"Had not Lincoln been a great president-elect ... not only wouldn't he have been a great president, I'm not sure there would have been a country to preside over," mused Abraham Lincoln scholar and author Harold Holzer in a July 9 lecture, "Lincoln: Candidate, Campaigner and President-elect," in Alice Statler Auditorium.

The lecture was the first event to highlight Cornell's New Student Reading Project, through which incoming first-year students will read and discuss Garry Wills' "Lincoln at Gettysburg."

Lincoln is remembered today as the Great Emancipator, a man of political cunning, eloquent oration and regal stature. However, in 1859, Holzer reminded his audience, Lincoln had lost the Illinois senate election to rival Stephen Douglas and returned to practicing law.

Despite this setback, Lincoln was tenacious: In an invitation to lecture at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, a bastion of anti-slavery activism, he saw opportunity.

"I think Lincoln was thinking about the presidency from the time he was about 30 years old," said Holzer. "[Lincoln] was famous as a western orator, but if he was to really contend for the nomination of the presidency, he had to prove himself in the east, something he had never done."

Lincoln decided to use Plymouth Church as the setting to argue that the founding fathers believed the federal government could restrict the spread of slavery into new states. After thorough research, Holzer said, Lincoln was convinced: "Contain it, and it will die."

Upon his arrival in New York City, Lincoln discovered he would instead speak at Cooper Union college. Lincoln revised his original 7,500-word speech for a secular audience and on Feb. 27, 1860, delivered it to 1,400 people at Cooper Union. According to Holzer, that very night Lincoln visited the city newspapers to ensure his address would reach thousands.

"The next morning when he wakes up, he's been given the biggest rave reviews of his career; he's absolutely become the toast of New York," said Holzer. After repeating the message of his Cooper Union speech on a short speaking tour, Lincoln became "a new person in the political pantheon having successfully conquered the east."

Lincoln made no other speeches and won the 1860 presidential nomination that May. Holzer called the Cooper Union address Lincoln's "surrogate" in the campaign during the almost-silent months from May to November. Despite losing the popular vote and having his Electoral College majority questioned, Lincoln became president-elect.

"He is suddenly thrust into the most dangerous interim in the history of the United States," said Holzer. While Lincoln received many personal threats, the Union was tearing at the seams. "Several efforts were made to create compromise that could prevent or reverse secession," Holzer noted. During the interim before his inauguration, Lincoln resisted these attempts because they allowed for the extension of slavery.

Elected during the winter of secession, the start of the nation's most turbulent era, Holzer concluded that as president-elect the "best thing [Lincoln] can do for himself is create an image of assurance in times that are likely to be very difficult."

The lecture was sponsored by the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions.

Laura Janka '09 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.