[aswanson]

Political speech in the time of Lincoln assumed of the audience a long attention span, ability to parse arguments and complex sentences, and up-to-date knowledge of current events.

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of "the Government under which we live" consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, that all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution" "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Can you imagine 10 percent of the populace following Lincoln on this today? It's like a legal deposition. To a far less educated electorate.

Some of the rhetoric of that age has a level of thought-density that is nonexistent in modern speech. I always thought that was due to the selection bias of the speakers back then (you had to be extraordinary to even register in the public consciousness, but there were several counterexamples to this).

[EDIT: added snippet of Lincoln speech.]

[jdminhbg]

> Can you imagine 10 percent of the populace following Lincoln on this today?

No. Not sure I can imagine 10 percent of the populace in 1860 following Lincoln either. Of course, with 60-70% of the adult population excluded from voting, narrowing your appeal wasn't such a huge problem.

[mynameishere]

I'm not sure the thought-density is as high as the lexical density. Translating and abridging it to commonspeak:

"My opponents say that federal control of slavery is unconstitutional. While the supreme court previously referenced the 5th amendment's protection of property, Douglas and his adherents point to the 10th, which grants powers to the states whenever not granted to the federal government."

The first two sentences are completely unnecessary.

[jerf]

"Can you imagine 10 percent of the populace following Lincoln on this today?"

In transcript form, perhaps not. In spoken text? I think we could meet the 10% bar. A lot of the klunkiness of that is the transcription, I think; modern extemporaneous speech is transcribed differently.

"So far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it. As I have already stated, the present frame of "the Government under which we live" consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates. As I understand, all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process of law", while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution" "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.""

Transcribe the same speech with modern sensibilities, dropping intermediate "ands" and other such information-free interjections when appropriate and lay off the semicolon and it cleans up fairly well. Even the "hard words" and phrases I think are more common speech of the time, and only sound erudite because we inherently think of old-timey things as sounding educated since only educated people bother to learn them. My great-grandchildren will probably think "old-timey" sounds fancy.