Ask an Expert: What Did Abraham Lincoln’s Voice Sound Like?
Civil War scholar Harold Holzer helps to decode what spectators heard when the 16th president spoke
- By Megan Gambino
- Smithsonian.com, June 07, 2011, Subscribe
No recordings of Abraham Lincoln's voice exist since he died 12 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device to record and play back sound. Shown here is Lincoln delivering his famous Gettysburg Address in 1863. Granger Collection, NYC
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I suspect that when people imagine Abraham Lincoln and the way he sounded, many imagine him as a bass, or at least a deep baritone. Perhaps this is because of his large stature and the resounding nature of his words. Certainly, the tradition of oratory in the 1850s would support the assumption. “Usually people with centurion, basso profundo voices dominated American politics,” says Harold Holzer, a leading Lincoln scholar. Then, of course, there are the casting choices of film and TV directors over the years. “It can’t get any deeper than Gregory Peck,” says Holzer. Peck played Lincoln in the 1980s TV miniseries The Blue and the Gray.
But, unfortunately, no recordings of Lincoln’s voice exist, since he died 12 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device to record and play back sound. If anyone had an educated guess as to how it sounded though, it would be Holzer, who has written 40 books on Lincoln and the Civil War. The author has pored over reports of Lincoln’s public appearances on speaking tours, eyewitness accounts told to Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon and newspaper commentaries about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and, surprisingly, he says, one of the only things that can be said with certainty is that Lincoln was a tenor.
“Lincoln’s voice, as far as period descriptions go, was a little shriller, a little higher,” says Holzer. It would be a mistake to say that his voice was squeaky though. “People said that his voice carried into crowds beautifully. Just because the tone was high doesn’t mean it wasn’t far-reaching,” he says.
When Holzer was researching his 2004 book Lincoln at Cooper Union, he noticed an interesting consistency in the accounts of those who attended Lincoln’s speaking tour in February and March 1860. “They all seem to say, for the first ten minutes I couldn’t believe the way he looked, the way he sounded, his accent. But after ten minutes, the flash of his eyes, the ease of his presentation overcame all doubts, and I was enraptured,” says Holzer. “I am paraphrasing, but there is ten minutes of saying, what the heck is that, and then all of a sudden it’s the ideas that supersede whatever flaws there are.” Lincoln’s voice needed a little time to warm up, and Holzer refers to this ten-minute mark as the “magical moment when the voice fell into gear.”
He recalls a critic saying something to this effect about Katharine Hepburn’s similarly startling voice: “When she begins to talk, you wonder why anyone would talk like that. But by the time the second act begins, you wonder why everyone doesn’t talk like that.” Says Holzer: “It’s that combination of gesture, mannerism and unusual timbre of voice that really original people have. It takes a little bit to get used to.”
Actor Sam Waterston has played Lincoln on screen, in Ken Burns’ The Civil War and Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, and on Broadway, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. To prepare for the role in the 1980s, he went to the Library of Congress and listened to Works Progress Administration tapes of stories told by people from the regions where Lincoln lived. (Some of the older people on the tapes were born when Lincoln was alive.) Lincoln’s accent was a blend of Indiana and Kentucky. “It was hard to know whether it was more Hoosier or blue grass,” says Holzer. The way he spelled words, such as “inaugural” as “inaugerel,” gives some clue as to how he pronounced them.
Despite his twang, Lincoln was “no country bumpkin,” Holzer clarifies. “This was a man who committed to memory and recited Shakespearean soliloquies aloud. He knew how to move into King’s English. He could do Scottish accents because he loved Robert Burns. He was a voracious reader and a lover of poetry and cadence. When he writes something like the Second Inaugural, you see the use of alliteration and triplets. ‘Of the people, by the people and for the people’ is the most famous example,” he says. “This was a person who truly understood not only the art of writing but also the art of speaking. People should remember that, though we have no accurate memorial of his voice, this is a man who wrote to be heard. Only parenthetically did he write to be read.”
According to William Herndon, Lincoln didn’t saw wood or swat bees, meaning he did not gesture too much. Apparently, he didn’t roam the stage either. Herndon once wrote that you could put a silver dollar in between Lincoln’s feet at the start of a speech and it would be there, undisturbed, at the end. “He was very still,” says Holzer. “He let that voice that we question and his appearance and the words themselves provide the drama.”
Of the actors who have played Lincoln, “Waterston catches it for me,” says Holzer. “Although he is from Massachusetts, he gets that twang down, and he’s got a high voice that sometimes lapses into very high.”
It will be interesting to see what Daniel Day-Lewis, who is known to go to great lengths to get into character, does with the part. He is slated to play the president in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, a 2012 release based on the book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
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Related topics: American History Abraham Lincoln Late 19th Century
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Comments (16)
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Was the bushy mustache Joshua L. Chamberlain was always pictured with considered a full beard during the Civil War? Was the definition of a full beard during the Civil War the same as we define a full beard today?
Posted by Robert Ryan on January 20,2012 | 10:18 AM
I have been known to be pretty fair with pencil,pen and marker and have done some rough portraits, I just can't see why they call Lincoln ugly, he look like Gregory Peck to me...I would have loved to hear Lincoln say just a hello...anything, ever since I was a child the teachers would love to see me draw Lincoln his face is a wonder to me forever changing just by a turn of the head he goes from Icabod Crane to Gregory Peck, I could never forget Lincoln .
Posted by Kenneth Jon Heinz on January 3,2012 | 06:30 AM
What gets left out here is that in Lincoln's time, his speeches went over much better in print than in person. The Gettysburg Address was considered to by most of those present to be a mediocre speech at best. It was when the newspapers published it that it became considered a great piece of oratory.There are many accounts of Lincoln having a very shrill and whiny voice almost bordering on being effeminate, and with a thick country accent to boot.
Posted by rtbrno65 on December 17,2011 | 01:31 PM
I find it preposterous that other readers would stoop to the level of "flaming" over a misspoke, or misquoted, word.
Posted by S. Young on December 1,2011 | 09:00 AM
This article on Lincoln's voice was so fasinating that I would jump at the chance to join Renee Sinrod in her 'time machine'.
Posted by Mary-Lou Chall on August 22,2011 | 08:13 PM
From everything I've read, as an habitual student of all things Lincolnian, ol' Abe had a bit of a twang fashioned from the rural Illinois/Kentucky inflection that probably was cultivated through his youthful days, and the tenor of his voice was fairly high and fairly shrill, without being extremely either. I would imagine it was less high and shrill than, say, the Don Knotts character from the Andy Griffith TV show of the late 1950s and early 1960s whom we've all come to lampoon over time, certainly not to be construed with a southern accent, but somewhere in that range in which rural meets southern. It is said that the voice was as high and shrill as one can imagine without it being squeaky. In any case, it was certainly a far cry from the classically filmic versions of his delivery as we have come to know from actors with clear baritones, such as Raymond Massey and Gregory Peck, each of whom portrayed Lincoln with an almost booming basso profundo that rose from the depths of the abdomen. It would have been one of the most intriguing moments for me personally to have been able to hear with my own ears just once the great man speak.
Posted by TheClambelly on July 30,2011 | 06:54 AM
I read somewhere many years ago that Lincoln's voice was high and nasal, so I'd agree that Hal Holbrook's performance would be one of the most accurate. My all-time favorite Lincoln performance, however, was that by Henry Fonda in "Young Mr. Lincoln."
Posted by Gray Rivers on July 8,2011 | 10:41 PM
We will little note, nor long remember what Lincoln's voice sounded like...but we can never forget what he said here.
Posted by R. A. on July 2,2011 | 03:33 PM
"...centurion, basso profundo voices..."???
I assume Mr. Holzer meant "stentorian."
Posted by David Bessmer on June 30,2011 | 06:57 PM
"Centurion?" Surely the word Ms. Gambino is groping for here is "stentorian." That is, unless Holzer made the mistake, which seems unlikely.
Posted by D. P. Higgins on June 30,2011 | 05:07 PM
Ah, but what does Megan Gambino's voice sound like?
Posted by whatsinaname on June 30,2011 | 02:01 PM
When I read about a great man like our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln and try to imagine how he spoke, I envision the time when Science will invent the Time Machine and we will all cease to wonder and know how he sounded.
Posted by Renee Sinrod on June 12,2011 | 07:38 PM
I enjoyed this very much
Posted by John V Berberich III on June 11,2011 | 01:38 PM
JFK did not have a "BASS" voice,but in his inaugural address,"ASK NOT,WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU,BUT ASK WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY?" got a clear message across.
Posted by Wayne Owens on June 11,2011 | 03:22 AM
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