As a public speaker, if excellence is measured by results, he had no superior. His manner was generally earnest, often playful; sometimes, but this was rare, he was vehement and impassioned. There have been a few instances, at the bar and on the stump, when, wrought up to indignation by some great personal wrong, or by an aggravated case of fraud or injustice, or when speaking of the fearful wrongs and injustice of slavery, he broke forth in a strain of impassioned vehemence which carried every thing before him.
Generally, he addressed the reason and judgment, and the effect was lasting. He spoke extemporaneously, but not without more or less preparation. He had the power of repeating, without reading it, a discourse or speech which he had prepared or written out. His great speech, in opening the Douglas canvass, in June, 1858, was carefully written out, but so naturally spoken that few suspected that it was not extemporaneous. In his style, manner of presenting facts, and way of putting things to the people, he was more like Franklin than any other American. His illustrations, by anecdote and story, were not unlike the author of _Poor Richard_.
A great cause of his intellectual power was the thorough exhaustive investigation he gave to every subject. Take, for illustration, his Cooper Institute speech. Hundreds of able and intelligent men have spoken on the same subject treated by him in that speech, yet what they said will all be forgotten, and his will survive; because his address is absolutely perfect for the purpose for which it was designed. Nothing can be added to it.
Mr. Lincoln, however, required time thoroughly to investigate before he came to his conclusions, and the movements of his mind were not rapid; but when he reached his conclusions he believed in them, and adhered to them with great firmness and tenacity. When called upon to decide quickly upon a new subject or a new point, he often erred, and was ever ready to change when satisfied he was wrong.
It was the union, in Mr. Lincoln, of the capacity clearly to see the truth, and an innate love of truth, and justice, and right in his heart, that constituted his character and made him so great. He never demoralized his intellectual or moral powers, either by doing wrong that good might come, or by advocating error because it was popular. Although, as a statesman, eminently practical, and looking to the possible good of to-day, he ever kept in mind the absolute truth and absolute right, toward which he always aimed.