Discoveries and Inventions: A lecture by Abraham Lincoln delivered in 1860

Abraham Lincoln

A LECTURE BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN DELIVERED IN 1860
SAN FRANCISCO JOHN HOWELL 1915


COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY JOHN HOWELL
The Lecture—“Discoveries and Inventions”—by our greatest American, presents a phase of Lincoln’s activity about which little is generally known. It shows as clearly as any of his other writings how great was Lincoln’s knowledge of the progress of mankind, particularly as related in the Bible, and it reveals also his debt to that Book of Books for inspiration and illustration, as well as his masterly use of pure English, largely gained through that study.
In the fateful year of 1860, the year of his election to the presidency, Lincoln took up, in the pause of his affairs after the long debate with Douglas, the custom of lyceum lecturing, then in great vogue. This lecture on “Discoveries and Inventions” was delivered in towns near his home, Springfield, Illinois, and in Springfield itself on Washington’s birthday. Five days later Lincoln made his great speech at Cooper Union in New York.
The lecture is not included with any collection of Lincoln’s addresses. It appeared in print for the first time in Sunset Magazine in 1909—the centennial of Lincoln’s birth .
The original manuscript, from which this edition, the first in book form, is made, was a cherished possession of the late Dr. Samuel Houston Melvin, of Oakland, California, formerly a resident of Springfield, Illinois, and a friend of Mr. Lincoln. Just prior to Dr. Melvin’s death, in 1898, he made an affidavit setting forth the history of the manuscript; that statement is as follows :