Featured Biographies in Lincoln's Bloomington

Lincoln's "Lost Speech" (May 29, 1856)

Lincoln gave a 90 minute speech at Illinois' First Republican Convention in Bloomington, Illinois. The text of the speech has been lost, but many recollected accounts give an idea that the speech was remarkably anti-slavery.
"I have heard or read all of Mr. Lincoln's great speeches; and I give it as my opinion that the Bloomington speech was the grand effort of his life," remembered Lincoln's law partner William Herndon, who was in the audience that night.

"His speech was full of fire and energy and force," added Herndon. "It was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, and right set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, backed with wrath."

Related Documents and Articles:
Picture
Major's Hall

Lincoln and the "Convergence of Purpose"

  • This sculpture celebrates Lincoln's connections to Bloomington-Normal and McLean County
  • Features Lincoln and his close friends, Jesse Fell and David Davis sometime in the 1850s.
  • The sculptor was challenged to depict the influence that Fell and Davis had on Lincoln's run for the presidency.
               - Fell worked to convince Lincoln to run for the office and write an autobiography
               - Davis led the team of the Lincoln's supporters at the Chicago convention

First Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions (April 6, 1858)
Lincoln and Economics

This speech given by Abraham Lincoln in 1858 was given several months prior to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Though the speech seems very apolitical, historians like Michael Burlingame point out that even this speech and those in a similar series (the Second Lecture, etc) contain hidden political meaning and commentary.