A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Public Speaking

I >> Irvah Lester Winter >> Public Speaking




From "The Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis," Vol. III.
Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

It was not until Lovejoy fell, while defending his press at Alton, in
November, 1837, that an American citizen was killed by a raging mob for
declaring, in a free State, the right of innocent men and women to
their personal liberty. This tragedy, like the deadly blow at Charles
Sumner in the Senate Chamber, twenty years afterward, awed the whole
country with a sense of vast and momentous peril. Never since the
people of Boston thronged Faneuil Hall on the day after the massacre in
State Street, had that ancient hall seen a more solemn and significant
assembly. It was the more solemn, the more significant, because the
excited multitude was no longer, as in the Revolutionary day, inspired
by one unanimous and overwhelming purpose to assert and maintain
liberty of speech as the bulwark of all other liberty. It was an
unwonted and foreboding scene. An evil spirit was in the air.

When the seemly protest against the monstrous crime had been spoken,
and the proper duty of the day was done, a voice was heard,--the voice
of the high officer solemnly sworn to prosecute, in the name of
Massachusetts, every violation of law, declaring, in Faneuil Hall,
sixty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, and amid a howling storm
of applause, that an American citizen who was put to death by a mad
crowd of his fellow citizens for defending his right of free speech,
died as the fool dieth. Boston has seen dark days, but never a moment
so dark as that. Seven years before, Webster had said, in the famous
words that Massachusetts binds as frontlets between her eyes, "There
are Boston and Concord, and Lexington and Bunker Hill, and there they
will remain forever." Had they already vanished? Was the spirit of the
Revolution quite extinct? In the very Cradle of Liberty did no son
survive to awake its slumbering echoes? By the grace of God such a son
there was. He had come with the multitude, and he had heard with
sympathy and approval the speeches that condemned the wrong; but when
the cruel voice justified the murderers of Lovejoy, the heart of the
young man burned within him. This speech, he said to himself, must be
answered. As the malign strain proceeded, the Boston boy, all on fire,
with Concord and Lexington tugging at his heart, unconsciously
murmured, "Such a speech in Faneuil Hall must be answered in Faneuil
Hall." "Why not answer it yourself?" whispered a neighbor, who
overheard him. "Help me to the platform and I will,"--and pushing and
struggling through the dense and threatening crowd, the young man
reached the platform, was lifted upon it, and, advancing to speak, was
greeted with a roar of hostile cries. But riding the whirlwind
undismayed, as for many a year afterward he directed the same wild
storm, he stood upon the platform in all the beauty and grace of
imperial youth,--the Greeks would have said a god descended,--and in
words that touched the mind and heart and conscience of that vast
multitude, as with fire from heaven, recalling Boston to herself, he
saved his native city and her Cradle of Liberty from the damning
disgrace of stoning the first martyr in the great struggle for personal
freedom. "Mr. Chairman," he said, "when I heard the gentleman lay down
principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of
Alton, side by side with Otis and Hancock, and Quincy and Adams, I
thought those pictured lips would have broken into voice to rebuke the
recreant American--the slanderer of the dead." And even as he spoke
the vision was fulfilled. Once more its native music rang through
Faneuil Hall. In the orator's own burning words, those pictured lips
did break into immortal rebuke. In Wendell Phillips, glowing with holy
indignation at the insult to America and to man, John Adams and James
Otis, Josiah Quincy and Samuel Adams, though dead, yet spake.

In the annals of American speech there had been no such scene since
Patrick Henry's electrical warning to George the Third. It was that
greatest of oratorical triumphs when a supreme emotion, a sentiment
which is to mold a people anew, lifted the orator to adequate
expression. Three such scenes are illustrious in our history: that of
the speech of Patrick Henry at Williamsburg, of Wendell Phillips in
Faneuil Hall, of Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg,--three, and there is no
fourth.


ON THE DISPOSAL OF PUBLIC LANDS

From reports of the Webster-Hayne debate in the United States Senate,
January, 1830

BY ROBERT Y. HAYNE

In 1825 the gentleman told the world that the public lands "ought not
to be treated as a treasure." He now tells us that "they must be
treated as so much treasure." What the deliberate opinion of the
gentleman on this subject may be, belongs not to me to determine; but I
do not think he can, with the shadow of justice or propriety, impugn my
sentiments, while his own recorded opinions are identical with my own.
When the gentleman refers to the conditions of the grants under which
the United States have acquired these lands, and insists that, as they
are declared to be "for the common benefit of all the States," they can
only be treated as so much treasure, I think he has applied a rule of
construction too narrow for the case. If, in the deeds of cession, it
has been declared that the grants were intended "for the common benefit
of all the States," it is clear, from other provisions, that they were
not intended merely as so much property; for it is expressly declared
that the object of the grants is the erection of new States; and the
United States, in accepting this trust, bind themselves to facilitate
the foundation of those States, to be admitted into the Union with all
the rights and privileges of the original States.

This, sir, was the great end to which all parties looked, and it is by
the fulfillment of this high trust that "the common benefit of all the
States" is to be best promoted. Sir, let me tell the gentleman that, in
the part of the country in which I live, we do not measure political
benefits by the money standard. We consider as more valuable than gold,
liberty, principle, and justice. But, sir, if we are bound to act on
the narrow principles contended for by the gentleman, I am wholly at a
loss to conceive how he can reconcile his principles with his own
practice. The lands are, it seems, to be treated "as so much treasure,"
and must be applied to the "common benefit of all the States." Now, if
this be so, whence does he derive the right to appropriate them for
partial and local objects? How can the gentleman consent to vote away
immense bodies of these lands for canals in Indiana and Illinois, to
the Louisville and Portland Canal, to Kenyon College in Ohio, to
schools for the deaf and dumb, and other objects of a similar
description?


THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

From "Speeches and Presidential Addresses," Current Literature
Publishing Company, New York.

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing in this place,
where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion
to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live.
You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of
restoring peace to our distracted country. I can say in return, sir,
that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far
as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated
in, and were given to the world from, this hall. I have never had a
feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied
in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the
dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed
and adopted that Declaration. I have pondered over the toils that were
endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that
independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or
idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the
mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that
sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not
alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all
future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the
weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all
should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the
Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved
on that basis? If it can, I shall consider myself one of the happiest
men in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon
that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be
saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would
rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view
of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and
war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course;
and I may say in advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it is
forced upon the government. The government will not use force, unless
force is used against it.

My friends, this is wholly an unprepared speech. I did not expect to be
called on to say a word when I came here. I supposed I was merely to do
something toward raising a flag. I may, therefore, have said something
indiscreet. But I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by,
and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.




EXPRESSING THE FEELING


NORTHERN GREETING TO SOUTHERN VETERANS

From "Speeches and Addresses," with the permission of the author and of
Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers.

BY HENRY CABOT LODGE

I was a boy ten years old when the troops marched away to defend
Washington. I saw the troops, month after month, pour through the
streets of Boston. I saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black
regiment, and Bartlett, shattered in body, but dauntless in soul, ride
by to carry what was left of him once more to the battlefields of the
Republic. I saw Andrew, standing bareheaded on the steps of the State
House, bid the men godspeed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I
can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears to the eyes
and fire to the hearts of all who listened. To my boyish mind one thing
alone was clear, that the soldiers, as they marched past, were all, in
that supreme hour, heroes and patriots. Other feelings have, in the
progress of time, altered much, but amid many changes that simple
belief of boyhood has never altered.

And you, brave men who wore the gray, would be the first to hold me or
any other son of the North in just contempt if I should say that now it
was all over I thought the North was wrong and the result of the war a
mistake. To the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we hold
out our hands freely, frankly, and gladly. We have no bitter memories
to revive, no reproaches to utter. Differ in politics and in a thousand
other ways we must and shall in all good nature, but never let us
differ with each other on sectional or state lines, by race or creed.

We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more eloquent than I
have said, to New England. We welcome you to old Massachusetts. We
welcome you to Boston and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and
at the sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years roll
back, and we see the figure and hear again the ringing tones of your
great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring to the first Continental
Congress, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New
Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an
American."

A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood among the graves of Arlington,
said: "Only a great people is capable of a great civil war." Let us add
with thankful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great
reconciliation. Side by side Virginia and Massachusetts led the
colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side they founded the
government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox,
Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought
shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue,--the
uniform of Washington.

Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is sentiment, true
sentiment, that has moved the world. Sentiment fought the war, and
sentiment has reunited us.

So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence here, brethren
of Virginia, sitting side by side with those who wore the blue, tells
us that if war should break again upon the country the sons of Virginia
and Massachusetts would, as in the olden days, stand once more shoulder
to shoulder, with no distinction in the colors that they wear. It is
fraught with tidings of peace on earth, and you may read its meaning in
the words on yonder picture, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one
and inseparable!"


MATCHES AND OVERMATCHES

From Webster's reply to Hayne in the United States Senate, January,
1830, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, publishers.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

If, sir, the honorable member, _modestia gratia_, had chosen thus
to defer to his friend and to pay him a compliment without intentional
disparagement to others, it would have been quite according to the
friendly courtesies of debate, and not at all ungrateful to my own
feelings. I am not one of those, sir, who esteem any tribute of regard,
whether light and occasional or more serious and deliberate, which may
be bestowed on others, as so much unjustly withholden from themselves.
But the tone and manner of the gentleman's question forbid me thus to
interpret it, I am not at liberty to consider it as nothing more than a
civility to his friend. It had an air of taunt and disparagement,
something of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does not
allow me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a question for
me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer,
whether I deemed the member from Missouri an overmatch for myself in
debate here. It seems to me, sir, that this is extraordinary language
and an extraordinary tone for the discussions of this body.

Matches and overmatches! Those terms are more applicable elsewhere than
here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman
seems to forget where and what we are. This is a senate, a senate of
equals, of men of individual honor and personal character and of
absolute independence. We know no masters, we acknowledge no dictators.
This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion; not an arena for
the exhibitions of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no
man; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But then, sir,
since the honorable member has put the question in a manner that calls
for an answer, I will give him an answer; and tell him that, holding
myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in
the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone or when aided by the
arm of _his_ friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me
from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to espouse, from debating
whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see
fit to say on the floor of the Senate.


THE COALITION

From the reply to Hayne

"The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster," Little, Brown
and Company, Boston, publishers.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, I hope on no occasion,
to betray myself into any loss of temper; but if provoked, as I trust I
never shall be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable
member may perhaps find that, in that contest, there will be blows to
take as well as to give; that others can state comparisons as
significant, at least, as his own, and that his impunity may possibly
demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I
commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources.

But, sir, the Coalition! The Coalition! Aye, "the murdered Coalition!"
The gentleman asks if I were led or frighted into this debate by the
specter of the Coalition. "Was it the ghost of the murdered Coalition,"
he exclaims, "which haunted the member from Massachusetts; and which,
like the ghost of Banquo, would never down?" "The murdered Coalition!"
Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the late
administration, is not original with the honorable member. It did not
spring up in the Senate. Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an
embellishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts it, indeed, from a very
low origin, and a still lower present condition. It is one of the
thousand calumnies with which the press teemed during an excited
political canvass. It was a charge of which there was not only no proof
or probability, but which was in itself wholly impossible to be true.
No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was
of that class of falsehoods which, by continued repetition, through all
the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who
are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling
into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less
degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the
general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off
slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further
mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now,
sir, in the power of the honorable member to give it dignity or decency
by attempting to elevate it and to introduce it into the Senate. He
cannot change it from what it is, an object of general disgust and
scorn. On the contrary, the contact, if he choose to touch it, is more
likely to drag him down, down to the place where it lies itself.


IN HIS OWN DEFENSE

BY ROBERT EMMET

I am asked what I have to say why sentence of death should not be
pronounced on me, according to law.

I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France!
and for what end? It is alleged that I wish to sell the independence of
my country; and for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? And
is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles
contradictions? No; I am no emissary; and my ambition was to hold a
place among the deliverers of my country, not in power nor in profit,
but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence to
France! and for what? Was it for a change of masters? No, but for
ambition. O my country! was it personal ambition that could influence
me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not by my education and
fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself
amongst the proudest of your oppressors? My country was my idol! To it
I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now
offer up my life.

My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. Be yet patient! I have
but a few more words to say--I am going to my cold and silent grave--my
lamp of life is nearly extinguished--my race is run--the grave opens to
receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at
my departure from this world: it is--the charity of its silence. Let no
man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives dares now
vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them
and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed,
until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my
country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not
till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.


ON RESISTANCE TO GREAT BRITAIN

From a speech in the Provincial Convention, Virginia, March, 1775

BY PATRICK HENRY

I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be
not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible
motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the
world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir,
she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the
British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose
them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We
have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it
has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble
supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already
exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm
which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we
have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and
have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the
ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our
remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our
supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with
contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after all these things,
may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no
longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve
inviolate these inestimable privileges for which we have been so long
contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in
which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves
never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be
obtained, we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to
arms, and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!


INVECTIVE AGAINST LOUIS BONAPARTE

From a reprint in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George Ridde,
Duffield and Company, New York, publishers.

BY VICTOR HUGO

I have entered the lists with the actual ruler of Europe, for it is
well for the world that I should exhibit the picture. Louis Bonaparte
is the intoxication of triumph. He is the incarnation of merry yet
savage despotism. He is the mad plenitude of power seeking for limits,
but finding them not, neither in men nor facts. Louis Bonaparte holds
France; and he who holds France holds the world. He is master of the
votes, master of consciences, master of the people; he names his
successor, does away with eternity, and places the future in a sealed
envelope. Thirty eager newspaper correspondents inform the world that
he has frowned, and every electric wire quivers if he raises his little
finger. Around him is heard the clanking of the saber and the roll of
the drum. He is seated in the shadow of the eagles, begirt by ramparts
and bayonets. Free people tremble and conceal their liberty lest he
should rob them of it. The great American Republic even hesitates
before him, and dares not withdraw her ambassador.

Europe awaits his invasion. He is able to do as he wishes, and he
dreams of impossibilities. Well, this master, this triumphant
conqueror, this vanquisher, this dictator, this emperor, this all-
powerful man, one lonely man, robbed and ruined, dares to rise up and
attack.

Yes, I attack Louis Napoleon; I attack him openly, before all the
world. I attack him before God and man. I attack him boldly and
recklessly for love of the people and for love of France. He is going
to be an emperor. Let him be one; but let him remember that, though you
may secure an empire, you cannot secure an easy conscience!

This is the man by whom France is governed! Governed, do I say?--
possessed in supreme and sovereign sway! And every day, and every
morning, by his decrees, by his messages, by all the incredible drivel
which he parades in the "Moniteur," this emigrant, who knows not
France, teaches France her lesson! and this ruffian tells France he has
saved her! And from whom? From herself! Before him, Providence
committed only follies; God was waiting for him to reduce everything to
order; at last he has come!

II

For thirty-six years there had been in France all sorts of pernicious
things,--the tribune, a vociferous thing; the press, an obstreperous
thing; thought, an insolent thing, and liberty, the most crying abuse
of all. But he came, and for the tribune he has substituted the Senate;
for the press, the censorship; for thought, imbecility; and for
liberty, the saber; and by the saber and the Senate, by imbecility and
censorship, France is saved. Saved, bravo! And from whom, I repeat?
From herself. For what was this France of ours, if you please? A horde
of marauders and thieves, of anarchists, assassins, and demagogues. She
had to be manacled, had this mad woman, France; and it is Monsieur
Louis Bonaparte who puts the handcuffs on her. Now she is in a dungeon,
on a diet of bread and water, punished, humiliated, garotted, safely
cared for. Be not disturbed; Monsieur Bonaparte, a policeman stationed
at the Élysée, is answerable for her to Europe. He makes it his
business to be so; this wretched France is in the straitjacket, and if
she stirs--Ah, what is this spectacle before our eyes? Is it a dream?
Is it a nightmare? On one side a nation, the first of nations, and on
the other, a man, the last of men; and this is what this man does to
this nation. What! he tramples her under his feet, he laughs in her
face, he mocks and taunts her, he disowns, insults, and flouts her!
What! he says, "I alone am worthy of consideration!" What! in this land
of France where none would dare to slap the face of his fellow, this
man can slap the face of the nation? Oh, the abominable shame of it
all! Every time that Monsieur Bonaparte spits, every face must be
wiped! And this can last! and you tell me it will last! No! No! by
every drop in every vein, no! It shall not last! Ah, if this did last,
it would be in very truth because there would no longer be a God in
heaven, nor a France on earth!

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.