People thought that the way Lincoln wrote speeches was very unusual. I don't know the way that other speech writing people write speeches, so I don't really know if his way of writing speeches is weird or not. I'm just stating what they said in Team of Rivals.
First, Lincoln would reduce complex ideas into paragraphs, then after days or weeks, he would go back to that paragraph to edit it. Another thing that other speech writers found weird about Lincoln's speeches had four sources, when other people's speeches usually had more. (Those four main sources, in case you were wondering, were the Constitution, Andrew Jackson's nullification proclamation, Daniel Webster's "Liberty and Union Forever" speech that was popular at the time, and Clay's address to the senate in 1850.)
Several people read Lincoln's inaugural speech draft before the inauguration. Of all the people who read Lincoln's speech, Seward had the most impact. Seward's changes softened the tone so the tone would be... well... softer. Other than making the speech more softy, Seward's changes also added a lot of other things that made the speech more better.
As you can see, I wouldn't be too good at speeches.
Nowadays, presidents have teams of people writing their speeches, going through each line like a marketing team. It's pretty amazing that he wrote his own speeches. Even more amazing that he only drew on 4 sources. Wow. Now I have even more respect for your hair.
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