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In an age when rhetorical eloquence is in such short supply in Washington, it's a pleasure to relive the majestic words of Abraham Lincoln.

In "Lincoln's Sword," Douglas Wilson breaks little new ground, considering scores of authors have dissected, analyzed and marveled at our 16th president's prose. Few politicians before or since have had his ability to paint linguistic landscapes of such emotion and depth. It's all the more remarkable, considering his writing overmatched his vocal ability as speechmaker.

But Wilson's accomplishment is in the detail -- his ability to take stock of Lincoln's deliberative work habits and explain differences, both subtle and profound, between the drafts and the final product. Beyond that, he injects himself into the president's thought process, to enlightening if debatable effect. (Parts of the book read more as dramatic re-enactment than historical record.)

The president was sharply attuned to the politics of the day, and much of the written record supports a kind of self-awareness manifested today in opinion polls. Every politician publicly rejects the influence of polls while privately scrambling to adjust his or her, uh, convictions.

Lincoln, for example, knew his first inaugural address would have to convince his supporters, not his opponents, of his ability to lead. A New York Herald reporter sent to Springfield, Ill., to cover the president-elect wrote of finding "a man of good heart and good intention," but who is "not firm."

The report said the "times demand a Jackson." Clearly influenced by that declaration, Lincoln hung a portrait of Old Hickory in his office, Wilson writes, and set out to compose an inaugural address that would separate himself from the vacillation of his predecessor, James Buchanan, and cast himself quite literally as commander in chief.

That he did so is indisputable.

		"LINCOLN'S SWORD: THE PRESIDENCY AND THE POWER OF WORDS" By Douglas L. Wilson Knopf ($26.95)

Wilson devotes about 300 pages to Lincoln's prose, focusing primarily on his farewell to his Springfield friends and constituents, both inaugural addresses, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address and his July 1861 message to Congress. There are more than 30 pages of acknowledgments and notes documenting Wilson's exhaustive research.

And while the author's approach is often textbook tedious, there are enough anecdotes and interesting asides to keep academic and casual reader alike entertained.

One such instance concerns the second inaugural address and the reaction it received from abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Nearly denied entrance -- as an "inadmissible black man" -- to a post-speech reception at the White House, Lincoln motioned to his critic-turned-supporter and said, "There is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of [the address]."

This, of course, is the speech in which Lincoln, with soaring eloquence, crafts an ending for the ages: "With malice toward none; with charity for all ..."

Douglass turned to the president and summoned the one word best suited to the occasion, calling the speech a "sacred" effort.

So, too, this book.