Illinois State University Alum Publishes on the First Lincoln Namesake Town, Lincoln's Prepresidential Compositions, and ISU's Lincoln Commemorations

After retiring from two teaching careers, Illinois State University (ISU) alum D. Leigh Henson, ’64, ’69, ’82, has published extensively on the prepresidential discourse of Abraham Lincoln—ISU’s founding attorney: Lincoln drafted documents that effectively secured the funds establishing the university in 1857 as Illinois's first public institution of higher education. Henson has also published on the Lincoln heritage in Illinois relating to family history. A native of Lincoln, Illinois—the first Lincoln namesake town—Henson attended Lincoln College there his freshman year. A two-semester course on Abraham Lincoln he took at Lincoln College with the renowned Lincoln collector/curator and author James T. Hickey planted a Lincoln seed that lay dormant in Henson for many decades.

After retiring from a thirty-year career as a high school English teacher at Pekin, Illinois, Henson taught technical communication at Missouri State University in its English Department for fourteen years and retired as a full professor.?After his second retirement, Henson began to publish on Abraham Lincoln’s legal, business, and political activities in his first namesake town and beyond.

Henson’s publications focus on Lincoln’s prepresidential compositions—speeches and other writings. Those publications include three books, most recently Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination (University of Illinois Press, 2024, ?https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p088032). Henson’s articles about Lincoln’s prepresidential compositions have appeared in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, The Lincoln Herald, and Lincoln Lore.

In 2019 ISU’s English Department honored Henson with a Distinguished Alumni Award (see article below). He is also an invited member of the Society of Midland Authors and a member of the Illinois Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress.

Henson’s interest in hometown history led to several Abraham Lincoln-related publications. In 2003 he published a hometown history, collaborative website that features information about Abraham Lincoln, who was the attorney for the founders of Lincoln the town (est. 1853) (https://findinglincolnillinois.com). Lincoln, Illinois, encompassed the earlier town of Postville (est. 1839). Postville had been the seat of Logan County, and Lincoln practiced law there prior to his election to Congress in 1846 (https://findinglincolnillinois.com/alincolnandpostville.html). From mid-1850s to his 1860 presidential nomination, Lincoln's law practice on the Eighth Judicial Circuit took him to the Logan County Courthouse in his first namesake town.

Henson grew up just a block away from the Postville Courthouse site. Henry Ford bought the original Postville Courthouse in 1949, carefully having it disassembled and moving it for reassembly at his Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. In 1953 Henson watched the construction of the Postville Courthouse replica on the original site, one of his favorite playgrounds. With his sixth-grade class from nearby Jefferson School, Henson that year witnessed the dedication of the courthouse replica, with Illinois Governor William G. Stratton, a Lincoln buff, as the featured speaker (https://findinglincolnillinois.com/memoirofpostville.html).

In the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln delivered four political speeches in his first namesake town, most notably during a “monster” Republican rally on October 16, 1858, the day after the last Lincoln-Douglas debate, at Alton. Henson’s background in English studies (literature, language, and rhetoric) enabled him to critique those speeches on his hometown history website and in articles and books. In 2004 the Illinois State Historical Society recognized this website with a Superior Achievement Award. Since then, Henson has continuously expanded the website with more research and contributions from other local history buffs.

In 2008, as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission of his hometown, Henson wrote a research-based play script for the reenactment of the 1858 Republican rally there (https://findinglincolnillinois.com/bicentennial/1858re-enactment.pdf). The reenactment featured a re-creation of Lincoln’s stem-winder speech that day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaexygCiZFQ&t=70s). Henson also proposed a bronze statue of Lincoln in his hometown, and local civic leaders there erected Lincoln Rallies the People in 2015 on the Logan County Courthouse lawn. Henson published an essay about his hometown’s Lincoln Bicentennial Celebration in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.

Henson's pictorial account of the research-based process of designing Lincoln Rallies the People: https://findinglincolnillinois.com/lincolnstatueplan.html#seagraveslincolnstatuedesign.

In 2011 Henson published The Town Abraham Lincoln Warned: The Living Namesake Heritage of Lincoln, Illinois (https://findinglincolnillinois.com/townabewarned.html). This book, rich with photos and other visuals, is not just a new history of the first Lincoln namesake town. Rather, it is a new kind of local history because it blends Lincoln heritage-related reminiscence from the author's years of growing up in Lincoln in the 1940s and 1950s, and his critical commentary on the town's art and literature (Abraham Lincoln related and other), including the creative nonfiction of native Lincolnite author William Maxwell, the celebrated fiction editor of The New Yorker. ?

The book recommends strategies for expanding and promoting the local Lincoln heritage to increase civic pride and heritage tourism to gain economic benefits. In 2012 the Illinois State Historical Society recognized this book with a Superior Achievement Award. Henson has donated copies of the book to the local and state libraries, and to local and state nonprofit organizations to sell for fund raising, including the Illinois State Historical Society.

The political speeches Lincoln gave in his namesake town spurred Henson’s research into Lincoln’s other prepresidential compositions. In 2014 the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association published his essay “Classical Rhetoric as a Lens for Reading the Key Speeches of Lincoln’s Political Rise, 1852–1856.” This essay identifies the historical and contemporaneous sources that influenced Lincoln’s writing and speaking, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the oratory of Daniel Webster. The essay discusses Lincoln’s most important compositions just before and after his second political career began in 1854, including his foundational Peoria speech. It first presented the multiple antislavery arguments that Lincoln used in the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, which propelled him to national prominence. ?

The essay observes that by 1856 Lincoln “as a leading strategist for the Illinois Republican Party was writing policy that would become essential to the success of his party at the state and later the national levels. Lincoln was functioning as the director of communications for the new state party, writing editorials and engaging in correspondence necessary for that party’s development. He was writing his own speeches, addressing diverse audiences, and excelling as one of that party’s chief spokesmen. Lincoln was succeeding remarkably well for a self-educated person.”

In 2017 Henson published Inventing Lincoln: Approaches to His Rhetoric (https://findinglincolnillinois.com/inventinglincoln.html). This work is an extended critical bibliography of sources that have emphasized analysis of Lincoln's composition. Inventing Lincoln provides a systematic discussion of the work of selected biographers and scholars from several academic fields who have interpreted Lincoln through their explanations and judgments of his discourse. This book rigorously critiques sources that claim Lincoln was a demagogue and points out that many other sources praise Lincoln’s eloquence without defining it.

In August 2024 the University of Illinois Press released Henson’s book titled Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence: How He Gained the Presidential Nomination? (https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p088032). The book argues that Lincoln’s compositions were a key factor in his political advancement that culminated in his 1860 presidential nomination and the presidency. None of the other 16,000+ Lincoln books had undertaken such a purpose. The book’s central argument is that over time Lincoln developed a powerful and ethical rhetoric, gaining credibility and political capital by deploying rational and emotional appeals through historical, legalistic, and moral argumentation, while sometimes using demagogic and satirical methods.

In Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence, Henson applies his background in literature, language, and rhetoric to develop systematic discussion of thirty-one of Lincoln’s main prepresidential compositions and numerous lesser ones that document his rhetorical/political growth. Typically, Henson introduces the discussion of a composition by citing limitations in other scholarship, thus establishing the need for fresh analysis and critical commentary. The analyses examine a composition’s political/rhetorical purposes; sources of influence; organization; methods of argumentation; appeals to reason, emotion, and credibility; and language usage.

These analyses are thorough and specific, as observed by an anonymous peer reviewer: this book is “substantial, coherent, and in-depth”; it is “well structured, well reasoned, highly readable, and supported by the relevant evidence.” Another peer reviewer writes, “I commend the author for his attention to detail.” In effect, Lincoln’s Rise to Eloquence is the first rhetorical biography of his prepresidential political life.

The most significant discovery Henson made in working on this book is that from the beginning of his political life, Lincoln indirectly or directly infused his compositions with moral suasion. First in the 1830s and then in the 1850s, Lincoln criticized the demagogic rhetoric of his main rival, Stephen A. Douglas, and during that time Lincoln’s moral compass caused him inner conflict over whether or how to respond to Douglas’s personal attacks. In the 1830s? when Lincoln and Douglas served in the Illinois legislature, Lincoln boldly called out Douglas for lying about public policy. In an 1838 lecture, Lincoln also accused Douglas of excessive ambition. In his 1854 Peoria speech, Lincoln again voiced frustration with Douglas’s demagoguery.

During the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln was challenged by Douglas’s moral ambivalence toward slavery, lying, and race-baiting. In those debates, Lincoln expressed regret for feeling he had to respond in kind to Douglas’s personal attacks. In his 1859 Cincinnati speech, Lincoln’s moral compass and literary writing ability enabled him to deliver an extended satire of Douglas as a proponent of popular sovereignty, which allowed territorial residents to decide for or against slavery. Lincoln thought the slavery question required a national, not local, policy to stop its spread. Henson’s book observes that throughout Lincoln’s prepresidential public life, he used satire as a political weapon.?

ISU alums and others affiliated with the university may be especially interested in Henson’s webpage about ISU’s and Bloomington’s Lincoln memorial trees and other Lincoln commemorations. Lincoln’s political friend and ISU founder, Jesse W. Fell, an amateur arborist, and other founders of Illinois State University honored Lincoln as its first attorney by planting a memorial pine tree in front of its first building, Old Main, on or shortly after May 3, 1865, the day Lincoln’s funeral train passed through Normal on the way to Springfield. Henson tells the plot-twisted story of this tree, its ill-fated replacement, and an ancient, present-day pine tree at the Fell Arboretum that a beloved ISU professor/historian mistook as the original.

Henson’s ISU-Bloomington Lincoln tree website includes a proposal to plant another ISU Lincoln memorial tree at the Fell Arboretum and erect a Lincoln statue on the ISU campus at the Jesse W. Fell Gates.

For the author's proposal to erect the Lincoln statue depicted above, see his LinkedIn article "Proposing Lincoln Commemorations at Illinois State University": https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/draft/preview/7241506070743957504.

Bloomington’s Lincoln memorial elm tree was planted mid-nineteenth century at the alleged site of debate speeches between Lincoln and Douglas. That tree succumbed to disease in 1976. Locals became contentious when souvenir pieces of the dead tree ran short. When workers removed the tree, they discovered a dedicatory plaque that had been attached to its trunk. The plaque was engulfed in the tree trunk as it grew, having allegedly been placed on the tree by the first Adlai Stevenson in 1914. Vachel Lindsay was the featured speaker at the dedication. In 1980 a replacement oak was planted and concrete historical marker with plaque installed nearby (https://findinglincolnillinois.com/ISU-BloomingtonIllinoisLincolnMemorials.html).

Henson is deeply grateful that his ISU education gave him the fundamental knowledge and writing skills that made his teaching careers and Lincoln-related research and publication possible.

Below: commemorative sites at Illinois State University

The original motto was in Middle English: “And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche." Dr. Dale Vetter, one of my English professors in the early 1960s and a Chaucer specialist, disapproved of the change from the Middle to Modern English version. In the early 1990s, the "he" was changed to "we"--but not seen in the above artwork seal created many years before. I'm sure somewhere Dr. Vetter is smiling, just as I am. For a history of controversy over language in the ISU motto, access https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2015/11/the-controversy-behind-illinois-states-evolving-motto/.

curriculum vitae: https://findinglincolnillinois.com/DLHensoncv7-23.pdf