Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech Turned the Tables on the Slavers

Abraham Lincoln

“What is the frame of government under which we live?”

Future President Abraham Lincoln asked that question during his speech of February 27, 1860, at New York City’s Cooper Union. Speaking like the skilled lawyer he was, Lincoln turned the tables against the slave states’ claim that they, and they alone, stood for the United States’ constitutional traditions. Thus, he skillfully used the conservatives’ own argument against them. Surprisingly, Lincoln presented himself as the true conservative in the slavery debate.

Slave owners had claimed that the federal government had no authority to restrict the spread of slavery to new territories. Lincoln, in contrast, wished to prevent the spread of slavery to new territories. In this speech, Lincoln used the historical record to show that tradition supported his view, not the slavers’ views. Sadly, even though Lincoln established that his opponents’ beliefs supported his position, not their own, the slavery dispute stubbornly resisted even Lincoln’s powerful logic.


Turning the Tables, Step #1

Beginning this magnificent speech, Lincoln insisted that he would speak from tradition:

“The facts with which I shall deal this e7vening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them.”

Far from using the more radical abolitionists’ blood-curdling language, Lincoln emphasized the traditional: “old and familiar;” “nor is there anything new.”

Continuing, Lincoln endorsed the traditional perspective. He quoted the pro-slavery argument of his erstwhile political opponent, Illinois’ pro-slavery United States Senator Stephen Douglas:

“In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in ‘The New-York Times,’ Senator Douglas said:

“‘Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.’”

Douglas had framed the argument as a return to the principles of “our fathers.” Lincoln pounced on Douglas’ view that “our fathers” understood the traditions better than anyone. This enabled Lincoln to turn Douglas’ argument against him:

“I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: ‘What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?’”

When turning the tables, the speaker accepts the opponent’s premise and uses it to prove the opposite conclusion. The argument’s power came from the fact that Douglas had handed Lincoln his argument. Lincoln did not say that tradition was wrong, nor did he say that we need to create new and progressive ideas. Instead, he co-opted Douglas' proud claim as “a text for this discourse.” Once he proved his point, neither Douglas nor any other advocate of slavery could refute Lincoln’s premise. After all, it was their own premise!

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address: “The Better Angels of Our Nature”

Turning the Tables, Step #2

Lincoln reframed the slavery debate by setting the debate as a dispute over what the tradition was rather than making an argument for change. Lincoln did not ask whether the founders of our Republic were wrong to endorse slavery. No! That would reject the constitutional tradition, which did accept slavery. Instead, Lincoln contended that southern secessionists misunderstood the traditions. That might sound tricky, but Lincoln cited the historical record. Mocking Douglas, Lincoln asked:

“What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood ‘just as well, and even better than we do now?’

“It is this: Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government  to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?”

Thus, Lincoln sidestepped the question of states’ rights. For secessionists took their legal framework from the notion of states’ rights, as embodied in the 9th and 10th amendments to the United States Constitution. In contrast, Lincoln pointed that the Constitution did not provide for territorial rights. Making a close, lawyerly distinction, Lincoln reminded his audience that territorial rights were not states’ rights. If more states were admitted to the union, the principle of states’ rights might give them the legal privilege to choose whether they would, or would not, permit slavery. If they were merely territories, however, Lincoln assigned that right to Congress. Furthermore, as we shall see, he drew that conclusion from tradition—indeed, repeating Douglas’ exact words, “our fathers.”

Cooper Union, Foundation Building

Turning the Tables, Step #3

So, to demonstrate that the nation’s founders supported his view, while turning Douglas’ premise against him, Lincoln examined the historical record. Again, if one wants to be traditional, where could one turn, if not to history? Lincoln cited the historical fact that in 1784, before the Constitution was adopted, three men who would later serve in the Constitutional Convention voted to withhold slavery from the Northwest Territory. Lincoln also cited a 1789 law, the very first law passed under the new constitution, which prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. The bill’s author was, in fact, Thomas Fitzsimmons, who had served in the Constitutional Convention. The bill was then passed into law with unanimous consent, in a Congress that, as Lincoln explained, included fully sixteen members of the Constitutional Convention.

Thus, Lincoln concluded from historical events that the very same people who wrote the Constitution felt were willing to prohibit slavery in a territory:

“This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory.”

Continuing, Lincoln cited the vote of Rufus King, who participated in the Constitutional Convention, to prohibit slavery in Missouri. Lincoln did acknowledge that Charles Pinckney voted against such a prohibition. Still, summing up several cases, Lincoln used the historical record to show that twenty-three of the thirty-nine participants in the Constitutional Convention had, at one time or another, voted to prohibit slavery in one territory or another. In a long, argumentative sentence, Lincoln was now ready to deride Douglas’ claim that the "fathers” of our Republic “understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now:”

“Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers ‘who framed the government under which we live,’ who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they ‘understood just as well, and even better than we do now;’ and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole ‘thirty-nine’ — so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories.”

Again, Lincoln quoted Douglas exact words: “understood just as well, and even better than we do now.” Having found that a slim, but real, majority of the Constitution’s framers explicitly supported his position, Lincoln concluded, with more than a little sarcasm:

“Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions, under such responsibility, speak still louder.”

By that point, Lincoln had taken the same premise that Douglas praised— to revere “our fathers— and turned it to his own purposes.   

Turning Tradition against the Traditionalists

Lincoln craftily avoided picturing himself as a reformer, a radical, or even a liberal. No, he spoke as the true traditionalist. Marshaling fact after fact from the historical record, argument after argument from tradition, Lincoln had cited, not only the Constitution’s text, but the actions of the men who wrote it: the “fathers” who Douglas had cited as the ultimate constitutional authorities.

Lincoln’s proposals were, by the standards of the time, moderate. He did not, in this particular speech, protest against slavery. He did not ask the slave states to free their slaves. Lincoln’s consistent argument during his run for the presidency, and, indeed, during the early years of his administration, was that slavery should not spread, while the existing institution should be left alone. He had earlier prophesied in his “House Divided” speech that the United States would eventually become either slave or free, but he had always held short of abolitionism. Unlike Frederick Douglass or William Lloyd Garrison, who opposed slavery in all forms, and who were, at the time, considered to be dangerous radicals, Lincoln stood in the middle.

One Searing Phrase: Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” Speech

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech and the Christian Right 

Instead of sounding radical, Lincoln argued like an attorney proving his case in court, or a debater who crushed his opponents’ case with a deluge of facts. On the one hand, the Cooper Union speech may have contributed to Lincoln’s nomination by the Republican Party and his subsequent election to the presidency. Newspapers published the speech’s text, while the Republican Party distributed it in pamphlets and flyers. On the other hand, Lincoln's carefully reasoned arguments could never soothe white Southerners’ fears. Despite his many assurances that he would leave southern slavery alone, South Carolina shelled Fort Sumter barely six weeks after Lincoln took office in 1861.

Red Cloud's Cooper Union Speech

Indeed, although Lincoln utterly and masterfully turned the tables against the South’s philosophical and historical argument, his speech proved nothing so much as the sad fact that logic can fail to persuade people. Yes, Lincoln made a powerful argument that tradition upheld his legal position and proved that the facts contradicted Douglas’ argument from tradition. Unfortunately, by 1860, the United States had fractured beyond repair. Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech had pummeled the slavers’ philosophical and legal niceties into logical rubble. The nation lurched into the Civil War anyway.

“What is the frame of government under which we live?” Given the turmoil of the Trump years, I am not certain that we have answered that question, even today. 

by William D. Harpine 

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Research Note: Communication scholars Michael C. Leff and Gerald P. Mohrmann published a detailed analysis of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech. Large libraries can probably find a copy for you. Their article, which is considered a masterpiece in the neo-Aristotelian theory of rhetoric, suggests that the speech was a major factor in Lincoln’s successful election.

Even more remarkably, in his book The Ethics of Rhetoric, conservative scholar Richard Weaver develops the surprising view that Abraham Lincoln was a true conservative. Weaver reasoned that, although Lincoln spoke for progressive ideas, he rested his arguments on fundamental definitions and moral attitudes. Anyone who wants to understand Lincoln in particular, or, more broadly, rhetoric’s ethical foundations, should study Weaver’s book. For that matter, anyone who wants to be a conservative should ignore Ayn Rand and the soulless politicians, and instead carefully ponder Weaver’s uplifting insights.

Historical Note: The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is a small but renowned university in lower Manhattan. Business magnate Peter Cooper provided a massive endowment that enables students to attend at either free or greatly discounted tuition. Lincoln was the most renowned of the many prominent speakers who have appeared in the famous Great Hall in the basement of Cooper Union’s Foundation Building. 

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of Abraham Lincoln, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Cooper Union Foundation Building, Eden, Janine and Jim, Creative Commons License