Visualization with Voyant
The dataset that I chose to use included Letters and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln. This dataset consists of 84 letters and speeches written by Lincoln between 1832-1865. The first thing that I noticed from the corpus was the cirrus box which contained the most used words. These words are slavery, people, states, men and right.
One of the things that stood out to me was that the most used word was slavery. Slavery was a large issue during Lincoln's time but he is often credited with trying to preserve the union. However, this data shows that slavery weighed heavy on Lincoln's mind. When we look at the links between the three most used words they are connected to the words territory, right, union and constitution. These are also themes that Lincoln was known to have addressed.
However, when we look at the collocates of the corpus we see that these words often appear together throughout Lincoln's letters and speeches. This leads me to the conclusion that these words could have helped Lincoln develop his view on slavery. By examining the frequency of Lincoln's use of slavery we can learn additional insight into Lincoln's thought process. While slavery was an important issue, Lincoln does not start his political career discussing the issue. Also, it seems that Lincoln sets his opinion on slavery and then focuses on other issues of his time.
In conclusion, all this analysis could be done through close reading, however, by using these visualizations I was able to see the connection between Lincoln's thoughts and these themes more easily.