All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography

by Ida M. Tarbell

I had the luck to find in Galesburg a helper who not only enthusiastically seconded my conviction that here was the place for the illustration which we wanted, but set out heartily to help me find material. This was John H. Finley, my old friend on the Chautauqua Assembly Daily Herald. Dr. Finley was now president of the college—“the youngest college president in the United States,” he was popularly called, doing a piece of work which was winning him more and more recognition. It was through him that I was able to find the newspaper reports of the debate. It was through him that I was able to meet people who could give me recollections of the day.

The picture which resulted from our joint efforts was made by that excellent artist William R. Leigh, who did many of the illustrations for the series. It has had a continuing life, being reproduced again and again on the occasion of the commemorative celebrations of the debate which Dr. Finley inaugurated in 1896. It was at this celebration that Robert Lincoln made his first and only public address about his father.

The real fun of the Lincoln work, as well as some of the worth-while results, came from setting myself little problems. I was curious, for instance, to know more of Lincoln as a speaker. Whenever I found an Illinois man who had been with him on the circuit or in public life I would bombard him with questions. He would tell me how Lincoln looked, what his voice was like, how he used stories. They all talked more about the Lincoln and Douglas debates than any other exhibit, but frequently would conclude by saying, “Well, those were good speeches, but they were nothing like the Lost Speech. That was the greatest thing Lincoln ever did.” Or a man would begin by saying, “Well, you can never know much about him as a speaker, nobody can that never heard the Lost Speech.”

It was, they said, a speech which so stirred his audience that the very reporters forgot to take their notes. Knowing reporters, I was skeptical about that, so I looked up some of them. They all told me that when Lincoln finally ended his speech they found themselves standing on, instead of sitting by their writing tables—and without a note!

Still I believed that somebody must remember something about the speech—enough at least to give an idea of the argument. Perhaps, I said to myself, I may pick up some of the phrases—get some real notion of it; so I went prowling about asking questions and finally learned that in the state of Massachusetts was a man who was said to have taken notes—a cool-headed man—a lawyer, not a reporter. His name was Henry C. Whitney. He knew Lincoln well, had travelled the circuit with him, had published a “Life on Circuit with Lincoln” with which I was familiar.

Of course there was nothing to do but look up Mr. Whitney, and that I did. To my great satisfaction I found he had a bunch of yellowed notes. He had always intended to write them up, he said; but when he tried it the result seemed so inadequate that he gave it up.

After much persuasion Mr. Whitney did get out a version of the Speech. When he turned it over to me I took it to the men in Illinois with whom I had talked and asked them what they thought of it. There were those who said, “It’s impossible to write out that Speech.” But there were others who said, “Yes, Whitney has caught the spirit, he has the argument, he even has many of the phrases, as of course he would have if he made notes.”

The most emphatic and enthusiastic statement came from a man of importance—Joseph Medill, the editor of the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Medill had been one of the reporters at Bloomington in 1856 when the speech was made who found himself in the end on top of the table without a note! He thought Mr. Whitney’s version was close to the original. Indeed, he wrote to Mr. McClure a long and interesting letter giving his recollections of the Convention. In that letter he said:

Mr. Whitney has reproduced with remarkable accuracy what Mr. Lincoln said, largely in his identical language and partly in synonymous terms. The report is close enough in thought and word to recall the wonderful speech delivered forty years ago with vivid freshness.

Well, that seemed to us reason enough for publishing Mr. Whitney’s report along with the story of how I had found it, what the people who heard the speech in the first place said about it, both for and against. And that we did.