If history is ever worth studying, then it is doubly valuable to read the source documents upon which history is based. For when we read other people telling us about history, we are only hearing what other people want us to hear. But when we read the documents that were written by our predecessors, we hear their voice and come to understand their concerns.

To be sure, reading the words of our predecessors has some limitations. Without knowing the context of the times we can sometimes mistake the meaning of what we are reading. Moreover, since we have limited time, it can be hard to know what would be most profitable to read. But even still, it is better to try to hear the words of those now dead than it is to listen to those who try to interpret them for us.

For we are all familiar with the childhood game called telephone. We all know that when a message is passed from one person to another it can become easily garbled. History is no different. The further you are from the source documents, the more garbled the message you are going to receive.

That is why one should take the time read Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address. It was given shortly before he was nominated to be the Republican presidential candidate. He had just lost the previous year’s election contest with Stephen Douglas for a senate seat. His name had been made, but there was no clear sign that he was going anywhere. Yet even though the speech was given in a lull in his frantic personal history, it still gives us one of the best insights we have into his reasoning process.

You can improve your understanding of this speech by brushing up on the Dred Scott decision and the Kansas-Nebraska act.