Cooper Union speech
speech by Abraham Lincoln in New York City during his 1860 campaign for US President
The Cooper Union speech or address, known at the time as the Cooper Institute speech, was delivered by Abraham Lincoln on February 27, 1860, at Cooper Union, in New York City. Lincoln was not yet the Republican nominee for the presidency, as the convention was scheduled for May. It is considered one of his most important speeches. Some historians have argued that the speech was responsible for his victory in the presidential election later that year.
In the speech, Lincoln elaborated his views on slavery by affirming that he did not wish it to be expanded into the western territories and claiming that the Founding Fathers would agree with this position. The journalist Robert J. McNamara wrote, "Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was one of his longest, at more than 7,000 words. And it is not one of his speeches with passages that are often quoted. Yet, due to the careful research and Lincoln's forceful argument, it was stunningly effective."
Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune hailed it as "one of the most happiest and most convincing political arguments ever made in this City.... No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience."
Background
As 1860 dawned, Lincoln's political tides were turning. Although he had lost a chance at a Senate seat in the 1858 Illinois Senate elections, he now eyed the presidency.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cooper Union speech” is speech by Abraham Lincoln in New York City during his 1860 campaign for US President. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cooper, Union and speech, not as a finished interpretation.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5167832. VIAF identifies the subject as 179754105. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1860 and 1858.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cooper Union speech” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.