Jim Amidon — I’ve often written about how much goes on at Wabash — in a single day or week — and I’ve often written about the unique opportunities our students have during their four years on campus.
Last week I hitched a ride with some students, and it both lifted my spirits and reinforced my feelings about the remarkable liberal arts education we provide.
On Monday, students in David Timmerman’s rhetoric course brought their studies of debating to life. As part of a class assignment to bolster what they had studied, four of them simulated a Lincoln-Douglas debate.
I wasn’t there for the debate, but I gather that the students struggled a bit, essentially having to stick with a plan, whereas earlier in the term they had been allowed to give extemporaneous arguments. The idea, though, was for the students to gain a better understanding of the series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas that would change the course of American history.
The debates were held in the late summer and early fall of 1858 and took place all throughout the state of Illinois as Lincoln and Douglas fought for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Douglas, though dogged and run down by the final debate in October, would go on to win the Senate seat. Lincoln would win a bigger prize — national prominence — and would go on to win the presidential election years later.
Fast forward from the students’ debates on Monday to their next class period on Wednesday. Instead of continuing with more Lincoln-Douglas-style debates, Professor Timmerman welcomed to his class Dr. Ronald White, an esteemed Lincoln historian who has written two honored books on Lincoln and soon will release A. Lincoln: A Biography (Random House, January, 2009).
Professor Timmerman graciously allowed me to sit in on the class.
White, who is a research fellow at the Huntington Library in California and is on the faculty at UCLA, talked at length about what those Lincoln-Douglas debates were really like, giving the students a necessary historical grounding for their understanding of the subject.
Professor White gave the Wabash students a glimpse of life on the campaign trail in 1858. He noted that there were no microphones at the debates, which were often held on the town square on elevated platforms, around which thousands of people would gather. If you wanted to hear the debate, you had to get there early — a couple of hours early — to save your spot. Otherwise, as thousands of citizens descended, you’d not be able to hear the candidates speak.
Lincoln, White explained, learned to project his voice so ably that as many as 7,000 people could hear him. White also taught the students that Lincoln would always concede certain points to Douglas, then over time turn those same points against Douglas — a graceful way of illustrating the flaws in Douglas’s views without berating his opponent.
(Makes me think our current political candidates could learn something from a talk with Professor White.)
The debates were long — really long. One speaker would open with a one-hour monologue, after which the other candidate would speak for 90 minutes. There was then time for a 30-minute rebuttal from the opening speaker. And during the whole debate, the audience would crowd the stage, often interrupting the candidates with questions.
(Again, a far cry from today’s tightly scripted, carefully rehearsed televised debates.)
“Lincoln had this amazing sense of humor,” White explained, “self deprecating humor, and he had a knack for using Douglas’s own words against him.”
Lincoln’s stove pipe hat? Well, he kept copies of Douglas’s speeches up there, and he would often pull them out to quote precisely what his opponent had said in earlier speeches.
So picture this: A class of about 16 Wabash students studying the finer points of debate — just 48 hours removed from their first attempts at a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate — having a preeminent Lincoln scholar give them the inside scoop on what made Abraham Lincoln one of the finest debaters in our country’s history. And this discussion with Professor White occurred just 48 hours before the McCain-Obama debate last Friday night.
I can’t think of a better teaching and learning moment for those rhetoric students, who will now listen to McCain and Obama differently — and more carefully — over the final 40 days of the most important election of the their lifetime.
Just another week at Wabash.
