Lincoln’s oratorical skills proved a valuable weapon in the Whig arsenal, for many Westerners seldom read newspapers and thus obtained political information solely from stump speakers. John Hay observed that it was difficult for city-dwellers “to form any adequate conception of the intense affection and eager interest that a … jolly, eloquent, and discreet partisan leader excites among his constituency of the backwoods.” His triumphs occur in “rural school-houses and groves,” where his “wit is rewarded by hearty laughter, and his eloquence by yells of approbation.” In regions with few sources of entertainment, “a popular orator, who can make men laugh and cry, becomes entwined with their sluggish, emotional natures, and a speech is to them not an incident of an evening, but the event of a week.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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