fortunate of all the arts. Whether in the era prior to the Revolution,
or in the formative years of the Republic before 1800, or in the first
half and more of the nineteenth century--in the pulpit as well as at
the bar and in the forum, American orators have drawn their inspiration
directly from the political or religious life of the nation. From the
nature of things, no other art, neither poetry, nor painting, nor
music, could bear so intimate a relation to the course of our national
existence as the utterance of the public speaker. Every crisis in our
history, the Revolution itself, the War of 1812, the struggle between
North and South, was hastened by the spoken word. Trained poets have
been wanting among us; trained speakers, in so far as their powers
could develop without a correspondingly high development of poetry and
music, we have always possessed; men skilled in rousing enthusiasm and
reverence throughout congregations of the pious, men alert to kindle
the intelligence of a legislature or to sway the minds of judge and
jury. From the first, this training was continuous and effective. In
the bare colonial churches thought, word, and action of the pastor
were criticised by an audience that had braved the sea and the savage
for the privilege of listening. From the colonial courts of justice
spread the education which warranted Burke in saying of a litigious
populace: “In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general
a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful.... But all
who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in
that science.” With this knowledge of law, every other colonist was a
keen debater for his private rights and, when the time came, for the
rights of his community or nation. From a population thus educated
sprang the forensic leaders of the Revolution; and to its sources in
eighteenth-century popular education we follow back the steady stream
of American eloquence which in the nineteenth century runs strong and
full in the noblest efforts of American literature--say Webster’s
tribute to Massachusetts in the reply to Hayne, and Lincoln’s undying
speech at Gettysburg.
So close indeed is the bond between juridic and political history on
the one hand, and the achievement of the great American orators on the
other, that they can be sundered, as in the following pages, only for
purposes of general reference. Since a political history of the United
States from the year 1783 is not here expected, we must limit ourselves
to brief notice of a few representative men, taken in something like
chronological order, and mainly between the years 1800 and 1865.
With the Civil War, or perhaps with the second inaugural address of
President Lincoln, ended the golden age of national eloquence.
=Precursors of the Nineteenth Century.=--The careers of James Otis
(1725-83), Samuel Adams (1722-1803), Josiah Quincy, Junior (1744-75),
and Patrick Henry (1736-99), fall largely in the period covered by
the pages from Tyler; and the orations and political writings of the
Revolutionary Period itself do not come within the scope of the present
sketch. Of course it is impossible to make a line of sharp division in
the case of public men whom we instinctively couple with the earliest
days of the Republic, but whose voices were heard to the verge of the
next century, or even beyond. The “Farewell Address” of Washington
to his countrymen in 1796, so long regarded with veneration, was, in
spite of its conservative form, its Johnsonian balance, a document
with matter for the coming age. However, it is clear that statesmen
who were in their prime at the time of Washington’s death in 1799 more
particularly require our attention.
_Fisher Ames._--Among these is Fisher Ames (1758-1808). Admitted to
Harvard at the age of twelve, after graduation he first engaged in
teaching, then studied law, and entering politics, became a force among
the Federalists. Long the victim of ill health, he nevertheless made
his superior mental endowment felt in the counsels of the nation. His
“Tomahawk Speech” (1796), on Jay’s treaty with Great Britain, contained
passages of splendour on the fear of Indian massacres. For the
eloquence of this speech he has been compared to Wilberforce, Brougham,
Burke, Pitt, and Fox. He could not have resembled them all. Ames had
a fastidious taste, was cautious and dignified in his utterances, and
was not desirous of a cheap popularity. “To be the favourite of an
ignorant multitude,” he observed, “a man must descend to their level.”
Four years before he died, his health constrained him to decline the
presidency of Harvard.
=The Early Nineteenth Century.=--The activity of Rufus King (1755-1827)
and others continued somewhat later. This friend of Alexander Hamilton,
and collaborator with him in the political essays signed “Camillus,”
was in 1796 accorded the delicate function of Minister to England.
In 1813 the Legislature of New York elected him to the United States
Senate; here he won laurels for his speech on the destruction of
Washington by the British. He returned to the Senate in 1820, and he
was Minister to England again under President Adams.
_John Marshall._--The name of John Marshall (1755-1835) we naturally
associate with his momentous work of interpreting the Constitution. The
dry light of his intellect and his lack of passion were more suited to
purely legal exposition than to the eloquence of debate. When he went
to Congress in 1798, the cogency of his argument was already known. It
is sufficiently demonstrated by his speech in Robbins’ case (1800), a
case that involved the international law governing murder committed
upon the high seas by a citizen of one country sailing on the ship of
another. Marshall’s uninspiring “Life of Washington” is valuable as a
repository of plain fact.
_Morris and De Witt._--Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) was early famous
for his eloquence. His thought was orderly, his style finished.
Successful in the practice of law, and distinguished for his services
during the Revolution, he became a zealous Federalist, entering the
United States Senate in 1800. Here his most notable effort was his
“Speech on the Judiciary” (1802). Clinton De Witt (1769-1828), who was
Mayor of New York City most of the time between 1803 and 1815, was
also in the Senate for two years, and opposed the redoubtable Morris
on the question of navigation on the Mississippi. De Witt was a man
of wide interests, being something of a scientist and historian; his
practical sense recognised the value of inland waterways. He merits
more attention than can here be given him.
_Gore_, _Dexter_, _and Others_.--The same is true of the following:
Christopher Gore (1758-1829), who in 1814 reached the Senate, to remain
three years, and who spoke on “The Prohibition of Certain Imports”
(1814) and on “Direct Taxation” (1815); Samuel Dexter (1761-1816),
Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury; James A. Bayard
(1767-1815), lawyer, Senator, Commissioner at Ghent in 1814; William
Branch Giles (1762-1840); Edward Livingston (1764-1836), jurist,
diplomat, Secretary of State; John Sergeant (1779-1852), candidate
for Vice-President on the Clay ticket of 1832; John J. Crittenden
(1787-1863), lawyer and statesman; James Hillhouse (1789-1846), orator
as well as poet.
_William Pinkney._--Among the noteworthy orators during the first
twenty years of the last century was William Pinkney (1764-1822).
The son of a sympathiser with England, he was himself devoted to the
cause of American freedom. His prominence in the affairs of Maryland
ushered him into national concerns. He took part in the War of 1812,
and was wounded. He was Attorney-General under Madison, but resigned
for the sake of his private practice. He was made Minister to Russia in
1816; in 1820 he entered the United States Senate. A specimen of his
eloquence may be seen in his argument before the Supreme Court (1815)
in the case of the prize ship _Nereide_. Pinkney was fond of classical
learning, and well versed in current literature. He prided himself on
his accuracy in the use of English. This made him over-conscious in his
style, so that his thought seems artificial. His death is said to have
been partly caused by his labours in the preparation and delivery of an
argument.
_Quincy_, _Gallatin_, _and Emmet_.--Josiah Quincy (1772-1864), son of
Josiah Quincy of Revolutionary fame, was president of Harvard from
1829 to 1845. Besides his “History of Harvard University,” he was the
author of many pamphlets and public addresses. “His career in Congress
was distinguished chiefly for his opposition to the Embargo, to the
War of 1812, and to the admission of Louisiana.” Albert Gallatin
(1761-1849), leaving his birthplace, at Geneva, Switzerland, came to
Boston in 1781, taught French in Harvard, went to Virginia, and there
became the friend of Patrick Henry. He was sent to Congress in 1795,
and thereafter entrusted with special missions to Holland and England.
He was also Minister to France (1816), and Minister to England (1826).
Gallatin’s intuitions were as quick and sure as his character was
upright and urbane. His information, as in his speech (1796) on the
earlier British treaty, was ample and exact. Among his innumerable
services to the country of his adoption, not the least were his efforts
on behalf of internal commerce and the improvement in methods of
banking. Thomas Addis Emmet (1764-1827) was also a foreigner--a native
of Cork. He studied medicine in Edinburgh, but turning to law, was
admitted to practice in 1791 and settled at Dublin. For his share in
the Irish insurrectionary movement he was imprisoned; after his release
he emigrated to New York, where he became an eminent pleader. He had a
“dignified but earnest attitude, forcible and unstudied gestures,” and
a “powerful and expressive voice.” “No orator knew better how to enlist
his hearers on the side of his client.”
_Red Jacket and Tecumseh._--Foreign, likewise, although bred within our
borders, was the eloquence of the Indians, Red Jacket and Tecumseh. Red
Jacket was the nickname of Sa-go-ye-wat-ha (“He keeps them awake”),
otherwise known as “the last of the Senecas.” He was a lover of peace,
resisting entanglements, counselling the Indians neither to fight, nor
yet to mingle, with the whites, dissuading them against the adoption
of Christianity, settled in his ancestral reverence for “the Great
Spirit.” His simple and direct language was full of sudden poetic
energy. He died at a great age in 1830. Tecumseh (1770?-1812), in many
things his opposite, was killed at the Battle of the Thames, where
he fought with the English against the United States. A born leader
was Tecumseh, magnificent in his proportions, noble in his bearing,
fiery and magnetic. Prior to the War of 1812 he tried to enlist the
Indians of the South and West in a general insurrection against
the government. He went from tribe to tribe, reproaching them with
their debasement through white civilisation, and abusing the Federal
authority.
_William Wirt._--Of Swiss descent, one of the ablest men this country
developed in his time was William Wirt (1772-1834). His arraignment
of Aaron Burr at the latter’s trial in 1807 was masterly, and made
Wirt’s name familiar to the public ear. From 1817 to 1828 he was
Attorney-General. In private as in national life his character was
without stain; his correspondence discloses an honesty and consistency
of statement and purpose almost unequalled. His imaginative “Letters
of the British Spy” (1803) described Virginian society and American
eloquence as they might appear to an unbiassed traveller. “The Life and
Character of Patrick Henry” (1817) was roundly praised by Jefferson. Of
Wirt’s occasional addresses none was more admired than that delivered
in 1830 before the students of Rutgers College.
_Judge Story._--The voluminous works of Joseph Story (1779-1845),
including text-books on law, are in part made up of his discourses.
He began life as a poet, but attained his first eminence as a lawyer.
Before his appointment to the United States Supreme Court, he was heard
on the floor of the House of Representatives. As professor in the
Harvard Law School he proved an acceptable lecturer.
_John Quincy Adams._--The younger Adams (1767-1848), sixth President
of the United States, received from his father, the second President,
specific training for the career of statesman; even his boyhood
was passed in the midst of political and diplomatic life. He
studied at Leyden, then at Harvard, where, during an interim in
his public activities, he afterward held the chair of rhetoric and
belles-lettres. He saw diplomatic service in Holland, Russia, England,
was in the Senate, and was in the House of Representatives. He was a
foe of slavery, but not a Garrisonian Abolitionist. In 1836 he urged
upon Congress its right under the Constitution, as he believed, to
abolish slavery by legal enactment. His influence was strong for
freedom of debate. This “old man eloquent” continued speaking when he
was over eighty, and died on the floor of the House of Representatives.
He was a diarist, a poet, a translator. He was a clear, fluent, not
very terse speaker, having the agglomerative and developing style of
the parliamentary orator. When he desired, he could be ironical.
=The High Tide of American Oratory.=--The burning questions of the
rights of an individual state as against its duties to the central
government, of the extension of negro slavery, or its territorial
limitation, or its entire abolition, brought on the crisis of the Civil
War, which is the central fact in American history. Correspondingly,
during the interval between the War of 1812 and the War of the
Rebellion, their eloquence fired by these and related questions, lie
the careers of our greatest orators.
“_Old Bullion._”--Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858) cannot be reckoned
one of these. Indifferent to the spread of slavery, he was in favour
of developing the great Western territories at any cost. He urged a
reduction of the prices charged by the government in the sale of public
lands, and promoted the interests of a railroad to the Pacific. As an
advocate of specie currency he acquired the sobriquet of “Old Bullion.”
Retiring from the Senate after extended usefulness there, he published
his “Thirty Years’ View,” a history of the workings of the American
Government from 1820 to 1850, highly commended by Bryant for its taste
and simplicity of style.
_Henry Clay._--Slightly the senior of Benton, Henry Clay (1777-1852)
was in public life for an even longer time. By birth he was a
Virginian. In the face of early hardship he rose to be Senator from
Kentucky (1806-1807); from 1811 until 1852, for forty-one years, he
was almost steadily in the eye of the nation. A leader of the Whig
party, he sided with his great opponent, Calhoun, against the more
timid Madison, in precipitating the second war with England; and
he was prominent in the negotiations for peace that followed. Clay
was four times Speaker of the House of Representatives, and four
times unsuccessful candidate for President of the United States. The
influence which he had shown over juries in Kentucky he likewise
exercised in the national legislature. In the management of conflicting
interests, and in furthering the measures of his party, he had a genius
for detecting what was possible or expedient. The Missouri Compromise
of 1820, the Tariff Compromise of 1833, and the Slavery Compromise
of 1850 were largely owing to him. He was a master in effecting
legislation. According to Blaine, “Mr. Webster argued the principle,
Mr. Clay embodied it in a statute.” Among his celebrated speeches were
those on the New Army Bill (1813), on the Seminole War (1819), and on
the Tariff (1824). At his death, a colleague, Joseph R. Underwood, said
in the Senate:
The character of Henry Clay was formed and developed by the
influence of our free institutions. His physical and mental
organisation eminently qualified him to become a great and
impressive orator. His person was tall, slender, and commanding;
his temperament ardent, fearless, and full of hope; his countenance
clear, expressive, and variable--indicating the emotion which
predominated at the moment with exact similitude; his voice
cultivated and modulated in harmony with the sentiment he desired
to express ...; his eye beaming with intelligence, and flashing
with coruscations of genius; his gestures and attitudes graceful
and natural. These personal advantages won the prepossessions of
an audience, even before his intellectual powers began to move his
hearers; and when his strong common sense, his profound reasoning,
his clear conceptions of his subject in all its bearings, and his
striking and beautiful illustrations, united with such personal
qualities, were brought to the discussion of any question, his
audience was enraptured, convinced, and led by the orator as if
enchanted by the lyre of Orpheus.
_John Caldwell Calhoun._--The character and intellect of John Caldwell
Calhoun (1782-1850) were admired even by those who least cared for his
opinions. A South Carolinian of Scotch-Irish extraction, he graduated
from Yale, in 1804, with the highest honours. He towered in political
life from 1808 until he died: as leader of the war party under Madison;
in upholding the doctrine of nullification--that is, the right of each
state to resist a Congressional enactment which the state might deem
injurious; in the annexation of Texas; and in the defence of slavery.
Calhoun was fearless and precise in the discharge of his duties as
Secretary of War under Monroe, reducing expenses, and rendering petty
defalcation impossible. He was Vice-President in 1825. His ruling ideas
are contained in his “Disquisition on Government” and “Discourse on the
Government of the United States” (in the first volume of his works),
and in speeches before the Senate--for example, on Nullification and
the Force Bill (1833) and on the Slavery Question (1850). He was thus
characterised by Webster:
The eloquence of Mr. Calhoun ... was plain, strong, terse,
condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned--still always severe.
Rejecting ornament, not seeking far for illustration, his power
consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the clearness
of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner....
His demeanour as a Senator is known to us all--is appreciated,
venerated by us all.
_Hayne and Randolph._--When Calhoun was Vice-President, his spokesman
in the Senate was a fellow Carolinian, Robert Young Hayne (1791-1840),
who was a soldier in the War of 1812, but who, in his vindication of
state rights, refused the Attorney-Generalship of the country to be
Attorney-General of South Carolina. He also retired from the Senate to
be Governor of his State. In his unlucky debate with Webster in 1830
he carried sectional jealousy--of the South against New England--into
the question concerning the sale of public lands in the West. Graceful
in person, of a fine countenance, industrious, commonly amiable, Hayne
“had a copious and ready elocution, flowing at will in a strong and
steady current, and rich in the material that constitutes argument.”
His prejudices, however, could distract him from the subject in hand.
The bellicose Virginian, John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), was
in Congress at the age of twenty-six. His bitterness toward England
seems excessive. Eccentric, singular also in appearance, biting and
unexpected in retort, he was a figure of interest when he came to the
Senate in 1825. His duel with Henry Clay is a matter of unpleasant
history. Enthusiastic contemporary estimates of him by Paulding and
others have not worn well.
_Daniel Webster._--The prince of American orators, and one of the great
orators of modern times, was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, on
January 18, 1782. His ancestry was Scotch. He had the stinted education
of a village school whose doors were open for a short term in winter.
Yet he could never recollect the time when he could not read the Bible;
and this and the few other books that he could obtain he perused so
often that he virtually had them by heart. He was fond of committing
passages to memory. But at Exeter, where he prepared for college, there
was one thing which he could not do: “I could not speak before the
school.” The efforts of his father made it possible for him to attend
Dartmouth College. He read by himself with the avidity of a Lowell--but
he also pursued with good intent the regular course of studies.
Finishing this course in 1801, he studied law, earned a little money
by teaching in Maine, and at length entered the office of Christopher
Gore in Boston--“a tall, gaunt young man, with rather a thin face,
but all the peculiarities of feature and complexion by which he was
distinguished in later life.” There followed some years of practice
with meagre remuneration, but of unceasing study. In 1813 he was sent
to Congress from New Hampshire. His speech in that year on the repeal
of the Berlin and Milan Decrees elicited praise from Chief Justice
Marshall, and throughout the country. Webster immediately advanced to
the front rank of debaters. It is baffling even to suggest the range
and importance of his subsequent labours. When the famous Dartmouth
College case, apparently a forlorn hope, was carried before the United
States Supreme Court in 1818, Webster’s opening argument as junior
counsel brought an unlooked for settlement in favour of the College;
since then the case has furnished a ruling precedent in interpreting
the Constitutional clause which prohibits state interference with the
terms of a past contract. In 1820 he was engaged on the revision of the
Massachusetts State Constitution. From 1823 to 1827 he was in the House
of Representatives; from 1827 to 1841, and again from 1845 to 1850, in
the Senate. He was Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and
under Fillmore. Through supposed concessions to slavery in his speech
of March 7, 1850, on the Constitution and the Union, he estranged his
best friends in the North, and had to endure the taunt of faithlessness
in Whittier’s “Ichabod.” Historians, however, have justified the
loftiness of his statesmanship even here. He died as Secretary of State
under Fillmore, October 24, 1852.
During his reply to Hayne in 1830, when Webster uttered his encomium on
the State of Massachusetts, strong men were moved to tears. One cannot
read it at this distance without strange emotion. Passages in the
second address at Bunker Hill, or the argument in Knapp’s trial--the
passage on the conscience of the murderer, or more especially that
at the end on the universal sense of duty--rise to the point where
the ethical and æsthetic values of eloquence are one and eternal.
One might go on to mention his eulogy on “Adams and Jefferson,” his
“First Settlement of New England”--but we should hardly finish a mere
enumeration of the speeches he delivered during his forty years of
public life.
Consider [said Choate] the work he did in that life of forty
years--the range of subjects investigated and discussed; composing
the whole theory and practice of our organic and administrative
politics, foreign and domestic; the vast body of instructive
thought he produced and put in possession of the country; how much
he achieved in Congress as well as at the bar; to fix the true
interpretation, as well as to impress the transcendent value of the
Constitution itself ...; how much to establish in the general mind
the great doctrine that the government of the United States is a
government proper, established by the people of the States, not a
compact between sovereign communities ...; to place the executive
department of the government on its true basis ...; to secure to
that department its just powers on the one hand, and on the other
hand to vindicate to the legislative department, and especially
to the Senate, all that belonged to them ...; to develop the vast
material resources of the country, and push forward the planting
of the West ...; to protect the vast mechanical and manufacturing
interests ...; how much for the right performance of the most
delicate and difficult of all tasks, the ordering of the foreign
affairs of a nation, free, sensitive, self-conscious ...; how much
to compose with honour a concurrence of difficulties with the first
power of the world.
His style is simple, clear, free from tricks, unstudied in its details,
the easy outflow of a mind nourished on choice and repeated reading,
with the English Bible as its main source; not avoiding allusion
to himself, but quickly mounting with the subject to universal
application; not deficient in grace, yet on the whole massive,
orderly, and neglectful of lighter emotions. In private life Webster
was genial. He was fond of the open country, delighting in the rod
and gun. “Black Dan” he was familiarly called, on account of his
deep-set, lustrous eyes, over-shadowing brows, and commanding, swarthy
countenance. The proportions and majesty of his head were in keeping
with the dignity of his figure.
_William Lloyd Garrison._--With the main agitator of the Abolitionist
movement there was no thought of compromise. Orator as well as
writer, William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), though the herald of
self-restraint, and preaching the doctrine of non-resistance, carried
his principles to their extreme length. He condemned the churches
for their tolerance of slavery, and disliked the Constitution for
permitting it. He favoured ending the Union, if the national disease
could be removed by amputation. He could not tolerate gradual treatment
or the doubtful promise of an incomplete cure.