The discovery of an unknown address by Abraham Lincoln is an event of
literary and historical significance. Various attempts have been made to
recover his "Lost Speech," delivered in Bloomington, in 1856. Henry C.
Whitney undertook to reconstruct it from notes and memory, with a result
which has been approved by some who heard it, while others, including a
considerable group who gathered in Bloomington to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of its original delivery and of the event which called it
forth, declared their conviction that "Abraham Lincoln's 'Lost Speech'
is still lost." So far as I am aware no one now living remembers to have
heard Lincoln's address on the death of President Zachary Taylor.
Lincoln's oration on the death of Henry Clay is well known, and his
speech commemorative of his friend, Benjamin Ferguson, also is of
record. His eulogy on President Zachary Taylor, however, appears to have
been wholly overlooked by Lincoln's biographers and by the compilers of
various editions of his works. Nicolay and Hay make no allusion to it,
either in their "Life" of Lincoln or in their painstaking compilations
of his writings and speeches. I have found but one reference to it, that
in Whitney's "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln."
Lovers of Lincoln are to be congratulated upon this discovery, of which
some account is to be given in this introduction. The address was
delivered in the City Hall in Chicago on Thursday afternoon, July 25,
1850. It was printed in one Chicago paper. It was set up from Lincoln's
original manuscript, furnished for the purpose.
President Taylor died at Washington on July 9, 1850. The disease was
diagnosed as cholera morbus. A number of other distinguished men were
sick in Washington at the same time and apparently with the same
disease. The death of Taylor was a hard blow to the Whig Party. Of its
seven candidates for the Presidency, it succeeded in electing only two,
William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, and each of these died not
long after his election.
Lincoln arrived in Chicago two days before the President's death. The
"Chicago Journal" of Monday evening, July 8, 1850, reported:
Hon. A. Lincoln, of Springfield, arrived in town yesterday to
attend to duties in the United States District Court, now in
session in this city.
A meeting was held in Chicago on the night of the President's death,
Tuesday, July 9, 1850, and arrangements were made for a memorial
service. In accordance with the journalistic methods of the times, the
daily papers reported the proceedings entire.
The committee appointed evidently acted promptly, for the same issue
records that the committee had selected Lincoln as the eulogist, and
that he had accepted. The formal acceptance, however, was not published
until two weeks later, and just before the address itself was delivered.
The occasion for the delay would appear to have been that the Common
Council of the City of Chicago had started independently a movement for
a Memorial Service, and that the two committees after some conference
had agreed to combine in one service to be held in the City Hall. The
following correspondence was published on Wednesday evening, July 24: