Chapter XIII: Oratoric Reading and the Art of Public Speech (1)

Upon this important subject of public speaking, and the interpretation of the addresses made by others, great men have thus expressed themselves: Dr. Charles W. Eliot, formerly President of Harvard University, says: “Have we not all seen, in recent years, that leading men of business have a great need of a highly trained power of clear and convincing expression? Business men seem to me to need, in speech and writing, all the Roman terseness and the French clearness. That one attainment is sufficient reward for the whole long course of twelve years spent in liberal study.” Abraham Lincoln likewise said: “Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he can not make a speech.”

Every thinker knows what a vital part eloquence plays in national as well as individual welfare. If at first thought effective speaking seems a simple thing and a superficial part of education, on mature thought and consideration it will be found to be one of the most complex, vital and difficult problems that education has to meet. And yet, notwithstanding this complexity of the problem, the teacher is cheered by the delightful assurance of giving the student a consciousness of his latent talents and the ability to reveal and make use of them for the proper influencing of his fellow men.

There is a belief fairly commonly held that only a limited few need study the art of public speaking. Never was there a greater error or a more fatal mistake—especially in a republic like ours, where every man should be vitally interested in public affairs. No single citizen can afford not to be able to stand before his fellows and clearly, pleasingly and convincingly present his ideas upon any subject of local, state, or national importance. It is no more an _ornamental_ accomplishment than is grammar, penmanship or simple arithmetic. It should be as universal as “the three r’s.” The hints and selections that follow are carefully chosen to incite every good citizen to the acquirement of this useful and practical aid for his own benefit as well as that of his fellows. All the lessons and analyses that have gone before in these pages will materially aid in the elucidation of these brief lessons.

The basis for development in Effective Speaking rests upon one’s bodily, emotional and mental agencies of expression, and a knowledge of their respective importance and efficient use. That which counts most for development is conscientious practice; without which, progress is impossible.

There are three definite means of communicating thought and feeling to others: (a) Pantomime: face, hands, body; (b) Vocal: tone sound; (c) Verbal: words, which are conventional symbols manifesting mental and emotional states.

The problem, then, is to obtain a harmonious coördination of these three languages. In other words, the content of the word when spoken should be reflected in the tone and in the body. Thus speech becomes effective merely because it receives its just and fair consideration.

With this general understanding let us take up and master the successive steps which ultimately lead to a realization of the desired end.

The first important essential of effective speaking is the _Spirit of Directness_. By this is meant natural, unaffected speech. Nothing can be more important than that the person speaking use in public address the ordinary elements of _Conversation_.

Hence, the first step is _practice_ in _natural_ speaking. Commit to memory _Hamlet’s Instructions to the Players_ given on a preceding page. Do this not line by line, but the entire selection as a whole. _First_: Read it through silently three times to familiarize yourself with the subject-matter. _Second_: Read it aloud at least five times. _Third_: Speak it _conversationally_ at least five times from memory. In this practice always be intensely conscious that you are addressing an individual and not an audience.

Now take any of the prose or poetic selections from the earlier pages of this book, memorize them, after studying them as the instructions require, and speak them _directly_ and _naturally_, in the ordinary _conversational_ style.

Sufficient practice in this is the necessary preparation for the next step, viz., the acquiring of a natural _elevated_ conversational style, which is merely another name for the higher type of public speaking.

Commit all, or a part, of the following selections, keeping in mind that in speaking them you are addressing a group of people.

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that the Union shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

* * * * *

By this time you should have mastered Ordinary Conversational Style; Elevated Conversational Style; and Abandon and Flexibility of Speech. The next consideration is the importance of Clearness. Clearness in speech means making prominent central words and subordinating unimportant words, or phrases. In other words, the logical sequence of thought must be clearly shown. This is brought about by a variety of inflections, changes of pitch, pause, etc. Clearness in speech is dependent upon clearness of _Thinking_.

It is important now to give full consideration to the subject of _Emphasis_. There are more ways than one of emphasizing your thought. The most common way is by merely increasing the stress of voice upon a word. This, however, is the most undignified form of emphasis. It is common to ranters and “soap-box” orators and is one mark of an undisciplined and uncultured man. Remember that loudness is a purely physical element, and does not manifest thought. Such emphasis is an appeal to the brute instinct, and is only expressive of the lower emotions. But Inflection, Changes of Pitch, Pause, Movement and Tone-Color—as have been fully explained in preceding pages—all appeal to the exalted nature of man.

In proportion to the nobleness of an emotion or thought, we find a tendency to accentuate these above-named elements. Such methods of emphasis are appropriate to the most disciplined and cultured man. More than that, they are the surest evidence of a great personality.

Commit, then make clear to the hearer, the vital thought in the following:

He have arbitrary power! My lords, the East India Company have
not arbitrary power to give him; the King has no arbitrary power
to give him; your Lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the
whole legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because
arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any
man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself according to his
own will, much less can one person be governed by the will of
another. We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high
and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great,
immutable, preëxistent law, prior to all our devices, and prior
to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our
sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are
knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of
which we cannot stir.

Extract from President Wilson’s Inaugural Address:

We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be
modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper
to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should
be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and
seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the
excitement of excursions whither they cannot tell. Justice, and
only justice, shall always be our motto.

And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The nation
has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by
the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often
debauched and made an instrument of evil.

The feelings with which we face this new age of right and
opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of
God’s own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and
the judge and the brother are one.

We know our task to be no mere task of politics, but a task
which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to
understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be
indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure
heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high
course of action. This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of
dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces
of humanity. Men’s hearts wait upon us; men’s lives hang in the
balance; men’s hopes call upon us to say what we will do.

Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try?

I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men,
to my side.

God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel
and sustain me!

SELECTIONS FOR PART FOUR

To gain control over public speech, to learn to express himself well on his feet, the speaker must both be constantly watchful over his every-day conversation and exercise himself much in writing. Only so can he make his tongue obey his will.-GENUNG.

If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any that can be named,—if the origin of language is by many philosophers even considered to be nothing short of divine,—if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated,—if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other,—if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the human family,—it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study; rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life,—who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence.

—CARDINAL NEWMAN.

A VISION RISES

BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

A vision of the future rises.... I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust, the aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.

I see a world without a slave, man at last is free. Nature’s forces have by science been enslaved, lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and flame, and all the secret subtle powers of the earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.

I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music’s myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet’s shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl, trying to win bread with a needle—the needle that has been called “the asp for the breast of the poor”—is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or death or suicide or shame.

I see a world without the beggar’s outstretched palm, the miser’s heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.

I see a race without disease of flesh or brain—shapely and fair, married harmony of form and function, and as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all in the great dome shines the eternal star of human hope.

CREED OF AMERICANISM

I have faith that this government of ours was divinely ordained to disclose whether men are by nature fitted or can by education be made fit for self-government; to teach Jew and Greek, bondman and free, alike, the essential equality of all men before the law and to be tender and true to humanity everywhere and under all circumstances; to reveal that service is the highest reward of life....

I believe that the world, now advancing and now retreating, is nevertheless moving forward to a far-off divine event wherein the tongues of Babel will again be blended in the language of a common brotherhood; and I believe that I can reach the highest ideal of my tradition and my lineage as an American—as a man, as a citizen and as a public official—when I judge my fellowmen without malice and with charity, when I worry more about my own motives and conduct and less about the motives and conduct of others. The time I am liable to be wholly wrong is when I know that I am absolutely right....

I believe there is no finer form of government than the one under which we live and that I ought to be willing to live or to die, as God decrees, that it may not perish from off the earth through treachery within or through assault without; and I believe that though my first right is to be a partisan, that my first duty, when the only principles on which free government can rest are being strained, is to be a patriot and to follow in a wilderness of words that clear call which bids me guard and defend the ark of our national covenant.—From “Vice-President Marshall’s Inaugural Address.”

WHAT IS OUR COUNTRY

BY GOVERNOR NEWTON BOOTH

(_Extract from speech delivered at Sacramento, Calif., August 14, 1862._)

What is our country? Not alone the land and the sea, the lakes and rivers, and valleys and mountains; not alone the people, their customs and laws; not alone the memories of the past, the hopes of the future: it is something more than all these combined. It is a divine abstraction. You cannot tell what it is; but let its flag rustle above your head, you feel its living presence in your hearts. They tell us that our country must die; that the sun and the stars will look down upon the great republic no more; that already the black eagles of despotism are gathering in our political sky; that, even now, kings and emperors are casting lots for the garments of our national glory. It shall not be! Not yet, not yet, shall the nations lay the bleeding corpse of our country in the tomb. If they could, angels would roll the stone from the mouth of the sepulcher. It would burst the casements of the grave and come forth a living presence, “redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled.” Not yet, not yet shall the republic die! The heavens are not darkened, the stones are not rent! It shall live, the incarnation of freedom; it shall live, the embodiment of the power and majesty of the people. Baptized anew, it shall stand a thousand years to come, the Colossus of the nations,—its feet upon the continents, its scepter over the seas, its forehead among the stars!—From “Notable Speeches by Notable Speakers of the Greater West,” by kind permission of the publishers; _The Harr Wagner Company_, San Francisco.

PIONEER CELEBRATION SPEECH

BY FREDERICK PALMER TRACEY

(_Delivered before the society of California Pioneers, September 9, 1858, at their celebration of the eighth anniversary of the admission of the state into the Union._)

Mr. President, and Members of the Society of California Pioneers: The great Napoleon said, “I will review at Cherbourg the marvels of Egypt,” and that saying, just now inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue standing amidst the new and massive fortifications of Cherbourg, startles England as a menace of war. England may rest in quiet. There will be no attempt to renew the marvels of Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign. But both Napoleons may have dreamed that in the gigantic moles of Cherbourg they might rival the grandeur and strength of the Pyramids, and in its sculptures the glorious beauty of Memnon and the Sphinx. And, truly, the vast dead marvels of Egypt’s architecture may be rivaled. Other tombs and temples may be hewn in the rocks; other columns and obelisks may rise in beauty; other sphinxes may in silence propose their eternal riddles to other lands; and other pyramids may lift their mountain forms over the hushed plains crouching at their feet. Greater marvels even than Egypt ever saw may be born of necessity and science, and not Cherbourg alone, but this and other lands may yet behold them.

But who, in any age or country, or with any people, shall renew the marvels of California, and give to the world a second example of a nation so suddenly created, gifted with the strength of Hercules in its cradle,—born in the purple of its empire that shall endure forever? A little more than ten years ago, California lay in the indolence and silence of that summer noonday in which she had been basking for ages. A few idle villages slept by the shores of her bays; a few squalid ranches dotted the interior with patches of wretched cultivation. There were herds of cattle in her valleys, but they were almost valueless for the want of a market. There were churches, but their chiming bells woke only the echoes of a vast solitude. The sun ripened only the harvest of wild oats on the hills, and the beasts of prey made their lairs in security close by the abodes of men. Seldom did the _vaquero_ in his solitary rounds hear the dip of the oar upon our rivers. Silence, deep and everlasting, brooded over all the land, and the lone oaks on the hills appeared like sentinels keeping guard around the sleeping camp of nature.

The cession of the country to the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the discovery of gold in the early part of the year of 1848, changed the whole scene as if by the power of magic. As in the naumachia of old time, the dry arena was instantly converted into a great lake on which contending navies struggled for the mastery; so, instantly on the discovery of gold, California was filled with people as if they had risen from the earth. The port of San Francisco was crowded with vessels. The rivers were alive with the multitudes that made them their highway, and din of commerce broke forever the silence of centuries. It seemed as if the people had stolen the lamp of Aladdin, and wished for the creation, not of palaces merely, but of royal cities, and an empire of which these should be the chief places; and at their wish, the cities of our state arose, not by slow, toilsome growth, but complete and princely at their very birth. The rattle of the shovel and the pick was heard in every mountain gorge, and a wide stream of gold flowed from the Sierra to the sea. The plains, rejoicing in their marriage to industry, bore fruitfully their yellow harvests. Villages, hamlets, farmhouses, schools, and churches sprang up everywhere; wharves were built, roads were opened; stage-coaches and steamers crowded all profitable routes; lands, houses, and labor rose to an enormous value; and plenty, with her blessings, crowned the rolling year.

I paint no exaggerated picture of this magical change. We have seen it with our eyes; and though it seems like a dream, so is it unlike anything in the history of the world, in the range of human experience, or in the field where imagination is wont to revel. We know that it is all true, and its truth is its greatest marvel.

Yet it is not to be concealed that we have reason to fear that California’s future may not be as prosperous as her past. If free institutions shall be established here in the simplicity of truth and justice; if public morality shall be substituted for the wild, passionate life of our earlier times; if industry and frugality shall expel indolence and thriftlessness from among us; if the people shall be made to feel that California is their home, and be controlled by the great ambition of making it a home worth loving and defending; if we shall be united for the promotion and protection of our own state interests, and shall banish from among us all influence of those who do not belong to us,—then indeed we cannot fail to secure a glorious future for our young state. But if we fail in the great duties of upright men and patriotic citizens, we can only expect to—

“Run anew the evil race the old nations ran;
And die, like them, of unbelief in God and wrong of man.”

That California has the material resources to make her not merely one of the first, but the very first, of the states of the Union, no one can doubt; but the fostering care of the general government, and the exertion of all the energies of our own people will be required to develop those resources and make our state what it is capable of becoming. I have dreamed of the time when that great highway of commerce around the Cape of Good Hope, opened to the world by the Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth century, should be abandoned, and long caravans of merchant ships, treading the desert ocean that lies at our west, should bring to our wharves the merchandise of China and the Indies, and give to us the profits of that vast trade which has built so many of the cities of Europe and of Asia; when along the great Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, from San Francisco to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to the Atlantic seaboard, the transit of this wealth of the world, like a turbid stream turned through our miners’ sluice-boxes, should everywhere deposit gold as it passed. If California and the general government shall ever be aroused upon this subject, and this great railway—the mightiest in its results of any enterprise ever projected by man—shall be completed, a revolution will be accomplished in our state, the marvels of which will be second only to those that accompanied our first settlement of the territory. Our population, no longer stinted to a few hundred thousand, will suddenly be counted by millions. Every valley will be fat with grain, and the yellow harvest will wave on every hillside. The hamlets will rise to villages, the villages to towns, and the towns to regal cities. Like the redwoods of our mountains, the masts of the vessels of all nations will be forests in our ports, and the white sails in the offing shall flock together as white doves when they come home to their nests. Then, capital will seek investment among us, and enterprise and industry will add wealth to wealth. Then will the hidden riches of the mines be explored, and larger and more secure investments afford a profit that now is hardly dreamed of. Every resource of the state will be developed, and California will become the mistress of the Pacific, rivaling not merely the richest commercial states of our own confederacy, but the most powerful maritime nations that sit by the shores of the Atlantic.

Such California once was; such California yet may be. You, pioneers, who meet to-day to celebrate the eighth anniversary of her admission as a state of the Union,—you, and those whom you represent, are the founders of this new commonwealth, and on the direction you give her institutions and her enterprise her destiny for good or evil will depend.

I congratulate you, Pioneers of California, on the proud position you occupy.

“You are living, you are dwelling,
In a grand and awful time,
In an age on ages telling,
To be living is sublime.”

You are presiding at the birth of a nation; you shape its destinies and mold its future according to your own will. Your works will speak for you in the coming ages. If you make California glorious, you will be immortal; if you make her base and vile, she will return her shame on your own heads.

It was my lot, in 1848, to witness the Revolution that overturned the throne of France, and drove Louis Philippe into exile, and I thought it the fortune of a lifetime to be present at the downfall of a great government. But how much more is the blood of ambition stirred by the creation of an empire,—of an empire that for centuries to come is to sit the undisputed mistress of these vast seas that spread themselves at our feet!

Pioneers, the men who come after you will rule only the hour in which they live. You are the masters of the approaching centuries. They come bending like slaves at your feet, and wait to know your pleasure. It is yours, if you will, to fill those centuries with the glory of California and your own high renown. All that you do in these early plastic times of the state will remain stamped upon her forever, and you sit here, masters, while the monuments of your own immortal fame are being built.

Pioneers of California, the eyes of the world are fixed upon this young state; they are fixed upon you. A great trust is committed to your hands by the events that have made you pioneers. Take care that you discharge that trust with honor to yourselves, and so that California may achieve the glorious destiny that is her due. Take care that you so conduct the youth of this state, that, centuries hereafter, your descendants may say proudly of their ancestors, “He came in with the pioneers.”—From “Notable Speeches by Notable Speakers of the Greater West,” by the kind permission of the publisher, the _Harr Wagner_ Company, San Francisco.

[Frederick Palmer Tracy was a California pioneer, and attorney-at-law in San Francisco, and one of the founders of the Republican party in California. He was an eloquent political speaker in the early days when his party was in a hopeless minority. He was a member of the California delegation to the Chicago convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln for President of the United States, and was appointed on the Committee on Platform and Resolutions. He drafted the famous platform of that convention, which was adopted by the committee as he wrote it, with only slight changes. He was engaged in the Lincoln campaign to stump the state of New York, and died during that campaign, worn out by exposure and loss of sleep.]

THE REDWOODS

BY W. H. L. BARNES

(_Delivered at a midsummer “jinks” of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco._)

The possessor of a name more ancient than the crusaders will show you, in the land of his birth, ancestral trees that surround his lordly domain, and proudly exhibit some gnarled and ugly oak, which by him is associated with some distant event in his own family, or with the history of the hoary races of the brave nation of which he forms a part. Here his ancestors builded a castle before the Middle Ages, with defensive moat and parapet, with keep and dungeon, all long since fallen into ruin,—melted in the unperceived decay of ages, or bruised into it by the vigor of the battering-ram of some gallant and feudal company.

He will say to you, “All these are mine. They are part of my race, and my race is of them.” But what are all his possessions—castle, moat, dungeon, or gnarled oak—beside the ancient brotherhood of venerable trees to which we have been admitted, and whose stately silence we have been permitted to break? Our trees were old before the Roman invaded Britain; old before the Saxon followed Hengist and Horsa; old before the Vikings sailed the northern seas. For ages piled upon ages, even before letters were known, before history commenced to make its record of the doings of nations and races, these trees and their ancestors builded and renewed their leafy castles.

The groupings of the present monarchs of the forest show that these are but the descendants of still more ancient growths; were once nothing but saplings that sprung from the superabundant life of some giant trunk long since vanished, and whose grave is sentineled by his stalwart children. How shall we measure the vigor and force which they possess? How shall we comprehend by what method the stately body, ever rising in monumental force toward the skies, draws its being from the deep and busy fingers of the roots, and from them lifts the alchemized earth and water higher and still higher, until both feed and nourish the smallest leaf and spear-point of the topmost shaft,—spear-point that, in its turn, is destined in some future age to become a stalwart trunk, crowding with its growth ever upward and onward towards the stars?

Who shall tell how, through the eons of the long ago, these trees have been silent and majestic watchers of the night and dawn and day of the world’s life? How shall we conjecture how long they have been welcoming the sun in his rising, and have caught his last and lingering caress as he has disappeared in the glory of the evening sky? How long have they been the vigil keepers of the night, and watched the silent constellations sailing through the immensity of space? Who shall tell us if these trees caught, perhaps, the earliest song of the stars of the morning, while above and beyond them, unnumbered comet and meteor have shone and vanished?

How came these trees to this continent? Have they ever lived and burgeoned in some other happy land? or are they the fruit of one sole and giant extravagance of nature, exulting in the uppermost luxury of force, and reveling in the very fullness of all power? Shall man solve the mystery? Nature is full of lessons yet to be learned, but nowhere in air or earth or water is there more awe-inspiring strangeness than in these great growths whose wonder we have studied, but with study fruitless of revelation.

To me, during the days we spent in the forest, the contemplation of the redwoods was never for a moment wearisome. I have looked up along their marvelous length in the early morning, when the frondent and topmost spear caught the first glimpse of the sun’s glory, and I have seen his afternoon rays flashing and glinting on emerald bough and purple trunk, and at last losing themselves in the depths of a solemn and impenetrable shade. I have lain at night on the dry earth and looked up at the closing vista of the dark boughs fretting the moonlight and shutting out the sparkle of the stars, until their weird shapes seemed summited in their very pathway; and I saw, when Pan killed Care upon the mountain-side that overhung the grove, such an illumination of the glory of the trees in purple and crimson and scarlet as shall forever make the ablest effort of the scenic artist stale, tawdry, unendurable.

THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(_Delivered from the steps of the Capitol at Washington, 1865._)

FELLOW COUNTRYMEN: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it with war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease when, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts,—you who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L’Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies,—men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle.

Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army—out of what? England,—the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen,—the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen,—their equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed and, as you say, despicable mass, he forged a thunderbolt, and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, this man was a soldier.

Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your age, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro,—rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of his sons,—anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo.

Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they think of the negro’s courage.

I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.

You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Lafayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L’Ouverture.

THE TWO GEORGES

BY W. H. RHODES

Between the years of our Lord 1730 and 1740, two men were born on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, whose lives were destined to exert a commanding influence on the age in which they lived, as well as to control the fortunes of many succeeding generations.

One was by birth a plain peasant, the son of a Virginia farmer; the other an hereditary Prince, and the heir of an immense empire.

Go with me for one moment to the crowded and splendid metropolis of England. It is the evening of the 4th of June, 1734. Some joyful event must have occurred, for the bells are ringing merrily, and the inhabitants are dressed in holiday attire. Nor is the circumstance of a private nature, for banners are everywhere displayed, the vast city is illuminated, and a thousand cannon are proclaiming it from their iron throats. The population seems frantic with joy, and rush tumultuously into each other’s arms, in token of a national jubilee. Tens of thousands are hurrying along toward a splendid marble pile, situated on a commanding eminence, near the River Thames, whilst from the loftiest towers of St. James’s Palace the national ensigns of St. George and the Red Cross are seen floating on the breeze. Within one of the most gorgeously furnished apartments of that royal abode, the wife of Frederic, Prince of Wales, and heir apparent to the British Empire, has just been delivered of a son. The scions of royalty crowd into the bed-chamber, and solemnly attest the event as one on which the destiny of a great empire is suspended. The corridors are thronged with dukes, and nobles, and soldiers, and courtiers. A Royal Proclamation soon follows, commemorating the event, and commanding British subjects everywhere, who acknowledge the honor of Brunswick, to rejoice, and give thanks to God for safely ushering into existence George William Frederic, heir presumptive of the United crowns of Great Britain and Ireland.

Just twenty-two years afterward that child ascended the throne of his ancestors as King George the Third.

Let us now turn our eyes to the Western Continent, and contemplate a scene of similar import, but under circumstances of a totally different character. It is the 22nd of February, 1732. The locality is a distant colony, the spot the verge of an immense, untrodden and unexplored wilderness, the habitation a log cabin, with its chinks filled in with clay, and its sloping roof patched over with clapboards. Snow covers the ground, and a chill wintry wind is drifting the flakes, and moaning through the forest. Two immense chimneys stand at either end of the house, and give promise of cheerful comfort and primitive hospitality within, totally in contrast with external nature. There are but four small rooms in the dwelling, in one of which Mary Ball, the wife of Augustine Washington, has just given birth to a son. No dukes or marquises or earls are there to attest the humble event. There are no princes of the blood to wrap the infant in the insignia of royalty, and fold about his limbs the tapestried escutcheon of a kingdom. His first breath is not drawn in the center of a mighty capitol, the air laden with perfume, and trembling to the tones of soft music and the “murmurs of low fountains.” But the child is received from its mother’s womb by hands embrowned with honest labor, and laid upon a lowly couch, indicative only of a back-woodsman’s home and an American’s inheritance. He, too, is christened George, and forty-three years afterward took command of the American forces assembled on the plains of old Cambridge.

But if their births were dissimilar, their rearing and education were still more unlike.

From his earliest recollection the Prince heard only the language of flattery, moved about from palace to palace, just as caprice dictated, slept upon the cygnet’s down, and grew up in indolence, self-will and vanity, a dictator from his cradle. The peasant boy, on the other hand, was taught from his infancy that labor was honorable, and hardships indispensable to vigorous health. He early learned to sleep alone amid the dangers of a boundless wilderness, a stone for his pillow, and the naked sod his bed; whilst the voices of untamed nature around him sang his morning and his evening hymns. Truth, courage and constancy were early implanted in his mind by a mother’s counsels, and the important lesson of life was taught by a father’s example, that when existence ceases to be useful it ceases to be happy.

Early manhood ushered them both into active life; the one as king over extensive dominions, the other as a modest, careful, and honest district surveyor.

Having traced the two Georges to the threshold of their careers, let us now proceed one step further, and take note of the first great public event in the lives of each.

For a long time preceding the year 1753 the French had laid claim to all the North American continent west of the Alleghany Mountains, stretching in an unbroken line from Canada to Louisiana. The English strenuously denied this right, and when the French commandant on the Ohio, in 1753, commenced erecting a fort near where the present city of Pittsburgh stands, and proceeded to capture certain English traders, and expel them from the country, Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, deemed it necessary to dispatch an agent on a diplomatic visit to the French commandant and demand by what authority he acted, by what title he claimed the country, and order him immediately to evacuate the territory.

George Washington, then only in his twenty-second year, was selected by the governor for this important mission.

It is unnecessary to follow him, in all his perils, during his wintry march through the wilderness. The historian of his life has painted in imperishable colors his courage, his sagacity, his wonderful coolness in the midst of danger, and the success which crowned his undertaking. Memory loves to follow him through the trackless wilds of the forest, accompanied by only a single companion, and making his way through wintry snows, in the midst of hostile savages and wild beasts, for more than five hundred miles, to the residence of the French commander. How often do we not shudder, as we behold the treacherous Indian guide, on his return, deliberately raising his rifle, and leveling it at that majestic form; thus endeavoring, by an act of treachery and cowardice, to deprive Virginia of her young hero! And oh! with what fervent prayers do we not implore a kind Providence to watch over his desperate encounter with the floating ice, at midnight, in the swollen torrent of the Alleghany, and rescue him from the wave and the storm. Standing bareheaded on the frail craft, whilst in the act of dashing aside some floating ice that threatened to engulf him, the treacherous oar was broken in his hand, and he is precipitated many feet into the boiling current. Save! oh, save him, heaven! for the destinies of millions yet unborn hang upon that noble arm!

Let us now recross the ocean. In the early part of the year 1764, a ministerial crisis occurs in England, and Lord Bute, the favorite of the British monarch, is driven from the administration of the government. The troubles with the American colonists have also just commenced to excite attention, and the young King grows angry, perplexed, and greatly irritated. A few days after this, a rumor starts into circulation that the monarch is sick. His attendants look gloomy, his friends terrified, and even his physicians exhibit symptoms of doubt and danger. Yet he has no fever, and is daily observed walking with uncertain and agitated step along the corridors of the palace. His conduct becomes gradually more and more strange, until doubt gives place to certainty, and the royal medical staff report to a select committee of the House of Commons that the King is threatened with insanity. For six weeks the cloud obscures his mental faculties, depriving him of all interference with the administration of the government, and betokening a sad disaster in the future. His reason is finally restored, but frequent fits of passion, pride and obstinacy indicate but too surely that the disease is deep-seated, and a radical cure impossible.

Not long after his return from the West, Washington was offered the chief command of the forces about to be raised in Virginia, to expel the French; but, with his usual modesty, he declined the appointment, on account of his extreme youth, but consented to take the post of lieutenant-colonel. Shortly afterward, on the death of Colonel Fry, he was promoted to the chief command, but through no solicitations of his own. Subsequently, when the war between France and England broke out in Europe, the principal seat of hostilities was transferred to America, and his majesty, George III, sent over a large body of troops, under the command of favorite officers. But this was not enough. An edict soon followed, denominated an “Order to settle the rank of the officers of His Majesty’s forces serving in America.” By one of the articles of this order, it was provided “that all officers commissioned by the King should take precedence of those of the same grade commissioned by the governors of the respective colonies, although their commissions might be of junior date;” and it was further provided, that “when the troops served together, the provincial officers should enjoy no rank at all.” This order was scarcely promulgated—indeed, before the ink was dry—ere the Governor of Virginia received a communication informing him that George Washington was no longer a soldier. Entreaties, exhortations and threats were all lavished upon him in vain; and to those who, in their expostulations, spoke of the defenseless frontiers of his native state, he patriotically but nobly replied: “I will serve my country when I can do so without dishonor.”

In contrast with this attitude of Washington, look at the conduct of George the Third respecting the colonies, after the passage of the Stamp Act. This act was no sooner proclaimed in America, than the most violent opposition was manifested, and combinations for the purpose of effectual resistance were rapidly organized from Massachusetts to Georgia. The leading English patriots, among whom were Burke and Barré, protested against the folly of forcing the colonies into rebellion, and the city of London presented a petition to the king, praying him to dismiss the Granville ministry, and repeal the obnoxious act. “It is with the utmost astonishment,” replied the king, “that I find any of my subjects capable of encouraging the rebellious disposition that unhappily exists in some of my North American colonies. Having entire confidence in the wisdom of my parliament, the great council of the realm, I will steadily pursue those measures which they have recommended for the support of the constitutional rights of Great Britain.” He heeded not the memorable words of Burke, that afterward became prophetic. “There are moments,” exclaimed this great statesman, “critical moments in the fortunes of all states, when they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may yet be strong enough to complete your ruin.” The Boston port bill passed, and the first blood was spilt at Lexington.

It is unnecessary to review in detail the Revolution. Let us pass to the social position of the two Georges in after-life.