The percentage of Americans literate in 1858 was certainly lower than today. There was, perhaps, an interest in longer speeches on key issues, a longer attention span.
Stephens made a mistake in criticizing Lincoln by name and then agreeing to debates. He should have ignored him. Instead, he made Lincoln nationally famous. Would Stephens have become President? Would he have lived past 1861? We will never know.
I have to disagree, allendale. As I read through the speech my thought was how different America was then. And how different Americans were. Oh, I suppose that in all eras people are people; they have their hopes, joys, and fears. But the language wasn’t the only thing different. The attitudes were certainly different, their worldview would never have been considered “acceptable” today. I do not judge the past by the standards of the present; to do so, the past will always be condemned. But they were different people.
Iowamark, the absorption of knowledge was also much different then than it is now. Yes, fewer people were literate. And going to hear a speech was considered an event. After all, there were no Iphones, internet, televisions or even radio. It’s often cited that today, most people are visual learners (65% is the common number). My guess is that it has changed over time, and that in Lincoln’s day, the percentage of auditory learners was much higher. They received their information by the spoken word far more than by any sort of visual medium.
And yes, the attention span was much longer, and that is a result of the shift to visual learning. Most Americans of today would lose interest in Mr. Lincoln’s speech after about five minutes unless he had a power point presentation to go with it.