the friend of Longfellow, Charles Sumner (1811-1878), was trained in
the law under Judge Story. It was partly through Whittier’s influence
that he entered politics, but when he succeeded Webster in the Senate
his place as a leader was assured. The infamous assault upon him
by Brooks in 1856, during the debate over the affairs of Kansas,
left Sumner incapacitated until 1859. When “the eloquent vacant
chair” was filled again, crowds gathered whenever announcement was
made that Sumner would speak. His intellect was not equal to that
of his illustrious predecessor; yet his sound judgment and winning
personality, aided by a captivating delivery, put him, in the Senate,
at the head of the new Republican party. His “Orations” have been
published in eight volumes.
_Thaddeus Stevens._--While Sumner was in the Senate, Thaddeus Stevens
(1792-1868), a less admirable character, led the Republicans in the
House. He also was a bitter foe of slavery, and was urgent with Lincoln
to emancipate the negroes. “A clear, logical, and powerful debater,”
he was feared for his mordant invective. Influential with the rank and
file of politicians, he rejoiced in the borrowed title of the “Great
Commoner.”
_Wendell Phillips._--Of course the trumpet of the Abolitionists was the
impassioned Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), ever supporting the hands of
Garrison, and similarly uncompromising. On graduating from Harvard in
1831, he studied law; but he refused to engage in its practice, since
this would entail his swearing to uphold a national Constitution which
tolerated slavery. He was a master of sarcasm, irony, and epigram, of
choice and varied wit; serene in the presence of his enemies, capturing
and holding their attention. When the Civil War was over, and the cause
of Abolition won, he turned to the remedy of other evils, speaking in
favour of woman’s rights, and championing labour reform. In the guise
of a general redresser of wrongs he lost prestige as well as something
of his own sense of dignity.
_Rufus Choate._--The most famous of a famous family, Rufus Choate
(1799-1859) was distinguished for his pleading at the bar, his literary
attainments, and, during the time that he was there (1841-1845), the
exercise of his talents in the Senate. A pupil of no less a lawyer than
William Wirt, Choate, in his unrivalled success with juries, and his
stirring if florid occasional addresses, was indebted not alone to his
natural ardour and personal magnetism, but also to thorough analysis
and unremitting preparation. His eulogy on Webster at Dartmouth
College, July 27, 1853, was the tribute of an eminent graduate of that
institution to the noblest.
_Stephen A. Douglas._--Stephen Arnold Douglas (1813-1861) was born
in Brandon, Vermont, studied law in Canandaigua, New York, continued
this study in Ohio, and proceeded thence to Illinois to teach, and to
practise his calling of lawyer. He was in the United States Senate from
1847 to 1861, doing his best to avert the Civil War. In 1858 and 1860
the “Little Giant” boldly appeared before audiences in the South and
denied the right of any state to secede from the Union. His speech on
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) shows his attitude of _laissez-faire_
in the matter of slavery. When he matched his wits with Lincoln in
their joint debate, he unintentionally hastened his antagonist’s
advance toward the Presidency.
_William H. Seward._--Cautious, clear, incisive, firm in his grasp
of the laws of political history, William Henry Seward (1811-1872)
foresaw what Douglas could not, that the struggle with slavery was an
irrepressible conflict. In New York State, of which he became Governor,
he was the untiring enemy of political opportunism in every shape.
An unsuccessful aspirant in 1860 for the Presidency, he eventually
overcame his lack of confidence in Lincoln, and as Lincoln’s Secretary
of State was of inestimable service in maintaining our relations with
England during the course of the Rebellion. His “Diplomatic History of
the Civil War in America” was published posthumously.
_Salmon P. Chase._--Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon
Portland Chase (1808-1873), was not a facile speaker, but, tall and
commanding, one of the handsomest men in the Senate, he was both
dignified and impressive. Like Choate, he graduated from Dartmouth and
studied with William Wirt. As a practising lawyer he engaged (1837) in
the defence of persons on trial for alleged violation of the Fugitive
Slave Act; in the debate upon the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) he
advocated “free soil,” and insisted upon “the absolute divorce of the
General Government” from all connection with slavery. He was a Senator
both before and after holding the governorship of Ohio, and again just
before Lincoln summoned him into the Cabinet. In 1864 he was made Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, a position which he honoured till his
death.
_Edward Everett._--In the delivery of Edward Everett (1794-1865)
“there was nothing in manner, person, dress, gesture, tone, accent,
or emphasis too minute for his attention.” From boyhood he had
the gift of eloquence, which he developed by assiduous practice.
Taking high honours at Harvard when but seventeen, he went into
the Unitarian ministry, and began preaching at the Brattle Street
Church in Boston, with immediate success. Invited to assume a chair
at Harvard, he studied abroad in preparation, and then from 1819 to
1825 taught Greek. He left his professorship to become a member of
the House of Representatives. Ten years later he was elected Governor
of Massachusetts. In 1841 General Harrison appointed him Minister
to England; on his return he accepted the presidency of Harvard. He
succeeded Webster as Secretary of State under Fillmore; and in the
national election of 1860, representing the forces that desired a
compromise between North and South, he was candidate for Vice-President
of the United States. During his stay in the Senate Everett also was
heard on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. His orations were published in
four volumes. His “Lecture on the Character of Washington” (1856),
frequently repeated, and his “Eulogy on Webster” (1859) were among his
most splendid efforts. He made a remarkable address at Gettysburg,
though it now seems academic beside that of Lincoln on the same
occasion.
_Abraham Lincoln._--For a manual of literature the essential thing in
the life of President Lincoln (1809-1865) is the ennoblement that went
on in his eloquence, as his character developed under the increasing
gravity and tension of his public career, and as his individual spirit
became more and more identified with the agonising soul of a nation.
The simplicity and directness of his mental operations are apparent
in any of his earlier letters and speeches; they were sufficiently
evident to those who heard his debate with Douglas. But his utterance
gained in dignity and closeness of texture when his native impulses
for good became free from idiosyncrasy, and when his innate moral
rightness grew into a deep and conscious religion. In all literature
there are few things more significant than the chastening of style
that accompanied the chastening of Lincoln’s personality. There is a
noticeable difference even between the manner of his first and that of
his second inaugural address. In the meantime he had pronounced his
speech at the dedication of the National Cemetery on the battlefield
of Gettysburg, November 19, 1863. There, devoid of all pretence to
rhetorical artifice, yet in the perfection of English style, Lincoln
gave to the world a masterpiece of literature, issuing as it were from
the life-blood of the people; a masterpiece in which art and life are
married, and imaginative and literal truth are become one flesh. Says
Mr. Bryce:
That famous Gettysburg speech is the best example one could desire
of the characteristic quality of Lincoln’s eloquence. It is a
short speech. It is wonderfully terse in expression. It is quiet,
so quiet that at the moment it did not make upon the audience, an
audience wrought up by a long and highly-decorated harangue from
one of the prominent orators of the day, an impression at all
commensurate to that which it began to make as soon as it was read
over America and Europe. There is in it not a touch of what we
call rhetoric, or of any striving after effect. Alike in thought
and in language it is simple, plain, direct. But it states certain
truths and principles in phrases so aptly chosen and so forcible,
that one feels as if those truths could have been conveyed in no
other words, and as if this deliverance of them were made for all
time. Words so simple and so strong could have come only from one
who had meditated so long on the primal facts of American history
and popular government that the truths those facts taught him had
become like the truths of mathematics in their clearness, their
breadth, and their precision.
=Miscellaneous and Later Orators.=--It is obvious that the lives of
many ante-bellum orators overlapped upon the era of Reconstruction;
and the fifty years of political activity since the Civil War have
brought forth an ever growing number of men concerned in affairs of
state. However, there are few in this last to compare in eloquence with
those of the preceding half-century. Among recognised orators a quieter
tone on the whole has prevailed; not altogether that of Lincoln, nor
yet that characteristic of the best speakers in the time of Madison
and the younger Adams; nevertheless marking an improvement upon the
flowery and pedantic effusions of an intermediate age represented by
Choate, Winthrop, and, to a certain extent, Everett. The passage of
laws and the expediting of other public business have come to depend
more upon influence and effort exerted off the floor of the House and
the Senate, and less upon forensic argument and persuasion. With the
enormous growth of the population and the corresponding increase in the
size of our legislative bodies, public orators have in most cases been
satisfied, perforce, with a local reputation. The following are chosen
miscellaneously.
John B. Gough (1817-1886) was an English editor, who fell a victim to
alcoholism, and being rescued from his habit by a friend of temperance,
dedicated himself to the cause of rescuing others. He lectured widely
in America, enthralling large audiences by his descriptions of the ruin
worked by alcoholic beverages, and by his graphic narratives of lapsing
and reformed drunkards.
George William Curtis (1824-1892) was in youth (1842) attached to the
community at Brook Farm. On returning from studies in Berlin and
Italy, he became connected with the publishers of Putnam’s Magazine.
The management of this periodical failing, Curtis assumed a financial
liability for which he was not legally responsible, and spent twenty
years in lecturing, to pay off the indebtedness. He was noted as
editor of _Harper’s Monthly_, and as a writer for _Harper’s Weekly_
and _Harper’s Bazar_. He was a virile speaker on civil-service reform
and other subjects involving the national welfare. Wherever he went he
inculcated high political ideals. His “Orations and Addresses” were
edited by Professor Charles Eliot Norton.
James G. Blaine (1830-1893), a Pennsylvanian, commenced life as an
editor in Maine, became a member of the State Legislature there,
and thence proceeded to Congress. He made a brilliant record as
Speaker of the House of Representatives (1869-1875). In 1876 he
was appointed United States Senator from Maine. Several times a
Presidential possibility, he was the Republican nominee in 1884, when
he was unexpectedly defeated by Cleveland. Blaine’s speech on the
remonetisation of silver (1878) has been often cited. He was clear and
forcible, save for a slight lisp, but his character was not such as to
force conviction home.
It is impossible in the space allotted to proceed further with recent
or contemporary orators in political or secular life. One ought not to
neglect such men as Carl Schurz (1829-1906) or Bourke Cockran (born in
1854), or among the last few presidents, Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901).
Mr. Harrison, an astute lawyer, could, on short notice, and seemingly
without effort, deliver the choicest of addresses, well turned, fluent,
and of a convenient length. An account of American political eloquence
properly ends with a reference to the distinguished statesman, now
President, and after Washington and Lincoln the third among our sons of
light, to whom this volume is dedicated. From the most conspicuous of
public orators at the present day, we return to the early divines and
theologians.
=American Divines.=--In his “Annals of the American Pulpit”--“from the
Early Settlement of this Country to the Close of the Year 1855”--the
Reverend William B. Sprague (1795-1875) collected the biographies of
thirteen hundred or more divines who had earned as he thought a lasting
memorial.[22] “From the commencement of this work,” he observes, “I
have been quite aware that nothing pertaining to it involves more
delicacy than the selection of its subjects, and that no degree of
care and impartiality can be a full security against mistakes.” Far
more difficult is the matter of selection, when in a sketch of barely
a dozen pages we try to include the names of those who, during the
nineteenth century, have most deeply wrought upon the private life of
our citizens. The separation of church and state in America renders
all the wider the ordinary cleft between public and private life, and
the multiplicity of religious sects still further tends to keep the
eloquence and motive force of great spiritual leaders from becoming
generally known. Even among those whose power and fame have overleaped
the confines of their own parish or denomination, our choice is
necessarily limited to a scanty few.
=Clergymen as Educators.=--The influence of notable preachers--not to
speak of the clergy as a whole--in American life is incalculable.
Outside of the church and the home, it has been most evident in higher
education; until a short time since, educational leadership was
vested, as it should be, in the ministers of religion. As significant
as the important colleges more or less directly founded for the
training of pastors is the long line of college presidents taken from
the ranks of that profession. At Princeton, Jonathan Edwards, head
of that institution (1758) during the last month of his life, was
succeeded ten years later by John Witherspoon (1722-1794), a lineal
descendant of John Knox, and a signer of the American Declaration of
Independence. The philosopher, James McCosh (1811-1894), was eleventh
president in the same illustrious succession. At Yale we have such
men as the poet, Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), and his grandson of the
same name (born in 1828); Jeremiah Day (1773-1867), mathematician and
commentator on Edwards; Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801-1889), classical
scholar and authority on international law, under whose presidency
was trained a generation of organisers to guide the affairs of newer
universities; and Noah Porter (1811-1892), whose treatise on “The
Human Intellect” became a general text-book. At Union College was
Eliphalet Nott (1773-1866), who, during an administration of sixty-two
years, manifested consummate wisdom in the management of students.
On the death of Hamilton at the hands of Aaron Burr, Nott eloquently
attacked the barbarous practice of duelling. In his “Lectures on
Temperance” (1823), he assisted the vigorous movement of Lyman
Beecher and others against “even the common use of ardent spirits.”
At Harvard was the versatile Edward Everett (1794-1865), to mention
none of his predecessors. At Brown was Francis Wayland (1796-1865),
the metaphysician; at Williams, Mark Hopkins, in his teaching a
veritable Gamaliel. Aside from presidents, the peaceful army of college
instructors chosen from the ministry is beyond reckoning--men like
Frederick Henry Hedge (1805-1890), a Unitarian, professor of the
German language and literature at Harvard, author of “Ways of the
Spirit, and Other Essays,” “Prose Writers of Germany,” “Atheism in
Philosophy,” etc.; or Edwards Amasa Park (1808-1900), descended, as
his first name suggests, from a celebrated stock. Park was professor
of philosophy at Amherst College, and afterward professor at Andover
Theological Seminary. He was a hymnologist as well as a theologian, a
biographer, as in his “Life of Nathanael Emmons,” and a contributor to
the _Bibliotheca Sacra_. He had an individual, curiously periphrastic,
way of putting things.
=Divines as Special Students.=--Although the large denominations of
the Methodists and Baptists have not insisted on the possession of
learning by their ministers, in their own province of scholarship
American clergymen, while rarely independent of foreign, especially
German investigators, have undertaken many researches of much value.
Edward Robinson (1794-1863), a professor at Andover and then at
Union Seminary, made a harmony of the Gospels in Greek, and another
in English, compiled a lexicon to the New Testament, and wrote on
the topography of the Holy Land. In this he assisted the sagacious
missionary, Eli Smith (1801-1857), whose long residence in the Orient
gave him peculiar advantages as a Biblical geographer. Similar
advantages were enjoyed by William McClune Thomson (1806-1894), and
bore good fruit in “The Land and the Book” (illustrations of the
Bible from customs and scenery in the East) and “The Land of Promise,
or Travels in Modern Palestine.” Nor should the translation of the
Scriptures into Burmese by that great apostle, Adoniram Judson
(1788-1850), go unmentioned. At home, George Rapall Noyes (1798-1868),
professor of Hebrew at Harvard Divinity School, translated the New
Testament into English. Leonard Bacon (1802-1881), pastor of the
Centre Church in New Haven, takes rank with the ecclesiastical
historians for his “Genesis of the New England Churches.” Thomas
Jefferson Conant (1802-1891), of the same generation, a Baptist, was a
Hebrew scholar of repute, in the main devoting himself to studies on
the Old Testament, and editing critical texts of the Book of Job, of
Proverbs, of Genesis, and of the Psalms. Thomas F. Curtis (1815-1872),
President of Lewisburg University, Pennsylvania, compiled a history
of the Baptist Church, publishing it in the year, 1857, when Sprague
began to issue his monumental “Annals of the American Pulpit,” already
referred to. Still another Baptist, Horatio Balch Hackett (1808-1875),
for thirty-one years professor at Newton Seminary, and for five at
Rochester, made himself an authority on Christian antiquities. Henry
Boynton Smith (1815-1877) from 1854 to 1874 taught the subject of
systematic theology at Union Seminary; he is important among the
church historians--not so important, of course, as the indefatigable
Philip Schaff (1819-1893). Born in Switzerland, educated in Germany,
and recommended by the most distinguished German theologians,
Schaff in 1844 accepted a call from this country to the Seminary at
Mercersburg, Pennsylvania; here he quickly established his reputation
as an encyclopedist of religious knowledge. His greatest work was an
edition, thoroughly revised, of Lange’s “Commentary on the Bible.”
Professor William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1820-1894), who taught
English literature in the University of Vermont, from there migrated
to the chair of Biblical literature in Union Seminary (1863-1890).
Besides a “History of Christian Doctrine,” and other theological
works, he published an edition, which has not yet been improved upon,
of the works of Coleridge. William Henry Green (1825-1900), of the
Theological Seminary at Princeton, an Orientalist, was a frequent
writer for _The Princeton Review_. Crawford Howell Toy (born in 1836),
since 1890 professor of Hebrew and related languages in the Harvard
Divinity School, is the author of meritorious published researches,
including a work on “The Religion of Israel” (1892) and a commentary
on the Book of Proverbs. If Charles Augustus Briggs (born in 1841)
had preserved all the objectivity of a scientific historian, and not
turned controversialist, he probably would not have been subjected to
trial by the Presbyterians on the charge of heresy. To his studies in
Biblical history and the growth of dogma has often been attached the
badly chosen term, “Higher Criticism,” that misnomer for the historical
interpretation of the Scriptures. A severe loss to American scholarship
has recently come through the death of Alexander Viets Griswold Allen
(1841-1908), biographer of Jonathan Edwards and Phillips Brooks, and
author of “The Continuity of Christian Thought” (1884) and “Christian
Institutions” (1897). In him the scholar became the constructive artist.
_Writers of Hymns._--Between the publication of “The Bay Psalm Book”
(1640) and the revision of Watts’ version of the Psalms by Joel Barlow
and by the elder Dwight at the end of the eighteenth century, sacred
poetry in America underwent much refinement. From Dwight and his
generation down, the writers of hymns have been many and able. Henry
Ustick Onderdonk (1789-1858), William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877),
George Washington Doane (1799-1859), Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New
Jersey at the age of thirty-three, Leonard Bacon (1802-1881), George W.
Bethune (1805-1862), Samuel Francis Smith (1808-1895), George Duffield
(1818-1888), Samuel Longfellow (1819-1892), above all, Ray Palmer
(1808-1887), are a few of the most eminent.
=Miscellaneous Preachers.=--_Samuel Hopkins._--A disciple of Jonathan
Edwards, the institutor of the Hopkinsian form of divinity (1721-1803)
sought, according to Hildreth, “to add to the five points of Calvinism
the rather heterogeneous ingredient that holiness consists in pure,
disinterested benevolence, and that all regard for self is necessarily
sinful.” He inculcated the doctrine of the free agency of sinners. A
forerunner of the Garrisons, Whittiers, and Sumners, he was an early
and persistent foe of negro slavery.
_Nathanael Emmons._--A typical predecessor of the nineteenth century,
whose great age brought him far into it, was Nathanael Emmons
(1745-1840), of Connecticut, and of Wrentham, Massachusetts. He wished
to be “a consistent Calvinist,” yet to harmonise a difficult creed
with the truths of common experience. He was an excellent reasoner on
the evidences of moral government, establishing unexpected chains of
inference, and from gladly accepted premises leading his hearers to
less pleasant but unavoidable conclusions. “He was skilled,” says Park,
“in disentangling a theory from its adscititious matter, and scanning
it alone.” “He made but few gestures; his voice was not powerful;
but men listened to him with intense curiosity, and often with awe.”
Emmons had his own conception of eloquence: “I read deep, well-written
tragedies for the sake of real improvement in the art of preaching.
They appeared to me the very best books to teach true eloquence.”
Again: “Style is only the frame to hold our thoughts. It is like the
sash of a window: a heavy sash will obscure the light.” And once more:
“First, have something to say; second, say it.” His writings--essays,
sermons at ordinations, sermons at installations, funeral sermons,
thanksgiving sermons, “A Sermon on Sacred Music” (1806)--are numberless.