Lincoln carried over the skills that he learned from Stephen Logan into his public life as well. His early speeches were often, like most early 19th-century speeches, full of flowery images and big words and long wind-up. He learned from Logan: “Forget all of that; get directly to the point and people will listen to you.” So he did, and he became a master of direct approach to his audience. They thought, “He’s talking to me personally, not some abstract body out there.” Now, this carried over particularly as he became a public figure and as he became president. No other president has equaled Lincoln as a master craftsman. When you look over his drafts, you realize how carefully he revised, how thoroughly he looked at words, how he decided on this word versus that one as being the appropriate word, not necessarily any old word. So he was a craftsman and worked at it. He knew that his success depended on his skill with language. This is the more important because, in those days, of course, there was no radio. There was no television. How do you reach people? You reach people primarily through some public speaking but mostly through public documents, which are printed in the newspapers. People read a lot of newspapers in those days. In order to read a story in the newspaper, it’s got to be short. It’s got to have a structure. It’s got to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it’s got to be logical. One thing has to follow after another. He learned this lesson very early. By the time he became president, his presidential messages are models of what a president ought to be saying.