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land. will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touches, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

It's good....