DiLorenzo says above:
"With regard to Basler, I quote him in Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, as suggesting that on the issue of slavery, post 1854, Lincoln’s “words lacked effectiveness.” Quackenbush says he was not referring to Lincoln’s comments on slavery here, but other things. I read him differently. What Basler said was that, yes, Lincoln used eloquent language with regard to human equality and “respecting the Negro as a human being,” but he offered no concrete proposals other than the odious colonization idea of his political idol, Henry Clay. As Basler wrote, “The truth is that Lincoln had no solution to the problem of slavery [as of 1857] except the colonization idea which he inherited from Henry Clay.” In the next sentence he mentions Lincoln’s eloquent natural rights language, then in the next sentence after that, he makes the “lacking in effectiveness” comment. What I believe Basler is saying here is that because Lincoln’s actions did not match his impressive rhetoric, his words did indeed lack effectiveness."
Here are some quotations from Basler pages 21-24 --surrounding the passage that DiLorenzo insisted (despite new squid ink above) indicate Basler's judgment that Lincoln's words on slavery were ineffective after 1854:
"In the next year, 1856, Lincoln definitely lined up with the new Republican party and took active lead in organizing the state convention at Bloomington in May. It was here that he delivered the famous so-called "Lost Speech," which according to the local tradition was the supreme effort that fused discordant elements into a unified party. The tradition has it that even hard-boilded newspapermen were so overpowered by his eloquence that they forgot pencil and pad to sit enraptured. A report of the speech, reconstructed by henry C. Whitney from notes taken at the time, and published in 1896, probably follows the general argument very well, but it hardly reproduces the rhetorical effect claimed for the utterance. In any event, however, the speech did inspire the convention with unity of purpose. Within a month Lincoln's national importance was recognized by delegates to the Republican National Convention, when 110 of them cast their votes for him on a nomination for Vice-President" pp. 21-22
"Of two fragments of other speeches made during this campaign (1856, DQ), one is preserved in a manuscript entitled "Sectionalism," apparently a portion of a speech which he delivered a number of times. It holds the distinction of being the only considerable speech manuscript known to be in existence from this period. In it Lincoln tried to show that Republicanism was not inherently sectional, and that if it appeared so, such appearance was not its own making but that of the Southerners who refused to take anything but a sectional attitude toward it. This argument he would recur to in later years, but with particular effect in the "Address at Cooper Institute.p. 22
Here occurs the passage DiLorenzo lies about above.
Then, immediately following:
From June to November, 1858, Lincoln delivered more than sixty speeches which, though they failed in their immediate purpose of defeating Douglas in the campaign for the United States senatorship, made Lincoln's national reputation and eventually led to the Presidency. He began on June 16 with his famous "House Divided Speech" in Springfield, accepting the unanimous nomination of the Republican State Convention as its "first and only choice" for the Senate. A greater speech had never before been delivered to an American political party gathering, and yet, although Lincoln said in it the essential things that he would repeat over and over during the next months, he found so many new ways, some of them memorable, of modifying and clarifying and emphasizing these essentials, that it is exceedingly difficult to eliminate any single speech of the campaign from analysis and comment. He closed his campaign on October 30 in Springfield with a speech which marked yet another peak in political oratory. The striking contrast between the "House Divided Speech" and the "Last Speech in the Campaign of 1858" is in mood rather than in power of expression. The former is an electrifying challenge to conflict; the latter, an avowal of faith and resignation, phrased with lyric calm and cadenced beauty of expression which Lincoln had never before equaled, and would afterward excel only in the three or four passages that are graven in the mind of humanity more permanently than in the granit of all the monuments to his greatness. The summer of 1858 was the literary, as well as the political, climax of his middle period.p. 23-24