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MODERN AMERICAN
ORATORY
SEVEN REPRESENTATIVE ORATIONS

EDITED WITH NOTES AND AN ESSAY ON
THE THEORY OF ORATORY

RALPH CURTIS RINGWALT

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1898

Copyright, 1898,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.

the MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

PREFACE.
The purpose of this volume is to present concisely
the general principles underlying the theory of ora
tory, and to illustrate these principles by orations
drawn from the work of the most prominent public
speakers in the United States in the past thirty years.
In choosing the orations a threefold object has been
kept in view. The aim has been to select: (i) such
speeches as were interesting, valuable, and notable
productions in themselves; (2) those which were typi
cal of the kind of oratory they are intended to repre
sent; and (3) those which were representative of the
best work of the men who delivered them. Each
oration is printed without any abridgment.
The book is intended to serve as a manual for stu
dents of oratory, and to furnish precept and illustra
tive matter for classes in argumentation and oral
discussion.
R. C. R.
Columbia University, May 4, 1898,

CONTENTS.

THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
I.

I. What Oratory Is, .
II. The Divisions of Oratory, .
HI. Deliberative Oratory, .
IV. Forensic Oratory, .
V. Demonstrative Oratory,
The Eulogy,
The Commemorative Oration,
The Platform Oration,
The After-dinner Address,

PAGE 379
i6
24 273°
35 40

VI. Pulpit Oratory,  43

II.
VII. The Divisions of the Oration,
VIII. Introduction,
IX. Narration,
X. Partition,
XI. Discussion,
XII. Conclusion,
XIII. The Preparation of Speeches,

53
55
6066 758385

VI CONTENTS.
ORATIONS. page
Deliberative Oratory.
Carl Schurz: General Amnesty  93
Forensic Oratory.
Jeremiah S. Black: The Right to Trial by Jury—
Ex-Parte Milligan,  131
Demonstrative Oratory.
The Eulogy— Wendell Phillips; Daniel O'Connell, . 182
The Commemorative Oration — Chauncey M. Depew:
The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Inaugura
tion of President Washington, .... 220
The Platform Oration — George William Curtis: The
Leadership of Educated Men, .... 256
The After-dinner Address— Henry W. Grady: The
New South, . .... 278
Pulpit Oratory.
Henry Ward Beecher: The Sepulcher in the Garden, 292
Notes  313
Bibliography of Orators and Oratory, . . . 331

THE THEORY OF ORATORY.

L
I. WHAT ORATORY IS.
If we turn to those treatises on oratory which are
most useful for the student to-day, — the works of Aris
totle, Cicero, and Quintilian, among the ancients. Dr.
Blair in England, and John Quincy Adams in this
country, — we have no little difficulty in finding an ap
propriate definition with which to begin our study.
Aristotle says that oratory (or rhetoric, as the whole
science of written and spoken discourse was denomi
nated by the Greeks) is " the faculty of finding all the
means of persuasion on any subject." Cicero, who is
followed by Dr. Blair, defines it as the " art of persua
sion "; while Quintilian and John Quincy Adams
agree in calling it the " art of speaking well." No
one of these definitions is, however, wholly apposite
for our purposes to-day. That of Aristotle, since it
has to do with but one branch of the subject, what the
rhetoricians called invention, the collection of argu
ments, may be rejected at once. But the other two,
one or the other of which has been adopted by perhaps
a majority of writers, call for more comment.
It is, indeed, true that the end of much oratory is
persuasion. This is the object of nearly all speeches

4 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
delivered in assemblies, in legislatures, or in courts of
law, where the purpose of the speaker is to persuade
his hearers to perform a certain act, to vote in
a certain way, or to render a certain decision.
But it is likewise true that there is a very large
division of oratory in which no such purpose
can be discerned. In such a category should be
placed the eulogies spoken after the deaths of great
men; the orations commemorating the anniversaries
of important events ; addresses delivered at the dedica
tion of monuments and buildings; and, finally, the
mass of after-dinner speeches. Rarely in any of these
instances is the object of the speaker, except most in
directly, that of persuasion; and thus the definition
which regards all oratory as the art of persuasion,
since it excludes so great a class, is inadequate. For
other reasons, the remaining definition is open to
quite as much objection. To define oratory as the art
of speaking well, is, in the first place, extremely un
scientific, for no standards are given upon which judg
ment may be based. The question at once arises,
what are the criteria of good speaking? Further
more, the definition is bad because it fails to discrimi
nate between such speeches as all would agree to be a
part of oratory, and those which, however clear and
logical and effective, would with no less certainty be
denied such a place. To put the point differently, the
definition does not distinguish between oratory which
admittedly is such, and public speaking in general.
This is a distinction which is fundamental.
We are therefore compelled to seek a definition else
where. To this end let it be asked. What is the differ
ence between a speech delivered in an assembly, out-

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 5
lining a financial scheme, and one in the same place
advocating war, or the annexation of territory ; between
an argument spoken before a single judge on a ques
tion of jurisdiction, and one before a jury in behalf of
a man indicted for murder? The answer is, of course,
superficially, that in one case the speech is cold and
rigid, like a demonstration in mathematics; in the
other it is intense, full of vigor and of passion. More
accurately, too, is it not that one speech is addressed
to reason and to the intellect, while the other, although
it may touch these faculties as well, appeals primarily
to the emotions? And herein it may be believed, is the
distinguishing characteristic of oratory; that which
raises it above and divides it from public speaking in
general; namely, the appeal to the emotions. No
matter how clear, logical, or effective, speaking may
be, so long as it appeals to the intellect only, it re
mains public speaking; when, however, the emotions
are touched — love, joy, hate, ambition, revenge — then
speaking becomes oratory. Nothing, moreover, — no
phrase, paragraph, or speech, — is in itself eloquent; it
is eloquent only as it affects the audience to which it
is addressed. In the present writer's opinion these are
the simplest and most fundamental ideas that can be
stated in regard to this subject. And the suggestion
is therefore hazarded that oratory may be defined, not
inadequately, as that form of public speaking which
appeals powerfully to the emotions of the hearer.
In connection with this definition, one or two sub
sidiary points of some practical value may be noted.
The first of these is that the test of oratory, since it
depends entirely on the effect produced in the minds
of the audience, is a quantity of exceeding variable-

6 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
ness and uncertainty. Because of differences in taste,
in experience, in environment, what to one mind is
eloquent, to another may be vapid, or possibly unin
telligible. A speech reviewing a military campaign
may be the height of oratory to soldiers who have
shared its victories and borne its defeats; to a civilian
of another land, disassociated from the facts, the
same speech may seem trite and uninteresting. The
famous oath of Demosthenes in which he referred
to the great victories gained at Marathon, Salamis,
Platseas, and Artimisium, was doubtless most moving
to a Greek, when it was spoken; but to-day, to the
average man, it conveys very little meaning. In
stances of the kind might be multiplied well-nigh
without limit. The point, however, is probably clear
enough: that oratory is largely contingent on the
character and condition of the minds of the hearers,
and for this reason no absolute standards in regard to
it can reasonably be laid down.
Another point of considerable importance, espe
cially with reference to such a volume as the present,
is that no oration can be estimated or judged finally
from any other aspect than that of a hearer. Oratory
(the true object of which is to produce an effect at the
time of delivery) is composed of two elements, matter
and manner ; and for the purposes of ultimate criticism
these two are inseparably connected. The much-
quoted remark of Charles James Fox, when he was
told that a speech read well, " Then it must have been
a bad speech," is as far from the truth as the popular
estimate which ranks Edmund Burke among the
world's great orators. A speech which reads well was
not necessarily ineffective when spoken; no more does

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 7
the delivery of essays of permanent literary value en
title one to be called a great orator. This fact, obvi
ous enough in itself, is forgotten when attempts are
made to classify orators definitely on the basis of their
printed works, and when each year at oratorical con
tests, two sets of judges are appointed, one to estimate
the manner of delivery, the other the literary value of
the compositions. Ideally, the method of studying ora
tory is to hear an oration delivered; then, when it
appears in print, to examine its woof and texture criti
cally, to observe how the results were produced.
Clearly, however, because of the few speeches we
hear worthy of such regard, this method of study is
rarely possible. But its peculiarly good results will
not be wholly denied if the student supplements his
reading with the frequent hearing of spoken dis
courses of all sorts, and if he will remember that any
appreciation based on printed words alone is likely to
fall somewhat short of the truth.

II. THE DIVISIONS OF ORATORY.
We have considered what oratory is and how, by
its appeal to the emotions, it differs from public speak
ing in general; we have seen how this appeal depends
for its effectiveness largely upon the state of mind of
those who compose an audience; and finally we saw
from what standpoint — that of the hearer — any oration
ought ideally to be judged. We can now advance a
step, and turn to the broad divisions into which ora
tions have been classified. Although variously named
by different writers, these divisions — a single addition

8 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
excepted — have always been intrinsically the same:
they have been based on one of two points of view,
either upon the attitude of an audience toward a
speech, or upon the purpose of the speaker, and usu
ally upon the former. For example, Aristotle, who
laid the foundation of the oratorical art so deeply that
those who have followed have done little more than
amplify his ideas, finds three attitudes in an audience,
and upon these he bases his divisions of oratory. He
says that audiences are either judges of things lying in
the past, as are members of judicial tribunals; or
judges of things lying in the future, as are members of
assemblies and deliberative bodies; or critics, as are
those who estimate only the ability of a speaker or the
power and charm of a speech. Then, from this analy
sis, he draws the conclusion that there can be but
three kinds of speeches — judicial, deliberative, and
epideictic, the oration of display. To this division,
the birth of Christianity, and the part played in the
spreading of its doctrine by spoken discourse, has
added a new, a fourth type of oratory; but with this
exception, Aristotle's classification is as valuable to
day as it was two thousand years ago. We may
therefore adopt it, making the addition which has
just been suggested, and changing a little, although
somewhat arbitrarily, the nomenclature. For judicial,
a word which is now open to several significations,
the term forensic, designating more univocally the ora
tory of the bar, may be substituted; and in place of epi
deictic, the word demonstrative, which was adopted by
Roman rhetoricians, and since them almost universally
by other writers, is probably better. We shall then
have four great divisions of oratory, as follows: (i)

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 9
deliberative, the oratory of the assembly; (2) forensic,
the oratory of the bar; (3) demonstrative (also called
occasional), the oratory of display; and (4) pulpit, the
oratory of the Christian Church. Each of these must
be considered separately.
III. DELIBERATIVE ORATORY.
Although deliberative oratory has been defined as
the oratory of the assembly, the inference must not be
drawn that it is restricted in scope to speeches before
legislative assemblies; with the debates of such bodies
it is, indeed, most commonly associated, but its actual
scope is by no means so limited. Any speech be
fore a number of people who listen as judges, where
the object of the speaker is to induce his hearers to
accept or reject a given policy for the future, may be
called a deliberative speech. Thus to this class be
long not only most congressional efforts, but speeches
in conventions, those on the hustings, those in pub
lic meetings of many sorts, as well as those before
synods and conferences. When a member of a board
of directors presents to his colleagues ideas concern
ing a business plan, his remarks also fall under this
category. Evidently, then, the division of oratory
before us is much broader th-'n might seem from the
first definition; it is, in fact, as extensive as is the
range of topics which men may be called to deliberate
upon. Those who are fond of ascertaining the period when
arts have first been practiced, have an interesting
though not wholly profitable subject in tracing the be
ginnings of deliberative oratory. Although perhaps

lo THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
not coeval with the faculty of speech, it is certainly
very old. Sedulous inquirers point to the harangues
in the Bible, and to the stormy councils which enliven
many pages of Homer as the first examples of deliber
ative speech. But these examples, whatever their anti
quarian interest, have little value for the student. Not
much more regard can be paid to the speeches which
the early historians, particularly Herodotus, but Thu-
cydides as well, put into the mouths of some of their
characters. The real beginning of deliberative ora
tory had better be placed somewhere in the first years
of the fifth century before Christ; the date of Antiphon,
who was born in 480, is a convenient starting place.
About 150 years after Antiphon was born, Demosthe
nes, with whom Greek oratory, and possibly the de
liberative oratory of all time, reached its acme, died;
and thenceforth with the victories of Philip of Mace-
don and the decay of liberty and virtue, oratory, ex
cept intermittently, ceased to be a vital force in Greece.
In Rome deliberative oratory also had a splendid
record; but, as if following too closely the history as
well as the artistic inspiration of Greece, it culminated
in a single great name, Cicero, and then fell into less
worthy forms. During the Dark Ages there was lit
tle chance for any kind of oratory whatsoever. But
when the results of the Reformation began to be felt,
public speech once more became a necessity. The
men who laid the foundations of English political lib
erty — Eliot, Pym, Cromwell — were also the first Eng
lish political orators, the first of a line the life of which
has not yet expired. In our own country deliberative
oratory has had a record of singular power and serv
ice. It lighted the fires which burned into the Revo-

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. II
lution. The Constitution is its product. And it
refined the wisdom that solved the great problems of
the first half century of our history. No single influ
ence has been more powerful in shaping our destiny
as a nation.
The pre-eminence which has usually been conceded
to deliberative oratory may be ascribed chiefly to three
causes: the comprehensiveness of its purpose, the
subjects with which it deals, and the character of the
audiences to which it is addressed. . A few words will
make these reasons clear. Forensic oratory is con
cerned primarily with the rights of individuals, rarely
with the rights of the many; sermons are likewise
directed to individuals, to each member of a congrega
tion, rather than to a congregation as a whole; demon
strative oratory has no especial purpose, except to
gratify the senses. But deliberative oratory, on the
other hand, has to do with the individual only as one of
a larger community. It is concerned not with what has
interest and importance for the single person, but with
what affects a body of people, a state, or a nation;
and thus it is exceptional in the breadth of its pur
pose. Furthermore, the subjects with which deliber
ative oratory has to do are more vital than those
touched by any other form of public speaking, that of
the pulpit alone excepted. These subjects embrace
much that pertains directly to the physical and
spiritual welfare and happiness of a people; to their
larger affairs with other nations ; and, not infrequently,
to questions of life and liberty. Finally, deliberative
oratory has in the past been addressed to audiences,
the forums and senates of the ancient world, the parlia
ments and legislatures of the modern, which, taken as

12 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
a whole, have probably combined intelligence and
mental acumen with emotional characteristics, as
have no other bodies which speakers have faced.
We must, however, hasten to admit that delibera
tive oratory, particularly of the parliamentary kind, is
now on the decline. The great oration has become an
unusual episode in our Senate and House of Repre
sentatives, and it is fast becoming unusual in the Eng
lish House of Commons. This decline is scarcely due,
as is sometimes said, to a lack of great orators or to
the fact that oratory has fallen into disrepute; it is due
more probably to the change that has come over the
legislative bodies themselves. The time which for
merly was occupied by great speakers in giving a
masterful presentation of a question is now spent in
committee rooms or in committees of the whole,
where, in an hour, a dozen men may state their po
sition on a question and their reasons for voting as
they do. So large have legislative bodies become,
and so many and varied are the subjects brought be
fore them, that all business cannot be considered by
a whole house; only that which is of prime importance
can have such consideration. The remainder of the
work, the sifting process, must take place before
smaller bodies, where the opportunity of the orator is
very slight. The change is also due to some extent,
perhaps, to the kind of subjects that now occupy legis
latures. Small details of administration, tariff sched
ules, currency schemes, do not as a rule afford much
chance for emotional speaking; such subjects are
better treated in simple, business-like debate ; and thus
debate is naturally fast taking the place before occu
pied by deliberative oratory.

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 13
Above it has been said that the purpose of deliber
ative oratory is to persuade an audience to accept or
to reject a policy for the future. Now, the object of
persuasion is, of course, as common to forensic oratory
as it is to deliberative; but, in each of these cases, there
is considerable difference in the relation of the speaker
to the subject of the persuasion; and in the precise re
lation of the deliberative orator to his facts and
arguments, we find the essential feature of the type of
oratory before us. While the forensic orator, for ex
ample, simply presents a side of a case, without
necessarily acting as sponsor for more than the logic
of his argument, the deliberative orator accepts as his
own the cause which he advocates; he believes fully
in the inherent truth or justice of what he says, and he
urges his hearers to adopt his position, as the one
which, in his best judgment, is most likely to result to
their advantage. He stands as an adviser; his speech
is counsel. And, from this attitude, the arguments
which he uses and the construction of his speech to a
great extent take their form.
Let us look to this more closely, and first to the
arguments. In order to determine what arguments
will be most effective for him, the deliberative speaker,
or any speaker in fact, must make a careful analysis
of the audience which he is to address. He must de
termine, as accurately as possible, what its intelligence
is, what are its prejudices, what motives are likely to
be uppermost in the minds of those who compose it,
and what interest it may have in the question in hand.
Then, so far as he can, he must reduce the audience
to a single individual, or, at least, to two or three indi
viduals, who shall represent for him its temperament.

14 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
To these he will direct his arguments; and the ma
terial which is likely to prove most valuable is that
which would be successful if used in conversation
between man and man, where one acts as adviser, and
the other listens to see how far his words may be of
weight. The deliberative speech is an exceedingly
practical and common-sense effort. The questions
which come up before legislative bodies and pub
lic meetings are those which embarrass the lives of
each one of us nearly every day. They are those of
present expediency as opposed to consistent principle,
of personal interest as contrasted with public welfare,
of friendly obligation against absolute justice. And
the method by which the higher and broader aspect is
made to triumph over the more sordid is no different
in a speech from what it is in an earnest conversation.
The same motives must be appealed to, the same
interests must be combated, and in very much the
same way. This the skillful speaker always realizes.
Precisely the same practical purpose must be held
before the speaker in the construction of his speech.
Other forms of oratory admit of rhetorical embellish
ment and ornate composition; deliberative oratory
rarely does. It must be straightforward, earnest,
and sincere, and whatever tends to make it less so,
and to attract attention from the substance of the
speech to the manner of the speaker, is an element
of weakness. Clearness and directness, rather than
elegance, are the ends to be sought for. Specifically
how these ends are to be gained is a question which
must be left to text-books on rhetoric. Here we
can only observe that it is of genuine importance
that the deliberative speech center around a single

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. ij
idea or group of ideas, and that all evidence that
is offered should have direct bearing on these points.
All unessential, extrinsic matter must be rigorously
excluded. The orderly development of the argu
ment is another very necessary element. By such
methods as frequent iteration and summary, this de
velopment must be clearly indicated. The audience
should never be in doubt as to what the speaker's
object is, or what purpose each idea that he introduces
serves. The worst fate that can befall an oration is
not to be heard; the next is to be unintelligible.
In all kinds of oratory the character of the orator
plays an important part in the effect his words pro
duce; but particularly is this the case in deliberative
oratory. As has been noted, the deliberative speaker
is the counselor who stands sponsor for the meas
ures which he advocates. However illogical at
times it may be, the majority of people are unwilling
to give much heed to the advice of one whose life tends
to belie his words. No notorious evildoer is thought
a good witness for the results of Spartan virtue; so
no politrcal speaker, whose past life is marked by
tergiversation and truckling, has much authority when
he appeals for unselfish support of a measure in which
he is interested. The sincerity of his statements is
called into question, and none choose to follow a leader
who does not believe his own words. Consistency,
therefore, between the utterances and the acts of a
speaker, especially the deliberative speaker, is of
the utmost importance.
In review, then, we may say that the valuable facts
to be remembered about deliberative oratory are its
broad field and its exceedingly practical value. For-

1 6 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
ensic and pulpit oratory are restricted to the members
of a single profession, and but few out of many are
called upon to pronounce a eulogy or to commemo
rate in speech a great event. But a deliberative
speech, whether it be the great oration before a sen
ate or a few remarks on a motion in a public meeting,
at some time or other comes as a duty to nearly
every man. The precise nature of the deliberative ora
tion, we saw, is that of advice. The orator is the
counselor, and upon this fact largely depends the ma
terial and the construction of his speech.

IV. FORENSIC ORATORY.
Although, for reasons that have been set forth, the
capital importance of deliberative oratory cannot be
questioned, this is neither the oldest, when regarded
as a technical art, nor has it been the most highly per
fected of the various forms of speaking; both of these
distinctions belong to forensic oratory — the oratory
of the bar. As Professor Jebb has shown in his Attic
Orators, public speaking was first taught and practiced
scientifically, not as an art for its own sake, nor yet for
political purposes; but to assist individuals in main
taining and recovering their rights in courts of law.
In the courts, owing to ignorance of forms and pro
cedure, men often found themselves at a loss to secure
justice; instruction was then given to help them, and
this instruction formed the basis of the art of oratory.
The broader interests of the community or nation,
which are the themes of deliberative oratory, as well
as the desire for artistic perfection, were at first sub-

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 17
servient to the very practical end of obtaining and
protecting personal rights. The technical superior
ity thus early acquired was never lost. The ma
jority of the great names in Grecian and Roman elo
quence are those of men famous for their forensic,
rather than their political or panegyric, efforts; the
schools and preceptors who did so much to develop
oratorical taste and ability, had greatest regard for the
forms of legal tribunals; in the treatises which were
written, — those of Cicero and Quintilian, for example,
— even in the definition of oratory itself, the forensic
oration is undoubtedly the one held in mind. Clearly
forensic oratory, in perfection of form and in the
amount of attention paid to it, transcended all rivals
in the ancient world.
But this relative superiority obviously no longer
exists, and we are at once constrained to ask why.
The difference, more than to anything else is due to a
change in the character of courts of law and their
methods of procedure. The ancient court was com
posed of many more judges than we are now accus
tomed to; in the Areopagus, the renowned court of
Athens, the number of judges has been differently esti
mated as from fifty to five hundred ; and in the tribunal
at Rome before which Cicero spoke for Milo, the
number was, it is said, at least fifty. With so many
judges as this, a court was much like a popular assem
bly of citizens; the arguments which might be used
and the emotions which might be appealed to, by a
speaker, were similar to those to which the delibera
tive orator might have recourse. But in another, and
from the standpoint of the orator, still more vital way,
the ancient and the modern courts differ; namely, in

1 8 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
the methods of procedure and in the freedom which
was permitted in arguing a cause. Instead of being
confined within the narrow limits of a fixed form, and
restricted to definite, unalterable rules, the forensic
orator of Greece and Rome was little bound as to
either the method or the material of his speech. The
law was extremely simple; Cicero said that it could be
mastered in three months; and the judges, who sat on
facts as well as law, based their decision largely on
equity and a sense of justice. In addition to this the
orator was granted a latitude of speech quite incom
prehensible to us; a defendant's life, his public services,
his moral character, his family affairs, all could be
drawn upon with impunity. Matter which to-day
would be regarded as extraneous and wholly irrelevant
was made the basis of argument. When Cicero spoke
in behalf of the citizenship of the poet Archias, not
more than one-sixth of his oration was on the legal
question; the rest was a splendid laudation of Archias
and of letters in general. As one writer has said,
Cicero's argument was that " Archias was a Roman
citizen, because he was a great Greek poet."
To-day all this is manifestly different; the condi
tions are just about reversed. The number of judges
sitting in any trial is small, rarely more than a dozen;
and these men are governed in their rulings entirely
by law and precedent; prejudice, the play of the emo
tions, which gave so much opportunity for the
imagination and rhetoric of the ancient orator, are
rigorously excluded and frowned upon. Questions
are no longer settled by the baring of a bosom or by
the exposure of a \Aound, but by hard facts and in
exorable logic. Still more, the pleader is confined

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 19
within certain narrow and well-marked limits, and woe
to him who, led by ardor in his cause, oversteps them.
In the celebrated trial of Captain Baillie, when Erskine
animadverted upon a certain Lord as the author of all
the iniquity that Baillie had pointed out, he was repri
manded by Lord Mansfield, and told that that person
was not before the court; in Cicero's time no heed of
such an excursus would have been taken, except, per
haps, to note the success with which the charge was
pressed. The results of the changes which we have noted
are evident to every observer; forensic oratory has de
clined in both quality and quantity until now it is
notable for its rarity, so thoroughly does oratory de
pend on the emotional appeal. Occasionally, to be
sure, a cause will arise, such as the income-tax case
of some years ago, or the impeachment of President
Johnson, or the case which called forth the speech
pcinted in this volume — a cause involving a great
moral or political question; and then, for a brief mo
ment, forensic oratory will shine forth with its old
luster. But such instances are not frequent. By the
change we have unquestionably gained more accurate
justice; but we have lost, in the main, a picturesque
and inspiring oratory, the type thought by Cicero to be
the greatest.
Still, we shall undoubtedly be justified in consider
ing forensic methods in some detail; if not as a part
of oratory, at least as an important part of public
speaking. For our purposes the subject may be
divided into two parts, the argument before judges,
and that before juries. According to the modern sys
tem of judicature all questions of law are tried before

20 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
judges; while, ordinarily, questions of fact are brought
before juries. Juries are bodies of men chosen from
the people, not wholly unassailable by the arts and
charms of the pleader's tongue; judges, as has already
been said, are usually few in number, and from long
experience are less likely to be moved by other than
sound argument. Evidently there must be a consider
able difference between the speech to be delivered
before a jury and the one which is intended only for a
bench. The speech before the jury naturally gives so much
more opportunity for persuasive speaking that this is
by many regarded as the chief source of the jury law
yer's success. Such an opinion is not, however, alto
gether correct. Juries are frequently on the watch
for men who would win their verdict by speech rather
than by argument; they are, for the most part, com
posed of hard-headed, matter-of-fact citizens, who,
more times than is suspected, know when unsupported
hypotheses and assumptions are given to them for
facts. So it is not so axiomatic that persuasive
speech is all that he requires who would win verdicts.
More discriminating analysis will show that absolute
lucidity of statement is a quality of almost as great
importance. The advocate who can present a case
in such a manner that a number of men, only ordi
narily perspicacious, see it so clearly that they can
see no other side of it, is more likely to have perennial
success than one who relies more completely on his
ability to unbridle emotions. As is generally known,
such was the source of much of the enviable power of
Abraham Lincoln as a lawyer. Combined with an
extraordinary gift for seeing just what was essential

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 21
in a discussion, he had a genius for defining a po
sition so that no one could escape either the chain of
his reasoning or the logic of his conclusions. An
other quality very necessary before a jury is sincerity;
and this carries with it, as a corollary, simplicity of
statement. No jury is likely to have respect for a
man who, knowing better, makes grammatical errors
for the purpose of putting himself, as it were, on a
level with them. At the same time, anything a counsel
can do to establish community of thought and feeling
with the jury is for the better; and in no way can this
be accomplished more skillfully than by downright
earnestness and sincerity in speech. So, on the con
trary, an attempt to befuddle or hoodwink, or to ex
ploit diction, is more than certain to be disastrous.
Jurymen generally assume seriously the task of dis
covering the truth from a body of facts ; with one who
seems imbued with a like desire they are glad, when
they can, to be in accord; but they do not take kindly
to any attempt to make their duties more difficult.
Aside, then, from persuasive speaking, the value of
which can by no means be disregarded, clearness in
presentation, and sincerity, are the important charac
teristics of the speech before the jury.
The speech before judges presents a different fac
tor, and hence a different problem. As has been
noted, the function of the trial before judges is to con
sider questions of law, not ordinarily questions of fact;
and, therefore, opportunity for eloquence is reduced to
a minimum. In jury trials, especially in those of
criminal cases, the circumstances often permit ani
mated and even imaginative discourse; the trial of a
point of law rarely does. So far indeed is this kind of

22 7 HE THEORY OF ORATORY.
speaking now removed from the realm of oratory that
we need not long consider it. The address to the
court is usually an exposition of legal principles, sup
ported by citations from cases and precedents. Learn
ing in the law and the faculty of stating precepts in a
logical way seem to be the requisites; certainly they
are more important than facundity. Clearness in
presentation enters also, although, because of the
greater intelligence and acumen of the audience, it
has scarcely such value as in the speech to the
jury. In fairness, too, one point must not be neg
lected; and this is that when appeals to the emotions
are possible, they may be elevated and dignified. By
tenure of office, by position in society, and by learn
ing, judges are removed beyond the obvious and less
delicate methods of persuasion; but the dignity of
justice, the necessity of preserving our institutions,
and the sacredness of the rights of the individuals and
classes committed to their hands, are themes which,
although hackneyed, can, when chance offers, be used
with great power and effectiveness. The character of
the appeals thus in some way atones for the insuffi
cient opportunity for their use.
The general structure of all forensic speeches,
whether they be ancient or modern, or intended for
judge or jury, is the same; they consist of three essen
tial parts: a statement of the facts on which the case
rests; a statement, drawn from these facts, of the
points at issue; and the proof of the issues.
But before any attempt can be made at forensic
speaking, there must precede what may technically
be called the analysis of the question, the proc
ess by which what is really essential in a case is

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 23
discovered. All litigation that comes before the law
yer's eye presents a multitude of facts, some of which
are relevant, some of which are not; in every case there
are, too, certain points which, if proved, will prove the
general contention. Now, it is the part of the analysis
of the question to determine, first, what these important
points are, and, second, what relation the rest of the
evidence bears to them. When this analysis, which,
after the presentation of evidence, is the most essen
tial part of argumentation, has been made, the struc
ture of the oration is easily solved. After a brief in
troduction comes the statement of the events leading
up to and out of which the contention arises. Al
though this statement must be made tersely, it must be
full enough to give a just comprehension of the ques
tion and its bearings; and great care must also be
taken that the facts be not distorted, but stated in a
fair and unbiased way. Then come the issues, or, as
they are sometimes called, the proposition; that is, just
what the question resolves itself into. The argument
proper follows. Each issue or division is taken up
in order and proved or disproved, all the evidence
being grouped under one or another of the heads.
Finally, the oration ends either with a summary or
with a spirited appeal, or with both. Later in this
essay the parts of the typical oration are treated in
detail; but as the structure of the forensic speech dif
fers, to some extent, from other forms, it was thought
best to make here this brief statement.

24 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
V. DEMONSTRATIVE ORATORY.
The term demonstrative, it must be confessed, when
applied to oratory conveys but very little meaning.
We have noted above that the word is the transla
tion made by the Roman rhetoricians of the Greek
epideictic (from €7ri8«Kvu/i.t, to display) meaning that
which shows; the purpose of such orations being to
show or set forth themes so as to appeal to the taste
or cultivation of a hearer. But even after such
an explanation, the pertinency of the term un
doubtedly seems forced; and if it were any less
generally accepted by writers on oratory, or if a suf
ficient substitute could be offered, we should not make
use of it at all. The word occasional, however, often
employed in its stead, is really no better than demon
strative; for, although more intelligible, it gives
scarcely any hint as to the purpose of the oratory to
which it is applied; demonstrative at least does this.
The province of demonstrative oratory was said by
the ancients to be the praise or censure of persons or
things, or, to put it differently, panegyric or invective.
It applied to all such speeches "as having no reference
either to deliberation for the future, or adjudication
upon the past, were engrossed with the present mo
ment; and were usually adapted more to exhortation
than to business ; to show rather than to action." The
field thus indicated is uncommonly large; the popu
lar lecture, the dedicatory or anniversary address, the
commencement oration, the after-dinner speech — all
come under the category. The purpose of all these
is not to convince, so much as to charm the senses
with words that are fit and adequate.

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 25
Because it has no direct, practical value, and be
cause it aims ostensibly at nothing higher than to
please, demonstrative has usually been regarded as
the least important of the four great divisions of ora
tory. The general justness of this conclusion probably
cannot be denied; and yet one may reasonably doubt
whether it is true that this form of oratory does serve
no purpose beyond the gratification of the senses. As
an instance of something pointing to the contrary,
the orations which used to be delivered in nearly every
city and hamlet on Independence Day might be cited.
Can it be said that these orations, reviewing, as they
did, the hardships and successes of our forefathers,
in inculcating patriotism, and in impressing later
generations with the sacredness of the heritage handed
down to them, were of no value to the state? Is it
not certain that one who had heard such themes di
lated upon would inevitably have a higher sense of
public duty, a stronger attachment for his country,
than before? Or, to turn to another branch of demon
strative oratory, the eulogy. By common consent few
things are more helpful than the biography of a good
and great man. Such biographies, by bringing out
the consistent beauty of high ideas and ideals, make
life a sweeter and happier thing. But more than the
critical, carefully weighed biography, the eulogy, pre
senting, as it does in large detail, characteristics lovely
to look upon, contributes to this end. In holding up
before the masses the importance of public virtue and
integrity of conduct, the eulogy not only pays tribute
to the dead, it furnishes inspiration for the living.
The plea can, however, be placed on a much broader
basis than that of mere utility. Oratory, just as litera-

26 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
ture, painting, or music, is an art, a means of creative
expression; and, because of the instruments which it
employs, it has strong claims to be reckoned as the
greatest of the creative arts. The art of the actor and
the reader is joined with that of the man of letters, the
philosopher, and the statesman, in producing the great
orator. If, therefore, poetry, music, or painting, aside
from the ideas or information which they convey, have
justification for existing, oratory certainly has, too.
No one will perhaps urge that oratory should be given
the place it occupied in Greece, when it was chief
among the fine arts, but everyone should regret that
we have gone so far to the other extreme. Just why
we have done this is a question futile to answer here;
here we are concerned only in showing that oratory,
as one of the fine arts of expression, in its demonstra
tive form, where it comes more nearly on common
ground with the other arts, is worthy of the attention
and cultivation of the best men.
There is, moreover, a reason still beyond this, why
this division of oratory should appeal to Americans,
and particularly to students of to-day. In Greece and
Rome demonstrative oratory was highly perfected and
much practiced; in France, too, especially in the seven
teenth century, one form, the eulogy, received a great
deal of attention ; but it is in our own country that the
fullest expression of the type is to be found. A further
fact, too, to be noted with more than usual care, is that
the present epoch, that represented by the selections in
this volume, beginning roughly with the War, is before
anything else one of demonstrative oratory. In the
history of oratory whatever place is ultimately as
signed to this period will be given it on account of its

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 27
demonstrative speakers. In fact, in the past thirty years
almost the entire production of enduring orations in
the United States has been of this type. For this
reason, in the selections much more space has been
given to this than to any other division; and, for the
same reason, we shall here be warranted in discussing
with some fullness each of the forms which the demon
strative oration has taken: the eulogy, the commemo
rative oration, the platform oration, and the after-din
ner address.
The Eulogy. — The eulogy, which is probably the
oldest form of the oratory of display, was by the an
cients regarded as the most important. The subjects
of eulogy were not, however, so restricted then as they
are now; gods and cities, as well as men, could ap
propriately be made the themes of praise. In Greek
literature of the many examples of the eulogy, the stu
dent will possibly recall first the discourse delivered
by Pericles over those who fell in the Peloponnesian
war, an oration which expresses lofty sentiment in a
singularly restrained and temperate manner. In the
modern world the French have attracted to themselves
more honor in this field than any other nation. Espe
cially in the reign of Louis XIV. a group of men arose,
— Bossuet, Massillon, Flechier, Bourdaloue, — whose
names have since been synonymous with what is
known as the funeral oration. All of these men were
prelates, and their most famous discourses were de
livered at the obsequies of important personages of
Louis' court. Besides their productions, the custom
of the French Academy of having memorial addresses
spoken after the deaths of its members has given
to France an exceedingly large and brilliant eulogistic

28 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
literature. In the United States the eulogy has also
been a form of speech much practiced; scarcely any
great man, certainly no one identified with public
affairs, has died in this century who has not had his
deeds commemorated in this way; and in many cases
such orations are among the most enduring monu
ments which these men have had raised to their
memory. With us the field of eulogy has been limited to the
praises of men. And there are two ways in which these
praises are generally handled. The first method, once
much followed, is what may be called the biographi
cal method. A life is treated chronologically. From
the early years to the end the eulogist follows with
minuteness the career of the subject, reserving only a
brief space before the conclusion for observations and
reflections. Of such a treatment many illustrations
will be found in the works of Edward Everett. That
orator's address on Lafayette is, for example, simply
a clear and painstaking sketch of the life of the great
Frenchman. To-day, however, one finds the method
used much less frequently. One reason for its
abandonment was probably that, on the death of great
men, newspapers and magazines furnish such ample
accounts of their lives as to make repetition in a eulogy
needless and tiresome. A still more valid reason may
be, too, that the reciting of a biographical sketch has
little to commend it to a man of ability or genius. By
anyone having the proper materials such a sketch can
be turned out; no great penetration or skill is required,
nor, when the work is completed, does any great inter
est or value necessarily attach to it.
Usually, therefore, we find a different plan is em-

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 29
ployed by most speakers. In place of giving a chrono
logical narrative, but little attention is paid to events
merely as such; perhaps no dates at all will be men
tioned; instead, an effort is made to single out and set
forth clearly what the subject of the eulogy accom
plished in his life; what he stood for; what influence
he exerted; and what is likely to be his place in his
tory. No especial discernment is needed to see that
such a treatment, if well wrought, demands immeas
urably more ability than a mere biographical nar
rative. Much study and analysis is of necessity
involved. A few central ideas must first be hit upon;
then, from various places and circumstances, evidence
must be extracted to demonstrate their truth and perti
nency. From many minor events, principles of action
must be discovered; discrimination and judgment
must be used; human nature must be read; motives
unraveled; the relation of the subject to a series of
events made certain. But, when all this has been
accomplished, the result justifies the amount of labor
expended. The life, touched by the genius of the
orator, stands out luminously; the salient deeds are
brought forward with their value made clear; the char
acter is solved ; the tribute due has been paid.
In the treatment of nearly every eulogy one nice
question generally arises, of which it may be well to
speak: to what extent should the weakness of char
acter and the untoward events of a life have place?
The tendency of all men s naturally in the opposite
direction; to exaggerate good quali-ties and to say
nothing about bad; and thus the fault with many eulo
gies — the French tributes of the seventeenth century
are excellent examples — is that they are fulsomely in-

30 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
discriminating; characters are not put in their proper
light, judgments are far from judicious. But that
such ought not to be the case need scarcely be said;
there is no justification for speaking, if it is necessary
to speak lies. Still, one must hasten to admit that the
eulogist is not necessarily the biographer; he is not
bound to dwell upon the events of a life with undevi-
ating impartiality; to tell of all the vices as well as of
all the virtues. He may reasonably choose to speak
the praises of a life as he saw it, where the good much
outweighed the evil. The eulogy of George William
Curtis on Wendell Phillips is as perfect an illustration
of the point before us as there is in modern literature.
In the later years of Wendell Phillips' life there were
many things of which so temperate and conservative
a man as Mr. Curtis could not approve; yet he was not
prevented from delivering a masterly oration on
Phillips, and he found no necessity for saying anything
that he could not believe. The orator simply laid
stress on those parts of the career for which he had the
profoundest reverence. Weighing the gold against
the dross, he found the former overwhelmingly pre
dominating, and of this he spoke. The example is one
that may well be taken for a model. Fulsome, indis
criminate praise cannot be enduring and cannot be
too heartily condemned; but no one, because human
nature is not perfect, need fear to speak a sincere
tribute. The Commemorative Oration. — Although not so
embedded in classic traditions as is the eulogy, a litera
ture replete with splendid achievements has been pro
duced by commemorative oratory. In our own coun
try, if one excepts a very few senatorial speeches, by

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 31
far the best orations of the century belong to this
type. Equally true is it that, in the published works of
American orators, we find more commemorative ora
tions of the highest rank than of any other kind.
The purpose of commemorative oratory is plainly to
distinguish certain events, either those of the past or
those of the present. When the events belong to the
past, some anniversary day is usually the time for re
calling them; and hence the oration for such an occa
sion may be designated as an anniversary oration.
When the events belong to the present, the laying of
a corner stone, the dedication of a building or monu
ment, or some like incident, furnishes the theme; and
then the effort may be called a dedicatory oration. In
the selections which follow, room was found for but
one of these types, the anniversary ; but here we shall
have something to say of each.
In the anniversary oration, what is most essential
is the bringing out clearly of the events to be com
memorated and the importance of these events in
history. Roughly speaking, three methods, some
what similar to those noticed under the eulogy, are
open. In the first, emphasis is thrown on the events,
simply as such; in the second emphasis is thrown on
the importance and meaning of the events ; and in the
last each of these points of view is touched upon.
When the first method is followed, the qualifications
demanded from the speaker are a rapid style and a
sense for the order and proportion of incidents; and
about the best thing that can be said of the oration,
when it is delivered, is that it is an accurate, entertain
ing n^rative. But this is clearly not the highest ex
pression of oratory. No chance is offered for the

32 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
analysis, the breadth of view, and the imagination
which stamp a great oration. The bulk of the ma
terial presented was probably to be found in a good
history or encyclopedia; and all that was required of
the speaker was the diligence to hunt it out and put
it together. Still, when the incidents themselves are
all that is important, as might be the case in a battle
upon which nothing especially turned; or when they
are exceedingly vivid and picturesque, or little known,
this method of treatment may be made not uninterest
ing or uninstructive.
In the second method, the actual events, either be
cause they are slight or because they are perfectly
familiar to the audience, play but a small part; the re
sults of the events, their importance to mankind, these
are the chief topics for the orator. That incident in
American history which has been the subject of more
great orations than any other, the landing of the Pil
grims, is one best treated in this manner. To be sure,
in dealing with this theme, some account of the con
dition of affairs in England, the sojourn in Holland,
the voyage across, and the landing, might and often
has been introduced; but the greatness of the subject
lies not here; it is rather in showing the value of the
principles compelling these events, and still more,
their consequences. This, obviously, too, demands a
much higher order of intelligence and abiHty than the
historical sketch. The orator must be a political phi
losopher, as well as a rhetorician and historian; he
must see things in a large perspective; and in a com
plexity of conditions he must be able to detect the
cause and the effect.
Rarely, however, is it necessary for a speaker to

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 33
deal altogether with principles and results; a combina
tion of narrative and reflection is usually both possible
and desirable. When this, the combination of the two
other methods, is adopted, the first part of the oration
is given over to recalling the incidents, possibly in go
ing so far back as to examine the causes giving rise
to them ; and the last to the lessons to be drawn. Both
elements then have place, but neither has undue
prominence; and any danger of the oration becoming
a philosophical treatise is avoided. The narrative
lends spirit, and often much of the interest, to the com
position; the reflection gives it weight and abiding
value. For the majority of occasions calling for an
anniversary address, this plan of procedure will be
found most suitable. There are exceptions, as has
been noted; but this, we may say, is the normal
type. In many respects the dedicatory address does not
differ from the anniversary address. What a speaker
would say at the dedication of a monument commemo
rating a great battle would, with little change, be
appropriate at a celebration of the anniversary of the
same battle. Here again, it is what happened in the
past rather than the present that gives the event its
chief significance. TTiere are, however, dedicatory
occasions which demand another form of speech from
anything an anniversary might call forth ; the laying of
the corner stone of a building or the opening of an ex
position are occasions in point. In such events the ora
tor must look around him, must gather from the
moment his inspiration. What is the meaning of the
occasion; for what does it stand; are its results likely to
be far-reaching in consequence? These are the ques-

34 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
tions he must ask. The ability to see the real sig
nificance of movements is here of value. Does this
mark an advance in our civilization; will it contribute
definitely to the good of humanity? So prophecy also
enters. With his words the speaker opens vistas into
the future; he interprets for his hearers what they do
not fully understand. Very few suggestions more
specific than this can be laid down for the composition
of these addresses. The time and circumstance of
each occasion provide the orator with his general line
of thought; his own skill and imagination must be his
guide for the rest.
Just a word of caution in regard to commemorative
orations of both kinds may now be added. Nearly
every address of this sort demands that the speaker
shall deal with facts — generally, as we have seen,
with historical facts. For the sake of antithesis, or the
clever turning of a sentence, the temptation is often
great to sacrifice absolute truth and accuracy. Again,
the broad, unfounded generalization seems to appeal
to the taste of many speakers. But the inclination
which makes use of either of these expedients for the
lack of better is in error. Exaggeration can never
be truly sententious; generalities do not necessarily
give breadth to a theme. Any stump speaker can
make statements novel and astounding, and, until a
bit of reflection discovers their speciousness, perhaps
effective. The true orator does aim for picturesque,
impelling sentences, but for truthful ones; and when
he indulges in generalization, it is founded on fact and
experience. Both of these errors are present to an
unconscionable degree in what is known as college
oratory. Speakers mistake the tinsel for the gold;

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 3S
their productions would be valuable if they meant
anything and were founded on fact; but for the most
part they are not. No more praiseworthy or reason
able piece of advice can be given to the youthful
speaker than to caution him to weigh carefully the
exactness of what he says.
The Platform Oration. — The term platform ora
tion is little more than an arbitrary head, under which
various types of demonstrative oratory that admit of
no more accurate classification may be discussed.
The popular lecture, the commencement address, the
address before literary or scientific bodies, and the like,
are the types referred to. Such orations, so far as
their subject-matter goes, have very little in common;
they are grouped together only because their end or
object, which is to provide entertainment, or at best,
to offer information in a casual way, is somewhat the
same. In the period before the War, through the lyceum
system, then so popular, the platform oration was an
exceedingly powerful factor in molding public opin
ion and in educating rural communities. No city or
town of any size was continuously without a lecture
course, to which some of the excellent speakers of the
time, — Phillips, Curtis, Emerson, Beecher, John B.
Gough, or other men only less notable, — did not con
tribute. With the settling after the War, however,
of many burning topics of controversy, and with the
inundation of newspaper and magazine literature, the
lyceum departed; the intermittent addresses delivered
now during the winter months by professional lectur
ers reflect only a suggestion of its former popularity.
Still, though the chief avenue of expression has been

36 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
closed, the value and necessity for such speaking re
main. In the demands of commencement season, in
the custom of Phi Beta Kappa societies of listening to
an address each year, in the plan of such institutions as
Chautauqua, there exists abundant incentive for study
and accomplishment in platform oratory.
In one important respect the platform oration dif
fers from any other of which we have so far spoken;
it is usually upon no prescribed topic. The delibera
tive orator speaks on the motion before the house; the
forensic orator on the case on trial; the themes of the
eulogist and anniversary orator are also prescribed;
but, without much exception, the platform speaker
may choose his own subject. At first this may seem
to be a matter of no great consequence; but in reality
it is, for the selection of the best thing on which to
speak is one of the most difficult of problems. In
some cases, to be sure, a subject may be suggested
and a lecture prepared without any definite idea as to
the uses to which it may be put; but more often a
speaker is asked to address a certain audience at a
stated time, and for this occasion he must prepare.
What subject, then, shall he choose? Life and litera
ture are full of interesting questions, but not all of
them, indeed but a very few of them, are appropriate.
Why all are not appropriate is because the range of
topics to which any audience can listen agreeably at
a given time is limited. The first duty of the speaker,
therefore, is to find out precisely to whom he is to
speak, for, unless he does this, he has no surety that
his address will have the slightest relevancy or perti
nency. He must ascertain the character, the educa
tion, and the discernment of his hearers; and also

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 37
under what circumstances they will have been brought
together; then he can proceed intelligently. And in
the final choice of his topic he will probably be gov
erned more than by anything else by two conditions:
first, that his subject shall be one of interest to his
audience; and second, that it shall be adapted to the
occasion. Most important of all is it that a subject shall be
interesting. Interest, however, is an exceedingly
variable quantity; what is interesting at one time is not
at another; what is absorbing to one man is not to a
second. An educational topic which would entertain
a college assembly would fill the office of the manager
of a popular lecture course with indignant patrons;
what is important in November may be dead by the
following March. All this, although universally
recognized by speakers, is not universally followed.
Audiences are bored by most inappropriate themes;
they are told to do things they never had any idea of
not doing ; and they are given information about which
they care absolutely nothing. Indeed, too much em
phasis cannot be laid upon this point: that the utmost
care should be expended by the speaker in discovering
exactly what his audience will be interested in.
It is, however, true that a topic in which an audi
ence has abstractly little interest, may yet prove an
excellent one for an address. Such is the case where
the speaker is an authority or expert in a special line
of work. For instance, the influence of the moon on
tides might not be an especially diverting subject to
people of unscientific minds; yet just such people
might be very eager to hear a talk on this question by
one who had spent his whole life and gained great

38 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
reputation in studying it. This idea is simply an ex
tension of the familiar aphorism that every man can be
entertaining on one subject. So, before browsing be
yond, a speaker may well look within to see if he is
not master of some field which for him would be more
appropriate than any other. All this, too, has espe
cial adaptation for young speakers. In spite of the
epithets flung back in its behalf, youth has great dis
advantages. A student may be better informed on a
public question than a congressman, but the latter will
get the invitation to speak; what a man may be ex
pected to know weighs heavily. Recently a young
student who had gained considerable reputation as a
speaker, was asked, with a number of distinguished
men, to respond to a toast of his own selection at a
banquet held on the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
Had he chosen to speak of Lincoln's political career,
he would have been listened to with courtesy, but, by
men who knew from experience the facts which he
related from histories, hardly with interest. He chose
rather as his subject, " Lincoln as a master of Eng
lish style," and scored the chief success of the even
ing. This was the one theme about which he not only
knew more than his hearers, but about which they all
realized he could know more. So, in a broader field,
no man ought to have any difficulty in commanding
attention when he speaks on a topic in which the
world acknowledges his authority.
Another quality that a topic must have is adapta
bility; that it shall be in itself interesting is not
enough; it must be suited to the occasion, and,
furthermore, susceptible of just the treatment re
quired. A subject which would be appropriate

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 39
in one place might be very ill-fitted for an
other, although the same audience were assem
bled; and a subject which would make an excel
lent magazine article might be wholly impossible for
an oration. Following the last thought, we can see
how such a question as Realism and Idealism in
Literature, although a thoroughly vital one to each
person of an audience, would hardly do for a great
oration. On the other hand, " The importance of illus
trating New England history by a series of romances "
furnished the text of one of Rufus Choate's best-
known speeches. Both of these are literary topics,
but they are very different; one is subtle, the other is
open; one deals with fine distinctions and carefully
spun hypotheses; the other with facts that can with
very little difficulty be made intelligible. The general
conclusion to be drawn is that a question to be suit
able for an oral address must be capable of being
treated along broad, easily comprehended lines; it
must not require overdefinition or too nice discrimina
tion, for, if it does, it probably cannot be followed.
The last few observations lead us naturally to a
brief statement of the structure of the platform ora
tion. In this kind of a speech the introduction is of
considerable importance. It may show why the ques
tion has been chosen, why it is of interest, and why a
discussion of it at that time is particularly desirable.
Then will follow whatever explanation is necessary
in regard to the subject and its meaning; that
is, the definition of the terms. This definition, how
ever mechanical it may seem, should never be omit
ted if there can be the slightest doubt in the mind of a
single listener as to just how the subject is to be taken;

4° THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
accurate definition may prevent a part or the whole
of an address from being vague or positively mis
understood. The terms having been made clear, the
general method of treatment should then be set forth.
This may be accomplished by a formal partition, or it
may not; but the point of view that the speaker is to
adopt may well be stated. A little extra care at the
outset to put one's hearers on the right track is always
repaid tenfold in the lucidity that results. The dis
cussion proper, that is, the body of the oration, follows
these preliminary statements. Here the plan pre
viously announced, or, at least, carefully determined
upon by the speaker, must be rigorously carried out.
There must be no aimless wandering from point to
point, as the thought of the moment may suggest. A
few central ideas must underlie the whole speech; and
all the incidents and details that are used must bear
directly on some one of them. Care should also be
taken not to introduce too many ideas or propositions.
The ends of speaking are much better served, and the
results much greater, if the mind of an audience is not
overtaxed. The After-dinner Address. — That there is a
great deal of after-dinner speaking no one can profit
ably undertake to deny; but that there is much after-
dinner oratory is far from certain. The difference
between the two is that between a good play and a
bad burlesque. As it is commonly practiced, after-
dinner speaking is inane, useless, and frequently
degrading. The greatest reputation for skill in the
art seems to go to the man who can speak without
touching his toast for a sober moment, and who, with
most perfect incoherence, can join together a string of

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 41
stories. The inexplicable part of the custom is, too,
that no one enjoys it. The speakers, unless they be
thoroughly hardened offenders, lose the pleasure of the
dinner in anxiety; while most of the guests are insuf
ferably bored, both in the expectation and in the
endurance of the season of nonsense extending far
into the next morning. Fortunately, as the reputation
for wit is the most dangerous that any speaker can
have, few men of real ability are successful in
this line. Indeed, if we had nothing more than
the typical concoction of the famous after-dinner
speaker to consider, there would be no need of a para
graph on this subject here.
There is, however, a kind of after-dinner oratory
well worth serious treatment. Such orations (perhaps
they had better be termed speeches) are called forth
generally at occasions of two sorts — at dinners given
in honor of some distinguished foreign or national
guest, or at those which celebrate a notable event,
either of the past or of the present. Of speeches suit
able for occasions of the first kind not much need be
said. Elegance and affability of manner, courtesy,
and a nicely discriminating taste are more essential
to them than ideas. Though the range of topics
which may be introduced is wide, the chief purpose is
the pleasant felicitation of the stranger. Edward
Everett, who did nearly everything in demonstrative
oratory as well as other men have done special things,
has several addresses of this sort, well worth perusal
as models of graceful, cultivated speech.
The other — the anniversary occasion — is both more
common (the birthdays of Washington, Lincoln, and
Grant, and the 22d of December at once suggest them-

42 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
selves), and also requires remarks of more substance
and weight. For such occasions the speaker is some
times permitted to select the sentiment to which he
will respond, sometimes the choice is not left to him.
But, whichever way the subject comes, in the prepara
tion of his speech certain definite rules can be followed
to great advantage. As the address must be very
brief, ten minutes being none too short, only one or
two ideas are necessary; these, however, must be
original and striking. It is not an easy matter to find
something fresh in a subject already dredged by hun
dreds of men bent on the same quest; yet diligent
effort can usually discover, if not a new point, at least
a new way of looking at an old one. And this should
be made the theme of the speech.
Just as much, or even more care, must be spent in
the method of statement. The whole effort must be
as free and spontaneous as it possibly can be. Of
course this does not mean that there should be no
premeditation or preparation; the material for an
after-dinner speech should be worked over with as
much thoroughness as that for any other; but the
lucubration must not be evident. The opening sen
tences should take their form easily from the introduc
tory words of the toastmaster, or else they should con
tain some sprightly reference to the occasion; the
whole introduction, in fact, should be light and airy,
and even a tactful anecdote may be made to serve as
a sop to the inveterate custom of story-telling. But
not much time can thus be spent. As soon as practi
cable the speaker must come to the purpose of his
speech, his point. This he should make clearly and
forcibly, with a few carefully chosen illustrations and

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 43
bits of evidence; and then he should sit down. Clear,
vigorous work, brought to a speedy conclusion, is the
siiiniiutin bonuin. Yet the speech must be brisk with
out being hurried; forceful without being aggressive.
The speaker must not forget that his purpose is to
please rather than to proselytize, and that charm of
manner and felicity of phrase are quite as necessary as
the compelling idea.
After-dinner speaking has always been popular in
this country, and from anything one can see now, is
likely to continue to be. Although, as it is commonly
meted out, it is intolerably silly, it does, sometimes,
offer a chance to say things of the utmost value. The
speech printed in this volume is a striking example.
So, as long as the opportunities of the orator are so
few as they are now, and so long as the people who are
compelled to go to dinners do not rise in their might,
there seems little sense in anyone's wasting strength
in denouncing the custom.

VI. PULPIT oratory.
Of the various forms of oratory which we have to
consider, the last is that of the pulpit, the oratory of
the Christian Church. Unlike any of the foregoing
divisions, pulpit oratory rests on no classic models, and
is the subject of no ancient treatises; but its history is
studded with great names and it has a literature both
brilliant and voluminous. Beginning with Christ
ianity, the pulpit has been the chief means by which
the dogma of the Church has been propagated and
disseminated throughout the world. Reckoning, too,

44 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
simply by the amount of attention paid to it both by
speakers and by audiences, this is probably the most
important of the forms of public speaking practiced
to-day. The history of pulpit oratory begins with the apos
tles, the greatest of whom, in this as in other respects,
was undoubtedly St. Paul. Then follow the Greek
and Roman patristic orators, among them Augustine
and Chrysostom, all in all, perhaps, the most gifted
body of men that the Church has produced. During
the Middle Ages, when all learning was in abeyance
except that nurtured by ecclesiastical bodies, the pul
pit alone kept alive the oratorical culture of the past.
Later, in the same period, stand out the preachers of
the Crusades, who, for the mighty torrent which they
set in motion, deserve to be accounted among the
very highest masters of persuasive eloquence of all
times. The Reformation is another great event of his
tory which may safely be ascribed to the influence of
the pulpit; Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, Latimer, John
Knox, accomplished what they did chiefly through the
medium of spoken words. In modern times, the
French prelates have been possibly the most famous;
although in our own country and in Great Britain the
sermon has always been much cultivated, and, as has
been said, is perhaps the most popular form of public
speech now engaged in.
When we pause to consider of what institution
pulpit oratory is the exponent, and its place in that
institution, this history does not seem any more re
markable than might be expected. After govern
ment itself, no factor in human affairs is so impor
tant as the Church, none concerns so many people in

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 45
SO essential a way; and in the Church more prominent
than any other feature is the sermon. The sermon is
the chief means for promulgating the faith; the sub
stantial reason why men assemble each Sunday; the
nucleus around which all other worship converges.
Cause therefore exists why the sermon should have
been so diligently studied in the past, and why preach
ing should have been so effective in history. In
no other profession is theie so much real incentive to
excel in oratory as in the ministry. A man may be
come a statesman without being an orator, a lawyer
without being an advocate; but he cannot well be a
successful minister without being a preacher.
There are, furthermore, certain great advantages
which the pulpit orator has over other speakers. The
themes which he treats are, for the audience he ad
dresses, paramount to any other; they deal not with
aesthetic appreciation, or with earthly rights, but with
the most momentous questions of human conduct and
a future life. The building in which he speaks is espe
cially adapted for the purpose for which it is used. In
a material way the acoustics and the seating arrange
ments are as nearly perfect as they can be made; no
inclement weather or ill-lighted auditorium can lessen
the effect of the discourse. In a higher sense, the
stained windows, the music, the decorations of the
chancel add spirituality and reverence to the scene.
In addition to this, the preacher knows just when, un
der what circumstances, and to whom he will make his
address. No one can take his time or interrupt him,
and nothing can happen to vex or make impatient his
congregation. In short, nearly every condition which
makes up two of the three essentials of oratory — the

46 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
subject and the occasion — the pulpit orator has at his
command. The fact is therefore inexplicable to the student of
public speaking why sermons are usually so bad as
they are. Few, however, who have taken the trouble
to observe with much thoroughness will deny that
such is the case; that sermons are in general bad.
Sunday after Sunday congregations listen to thought
less, structureless, carelessly composed discourses
which would be tolerated by no other audiences in the
universe. Nor is reference here made to the preach
ing of clergymen in the smaller towns. The truth is
that in no other profession does so little discrepancy
exist between the ability of the better and the less-
known men, as in the ministry, and that one is almost
as likely to hear a well-wrought sermon in a small
town as in Boston, New York, or Chicago. It is to
the ministers who hold the important charges, who
preach to the most cultivated people, that the stric
ture applies with the greatest force. These men
standing at the head, the historic successors of Paul
and Gregory, of Athanasius and Chrysostom, of Peter
and Bernard, in an age when skepticism is so fast
multiplying as to provoke the most powerful and im
passioned utterance, cause by their weekly homilies
hardly a ripple in the great tide of the best human
thought. One answer in explanation of this condition is often
made and is not without some pertinency: that a
clergyman in endeavoring to prepare each week two
sermons, and sometimes more, undertakes what no
other speaker would think of attempting. Granting
the assistance to be derived from commentaries, from

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 47
a familiar subject, and from a fund of old material,
this is an almost superhuman task. Very few men in
deed — even those with the greatest fecundity of
thought — can make ideas worth listening to so rapidly;
few, given all their matter, can arrange and digest it
in so short a space as one week. What wonder is it
then, people say, that the preacher is dull and jejune;
how can he be expected, besides attending many meet
ings and making innumerable calls, to reflect long
enough to present something fresh and original each
Sunday? The retort is perfectly well taken ; and yet it does not
destroy the criticism that sermons are bad when, for
the importance of the cause and the dignity of the
Church, they ought to be good. Rather, the reply
should turn attention to the remedy which lies near at
hand. This remedy is undoubtedly in the general
recognition of the fact that one good sermon is of more
account than three poor ones ; and that a minister had
much better limit himself to a single effort each month
than to deliver half a dozen ill-conceived and badly
stated. For the other services, the advice may well be
adopted of Dr. Parker of London, who urged that
when two meetings were held on Sunday, at one of
them the sermon of some great pulpit orator of the
past should be read. Not only would the minister
thus gain opportunity to make his own work better,
but the minds of his congregation would, of necessity,
be broadened, refined, and illuminated, by hearing the
words of a great man, who otherwise would be quite
unknown to them.
Turning now to speak more specifically of the faults
in sermons, we may say that, in general, there are three

48 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
which stand out more prominently than others : inco
herent structure, lack of adaptability to the audiences
to which they are addressed, and assertiveness.
The necessity and value of clear, well-defined struc
ture have been brought out above, more than once.
It has been insisted that all spoken discourses must be
built on a plan; that a few fundamental ideas must
underlie every speech, and that all that is said must
bear directly on them ; that because of the much greater
difficulty of comprehending, when it is spoken, what
would be easily intelligible in print, the plan, struc
ture, and arrangement of a speech must always be
easily discernible to the hearer. So much has been
stated and insisted upon before. There is, however,
because of the peculiar liability of sermons to err in
this way, good reason for once more returning to the
topic. A large proportion of the sermons that one
hears seem to be built according to the scheme once
propounded to the writer by a leading clergyman in
one of the largest cities of the country. He said that
his rule was to place before himself so many sheets of
paper; as many as would fill the allotted time when
delivered; and then to write until his paper was ex
hausted. Wherever the momentary thought or im
pulse directed such a man, there, without the slightest
regard to the relevancy of the idea, his hearers on the
following Sunday would be led; and the progress of
his composition might be indicated by a series of
scratch marks, darting hither and yon over vast areas,
without reason or logical connection. The chief ob
jection to such work is that it can make no lasting
impression. Each sentence, as it is uttered, is a uni
fied and comprehensible whole; but the total effect is

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 49
blurred and indistinct. There are no general divisions
in which the ideas may be stored away; no conception
of the theme as a whole; and hence no lasting effect.
Such is, however, possibly the most common fault of
sermons to-day.
The seriousness of the second difficulty, the lack of
adaptability of sermons to the audiences to which they
are addressed, has also been spoken of before, in not
ing, under the head of platform oratory, the impor
tance of choosing suitable topics for orations. In
stead of analyzing, as he should do in every case, the
real needs and the exact attitude of his audience, the
pulpit speaker frequently seems to give himself no
concern about the applicability of what he says. We
find sins denounced which do not remotely tempt a
single person in a congregation, while questions which
daily vex and perplex life are left untouched; or, as a
basis for a sermon, a point of view or a dogma is
assumed which by no means all are disposed to ad
mit without question. The result is that words so
carelessly directed make little impression; they fly
either above or below, but they do not hit the mark;
they carry no conviction. The minister is surprised
that his congregations go to sleep, or fumble their
watches and read hymns. But why should they not?
His comment does not touch their troubles and weak
nesses, so why should he be attended to? And thus,
in a great measure, the purpose of his teaching is lost.
The third fault, not so prominent as the other two,
but still well worth mentioning, is the tendency which
preachers have to make assertive, unfounded state
ments. The fact that no one can contradict or con
fute the pulpit orator is not an unmixed blessing; for

5° THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
it leads, unless much caution is observed, into care
lessness in the treatment of a subject. Constantly
most extraordinary asseverations are heard in the pul
pit for which no evidence is presented, and which,
therefore, produce no belief. To be sure one cannot
reasonably demand that such elaborate proof shall be
offered to a congregation as is given to a court of law;
yet when a man addresses intelligent people, either in
or outside a church, he has to remember that affirma
tions, beyond the special field in which he is an ex
pert, carry no substantial assent. Much better is it,
instead of asking an audience to accept unsupported
conclusions, to show the reasoning by which those
conclusions have been arrived at; and, when
thoughts and facts are cited on a point, to indicate the
value of the sources. Care of this sort in no way de
tracts from the dignity or authority of the Gospel;
but it places a sermon on the same ground with other
scholarly work, and gives it, in the minds of thought
ful persons, much more weight and importance.
Constructively, what the sermon should contain,
what the different parts are and their relation to each
other, the place of the text and its treatment — all these
topics, too vast and technical for discussion here, must
be left to special treatises on homiletics. But, before
turning to another part of our subject, it may possibly
be well to summarize here briefly the admirable rules
which Dr. Blair, who treats this division of oratory
more suggestively than any other rhetorical writer,
lays down in respect to the sermon. The first point
that he makes, — that a sermon should have unity, —
meaning by this " that there should be one main point
to which the whole strain of the sermon should refer,"

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. $1
has already been dwelt upon very fully. But Dr.
Blair's words are well worth adding. He says, " It
[the sermon] must not be a bundle of different sub
jects strung together, but one object must predominate
throughout. This rule is founded on what we call
experience, that the mind can fully attend only to one
capital object at a time. By dividing, you always
weaken the impression. Now this unity, without
which no sermon can either have much beauty or
much force, does not require that there should be no
divisions or separate heads in the discourse, or that
one single thought only should be, again and again,
turned up to the hearers in different lights. It is not
to be understood in so narrow a sense; it admits of
some variety; it admits of under parts and appen
dages, provided always that so much union and con
nection be observed, as to make the whole concur in
some one impression upon the mind."
The second point Blair urges is that sermons are
always the more striking and useful, the more pre
cise and particular is their subject. General subjects
are often chosen by young preachers as the most
showy, and the easiest to be handled, but, because they
lead almost inevitably into commonplaces, they are
not the most serviceable for producing the high
effects of preaching. " Attention," the writer de
clares, " is much more commanded by seizing some
particular view of a great subject, some single interest
ing topic, and directing to that point the whole force
of argument and eloquence. To recommend some
one grace or virtue, or to inveigh against a particular
vice, furnishes a subject not deficient in unity or pre
cision; but if we confine ourselves to that virtue or

52 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
vice as assuming a particular aspect, and consider it as
it appears in certain characters, or affects certain situa
tions in life, the subject becomes still more in
teresting." The third suggestion is that a preacher should
never study to say all that can be said upon a topic;
and the fourth, that, above all things, a sermon should
be interesting. No error is greater than the attempt
to cover in half an hour all the ideas which centuries
have associated with a subject. In place of this the
most useful and persuasive thoughts that a text sug
gests should be selected, and to these the discourse
should be devoted. Some things may be taken for
granted; and some must be touched upon lightly; but
if nothing that a subject may suggest is omitted, the
treatment is certain to be cursory and extremely
superficial. The point about interest, too, is excellently well
taken. " A dry sermon can never be a good one."
And the only way that this interest can be secured is
by observing the caution already made: that the ad
dress be adapted especially to the audience which must
listen to it. In this respect Dr. Blair observes that
" It will be of much advantage to keep always in
view the different ages, characters, and conditions
of men, and to accommodate directions and exhor
tations to these different classes of hearers. When
ever you bring forth what a man feels to touch
his own character, or to suit his own circum
stances, you are sure of interesting him." He
also advises with much astuteness that a preacher
should place himself in the situation of a serious
hearer. " Let him suppose the subject addressed to

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 53
himself: let him consider what views of it would strike
him most; what arguments would be most likely to
persuade him; what parts of it would dwell most on
his mind. Let these be employed as his principal
materials; and in these it is most likely that his genius
will assert itself with the greatest vigor." All these
suggestions are admirably well taken; and, because
of the experience of the writer, who was a gifted ora
tor and celebrated preacher as well as a rhetorician,
they deserve more than ordinary attention. No pulpit
speaker can long afford to neglect them, for they are
based on the inherent, elemental principles which un
derlie all spoken discourse. IL
VII. THE DIVISIONS OF THE ORATION.
Thus far we have been considering the four differ
ent forms of oratory which in the past have been most
conspicuous. Next we must turn to another phase of
the subject, we must examine the oration itself. And
the first topic to which we must give some attention
is an enumeration of the parts into which an oration
may be divided, a question upon which by no means
all writers have been agreed. Common tradition has
it that the first person to make the analysis of a speech
was Corax, the Sicilian rhetorician, who framed four
divisions: introduction, narration, proof, and conclu
sion. Aristotle, a number of years later, reaches prac
tically the same result, although his designation is
slightly different; he, also, has four divisions: ex
ordium, exposition, proof, and peroration. The first

54 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
important deviation from this plan is made by Cicero,
who adds two new divisions, thus making in all six:
introduction, narration, proposition, proof, refutation,
and conclusion. Quintilian, inasmuch as he puts
the proposition under the narration, again alters this;
and modern writers have been equally unable to ac
cept implicitly any of the arrangements.
In reality, it must be said, the plan adopted makes
very little difference. Aristotle includes everything
that is essential in his four parts; and to place the
proposition under a separate head, and to distinguish
between direct and indirect proof by calling one con
firmation and the other confutation, is simply to re
fine more subtilely, and not to add anything new. A
much more pertinent objection is that some of these
divisions are not adapted to modern conditions. It is
absurd to call the body of the oration the proof when
(as in the case of a sermon or a eulogy) it may contain
no trace of argument; and to designate any part as the
proposition is anachronistic, for now most orations
have no proposition. Such terms as these are a relic
of the time when a majority of speeches were argu
ments, when nearly all oratory worth writing about
was forensic. But to-day, when pulpit oratory has
arisen and demonstrative oratory has so much promi
nence, such divisions are very misleading.
We should, then, either omit or find some fresh
designation for at least two of the divisions of the an
cient rhetoricians. The latter is the better course.
In place of proof, the body of the oration can be called
the discussion; and in place of proposition, the word
which fills a similar office for exposition, partition,
may be adopted. The other three divisions as named

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 55
by Cicero are serviceable and can be retained. We
shall then have five parts in the oration: (i) introduc
tion, (2) narration, (3) partition, (4) discussion, (5)
conclusion. Not all of these parts will be found in
every public address; usually no more than three — the
introduction, the discussion, and the conclusion; but
the five represent the completest structure, and each
therefore will be the subject of some comment in what
follows. VIII. THE INTRODUCTION.
The introduction, the beginning, is always an ex
tremely important part of any discourse, whether it be
spoken or written. We all know how many magazine
articles are cast aside after the opening paragraphs
have been glanced through, and how many speeches
cease to command attention after the first five minutes.
At the outset of a discourse, an audience, fresh and
eager, gives more unsought attention, and is also in a
more critical mood, than at any other time; the jar
ring phrase or the slightly ungraceful gesture will
then be noticed which, in the thrill of the discussion
proper, would pass unremarked. Hence, in many
cases, if an orator is to win a hearing for his cause at
all, it must be at the beginning. Once let an audi
ence conclude that an address is to be dry and un
profitable and relax their interest, and only with the
greatest exertion can they be recalled; but let that
interest be gained at the start, and the rest is likely to
be fair sailing.
Cicero stated very succinctly the purpose of the
introduction when he said that it should " pre
pare the minds of the audience for a favorable recep-

56 2 HE THEORY OF ORATORY.
tion of what follows." Analyzing this dictum a little
further, we may add that the minds of an audience are
generally of one of two complexions ; either they are
hostile, in which case they must be made tractable, or
they are inert and inattentive, and must be interested;
and hence the function of the introduction to a dis
course is usually either to placate or to interest. The
first of these two problems is much the more difficult;
to win the favor of a bickering crowd being perhaps
the highest evidence of oratorical art. But for the
accomplishment of this end, since so much depends on
the color and temperament of each body of hearers, no
very precise rules can be laid down. Possibly the
most common method employed is where the speaker
attempts at the outset to establish some bond of sym
pathy between himself and those before him. On the
question in hand, to be sure, some difference of
opinion exists, but on many other points the two are
united; why not, then, bear with a brief statement of
the present topic? Or he may insist that he and his
audience are, in reality, not so far apart after all, they
happen to look at the question in only a little different
perspective; or he may appeal to their fair-mindedness
to hear both sides before coming to a definite conclu
sion; or he may show that their abiding interest lies
with him, not with his opponent, whom they momen
tarily follow. All such methods as these, and many
more drawn from the nature of the cause, lie at the
command of the speaker, by which he may insinuate
himself into favor. Another way, somewhat less easy
of accomplishment, is also open : for the orator to con
ciliate through some reference to himself, his history,
or his vocation. The difficulty in such cases lies of

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 57
course in handling delicately and inoffensively the
subject of one's self; although, when common senti
ment, ancestry, training, predilection, or experience,
actually exist, no great harm can come from stating
the facts modestly and adroitly. As examples of in
troductions for hostile audiences, none show more
insight than those which preface the addresses made
by Henry Ward Beecher in England in 1863.
Not often, however, must a speaker nowadays ad
dress those positively inimical to him; much more
frequently his sole duty is to grapple and overcome
that vast inertia which every audience presents. Few
assemblies are so intent on a subject that they need no
word of stimulus to prod their interest and demon
strate to them why they should pay careful heed to the
discussion. This, then, is a second purpose of the
introduction — to win attention; and it is also secured
from two sources: from some tactful reference to the
speaker's knowledge of the subject and his association
with it, or from the subject itself; the latter again fur
nishing a greater variety of themes. Now, a subject
may be interesting in itself for three reasons: because
of its inherent importance, because of the amount of
discussion it has aroused, or because of some event or
circumstance v.ith v/hich it is identified. In framing
any introduction, all three or only a single one of these
ideas may be touched upon, according to the time or
place of thr oration. An address on civil service re
form, for instance, delivered shortly after a new admin
istration had come into power, might get its chief
interest from current events; two years later, the in
herent importance of the subject might more appro
priately form the burden of the introduction.

58 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
But whenever possible, it may be said, the imme
diate occasion, the place, the words of a preceding
speaker, probably form the best sort of introduction
to an address. The reason for this is that such ideas
make the opening, and indeed the whole speech,
fresher and more spontaneous — an end much to be
sought for. Quintilian gives expression to this
thought with singular felicity. He says, " There is
much attraction in an exordium which derives its sub
stance from the pleading of our opponent, for this rea
son, that it does not appear to have been composed at
home, but to be produced on the spot, and from the
suggestion of the subject; it increases the reputation
of the speaker for ability, from the facility which he
exhibits, and, from wearing the appearance of a plain
address, prompted by what has just been said, gains
him the confidence of his audience; insomuch that,
though the rest of his speech may be written and care
fully studied, the whole of it nevertheless seems almost
entirely extemporaneous, as it is evident that its com
mencement received no preparation at all." Only in
a less degree is this true when the idea of the opening
paragraphs is taken from the scene, the occasion, or
the circumstance, which call forth the effort; when the
speaker expresses the thoughts inarticulate in other
minds. As a usual thing the introduction should be so
striking and beautiful as to exact the attention of even
the most reluctant. Such was the plan of Daniel
Webster, whose exordiums are among the choicest
gems of his oratory. And yet there is a caution to be
uttered against making the opening so grand and im
pressive that the rest of the speech seems anti-climac-

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 59
tic. No higher or loftier note should be sounded than
can be sustained in other parts, particularly at the end;
and, in addition, nothing should be admitted that is
artificial or bombastic. Strength and impressiveness
should be sought for; but simple, natural strength,
rather than high-flown declamation. Smoothness,
ease, and grace must also be cultivated, for nowhere,
as has been observed, does halting, nervous ineffect
iveness count more to the ill, than when the audience
is fresh to notice and to criticise. No mention of the
difficulties the speaker has labored under, or his lack
of preparation, should ever be admitted: no apology
for a poor performance is tolerable. If a speaker
takes the floor, his duty is to do the best he can; not to
make his effort worse by tedious, obvious remarks in
exculpation. Not every address requires a formal introduction.
Particularly is this the case in deliberative oratory,
when a speech is delivered in the course of an ex
tended debate. Then, in all probability, all that is
needed is a few sentences which shall join the speech
to the one that preceded it. The importance of the
discussion, its bearing, and like topics have doubtless
been touched upon by previous speakers. The same
IS also true at times in forensic oratory, when the
plea of one advocate follows that of a colleague or an
opponent. Even in these cases, however, a brief
word or two is better indulged in before plunging into
the argument proper, since the speech is thus given
a certain form, a completeness, which otherwise will
be lacking. Beyond such a rule, the length of an in
troduction can never be determined except for each
occasion as it arises. The usual suggestion made by

6o THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
writers is that the introduction should be short and to
the point; but short may mean, in some instances,
several pages. The length, as in any work of art,
should be in proportion to the structure; it should be
long enough to accomplish the wished-for end, and
no longer; but whether this is ten or one thousand
words, depends entirely upon conditions.
IX. THE NARRATION.
The narration normally follows the introduction,
and states the facts necessary for an intelligent and
satisfactory understanding of the question. As, how
ever, an exposition of facts is not required in the
treatment of all subjects, the narration is not an essen
tial part of every discourse. Its use is, indeed, chiefly
limited to the field of deliberative, pulpit, and forensic
oratory; although it is occasionally employed in dem
onstrative oratory as well.
Although deliberative oratory deals almost entirely
with questions of future expediency, so frequently does
the settlement of such questions depend on conditions
in the past that the narration is usually an important
element of orations of this type. Certain facts and
conditions of the past must be made known before
any adequate discussion in regard to the future can
be carried on. If, for example, appropriations are de
sired for an increase of coast defenses, those appealed
to must be told what the present defenses are, when
they were built, how much they cost, their condition,
whether they are of an approved type. They also
must know, approximately, what could be accom
plished for the amount of money asked for; what guns

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 6i
could be purchased, where they could be placed, and
how far they would go toward making the seaboard
secure. Only after these facts, which properly be
long to the narration, have been stated, can the gen
eral proposition be argued. The student, recalling
how large a proportion such questions form of all
that come before a legislative body, will at once recog
nize the place and importance of the narration in
deliberative oratory.
In pulpit orator}^ the function of the narration is
usually to make clear the meaning of the text, or to
elucidate in any other way points which the preacher
may regard as essential to a complete comprehension
of the body of his sermon. Often in pulpit oratory the
narration is called the exposition. In dealing with a
subject drawn from biblical history, the topography
of the country may have to be explained; or the cir
cumstances recalled under which the words of a text
were spoken; or, in an exegetical sermon, some
account of the interpretations of the most learned
scholars given; and these offices will usually be per
formed in the narration. Still, not in all sermons, any
more than in all deliberative speeches, is a formal nar
ration necessary. A preacher may proceed to his
divisions or to the first main head of his discourse at
once, without explanation or amplification, the mean
ing of his text being perfectly clear, and the special
theme requiring no preliminary exposition.
In forensic oratory, except when a speaker follows a
colleague or an opponent who has related the essential
facts, the narration always has great importance. The
reason for this is manifest enough. Forensic oratory
has to do exclusively with contentions arising in the

62 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
past; and, as is evident, before any discussion is possi
ble as to the merits of a dispute relating to the past,
the events leading up to it must be clearly known.
Hence, in the trial of nearly all cases, much time is
devoted to the examination of witnesses and the dis
covery of facts, to which both judge and jury pay close
attention. But, because of this, because when the
time for making the pleas comes the great mass of
material, which in a wholly comprehensive scheme
would be included in the narration, is already known,
the statement of facts in a legal argument may occupy
no more space than in any other speech. Usually
all that the advocate will attempt is to revive in the
minds of the court what he regards as the salient fea
tures of the evidence, taking for granted that the more
adventitious elements have been sufficiently well re
membered. Occasionally, however, the whole story
of the crime or fraud will be recited, an effort being
made to present the circumstances truthfully but in
such a way as inevitably to throw weight to one side
or the other of the contest. When the last expedient
is adopted, great skill may be shown in selecting the
proper facts to be introduced, and in presenting them
in their logical relations; and the fullest opportunity
is given for graphic, persuasive statement. The im
memorial example in ancient literature of a narration
of this kind is in Cicero's oration for Milo, and in
modern literature, Webster's argument in the trial of
Knapp. In demonstrative oratory any extended narration is
scarcely ever needed; the nature of the subjects which
ordinarily engage the demonstrative orator does not
demand it. To be sure, it is sometimes said that the

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 63
biographical sketch in a eulogy should be treated as
part of the narration; but the reasoning upon which
such an opinion is based is purely sophistical. The
narrative of the life in a biographical eulogy is a dis
tinct part of the discussion; it does not have the func
tion of the narration in an expository discourse, which
is to clear the path for what follows. The same is
true of the commemorative address, which deals
chiefly with incidents; the recounting of the events
belongs to the discussion, not to the narration. Al
though, of course, when incidents are recalled solely
for the purpose of rendering intelligible an exposition
which follows, they belong to the narration.
From what has now been said the student may have
observed on his own account that, apart from its use in
forensic speeches, the chief use of the narration is that
of definition. When, to illustrate, the speaker makes
clear, for the purpose of debate, the present condition
of coast defenses, he is doing no more than defining
that term of the proposition; when he describes the
improvements desired, he defines the word " in
creased"; and nearly always in deliberative, pulpit,
and demonstrative oratory does this rule hold, that
the definition of the terms in a broad sense will include
about all the narration necessary. Certain it is that
the best guide to follow in determining what a narra
tion should contain is to take up separately each term
of the proposition or subject, and to ask whether any
thing about it requires explanation. Does the audi
ence understand not only the usual interpretation, but
the one to be maintained in this precise discourse? If
not, then the special meaning should be expounded.
It has been before remarked that an audience should

64 ?'//£¦ THEORY OF ORATORY.
never be left in the slightest doubt as to just what a
speaker wishes to convey; and the place where this
explanation can generally best be made is in the
narration. The last rule, however, is not always to be accepted;
sometimes the narration does not follow the introduc
tion; instead of being thus introduced it is scattered
throughout the discourse. Instances where this
method is adopted are found in speeches of all kinds.
In a sermon, for example, the speaker may consider
separately the several phrases of his text, explaining
and commenting on each fully before passing to the
next. Here, then, the narration will be made in three
or four different places. The same may occur in de
liberative oratory when it is proposed to change an
existing institution for a new one; the present insti
tution may be fully brought out and enlarged upon
before anything is said about the scheme which is to
supersede it. That is, one half of the narration, the
exposition of the existing system, would be placed after
the introduction; one half, the exposition of the pro
posed system, would be placed in the middle of the
discussion. There is, furthermore, in questions of the
kind just spoken of, still another reason why the narra
tion might be placed elsewhere than at the beginning.
In such questions certain facts are likely to be equally
essential both as narration and as argument. The
definition of an existing system might also include a
statement of asserted evils, because of which a change
is to be made; such a statement being justified in the
narration as an exposition of present conditions. But
these same facts might likewise be a very important
part of the argument in favor of the scheme proposed.

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 65
Hence the question may arise where such facts can
best be placed; should they be put after the introduc
tion, or passed by until the discussion proper has been
reached? The answer to this, as to other similar ques
tions, can never be made absolutely. There are un
doubtedly a great many cases in which at least part
of the narration had better be reserved until the time
to make use of it in the discussion arrives; but more
often, we may say, the beginning of the address is the
place for it. Here, to be sure, it may stand out with
unfortunate prominence, and unless dexterously
handled, make the work a bit mechanical ; but then the
likelihood that any part of the speech will not be com
prehended is as far as possible avoided.
The three rhetorical qualities which have always
been regarded as essential in a narration are clearness,
conciseness, and truthfulness. The facts must be
placed before an audience with absolute lucidity; their
relation and bearing on the general question made
perfectly evident. So far, too, as is consistent with
clearness, conciseness must be aimed for. The
speaker must not forget that the narration is really a
preliminary part and must not occupy the minds of his
audience longer than is necessary. Time spent here,
in so far as additional attention is demanded, may
militate against the success of what follows. Tech
nically less evident, perhaps, at first glance, but equally
important, is the last stipulation of truthfulness and
probability. In the narration the speaker is stating
facts which all must agree to. While exaggeration
and over-insistence may be permitted in the profes
sedly biased argument, in the narration these qualities
have no place at all. Not only, too, should the facts

66 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
be accurate, but they should be incontrovertible; for
to provoke discussion on questions of definition is to
drive the argument entirely out of its proper channel.
Indeed, one of the most skillful of all methods of argu
mentation is to state the circumstances so impartially
that they will be as acceptable for one side as for the
other. The value of such a method is in conciliation.
Nothing will more quickly win a judge from the atti
tude of opposition in which he instinctively places him
self when a speaker, avowedly an advocate, begins,
than an eminently fair and unbiased exposition.
In not a great many instances does the narration
furnish much chance for play upon the emotions; con
ciseness and clearness, as has been remarked, rather
than elegance or beauty are the important ends. The
exception to this is where the facts on which an argu
ment is based are, in themselves, exceedingly dra
matic and vivid, and where their recital in a dramatic
way will clearly add force to the whole presentation.
Then the imagination may be let loose and all the
arts of splendid rhetoric called into play. But such
instances, outside the field of forensic oratory, are not
many; generally the narration is a subdued though in
cisive part of the oration, vigorous perhaps, but not
necessarily impassioned. X. THE PARTITION.
The partition, the purpose of which is to indicate the
method of treatment to be adopted in a discourse, is
another division not to be found in all orations. In
classic oratory, and, in spite of the criticisms heaped
upon it by so influential a writer as the Archbishop of

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 67
Cambray, in much modern oratory a partition of some
sort is usually to be noted. But in the last half cen
tury, owing no doubt to the wholesome trend toward
simplicity and inartificiality in all writing and speak
ing, its use has been much less general; and to-day it
is rarely to be observed even in the work of the most
careful speakers.
The advantages and disadvantages of a partition,
and the characteristics of a good one, are the impor
tant things to be spoken of here; although, before do
ing so, it may be well to show a little more clearly just
what a partition is, first in narrative and expository
addresses, and second in arguments; for the purpose
is scarcely the same in each.
In expository discourses, — that is, in demonstrative
and in the burden of pulpit oratory, — the partition is
an enumeration of the various points a speaker wishes
to treat of. It is introduced after the preliminary ex
planations have been made and just before the discus
sion proper begins. The points are most frequently
stated clearly and intelligibly in a single paragraph,
as is the case in the following example taken from the
oration on the Law of Human Progress by Charles
Sumner (who, as is rather interesting to note, is the
last important orator to use a partition with any regu
larity). After a few preliminary pages Sumner says:
" The subject is vast as it is interesting and impor
tant. It might well occupy a volume, rather than a
brief discourse. In unfolding it, I shall speak first of
the History of the Law, as seen in its origin, gradual
development, and recognition, — and next of its charac
ter, conditions, and limitations, with the duties it en
joins and the encouragement it affords."

68 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
This is a partition of two heads, indicating the gen
eral direction which the discourse will take, and of
some minor points which show how the chief divisions
will be handled. Except, however, as they remove in
a certain way the baldness which would arise from a
plain statement of the two main heads, the subheads,
since they are likely soon to be forgotten, have no
great value and could be omitted Vv'ithout disturbing
the structure of the oration. What is more important
to note about this kind of partition is that it indicates
a perfectly arbitrary method of treatment. The orator,
had he chosen, might have touched the subject from
half a dozen other, and different, points of view. For
reasons known only to himself he selected the one
phrased in this excerpt, and to this he directed the
attention of his hearers.
In forensic speeches this is not the case. The
partition no longer shows how the speaker, con
trolled only by taste, and certain exigencies of the
occasion, will take up his topic; it is the statement
of the necessary and inevitable points which, if
proved, will prove the question. The difference is
very great. In an expository address the speaker has
a wide latitude of treatment permitted him; his di
visions may not be at all exhaustive, that is, without
impairing the weight or agreeableness of his discourse,
he may cover no more than a corner of his subject;
and his audience will, in all probability, pay very
slight attention either to the exactness or scientific-
ness of his method, so long as it is not absolutely bad.
But not so in argument. In an argument a speaker is
confined within very rigid lines; his divisions must
completely and conclusively cover his question; and,

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 69
unless his audience and his opponent accept his par
tition as the proper and logical one, he need go no
further, for what he says will be fruitless. In the
one case the division is taken arbitrarily and some
what casually, in the other logically and inevitably;
this is the difference between the partition of an ex
position and the partition of an argument.
Now, just how in the last instance, in the argu
ment, the speaker shall proceed to get the divisions,
or, as they may more technically be called, the issues
of his question, is worth}' of a word of explanation.
Under the head of forensic oratory the statement was
made that the first step in preparing any argument is
to make an analysis of the question in order to dis
cover the chief, the essential, points in it. By such an
analysis, the speaker will find that both the affirmative
and negative sides will agree upon certain facts, which
may at once be excluded from any consideration; and
he will also learn that there are certain other facts
which, though usually associated with the question,
have no real bearing upon it, and which may also be
excluded by simply showing that they are extraneous.
The result is that by this process the question can be
nrrrowed down to two or three or perhaps more issues
which will form the divisions of the oration, and about
which all the discussion will center. Both sides ad
mitting these issues, according to the way they are
proved, the verdict will go.
The following passage, taken from a speech of Wen
dell Phillips, in favor of the abolition of capital punish
ment, is an excellent illustration of the method of
finding the issues by exclusion and argument, and
incidentally of the difference between partition in

7o THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
argumentation and partition in exposition. The
speaker says:
" In the first place, Mr. Chairman, what is the ob
ject of all punishment, in a civil community? Of
course, it is not to revenge any act committed. The
idea of revenge is to be separated from the idea of
punishment, when we speak of capital punishment,
or any other punishment, in civil society. Neither
can it be said that punishment is the penalty of sin,
properly speaking; that is, sin in the eye of God, where
an individual — a conscious, responsible individual —
commits a wrong act with a wrong motive. Society
has nothing to do with motive; society punishes acts.
Strictly speaking, therefore, the word punishment
ought never to be used in this connection. Punish
ment belongs only to that Being who can fathom the
heart and find out motives.
" Now, there are two objects that society has in in
flicting penalties — that is the proper word, not ' pun
ishment.' According to Lord Brougham, in his
letter to Lord Lyndhurst on this very topic, these
objects are — first, to prevent the individual offender
from ever repeating his offense; and second, to deter
others from imitating his offense. The primary ob
ject of all government is protection, — protection to
persons and property. That protection is to be
gained in two ways, — by taking the individual mur
derer, or the individual thief, and by putting him to
death, or shutting him up, to prevent his recommitting
his offense; and by so arranging the penalty on that
man as to deter others from imitating his example.
" Well, we come to the penalty of the gallows, — the
taking away of life. In the first place, — to look at it

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 7'
abstractly, — is it necessary in order to restrain the
murderer, or to deter others from imitating him? It
manifestly is not necessary to restrain the murderer;
because society is now so settled in its arrangements,
so perfectly stereotyped in its shape and form, that
you can put a man between four walls and keep him
there his whole life. No man will pretend before this
committee that that part of the object of penalty which
would prevent the man from repeating his offense
obliges you to take his life. You can shut him up
just as securely in a prison as in a grave. It is not
necessary, then, to restrain the criminal; nobody pre
tends it.
" Is it necessary for the simple purpose of deterring
others from like offenses? Will the taking of the
man's life deter others from following in his steps?
That is the only question that remains."
Here the reader will have observed how the parti
tion, instead of being taken arbitrarily, is, throughout,
a piece of logical exclusion. First the speaker shows
that two ideas, those of revenge and punishment,
sometimes associated with the topic, are really extra
neous, and should have no place. On the contrary,
the only two objects for which penalties are given are,
to prevent the individual offender from repeating his
offense, and to deter others; and, furthermore, there
are only two ways by which these ends can be accom
plished — by death and by imprisonment. Taking up
the first, it is evident that death is not necessary to pre
vent repetition by the present offender; the question
is, therefore, is it necessary to deter others? The flaw
in reasoning here will probably be observed by even
the inexpert dialectician; and no one would be likely

72 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
to affirm that enough evidence is introduced in sup
port of the different propositions. Nevertheless the
example is a thoroughly good one for the present pur
pose. It illustrates the care which must be taken with
the partition in argumentation as opposed to exposi
tion. In exposition the speaker might have said that
he proposed to treat the subject from the point of view
of the influence of the death penalty in preventing
others from committing crimes; and all the evidence
brought out in the present speech might have been
used. But the question would not have been proved.
Tlie audience would not have seen that by proving
this one point, the entire contention of the affirmative
was substantiated. This is why the logical partition is
necessary in argument. One must show that the
points that one discusses are the points, and the only
points, on which the question turns. In other words
one must frequently prove what one is to prove.
Thus far we have considered the partition as enter
ing into and forming a distinct and essential part of
every spoken discourse. Such, however, as has al
ready been hinted, is not always the case. Although
no discourse ever ought to be composed or spoken
v» ithout a rigid and definite partition existing in the
speaker's mind, there are many reasons, some of them
of a good deal of v/eight, why the divisions should not
be formally stated and made known to the audience.
In the first place, there are certain occasions when the
speaker wishes wholly to conceal the object of his dis
course, and when to make a partition would be abso
lutely fatal; the funeral oration of Antony in Julius
Cccsar is the classic example of this. It is, further
more, true that a partition tends to make an address

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 73
stiff and ay.kward, to take away the appearance of
spontaneity, and in some degree to qualify and miti
gate the effect of appeals to the passions. A speech
may be made too cut and dried; the audience, knowing
all that is coming, and having no goad of expectancy
to keep their interest aroused, may wait for one divi
sion to be completed and another entered upon as the
weary traveler watches for the milestones in a tedi
ous journey. All this is unquestionably true; and in
these days when the chief characteristic of speaking
both as regards matter and manner is sincerity and
naturalness, the tendency is more and more to omit
partitions. And yet, there is much, rather more in fact, to be
said on the opposite side. Both Cicero and Quin
tilian, and most rhetorical writers, have strongly urged
the value of the statement of the divisions as an im
mense assistance not only to the listener but to the
speaker. V/hen the speaker would, as it were, wan
der, on the one hand, into flowery fields, or, on the
other, into arid sands of extraneous excursions, the
divisions are likely to keep him in the proper path;
they will act as bits checking him when he would de
part from his thoughtfully conceived, previously
wrought structure. To the listener, also, they are
often of incalculable service. No matter how price
less the treasures of a museum may be, unless they are
properly catalogued and placarded, although they may
attract a passing glance, they can make no very defi
nite or lasting impression on the mind of a visitor.
So, the divisions show to the audience exactly where
the speaker is, what he intends to do, and how he will
do it. They make the address clear and easily appre-

74 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
hended; and clearness is the first requisite of all writ
ing and speaking. Particularly, therefore, when the
object of a speech is to give important information,
that is, in deliberative or forensic oratory, a formal
partition should in most cases be announced; and it
should always be announced when there is any reason
to believe that the method adopted will not otherwise
be readily comprehended.
The characteristics of a good partition are that the
divisions shall be few, brief, intelligible, and exclu
sive; and, in argument, in addition to these, exhaustive
and conclusive. The best number of divisions for the
ordinary discourse is, perhaps, three, although as
many as five are permissible; and sometimes in foren
sic speeches, the whole question can be made to turn
on a single point, which is very desirable. More than
five divisions are likely to bewilder an audience; they
cannot be easily grasped as a whole or retained in the
mind. Furthermore, each division should be brief
and concise, occupying not more than a line or two;
and this again because a short, terse statement is much
more easily fastened upon than one longer and more
involved. Of course the divisions must be set forth
simply, lucidly, and intelligibly. By exclusive is
meant that there shall be no overlapping, a fault that
is not uncommon. For instance, it would be wrong to
divide a question into three such heads as : the theoreti
cal side, the practical side, the situation in New York
State; for the last is included in the other two. To
make such a division as wisdom, expediency, history,
and justice is also faulty, for these terms are not logi
cally correlative. In argument, as has already been
said, exhaustiveness and conclusiveness are the prime

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 75
requisites of a partition. The question must not only
be covered, but covered in such a way as to permit of
neither dissent nor controversy.
In conclusion, then, we may say that the partition
is often a very serviceable part of an oration, and, on
theoretical grounds at least, may always be defended.
But, in practice, the custom, we must acknowledge, is
largely to do away with it, and by its omission to make
the structure of an oration as little mechanical as pos
sible. The question which each speaker must deter
mine for himself is whether the result thus secured is
adequate compensation for the clearness which is
likely to be sacrificed. XI. THE DISCUSSION.
Although each of the foregoing divisions — the in
troduction, the narration, and the partition^has
been treated with some fullness, the writer has been
careful to point out that none of them is absolutely
essential to any discourse; an introduction is, indeed,
usually to be found; the other parts are rare. But in
the case of the discussion, the division now before us,
the reverse of this is true; the discussion is an essen
tial part ; in fact it is the only essential part in an ora
tion. Everything that precedes this is explication and
preparation; here we enter upon the real purpose and
object of the speaker.
Ancient rhetoricians were much more successful
than moderns have been in indicating what the discus
sion should contain. No one, nowadays, seriously
pretends to give rules for the contents of speeches; it
is generally recognized that however much can be

76 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
done in perfecting form, that is, the method of ar
ranging ideas, nothing very valuable can be said by
anyone as to how these ideas shall be procured.
The ancients, however, were of an opinion much to the
contrary. Their treatises not only gave rules for the
construction, but for the discovery of the material
which an address should contain. Such rules, which
are said to have been the invention of Greek sophists,
were called " topics," and were divided into two
classes, internal and external, the former being de
rived from the immediate subject, the latter from an
terior sources. Besides the general topics, there were
topics peculiar to the different forms of oratory; as,
in deliberative oratory, special rules were given for
advocating or condemning causes of certain kinds;
and in demonstrative oratory, schemes showing how
a person or thing might be praised or censured. Of
course these topics deserve all the scorn that has been
cast upon them by latter-day writers; ideas cannot be
made to order; and yet this whole subject, so fully
treated by Cicero, is full of interest, as showing the
thought and attention that were once devoted to the
science of speech-making.
W' hat little thei e is of real value to be said under the
head of the discussion may be stated, as was done
under partition, first with reference to the expository,
and second with reference to the argumentative ad
dress. In touching both of these forms one of the
chief points to be noticed is the method of arranging
the ideas of a speech. In an expository oration the
ordinary plan for securing climax is followed: the de
velopment is from the weaker to the stronger, from
the less to the more intense. Beginning smoothly

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 77
and easily, without extraordinary emphasis or gestic
ulation, the orator should gradually work up to the
moving portion of what he has to say. In a majority
of cases, too, more than one climax should be made;
there ought to be several summits, after the attain
ment of which the speaker returns quietly to the vales,
again to begin simply and easily a new division of
his work. It is, however, much more common to find
too many instead of too few climaxes ; or else to find
no climax at all, the address being placed on a high
key at the beginning, and maintained there through
out. At first, such a method may seem forcible and
convincing, but the impression does not last long; in
terest soon gives way to neglect; monotony is fol
lowed by inattention. Light and shade are among the
most essential qualities of an oration, but they are
qualities which few speakers, even those of experience,
have wholly mastered. The moderate use of the
strongest appeal following graceful, winning passages
of little intensity; the whole carefully modulated; the
climaxes skillfully worked up — these are the character
istics of the greatest orations. But too often in their
place we have a single appeal of uniform emphasis, or
else a series of explosions, weak and tiresome in their
frequency and in the \\ holesale lack of judgment and
feeling which they display.
It would, however, be manifestly unfair to infer
from this that appeals to the emotions, which are the
end of all great oratory, can be regulated with geo
metrical precision; that, after the gentler methods of
speech have been exhausted, the passions can be
turned on to give spice and adornment to the tale.
Appeals to the emotions must be spontaneous, and

7^ THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
must arise directly and naturally from the subject it
self, or they will be wholly inapt. To manage fervid
parts artificially is to destroy their force and purpose.
At the same time, the orator must have a keen appre
ciation for effects, and must deal with them just as
coolly and as scientifically as the painter or composer;
his imagination and passion must no more be let run
riot than theirs, for, in either case, chaos is the inevi
table result. The speaker has at his command certain
means by which his ends are produced; these he must
use thoughtfully and with discretion; he must see that
certain ideas can be introduced much more effectively
in one place than in another; and he must be able to
lead up to these ideas, so as to bring out their whole
beauty and power. But all this, by the accomplished
speaker, can be done without imparting to his work
the appearance of studied arrangement. The juxta
position and the massing of thoughts and facts may
have been hit upon only after repeated efforts, but the
result may be so harmonious and natural as to seem
wholly unsought for. It is not care-taking structure
that mars an oration; it is the undue evidence of the
labor; the art which is no more than artificiality.
Some writers in dealing with the oration justify, as
a kind of subdivision, what is known as the excursus.
The excursus may be placed after any one of the pre
liminary parts, or in the discussion. Its function is
to give the orator the chance to say anything he
may wish under a head not at once derivable from
his topic; here, if he will soon return to resume the
plan of his discourse, he may wander for a moment in
foreign fields. The whole notion of an excursus in
speaking is pernicious. If an idea belongs to a topic.

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 79
and by being introduced will lend interest and thor
oughness to the treatment, it should be made a regular
part of the oration; if it cannot be brought in thus it
should be omitted entirely. It must contribute directly
to the development, or, however beautiful and striking
in itself it may be, it should have no place. The be
fogging of the audience, the turning of their minds
from the regular channel of the speech, does far more
harm than can be retrieved by supervenient observa
tions no matter how profound. In too many speeches
there are parts which a careful editor, having his mind
only on the effect produced, can strike out bodily,
without in the least disturbing the structure or de
stroying the continuity of the thought.
In dealing with the discussion in an argumentative
address, a little more definite treatment is possible, and
some slight reversal of the rules laid down is neces
sary. The discussion of an argument constitutes the
proof. The preliminary parts have explained and de
fined the question and made its bearing clear; in the
partition the exact points at issue have been deter
mined; now comes the proof of the issues. Each di
vision is taken up separately and in order, and, so far
as is possible, proved one way or another. The evi
dence, the facts which the speaker in the course of his
reading and cogitation has chanced upon, are placed
under appropriate heads and subheads; the ideas are
marshaled one after another with cogency and force;
nothing is left unsaid that will tend toward abso
lute conviction in the minds of the audience. The dis
cussion is the scientific demonstration, by means of
argument and evidence, of the points in dispute.
This demonstration is, moreover, usually the result

8o THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
of two different processes : proof may be either direct,
the statement of affirmative points; or indirect, the
statement of points in answer to arguments advanced
by an opponent — that is, refutation. Cicero, it will be
remembered, made a division of proof with reference
to these classes, calling direct proof, confirmation^ and
indirect proof, confutation. Although it is unneces
sary, and, since the two blend so constantly into each
other, a little unwise to distinguish between them thus,
the expert in argumentation never forgets that one is
almost as important as the other. No matter how valid
may be a series of arguments on one side, their force
can be totally destroyed by a single unanswered point
on the other; and in such a situation much 'more will be
gained by replying to the negative point, even incon
clusively, than by dwelling throughout on affirmative
issues. Refutation, furthermore, goes deep into the
very roots of argument. A speaker may be called
upon not only to meet assertions directed against the
main contentions of his case, but each subsidiary idea
that he introduces in support of the main conten
tions may also be the object of attack. The value of
the evidence may be controverted; what a point proves
may be disputed ; and before these ideas can be ranged
in proper support of the main issues, the speaker may
be obliged to undertake very elaborate refutation in
their behalf. Few characteristics are more essential
for the orator than the faculty to see just where his
advances are to be encountered and how he can meet
and overcome the attacks.
The arrangement of a forensic oration is frequently
different from that of an expository address. In an
expository address, as was said, the law of climax is

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 8i
usually followed; the development is from the less to
the greater. But in the argument the more impor
tant points can often be placed advantageously first.
Sometimes the opening division may be one in direct
argument, sometimes one in refutation. The rule is
that whenever any point in refutation is so emphatic
as to impede, until it is answered, the affirmative argu
ment, it should be placed first; otherwise it should be
brought in toward the end. The reason for putting
the stronger points at the beginning is that they pro
duce here their greatest effect; after a predisposition
has been gained, weaker arguments can be brought
out and weaker refutation used without so materially
damaging the case. There has always been much dis
cussion as to the value of stating, either in direct argu
ment or in refutation, points which cannot be fully
proved. Some have maintained that such points
should be omitted altogether; others that they should
be placed as tactfully as possible and made the most
of. Certainly, when inconclusive propositions are em
ployed, the best place for them is where their insuffi
ciency will be least noticed, preferably in the middle
of the speech, between two ideas which carry greater
conviction. The moment of doubt will thus be de
layed by what precedes, and safe ground will be
reached before the element of uncertainty has long
worked. The question of what in the fullest sense constitutes
proof is one rather too intricate and difficult to enter
upon here, and may be dismissed with the mere indi
cation of the two general divisions into which the sub
ject falls. These divisions are: argument and evi
dence. Argument is that form of demonstration

82 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
which the speaker draws from his own mind, and its
value depends on the common experience of the hear
ers and the reputation of the speaker. If the one who
makes the statement is an authority on the subject,
his words have weight just to the extent that his
authority is recognized and his veracity unquestioned.
If he is not an expert, the value of what he says de
pends wholly on common experience; if it commends
itself to the audience it will be effective; otherwise not.
The character and intelligence of an audience thus de
termine, to a considerable degree, the worth of argu
ment; what a scientific body would accept unhesitat
ingly might be wholly inadequate before a popular
assembly. The second form of proof is that of evidence; not
what the speaker extracts from his own mind, but
what he gathers from the writings and words of others.
And the test of evidence is the same as one of the tests
of argument: the authority of the person or work from
whence the matter is derived. The chance saying re
ported by a newspaper is of infinitely less value as
evidence than the same statement made by the same
person in a public report or printed review. Where,
when, and by whom, are the questions on which the
reliability of proof rests. To make a quotation or to
cite figures is not enough; an audience must be told
by whom, and under what conditions, the words were
uttered, and whether the figures are from a reliable
document or are those hastily compiled from un
authorized sources. This faculty of bringing out the
character of evidence lies at the bottom of all con
vincing argumentation.

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 83

XII. THE CONCLUSION.
The only division of the oration that now remains
to be spoken of is the conclusion, often called the per
oration. The purpose of the conclusion is usually rec
ognized to be twofold: to recapitulate, and to arouse
the passions. Aristotle, whose analyses are generally
so penetrating, did indeed add to these two other func
tions: that of rendering the hearers favorable to the
speaker and ill-disposed to his adversary, and that of
amplification and extenuation; but the first may
rightly be regarded as a part of the general purpose
of arousing the passions; while the last is purely
factitious. A conclusion with a summary is found particularly
in forensic and deliberative orations, sometimes in ser
mons, but rarely in demonstrative efforts. Thus it
pertains to orations of the argumentative rather than
the narrative or expository type. The summary is the
recapitulation of the cardinal points which have been
touched upon in a discourse. The speaker goes back
to the issues and restates the case again briefly, dwell
ing as well on the contentions of his opponent as upon
the facts advanced by himself d rectly. The object is
to refresh the memory of the audience, to enforce the
essential parts, and to leave a convincing impression.
Only the important ideas, however, those on which the
two sides clash, need be regarded with much care;
and all new matter, since it tends to divert the
attention from the retrospection, should be excluded.
The points which are reviewed should not be recalled
simply in the same phrases in which they were first
mentioned, for this is exceedingly tiresome; they

84 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
should be presented with some freshness and variety,
although the audience should never be led to regard
them as something new.
The other purpose of the conclusion, to make a
final appeal to the emotions, is now hardly ever omit
ted, although in classic oratory there was much di
vergence in the practice. In Athens, in a forensic
discourse, a direct appeal was not countenanced; the
speaker had to confine himself scrupulously to a logi
cal demonstration. In Rome, on the other hand, so
unrestricted was the use of the pathetic that all sorts
of ingenious devices could be called into service. The
weeping children of the prisoner on trial, the wounds
of the victim, the implements with which the act was
committed, might be brought forward by the advocate
to engage sympathy and to secure the verdict. Now
adays, of course, such perversions of argument are
permitted neither in the conclusion nor in the other
parts of the oration; the speaker has no means except
words at his command. The underlying purpose or
idea of the speech is the one to be insisted upon in the
final appeal. If the object is to secure a certain ver
dict, or to lead men to vote in a certain way, the
thoughts and feelings which have been most in ques
tion must be dwelt upon; if it was the teachings of a
noble life or a great event that has formed the subject,
the essence of the principle which the orator wishes to
inculcate must have place. Whatever is the impres
sion to be conveyed, whatever is the end to be accom
plished — this should form the burden, the motive of
the conclusion.
In no other part of the oration does the orator have
so great an opportunity to prove his genius and his

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 85
eloquence as in the conclusion. In the introduction
he is frequently hampered by the newness of his
theme and the lack of any real sympathy on the part
of his audience; in the body of the address he must be
busy maintaining his thesis and elaborating his evi
dence; but in the conclusion no such limitations are
possible. The whole speech has been given to pre
pare the hearers for this part; the speaker's skill as a
logician and philosopher has been fully demon
strated; he is now entirely free for whatever flight his
ability may permit. The incentive, too, which urges
him is greater at this than at any other time. In a
moment the jury will retire, the vote on the bill will be
taken, the cause will go forth to ride on the great sea
of public opinion, unsupported by any further
words. Well, therefore, may power and ingenuity be
exerted to the utmost; well may the peroration be the
sublimest part of the work.
Never should the conclusion be much prolonged.
The speech proper is finished; this is the parting word;
and, like all parting words, it should not be amplified
or repeated. To hold an audience when they are in
this state of expectancy is not only to vex them ; it may
seriously endanger the effect of the whole oration.
All that is said should be brief and to the point; as
striking and impelling as possible; but never so
long as to lose for a moment the attention of a single
hearer. XIII. THE PREPARATION OF SPEECHES.
Nearly every speaker, very early in his career,
adopts some method which he follows in the prepara
tion of his work. These methods, as is perfectly

86 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
natural, owing to many differences in temperament,
in training, and in mental habits, are often widely di
vergent: what one man finds exceedingly helpful may
be to another laborious and unfruitful; and so, only
with caution can anyone write of the best, or even a
profitable plan for another to pursue in the making of
a speech. Still, some observation has shown that a
great number of public speakers in performing the
same task go about it in much the same way; and a
brief statement of what this way is seems worthy of a
place here.
Manifestly the first requisite in the making of a
speech is to secure a topic; but, as this part of the
preparation has already received some attention above,
it need not be enlarged upon now. Granted a topic,
the next step is to procure material. Perhaps as good
a way as any to begin is for the speaker to meditate
long and earnestly on his subject, in order to recall
all the ideas that he has upon it. These ideas should
then be placed on a sheet of paper, which for many
days after should be kept near at hand to receive
other and possibly more important points, that have
before eluded discovery. The purpose is to evolve as
much as can be from within, for although there is little
positive guarantee that suggestions derived in this
manner will be original, they are more than likely to
bear the personal stamp which is so highly desirable.
When the stock of his own ideas has been exhausted,
the speaker may turn to seek inspiration from other
sources. He will, in all probability, go at once to
literature; but he will do well to avoid books and arti
cles bearing directly upon his theme; rather, he will
peruse such matter as will furnish food for reflection.

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 87
not that which he might make use of with little
change. Thus, if he is to discuss the career of Wash
ington, a good history of the Revolution and the
period following it will better suit his purpose than a
critical biography of the great man. The reading of
books of the former class will get the mind to working
in sympathetic channels and will furnish data from
which original observations and generalizations can be
drawn, but it will not prove a source of vexation or
temptation. To be sure, if biographical or historical
matter is to be incorporated, the best authorities may
at once be consulted and freely drawn upon; for the
orator cannot be expected to work as the historian,
gleaning all his facts first-hand. But, aside from such
cases, reading should principally be for the purpose of
suggestion. The reading having been accomplished and a con
siderable body of notes and observations having been
brought together, the next step is to select the ideas
which shall be used, and to arrange them. For this
purpose the speaker can best provide himself with a
number of sheets of paper, each of which will repre
sent a given part of the oration. One slip will be
labeled introduction, another narration, and so on
until all the parts have been cared for. Turning then
to his jottings, he will go through them very carefully
a number of times, and such points as he thinks well
of he will transfer to the slip of paper to which it be
longs. A miniature brief will thus be constructed;
the general divisions and the ideas which may be
amplified under them will begin to be evident. But
just here it will probably be apparent that some points
which before seemed of slight importance could, if

88 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
fuller treatment were given them, be made of greater
value; in other words, that more reading and thought
along certain lines is necessary. So the steps may
have to be retraced, and further time expended before
the outlines of the work seem wholly satisfactory.
The only other duty that remains is to put the ora
tion into its final form; and this is where the individual
preference of speakers differs most widely. In gen
eral there are three forms into which a speech may be
cast before being delivered: it may be wholly written
and committed to memory; none of it may be written
or learned; parts of it may be written and learned
and parts spoken extemporaneously. Usually speak
ers begin with the first method; many learn to follov/
the second; while the last is probably the best of the
three. At the outset nearly every neophyte has to learn
his speeches by heart. Confidence must be acquired;
attention must be devoted to the manner of delivery;
the chance of not saying what one v/ished to say can
not be risked; and hence the discourse is written out
and learned by heart, as is perfectly proper it should
be. Tlie ancients nearly always did this, and the culti
vation of the memory was formerly a part of nearly
every orator's training and qualifications. But if
there were any danger that this method would now be
followed by a very great number of men a slight cau
tion against it would be in place. In reality it puts
the speaker at a great disadvantage; audiences do
not care for a memorized speech, and only by the
most consummate art can they be deceived. Further
more, the speaker whose address is written is pre
vented from taking advantage of suggestions of the

THE THEORY OF ORATORY. 89
moment; from meeting retort with retort; from weav
ing together subtly his own arguments and his reply
to his opponent; in short, from making the most of
his opportunities. Especially, therefore, for the de
liberative or forensic orator, the habitual use of this
method is very unfortunate. There is, however, not
a great deal of danger that many will long follow it;
the great labor that it imposes is alone sufficient to
bring its abandonment after a little facility, ease, and
confidence have been acquired.
So we come to the second method, which is to
commit nothing to memory, to rely solely on the con
cisely stated outline. The many advantages of being
able to speak after such preparation are evident : every
suggestion of the occasion, every frown or ripple that
passes over the audience may be seized upon and turned
to good account; that sparkle and glamour of instant
reply which assemblies so delight in may be indulged in
to the utmost. And yet, except in the case of unusual
men, this method, for one who aspires to great oratory,
probably has less, by a good deal, to commend it than
any other. The inspiration which such a plan neces
sitates is not always forthcoming, and when it is
absent, platitudes and vacuity only can be hoped for.
Again, taking a discourse as a whole, not even the
most gifted person can build so fine a structure with
out a pen as with one; writing demands accurate
thinking; improvised speaking permits and en
courages very loose thinking. Separate passages of
great brilliancy may be struck off at the moment, but
their power is certain to be diminished by paragraphs
which are irrelevant and sentences that are impos
sible. If anvone wishes to observe the different

90 THE THEORY OF ORATORY.
results of careful preparation and extempore speaking,
let him compare the shorthand reports of an admit
tedly extempore effort such as Webster's reply to
Hayne, and the revision of the same speech which was
printed a month or so afterward.
It seems, therefore, that a combination of the two
preceding plans is, on the whole, the best. Certain
portions of a speech should nearly always be written
out: the conclusion, for example; parts of the narra
tion, when a precise statement of facts is necessary;
passages in the discussion. But opportunity should
also be left for the exigencies of the occasion, for re
marking upon passing events, and replying to an
adversary's contentions. In some kinds of speeches
more can profitably be written than in others; large
parts of sermons and demonstrative orations; but
less of deliberative and forensic efforts. Finally, it
should be noted that whatever is written and spoken
from memory should be so blended and interwrought
with the other parts of the speech that not even the
most watchful person can detect the different elements
as they are uttered. Nothing so much destroys the
harmony of an oration as the curiously incongruous
result that comes from the protrusion of paragraphs
prepared in different ways.

ORATIONS.

ORATIONS.

DELIBERATIVE ORATORY.
CARL SCHURZ.
Born i82g.
GENERAL AMNESTY.
[The following speech was delivered in the United States Senate,
January 30, 1872, on a bill for removing the political disabilities
imposed by the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution. This section provided that no person should be a
senator, representative, or presidential elector, or hold any civil or
military office under the United States or any State, who, as a Federal
or State officer, had sworn to support the Constitution and had after
ward engaged in the Rebellion ; but provision A\as made that the
disability could be removed by a two-thirds vote of each House. The
bill before Congress at this time did not, however, aim to secure
general amnesty, for three classes of persons were excepted from
the relief : members who withdrew from Congress and aided the
Rebellion ; officers, over twenty-one years of age, who left the Army
and Navy and aided the Rebellion ; and members of State conventions
who voted for ordinances of secession. The bill, failing to receive
the necessary two-thirds vote, was defeated. The speech is reprinted,
with the permission of Mr. Schurz, from the Congressional Globe.\
Mr. President, when this debate commenced before
the holidays, I refrained from taking part in it, and
from expressing my opinions on some of the provi-

94 CARL SCHURZ.
sions of the bill now before us; hoping as I did that
the measure could be passed without difficulty, and
that a great many of those who now labor under politi
cal disabilities would be immediately relieved. This
5 expectation was disappointed. An amendment * to
the bill was adopted. It will have to go back to the
House of Representatives now unless by some parlia
mentary means we get rid of the amendment, and
there being no inducement left to waive what criti-
10 cism we might feel inclined to bring forward, we may
consider the whole question open.
I beg leave to say that I am in favor of general, or,
as this word is considered more expressive, universal
amnesty, believing, as I do, that the reasons which
15 make it desirable that there should be amnesty granted
at all, make it also desirable that the amnesty should
be universal. The senator from South Carolina [Mr.
Sawyer] has already given notice that he will move to
strike out the exceptions from the operation of this
2o act of relief for which the bill provides. If he had not
declared his intention to that effect, I would do so.
In any event, whenever he offers his amendment I
shall most heartily support it.
In the course of this debate we have listened to
25 some senators, as they conjured up before our eyes
once more all the horrors of the Rebellion, the wicked
ness of its conception, how terrible its incidents were,
and how harrowing its consequences. Sir, I admit it
all; I will not combat the correctness of the picture;
30 and yet if I differ with the gentlemen who drew it, it is
*An amendment offered by Senator Morton, providing that the
act should not relate back and validate the election or appointment of
persons who were ineligible when elected.

GENERAL AMNESTY. 95
because, had the conception of the Rebellion been
still more wicked, had its incidents been still more
terrible, its consequences still more harrowing, I could
not permit myself to forget that in dealing with the
question now before us we have to deal not alone with 5
the past, but with the present and future interests of
this republic.
What do Ave want to accomplish as good citizens
and patriots? Do we mean only to inflict upon the late
rebels pain, degradation, mortification, annoyance, for lo
its own sake; to torture their feelings without any
ulterior purpose? Certainly such a purpose could not
by any possibility animate high-minded men. I pre
sume, therefore, that those who still favor the continu
ance of some of the disabilities imposed by the Four- 15
teenth Amendment do so because they have some
higher object of public usefulness in view, an object
of public usefulness sufficient to justify, in their minds
at least, the denial of rights to others which we our
selves enjoy. 20
What can those objects of public usefulness be?
Let me assume that, if we differ as to the means to be
employed, we are agreed as to the supreme end and
aim to be reached. That end and aim of our endeavors
can be no other than to secure to all the States the 25
blessings of good and free government and the high
est degree of prosperity and well-being they can attain,
and to revive in all citizens of this republic that love
for the Union and its institutions, and that inspiring
consciousness of a common nationality, which, after 30
all, must bind all Americans together.
What are the best means for the attainment of that
end? This, sir, as I conceive it, is the only legitimate

96 CARL SCHURZ.
question we have to decide. Certainly all will agree
that this end is far from having been attained so far.
Look at the Southern States as they stand before us
to-day. Some are in a condition bordering" upon an-
5 archy, not only on account of the social disorders
which are occurring there, or the inefficiency of their
local governments in securing the enforcement of the
laws; but you will find in many of them fearful corrup
tion pervading the whole political organization; a
10 combination of rascality and ignorance wielding offi
cial power; their finances deranged by profligate prac
tices; their credit ruined; bankruptcy staring them in
the face; their industries staggering under a fearful
load of taxation; their property-holders and capital-
15 ists paralyzed by a feeling of insecurity and distrust
almost amounting to despair. Sir, let us not try to
disguise these facts, for the world knows them to be
so, and knows it but too well.
What are the causes that have contributed to bring
20 about this distressing condition? I admit that great
civil wars, resulting in such vast social transformations
as the sudden abolition of slavery, are calculated to
produce similar results; but it might be presumed that
a recuperative power such as this country possesses
25 might, during the time which has elapsed since the
close of the War, at least have very materially allevi
ated many of the consequences of that revulsion, had
a wise policy been followed.
Was the policy we followed wise? Was it calculated
30 to promote the great purposes we are endeavoring to
serve? Let us see. At the close of the War we had to
establish and secure free labor and the rights of the
emancipated class. To that end we had to disarm

GENERAL AMNESTY. 97
those who could have prevented this, and we had to
give the power of self-protection to those who needed
it. For this reason temporary restrictions were im
posed upon the late rebels, and we gave the right of
suffrage to the colored people. Until the latter were 5
enabled to protect themselves, political disabilities
even more extensive than those which now exist rested
upon the plea of eminent political necessity. I would
be the last man to conceal that I thought so then, and
I think there was very good reason for it. lo
But, sir, when the enfranchisement of the colored
people was secured; when they had obtained the po
litical means to protect themselves, then another
problem began to loom up. It was not only to find
new guarantees for the rights of the colored peo- 15
pie, but it was to secure good and honest gov
ernment to all. Let us not underestimate the
importance of that problem, for in a great meas
ure it includes the solution of the other. Cer
tainly nothing could have been more calculated 20
to remove the prevailing discontent concerning the
changes that had taken place, and to reconcile men's
minds to the new order of things, than the tangible
proof that that new order of things was practically
working well ; that it could produce a wise and eco- 25
nomical administration of public affairs, and that it
would promote general prosperity, thus healing the
wounds of the past and opening to all the prospect of
a future of material well-being and contentment.
And, on the other hand, nothing could ha\'e been more 30
calculated to impede a general, hearty, and honest ac
ceptance of the new order of things by the late rebel
population than just those failures of public adminis-

98 CARL SCHURZ.
tration which involve the people in material embar
rassments and so seriously disturb their comfort. In
fact, good, honest, and successful government in the
Southern States would in its moral effects, in the long
5 run, have exerted a far more beneficial influence than
all your penal legislation, while your penal legis
lation will fail in its desired effects if we fail in es
tablishing in the Southern States an honest and
successful administration of the public business.
10 Now, what happened in the South? It is a well-
known fact that the more intelligent classes of South
ern society almost uniformly identified themselves
with the Rebellion; and by our system of political dis
abilities just those classes were excluded from the man-
15 agement of political affairs. That they could not be
trusted with the business of introducing into living
practice the results of the War, to establish true free
labor, and to protect the rights of the emancipated
slaves, is true; I willingly admit it. But when those
20 results and rights were constitutionally secured there
were other things to be done. Just at that period
when the Southern States lay prostrated and ex
hausted at our feet, when the destructive besom of war
had swept over them and left nothing but desolation
25 and ruin in its track, when their material interests were
to be built up again with care and foresight — just
then the public business demanded, more than ordi
narily, the co-operation of all the intelligence and all
the political experience that could be mustered in the
30 Southern States. But just then a large portion of that
intelligence and experience was excluded from the
management of public affairs by political disabilities,
and the controlling power in those States rested in a

GENERAL AMNESTY. 99
great measure in the hands of those who had but re
cently been slaves and just emerged from that
condition, and in the hands of others who had some
times honestly, sometimes by crooked means and for
sinister purposes, found a way to their confidence. 5
This was the state of things as it then existed.
Nothing could be further from my intention than to
cast a slur upon the character of the colored people of
the South. In fact, their conduct immediately after
that great event which struck the shackles of slavery lo
from their limbs was above praise. Look into the
history of the world, and you will find that almost
every similar act of emancipation — the abolition of
serfdom, for instance — was uniformly accompanied by
the atrocious outbreaks of a revengeful spirit; by the 15
slaughter of nobles and their families, illumined by the
glare of their burning castles. Not so here. While
all the horrors of San Domingo had been predicted
as certain to follow upon emancipation, scarcely a sin
gle act of revenge for injuries suffered or for misery 20
endured has darkened the record of the emancipated
bondmen of America. And thus their example
stands unrivaled in history, and they, as well as the
whole American people, may well be proud of it. Cer
tainly, the Southern people should never cease to re- 25
member and appreciate it.
But while the colored people of the South earned
our admiration and gratitude, I ask you in all candor
could they be reasonably expected, when, just after
having emerged from a condition of slavery, they 30
were invested with political rights and privileges,
to step into the political arena as men armed with the
intelligence and experience necessary for the manage-

IOC CARL SCHURZ.
ment of public affairs and for the solution of prob
lems made doubly intricate by the disasters which had
desolated the Southern country? Could they reason
ably be expected to manage the business of public ad-
5 ministration, involving to so great an extent the finan
cial interests and the material well-being of the people,
and surrounded by difficulties of such fearful perplex
ity, with the wisdom and skill required by the
exigencies of the situation? That as a class they were
lo ignorant and inexperienced and lacked a just concep
tion of public interests, was certainly not their fault;
for those who have studied the history of the world
know but too well that slavery and oppression are
very bad political schools. But the stubborn fact
15 remains that they z\.<crc ignorant and inexperienced;
that the public business -ojas an unknown world
to them, and that in spite of the best inten
tions they ziv/T easily misled, not infrequently
by the most reckless rascality which had found
20 a way to their confidence. Thus their political
rights and privileges were undoubtedly well calcu
lated, and even necessary, to protect their rights
as free laborers and citizens; but they were not well
calculated to secure a successful administration of
25 other public interests.
I do not blame the colored people for it, still less do
I say that for this reason their political rights and
privileges should have been denied them. Nay, sir, I
deemed it necessary then, and I now reaffirm that
30 opinion, that they should possess those rights and
privileges for the permanent establishment of the logi
cal and legitimate results of the War and the protec
tion of their new position in society. But, while never

GENERAL AMNESTY. lOl
losing sight of this necessity, I do say that the inevi
table consequence of the admission of so large an
uneducated and inexperienced class to political power,
as to the probable mismanagement of the material in
terests of the social body, should at least have been 5
mitigated by a counterbalancing policy. V\'hen igno
rance and inexperience were admitted to so large an
influence upon public affairs, intelligence ought no
longer to so large an extent to have been excluded.
In other words, when universal suffrage was granted lo
to secure the equal rights of all, universal amnesty
ought to have been granted to make all the resources
of political intelligence and experience available for
the promotion of the welfare of all.
But what did we do? To the uneducated and 15
inexperienced classes — uneducated and inexperi
enced, I repeat, entirely without their fault — we
opened the road to power; and, at the same time, we
condemned a large proportion of the intelligence of
those States, of the property-holding, the industrial, 20
the professional, the tax-paying interest, to a worse
than passive attitude. We made it, as it were, easy
for rascals who had gone South in quest of profitable
adventure to gain the control of masses so easily mis
led, by permitting them to appear as the exponents 25
and representatives of the national power and of our
policy; and at the same time we branded a large num
ber of men of intelligence, and many of them of per
sonal integrity, whose material interests were so largely
involved in honest government, and many of whom 3°
would have co-operated in managing the public busi
ness with care and foresight — we branded them, I say,
as outcasts; telling them that they ought not to be

I02 CARL SCHURZ.
suffered to exercise any influence upon the manage
ment of the public business, and it would be unwar
rantable presumption in them to attempt it.
I ask you, sir, could such things fail to contribute
5 to the results we to-day read in the political corruption
and demoralization, and in the financial ruin of some
of the Southern States? These results are now before
us. The mistaken policy may have been pardonable
when these consequences were still a matter of conjec-
10 ture and speculation; but what excuse have we now
for continuing it when those results are clear before
our eyes, beyond the reach of contradiction?
These considerations would seem to apply more
particularly to those Southern States where the col-
15 ored element constitutes a very large proportion of the
voting body. There is another which applies to all.
When the Rebellion stood in arms against us, we
fought and overcame force by force. That was right.
When the results of the War were first to be estab-
20 lished and fixed, we met the resistance they encoun
tered with that power which the fortune of war and the
revolutionary character of the situation had placed at
our disposal. The feelings and prejudices which then
stood in our way had under such circumstances but
25 little, if any, claim to our consideration. But when
the problem presented itself of securing the perma
nency, the peaceable development, and the successful
working of the new institutions we had introduced
into our political organism, we had as wise men to
30 take into careful calculation the moral forces we had
to deal with; for let us not indulge in any delusion
about this : what is to be permanent in a republic like
this must be supported by public opinion; it must rest

GENERAL AMNESTY. 103
at least upon the willing acquiescence of a large and
firm majority of the people.
The introduction of the colored people, the late
slaves, into the body-politic as voters, pointedly
affronted the traditional prejudices prevailing among 5
the Southern whites. What should we care about
those prejudices? In war, nothing. After the close
of the War, in the settlement of peace, not enough to
deter us from doing what was right and necessary;
and yet, still enough to take them into account when 10
considering the manner in which right and necessity
were to be served. Statesmen will care about popular
prejudices as physicians will care about the diseased
condition of their patients, which they want to amelio
rate. Would it not have been wise for us, looking at 15
those prejudices as a morbid condition of the Southern
mind, to mitigate, to assuage, to disarm them by pru
dent measures, and thus to weaken their evil influence?
We desired the Southern whites to accept in good
faith universal suffrage, to recognize the political 20
rights of the colored man, and to protect him in their
exercise. Was not that our sincere desire? But if
it was, would it not have been wise to remove as
much as possible the obstacles that stood in the way
of that consummation? But v/hat did we do? When 25
we raised the colored people to the rights of active
citizenship and opened to them all the privileges of
eligibility, we excluded from those privileges a large
and influential class of whites; in other words, we
lifted the late slave, uneducated and inexperienced as 30
he was, — I repeat, without his fault, — not merely to the
level of the late master class, but even above it. We
asked certain white men to recognize the colored man

104 CARL SCHURZ.
in a political status not only as high but even higher
than their own. We might say that under the cir
cumstances we had a perfect right to do that, and I
will not dispute it; but I ask you most earnestly, sir,
5 was it wise to do it? If you desired the white man to
accept and recognize the political equality of the black,
was it wise to imbitter and exasperate his spirit with
the stinging stigma of his own inferiority? Was it
wise to withhold from him privileges in the enjoyment
10 of which he was to protect the late slave? This was
not assuaging, disarming prejudice; this was rather
inciting, it was exasperating it. American statesmen
will understand and appreciate human nature as it
has developed itself under the influence of free insti-
15 tutions. We know that if we want any class of peo
ple to overcome their prejudices in respecting the
political rights and privileges of any other class, the
very first thing we have to do is to accord the same
rights and privileges to them. No American was
20 ever inclined to recognize in others public rights and
privileges from which he himself was excluded; and
for aught I know, in this very feeling, although it may
take an objectionable form, we find one of the safe
guards of popular liberty.
25 You tell me that the late rebels had deserved all this
in the way of punishment. Granting that, I beg leave
to suggest that this is not the question. The question
is: \A'hat Vv'ere the means best calculated to overcome
the difficulties standing in the way of a willing and uni-
3oversal recognition of the new rights and privileges of
the emancipated class? What were the means to over
come the hostile influences impeding the development
of the harmony of society in its new order? I am far

GENERAL AMNESTY. 105
from asserting that, had no disabilities existed, uni
versal suffrage would have been received by the South
ern whites with universal favor. No, sir, most
probably it would not; but I do assert that the exist
ence of disabilities, which put so large and influential 5
a class of whites in point of political privileges below
the colored people, could not fail to inflame those
prejudices which stood in the way of a general and
honest acceptance of the new order of things; they
increased instead of diminishing the dangers and diffi- lo
culties surrounding the emancipated class ; and nobody
felt that more keenly than the colored people of the
South themselves. To their honor be it said, follow
ing a just instinct, they were among the very first, not
only in the South but all over the country, in entreat- 15
ing Congress to remove those odious discriminations
which put in jeopardy their own rights by making
them greater than those of others. From the colored
people themselves, it seems, we have in this respect
received a lesson in statesmanship. 20
Well, then, what policy does common sense sug
gest to us now? If we sincerely desire to give to the
Southern States good and honest government, ma
terial prosperity, and measurable contentment, as far
at least as we can contribute to that end; if we really 25
desire to weaken and disarm those prejudices and re
sentments which still disturb the harmony of society,
will it not be wise, will it not be necessary, will it not
be our duty to show that we are in no sense the allies
and abettors of those who use their political power 30
to plunder their fellow-citizens, and that we do not
mean to keep one class of people in unnecessary
degradation by withholding from them rights and

I06 CARL SCHURZ.
privileges which all others enjoy? Seeing the mis
chief which the system of disabilities is accomplishing,
is it not time that there should be at least an end of it;
or is there any good it can possibly do to make up for
5 the harm it has already wrought and is still working?
Look at it. Do these disabilities serve in any way
to protect anybody in his rights or in his liberty or
in his property or in his life? Does the fact that some
men are excluded from office, in any sense or measure,
lo make others more secure in their lives or in their prop
erty or in their rights? Can anybody tell me how?
Or do they, perhaps, prevent even those who are ex
cluded from official position from doing mischief if
they are mischievously inclined? Does the exclusion
15 from office, does any feature of your system of political
disabilities, take the revolver or the bowie-knife or the
scourge from the hands of anyone who wishes to use
it? Does it destroy the influence of the more intelli
gent upon society, if they mean to use that influence
20 for mischievous purposes?
We hear the Ku Klux * outrages spoken of as a rea
son why political disabilities should not be removed.
Did not these very same Ku Klux outrages happen
while disabilities were in existence? Is it not clear,
25 then, that the existence of political disabilities did not
prevent them? No, sir, if political disabilities have
any practical effect it is, while not in any degree di
minishing the power of the evil-disposed for mischief,
* The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization in the Southern
States, formed for the purpose of preventing negroes, by intimidation,
from voting or holding office. It arose probably in 1867. Many
murders and other crimes were committed by its members, and it was
suppressed at last only by Federal enactment.

GENERAL AMNESTY. T07
to incite and sharpen their mischievous inclination by
increasing their discontent with the condition they
live in.
It must be clear to every impartial observer that
were ever so many of those who are now disqualified 5
put in office, they never could do with their official
power as much mischief as the mere fact of the ex
istence of the system of political disabilities, with
its inevitable consequences, is doing to-day. The
scandals of misgovernment in the South which 10
we complain of I admit were not the first and
original cause of the Ku Klux outrages. But
every candid observer will also have to admit
that they did serve to keep the Ku Klux spirit
alive. Without such incitement it might gradually by 15
this time, to a great extent at least, have spent itself.
And now if the scandals of misgovernment were,
partly at least, owing to the exclusion of so large a
portion of the intelligence and experience of the South
from the active management of affairs, must it not be 20
clear that a measure which will tend to remedy this
evil may also tend to reduce the causes which still
disturb the peace and harmony of society?
We accuse the Southern whites of having missed
their chance of gaining the confidence of the emanci- 25
pated class when, by a fairly demonstrated purpose of
recognizing and protecting them in their rights, they
might have acquired upon them a salutary influence.
That accusation is by no means unjust; but must we
not admit, also, that by excluding them from their po- 30
litical rights and privileges we put the damper of most
serious discouragement upon the good intentions
which might have grown up among them? Let us

io8 CARL SCHURZ.
place ourselves in their situation, and then I ask you
how many of us would, under the same circumstances,
have risen above the ordinary impulses of human na
ture to exert a salutary influence in defiance of our
5 own prejudices, being so pointedly told every day that
it was not the business of those laboring under po
litical disabilities to- meddle with public affairs at all?
And thus, in whatever direction you may turn your
eyes, you look in vain for any practical good your
10 political disabilities might possibly accomplish. You
find nothing, absolutely nothing, in their practical
effects but the aggravation of evils already existing,
and the prevention of a salutary development.
Is it not the part of wise men, sir, to acknowledge
15 the failure of a policy like this in order to remedy it,
especially since every candid mind must recognize
that, by continuing the mistake, absolutely no practi
cal good can be subserved?
But I am told that the system of disabilities must
20 be maintained for certain moral effect. The senator
from Indiana [Mr. Morton] took great pains to in
form us that it is absolutely necessary to exclude
somebody from office in order to demonstrate our dis
approbation of the crime of rebellion. Methinks that
25 the American people have signified their disapproba
tion of the crime of rebellion in a far more pointed
manner. They sent against the rebellion a million
armed men. We fought and conquered the armies of
the rebels; we carried desolation into their land; we
30 swept out of existence that system of slavery which
was the soul of their offense and was to be the corner
stone of their new empire. If that was not signify
ing our disapprobation of the crime of rebellion, then

GENERAL AMNESTY. 109
I humbly submit that your system of political disa
bilities, only excluding some persons from office, will
scarcely do it.
I remember, also, to have heard the argument that
under all circumstances the law must be vindicated. 5
What law in this case? If any law is meant, it must
be the law imposing the penalty of death upon the
crime of treason. Well, if at the close of the War we
had assumed the stern and bloody virtue of the ancient
Roman, and had proclaimed that he who raises his hand 10
against this republic must surely die, then we might
have claimed for ourselves at least the merit of logical
consistency. We might have thought that by erect
ing a row of gallows stretching from the Potomac to
the Rio Grande, and by making a terrible example of 15
all those who had proved faithless to their allegiance,
we would strike terror into the hearts of this and com
ing generations, to make them tremble at the mere
thought of treasonable undertakings. That we might
have done. Why did we not? Because the American 20
people instinctively recoiled from the idea; because
every wise man remembered that where insurrections
are punished and avenged with the bloodiest hands,
there insurrections do most frequently occur; witness
France and Spain and the southern part of this hemi- 25
sphere; that there is a fascination for bloody reckon
ings which allures instead of repelling — a fascination
like that of the serpent's eye, which irresistibly draws
on its victim. The American people recoiled from it,
because they felt and knew that the civilization of the 30
nineteenth century has for such evils a better medicine
than blood.
Thus, sir, the penalty of treason, as provided for by

no CARL SCHURZ.
law, remained a dead letter on the statute book, and
we instinctively adopted a generous policy, and we
added fresh luster to the glory of the American name
by doing so. And now you would speak of vindicat-
5 ing the law against treason, which demands death, by
merely excluding a number of persons from eligibility
to office! Do you not see that, as a vindication of the
law against treason, as an act of punishment, the sys
tem of disabilities sinks down to the level of a ridicu-
lo lous mockery? If you want your system of disabili
ties to appear at all in a respectable light, then, in the
name of common sense, do not call it a punishment
for treason. Standing there, as it does, stripped of
all the justification it once derived from political neces-
15 sity, it would appear only as the evidence of an im
potent desire to be severe without the courage to carry
it out. But, havin'g once adopted the policy of gen
erosity, the only question for us is how to make that
policy most fruitful. The answer is: We shall make
20 the policy of generosity most fruitful by making it
most complete.
The senator from Connecticut [Mr. Buckingham],
whom I am so unfortunate as not to see in his seat
to-day, when he opened the debate, endeavored to
25 fortify his theory by an illustration borrowed from the
Old Testament, and I am willing to take that illustra
tion off his hands. He asked, if Absalom had lived
after his treason, and had been excluded from his
father's table, would he have had a just reason to com-
30 plain of an unjust deprivation of rights? It seems to
me that story of Absalom contains a most excellent
lesson, which the Senate of the United States ought to
read correctly. For the killing of his brother, Absa-

GENERAL AMNESTY. Ill
lorn had lived in banishment, from which the king, his
father, permitted him to return; but the wayward son
was but half pardoned, for he was not permitted to
see his father's face. And it was for that reason, and
then, that he went among the people to seduce them 5
into a rebellion against his royal father's authority.
Had he survived that rebellion, King David, as a pru
dent statesman, would either have killed his son Ab
salom or he would have admitted him to his table, in
order to make him a good son again by unstinted 10
fatherly love. But he would certainly not have per
mitted his son Absalom to run at large, capable of
doing mischief, and at the same time by small meas
ures of degradation inciting him to do it. And that
is just the policy we have followed. We have per- 15
mitted the late rebels to run at large, capable of doing
mischief, and then by small measures of degradation,
utterly useless for any good purpose, we incited them
to do it. Looking at your political disabilities with an
impartial eye, you will find that, as a measure of pun- 20
ishment, they did not go far enough; as a measure of
policy they went much too far. We were far too gen
erous to subjugate the hearts of our late enemies by
terror; and we mixed our generosity with just enough
of bitterness to prevent it from bearing its full fruit. 25
I repeat, we can make the policy of generosity most
fruitful only by making it most complete. What ob
jection, then, can stand against this consideration of
public good?
You tell me that many of the late rebels do not de- 30
serve a full restoration of their rights. That may be
so; I do not deny it; but yet, sir, if many of them do
not deserve it, is it not a far more important considera-

112 CARL SCHURZ.
tion how much the welfare of the country will be
promoted by it?
I am told that many of the late rebels, if we volun
teer a pardon to them, would not appreciate it. I do
5 not deny this; it may be so, for the race of fools, un
fortunately, is not all dead yet; but if they do not
appreciate it, shall we have no reason to appreciate
the great good which by this measure of generosity
will be conferred upon the whole land?
lo Some senator, referring to a defaulting paymaster
who experienced the whole rigor of the law, asked us,
" When a poor defaulter is punished, shall a rebel go
free? Is embezzlement a greater crime than trea
son?" No, sir, it is not; but again I repeat that is not
15 the question. The question is whether a general
amnesty to rebels is not far more urgently demanded
by the public interest than a general pardon for
thieves. Whatever may be said of the greatness and
the heinous character of the crime of rebellion, a single
20 glance at the history of the world and at the practice
of other nations will convince you that in all civilized
countries the measure of punishment to be visited on
those guilty of that crime is almost uniformly treated
as a question of great policy and almost never as a
25 question of strict justice. And why is this? Why is
it that a thief, although pardoned, will never again be
regarded as an untainted member of society, while a
pardoned rebel may still rise to the highest honors of
the state, and sometimes even gain the sincere and
30 general esteem and confidence of his countrymen?
Because a broad line of distinction is drawn between
a violation of law in which political opinion is the
controlling element (however erroneous, nay, however

GENERAL AMNESTY. 1 13
revolting that opinion may be, and however disastrous
the consequences of the act) and those infamous
crimes of which moral depravity is the principal in
gredient; and because even the most disastrous politi
cal conflicts may be composed for the common good 5
by a conciliatory process, while the infamous crime
always calls for a strictly penal correction. You may
call this just or not, but such is the public opinion of
the civilized world, and you find it in every civilized
country. 10
Look at the nations around us. In the Parliament
of Germany how many men are there sitting who were
once what you would call fugitives from justice, exiles
on account of their revolutionary acts, now admitted
to the great council of the nation in the fullness of 15
their rights and privileges — and mark you, without
having been asked to abjure the opinions they for
merly held, for at the present moment most of them
still belong to the Liberal opposition. Look at Austria,
where Count Andrassy, a man who, in 1849, W'^s con- 20
demned to the gallows as a rebel, at this moment
stands at the head of the imperial ministry; and those
who know the history of that country are fully aware
that the policy of which that amnesty was a part,
which opened to Count Andrassy the road to power, 25
has attached Hungary more closely than ever to the
Austrian Crown, from which a narrow-minded policy
of severity would have driven her.
Now, sir, ought not we to profit by the wisdom of
such examples? It may be said that other Govern- 3°
ments were far more rigorous in their first repressive
measures, and that they put off the grant of a general
amnesty much longer after suppressing an insurrec-

114 CARL SCHURZ.
tion than we are required to do. So they did; but is
not this the great republic of the New World which
marches in the very vanguard of modern civilization,
and which, when an example of wisdom is set by other
5 nations, should not only rise to its level, but far
above it?
It seems now to be generally admitted that the time
has come for a more comprehensive removal of politi
cal disabilities than has so far been granted. If that
10 sentiment be sincere, if you really do desire to accom
plish the greatest possible good by this measure that
can be done, I would ask you what practical advan
tage do you expect to derive from the exclusions for
which this bill provides? Look at them, one after an-
15 other. First, all those are excluded who, when the Rebel
lion broke out, were members of Congress, and left
their seats in these halls to join it. Why are these
men to be excluded as a class? Because this class
20 contains a number of prominent individuals, who, in
the Rebellion, became particularly conspicuous and
obnoxious, and among them we find those whom we
might designate as the original conspirators. But
these are few, and they might have been mentioned
25 by name. Most of those, however, who left their seats
in Congress to make common cause with the rebels
were in no way more responsible for the Rebellion than
other prominent men in the South who do not fall
under this exception. If we accept at all the argu-
30 ment that it will be well for the cause of good govern
ment and the material welfare of the South to re-admit
to the management of public affairs all the intelligence
and political experience in those States, why, then,

GENERAL AMNESTY. 115
exclude as a class men who, having been members
of Congress, may be presumed to possess a higher de
gree of that intelligence and experience than the rest?
If you want that article at all for good purposes, I ask
you, do you not want as large a supply of that article 5
as you can obtain?
Leaving aside the original conspirators, is there any
reason in the world why those members of Congress
should be singled out from the numerous class of in
telligent and prominent men who were or had been 10
in office and had taken the same oath which is ad
ministered in these halls? Look at it. You do not
propose to continue the disqualification of men who
served this country as foreign ministers, who left their
important posts, betrayed the interests of this country 15
in foreign lands to come back and join the Rebellion;
you do not propose to exclude from the benefit of
this act those who sat upon the bench and doffed the
judicial ermine to take part in the Rebellion; and if
such men are not to be disfranchised, why disfranchise 20
the common run of the congressmen, whose guilt is cer
tainly not greater, if it be as great? Can you tell me?
Is it wise even to incur the suspicion of making an ex
ception merely for the sake of excluding somebody,
when no possible good can be accomplished by it, and 25
when you can thus only increase the number of men
incited to discontent and mischief by small and un
necessary degradations?
And now as to the original conspirators, what has
become of them? Some of them are dead; and as to 30
those who are still living, I ask you, sir, are they not
dead also? Look at Jefferson Davis himself. What
if you exclude even him — and certainly our feelings

Ii6 CARL SCHURZ.
would naturally impel us to do so; but let our reason
speak — what if you exclude even him? Would you
not give him an importance which otherwise he never
would possess, by making people believe that you are
5 even occupying your minds enough with him to make
him an exception to an act of generous wisdom?
Truly to refrain from making an act of amnesty gen
eral on account of the original conspirators, candidly
speaking, I would not consider worth while. I would
10 not leave them the pitiable distinction of not being
pardoned. Your very generosity will be to them the
source of the bitterest disappointment. As long as
they are excluded, they may still find some satisfac
tion in the delusion of being considered men of dan-
15 gerous importance. Their very disabilities they look
upon to-day as a recognition of their power. They
may still make themselves and others believe that,
were the Southern people only left free in their choice,
they would eagerly raise them again to the highest
20 honors. But you relieve them of their exclusion, and they
will at once become conscious of their nothingness, a
nothingness most glaringly conspicuous then, for you
will have drawn away the veil that has concealed it. I
25 suspect that gentlemen on the Democratic side of the
House, whom they would consider their political
friends, would be filled with dismay at the mere
thought of their reappearance among them. If
there is anything that could prevent them from vot-
30 ing for universal amnesty, it might be the ^ear, if they
entertained it at all, of seeing Jefferson Davis once
more a senator of the United States.
But more than that: you relieve that class of per-

GENERAL AMNESTY. II 7
sons, those old misleaders, of their exclusion, and they
will soon discover that the people whom they once
plunged into disaster and ruin have in the meantime
grown, if not as wise as they ought to be, certainly
too wise to put their destinies in the hands of the 5
same men again. I hope, therefore, you will not strip
this measure of the merit of being a general amnesty
to spare the original plotters this most salutary ex
perience. So much for the first exception. Now to the sec- lo
ond. It excludes from the benefit of this act all those
who were officers of the Army or of the Navy and then
joined the Rebellion. Why exclude that class of per
sons? I have heard the reason very frequently stated
upon the floor of the Senate; it is because those men 15
had been educated at the public expense, and their
turning against the Government was therefore an act
of peculiar faithlessness and black ingratitude. That
might appear a very strong argument at first sight.
But I ask you was it not one of the very first acts of 20
this administration to appoint one of the most promi
nent and conspicuous of that class to a very lucrative
and respectable public office? I mean General Long-
street. He had obtained his military education at the
expense of the Am rican people. He was one of the 25
wards, one of the pets of the American Republic, and
then he turned against it as a rebel. Whatever of
faithlessness, whatever of black ingratitude there is in
such conduct, it was in his; and yet, in spite of all this,
the President nominated him for an office, and your 30
consent, senators, made him a public dignitary. Why
did you break the rule in his case? I will not say that
you did it because he had become a Republican, for I

Il8 CARL SCHURZ.
am far from attributing any mere partisan motive to
your action. No; you did it because his conduct after
the close of hostilities had been that of a well-dis
posed and law-abiding citizen. Thus, then, the rule
5 which you, senators, have established for your own
conduct is simply this : you will, in the case of officers
of the Army or the Navy, waive the charge of peculiar
faithlessness and ingratitude if the persons in question
after the War had become law-abiding and well-dis-
10 posed citizens. Well, is it not a fact universally
recognized, and I believe entirely uncontradicted, that
of all classes of men connected with the Rebellion
there is not one whose conduct since the close of the
War has been so unexceptionable, and in a great many
15 instances so beneficial in its influence upon Southern
society, as the officers of the Army and the Navy, espe
cially those who before the War had been members
of our regular establishments? Why, then, except
them from this act of amnesty? If you take subse-
20 quent good conduct into account at all, these men are
the very last who as a class ought to be excluded.
And would it not be well to encourage them in well
doing by a sign on your part that they are not to be
looked upon as outcasts whose influence is not de-
25 sired, even when they are inclined to use it for the pro
motion of the common welfare?
The third class excluded consists of those who were
members of State conventions, and in those State con
ventions voted for ordinances of secession. If we
30 may judge from the words which fell from the lips of
the senator from Indiana, they were the objects of his
particular displeasure. Why this? Here we have a
large number of men of local standing who in some

GENERAL AMNESTY. 119
cases may have been leaders on a small scale, but
most of whom were drawn into the whirl of the revo
lutionary movement just like the rest of the Southern
population. If you accept the proposition that it will
be well and wise to permit the intelligence of the coun- 5
try to participate in the management of the public
business, the exclusion of just these people will appear
especially inappropriate, because their local influence
might be made peculiarly beneficial; and if you ex
clude these persons, whose number is considerable, 10
you tell just that class of people whose co-operation
might be made most valuable that their co-operation
is not wanted, for the reason that, according to the
meaning and intent of your system of disabilities, pub
lic affairs are no business of theirs. You object that 15
they are more guilty than the rest. Suppose they are
— and in many cases I am sure they are only appar
ently so — but if they were not guilty of any wrong,
they would need no amnesty. Amnesty is made for
those who bear a certain degree of guilt. Or would 20
you indulge here in the solemn farce of giving pardon
only to those who are presumably innocent? You
grant your amnesty that it may bear good fruit; and
if you do it for that purpose, then do not diminish the
good fruit it may bear by leaving unplanted the most 25
promising soil upon which it may grow.
A few words now about the second section of the
bill before you, which imposes upon those who desire
to have the benefit of amnesty the duty of taking an
oath to support the Constitution before some public 30
officer, that oath to be registered, the list to be laid be
fore Congress and to be preserved in the office of the
Secretary of State. Sir, I ask you, can you or any-

I20 CARL SCHURZ.
one tell me what practical good is to be accomplished
by a provision like this? You may say that the tak
ing of another oath will do nobody any harm. Proba
bly not; but can you tell me, in the name of common
5 sense, what harm in this case the taking of that oath
will prevent? Or have we read the history of the
world in vain, that we should not know yet how little
political oaths are worth to improve the mortality of a
people or to secure the stability of a government?
lo And what do you mean to accomplish by making up
and preserving your lists of pardoned persons? Can
they be of any possible advantage to the country in
any way? Why, then, load down an act like this with
such useless circumstance, while, as an act of grace
15 and wisdom, it certainly ought to be as straightfor
ward and simple as possible?
Let me now in a few words once more sum up the
whole meaning of the question which we are now en
gaged in discussing. No candid man can deny that
20 our system of political disabilities is in no way calcu
lated to protect the rights or the property or the life
or the liberty of any living man, or in any way practi
cally to prevent the evil-disposed from doing mischief.
Why do you think of granting any amnesty at all? Is
25 it not to produce on the popular mind in the South a
conciliatory effect, to quicken the germs of good in
tentions, to encourage those who can exert a bene
ficial influence, to remove the pretexts of ill-feeling
and animosity, and to aid in securing to the Southern
30 States the blessings of good and honest government?
If that is not your design, what can it be?
But if it be this, if you really do desire to produce
such moral effects, then I entreat you also to consider

GENERAL AMNESTY. 121
what moral means you have to employ in order to
bring forth those moral effects you contemplate. If an
act of generous statesmanship, or of statesman-like
generosity, is to bear full fruit, it should give not as
little as possible, but it should give as much as possi- 5
ble. You must not do things by halves if you want
to produce whole results. You must not expose your
self to the suspicion of a narrow-minded desire to
pinch off the size of your gift wherever there is a
chance for it, as if you were afraid you could by any 10
possibility give too much, when giving more would
benefit the country more, and when giving less would
detract from the beneficent effect of that which you
do give.
Let me tell you it is the experience of all civilized 15
nations the world over, when an amnesty is to be
granted at all, the completest amnesty is always the
best. Any limitation you may impose, however plausi
ble it may seem at first sight, will be calculated to take
away much of the virtue of that which is granted. I 20
entreat you, then, in the name of the accumulated
experience of history, let there be an end of these
bitter and useless and disturbing questions; let the
books be finally closed, and when the subject is for
ever dismissed from our discussions and our minds, we 25
shall feel as much relieved as those who are relieved
of their political disabilities.
Sir, I have to say a few words about an accusation
which has been brought against those who speak in
favor of universal amnesty. It is the accusation re- 30
sorted to, in default of more solid argument, that those
who advise amnesty, especially universal amnesty, do
50 because they have fallen in love with the rebels.

122 CARL SCHURZ.
No, sir, it is not merely for the rebels I plead. We are
asked. Shall the Rebellion go entirely unpunished?
No, sir, it shall not. Neither do I think that the Re
bellion has gone entirely unpunished. I ask you, had
5 the rebels nothing to lose but their lives and their
offices? Look at it. There was a proud and arro
gant aristocracy, planting their feet on the necks of the
laboring people, and pretending to be the born rulers
of this great republic. They looked down, not only
10 upon their slaves, but also upon the people of the
North, with the haughty contempt of self-asserting
superiority. When their pretensions to rule us all
were first successfully disputed, they resolved to de
stroy this republic, and to build up on the corner
15 stone of slavery an empire of their own in which they
could hold absolute sway. They made the attempt
with the most overweeningly confident expectation of
certain victory. Then came the Civil War, and after
four years of struggle their whole power and pride
20 lay shivered to atoms at our feet, their sons dead by
tens of thousands on the battle-fields of this country,
their fields and their homes devastated, their fortunes
destroyed; and more than that, the whole social system
in which they had their being, with all their hopes
25 and pride, utterly wiped out ; slavery forever abolished,
and the slaves themselves created a political power
before which they had to bow their heads, and they,
broken, ruined, helpless, and hopeless in the dust be
fore those upon whom they had so haughtily looked
30 down as their vassals and inferiors. Sir, can it be
said that the Rebellion has gone entirely unpunished?
You may object that the loyal people, too, were
subjected to terrible sufferings; that their sons, too,

GENERAL AMNESTY. 123
were slaughtered by tens of thousands; that the
mourning of countless widows and orphans is still
darkening our land; that we are groaning under ter
rible burdens which the Rebellion has loaded upon us,
and that therefore part of the punishment has fallen 5
upon the innocent. And it is certainly true.
But look at the difference. We issued from this
great conflict as conquerors; upon the graves of our
slain we could lay the wreath of victory; our widows
and orphans, while mourning the loss of their dearest, 10
still remember with proud exultation that the blood of
their husbands and fathers was not spilled in vain; that
it flowed for the greatest and holiest and at the same
time the most victorious of causes; and when our peo
ple labor in the sweat of their brow to pay the debt 15
which the Rebellion has loaded upon us, they do it
with the proud consciousness that the heavy price they
have paid is infinitely overbalanced by the value of the
results they have gained: slavery abolished; the great
American Republic purified of her foulest stain; the 20
American people no longer a people of masters and
slaves, but a people of equal citizens; the most dan
gerous element of disturbance and disintegration
wiped out from among us; this country put upon the
course of harmonious development, greater, more 25
beautiful, mightier than ever in its self-conscious
power. And thus, whatever losses, whatever sacri
fices, whatever sufferings we may have endured, they
appear before us in a blaze of glory.
But how do the Southern people stand there? All 30
they have sacrificed, all they have lost, all the blood
they have spilled, all the desolation of their homes, all
the distress that stares them in the face, all the wreck

124 CARL SCHURZ.
and ruin they see around them — all for nothing,
all for a wicked folly, all for a disastrous infatua
tion; the very graves of their slain nothing but
monuments of a shadowy delusion; all their former
5 hopes vanished forever; and the very magniloquence
which some of their leaders are still indulging in,
nothing but a mocking illustration of their utter dis
comfiture! Ah, sir, if ever human efforts broke down
in irretrievable disaster, if ever human pride was hu-
lo miliated to the dust, if ever human hopes were turned
into despair, there you behold them.
You may say that they deserved it all. Yes, but
surely, sir, you cannot say that the Rebellion has gone
entirely unpunished. Nor will the senator from Indi-
15 ana, with all his declamation (and I am sorry not now
to see him before me), make any sane man believe that
had no political disabilities ever been imposed, the
history of the Rebellion, as long as the memory of
men retains the recollection of the great story, will
20 ever encourage a future generation to rebel again, or
that if even this great example of disaster should fail
to extinguish the spirit of rebellion, his little scare
crow of exclusion from office will be more than a thing
to be laughed at by little boys.
25 And yet, sir, it is certainly true that after the close
of the War we treated the rebels with a generosity
never excelled in the history of the world. And thus,
in advising a general amnesty it is not merely for the
rebels I plead. But I plead for the good of the coun-
30 try, which in its best interests will be benefited by
amnesty just as much as the rebels are benefited them
selves, if not more.
Nay, sir, I plead also for the colored people of the

GENERAL AMNESTY. 125
South, whose path will be smoothed by a measure
calculated to assuage some of the prejudices and to
disarm some of the bitternesses which still confront
them; and I am sure that nothing better could happen
to them, nothing could be more apt to make the 5
growth of good feeling between them and the former
master-class easier, than the destruction of a system
which, by giving them a political superiority, endan
gers their peaceable enjoyment of equal rights.
And I may say to my honorable friend from Massa- 10
chusetts [Mr. Sumner], who knows well how highly
I esteem him, and whom I sincerely honor for his
solicitude concerning the welfare of the lowly, that my
desire to see their wrongs righted is no less sincere and
no less unhampered by any traditional prejudice than 15
his; although I will confess that as to the constitu
tional means to that end we may sometimes seriously
differ; but I cannot refrain from expressing my regret
that this measure should be loaded with anything that
is not strictly germane to it, knowing as we both do 20
that the amendment * he has proposed cannot secure
the necessary two-thirds vote in at least one of the
Houses of Congress, and that therefore it will be cal
culated to involve this measure also in the danger of
common failure. I repeat, it is not merely for the 25
rebels I plead; it is for the whole American people,
for there is not a citizen in the land whose true inter
ests, rightly understood, are not largely concerned in
every measure affecting the peace and welfare of any
State of this Union. 30
* Mr. Sumner had offered to the bill an amendment of several sec
tions, the purpose of which was to secure equal civil rights for the
colored race.

126 CARL SCHURZ.
Believe me, senators, the statesmanship which this
period of our history demands is not exhausted by
high-sounding declamation about the greatness of the
crime of rebellion, and fearful predictions as to what
5 is going to happen unless the rebels are punished with
sufficient severity. We have heard so much of this
from some gentlemen, and so little else, that the in
quiry naturally suggests itself whether this is the
whole compass, the be-all and the end-all of their
lo political wisdom and their political virtue; whether
it is really their opinion that the people of
the South may be plundered with impunity by
rascals in power, that the substance of those
States may be wasted, that their credit may be
15 ruined, that their prosperity may be blighted, that
their future may be blasted, that the poison of bad
feeling may still be kept working where we might do
something to assuage its effects; that the people may
lose more and more their faith in the efficiency of self-
20 government and of republican institutions ; that all this
may happen, and we look on complacently, if we can
only continue to keep a thorn in the side of our late
enemies, and to demonstrate again and again, as the
senator from Indiana has it, our disapprobation of the
25 crime of rebellion?
Sir, such appeals as these, which we have heard so
frequently, may be well apt to tickle the ear of an
unthinking multitude. But unless I am grievously in
error, the people of the United States are a multitude
30 not unthinking. The American people are fast be
coming aware that, great as the crime of rebellion is,
there are other villainies beside it; that much as it
may deserve punishment there are other evils flagrant

GENERAL AMNESTY. 127
enough to demand energetic correction ; that the rem
edy for such evils does, after all, not consist in the
maintenance of political disabilities, and that it would
be well to look behind those vociferous demonstrations
of exclusive and austere patriotism to see what abuses 5
and faults of policy they are to cover, and what rotten
sores they are to disguise. The American people are
fast beginning to perceive that good and honest gov
ernment in the South, as well as throughout the whole
country, restoring a measurable degree of confidence 10
and contentment, will do infinitely more to revive true
loyalty and a healthy national spirit, than keeping
alive the resentments of the past by a useless degrada
tion of certain classes of persons; and that we shall
fail to do our duty unless we use every means to con- 15
tribute our share to that end. And those, I appre
hend, expose themselves to grievous disappointment
who still think that, by dinning again and again in the
ears of the people the old battle-cries of the Civil War,
they can befog the popular mind as to the true re- 20
quirements of the times, and overawe and terrorize
the public sentiment of the country.
Sir, I am coming to a close. One word more. We
have heard protests here against amnesty as a measure
intended to make us forget the past and to obscure and 25
confuse our moral appreciation of the great events of
our history. No, sir; neither would I have the past
forgotten, with its great experiences and teachings.
Let the memory of the grand uprising for the integrity
of the republic ; let those heroic deeds and sacrifices 30
before which the power of slavery crumbled into dust,
be forever held in proud and sacred remembrance by
the American people. Let it never be forgotten, as

128 CARL SCHURZ.
I am sure it never can be forgotten, that the American
Union, supported by her faithful children, can never
be undermined by any conspiracy ever so daring, nor
overthrown by any array of enemies ever so formida-
5 ble. Let the great achievements of our struggle for
national existence be forever a source of lofty inspira
tion to our children and children's children.
But surely, sir, I think no generous resolution on
our part will mar the luster of those memories, nor will
10 it obliterate from the Southern mind the overwhelm
ing experience that he who raises his hand against the
majesty of this republic is doomed to disastrous
humiliation and ruin. I would not have it forgotten;
and, indeed, that experience is so indelibly written
15 upon the Southern country that nothing can wipe it
out. But, sir, as the people of the North and of the South
must live together as one people, and as they must be
bound together by the bonds of a common national
20 feeling, I ask you, will it not be well for us so to act
that the history of our great civil conflict, which cannot
be forgotten, can never be remembered by Southern
men without finding in its closing chapter this irresist
ible assurance: that we, their conquerors, meant to
25 be, and were after all, not their enemies, but their
friends? When the Southern people con over the dis
tressing catalogue of the misfortunes they have
brought upon themselves, will it not be well, will it
not be " devoutly to be wished " for our common fu-
30 ture, if at the end of that catalogue they find an act
which will force every fair-minded man in the South
to say of the Northern people, " When we were at
war they inflicted upon us the severities of war; but

GENERAL AMNESTY. 1 29
when the contest had closed and they found us pros
trate before them, grievously suffering, surrounded by
the most perplexing difficulties and on the brink of
new disasters, they promptly swept all the resentments
of the past out of their way and stretched out their 5
hands to us with the very fullest measure of gener
osity — anxious, eager to lift us up from our pros
tration?" Sir, will not this do something to dispel those mists
of error and prejudice which are still clouding the 10
Southern mind? I ask again, will it not be well to
add to the sad memories of the past which forever will
live in their minds, this cheering experience, so apt
to prepare them for the harmony of a better and com
mon future? 15
No, sir; I would not have the past forgotten, but I
would have its history completed and crowned by an
act most worthy of a great, noble, and wise people.
By all the means which we have in our hands, I would
make even those who have sinned against this repub- 20
lie see in its flag, not the symbol of their lasting degra
dation, but of rights equal to all; I would make them
feel in their hearts that in its good and evil fortunes
their rights and interests are bound up just as ours are,
and that therefore its peace, its welfare, its honor, and 25
its greatness may and ought to be as dear to them
as they are to us.
I do not, indeed, indulge in the delusion that this
act alone will remedy all the evils which we now de
plore. No, it will not ; but it will be a powerful appeal 30
to the very best instincts and impulses of human na
ture; it will, like a warm ray of sunshine in spring
time, quicken and call to light the germs of good

130 CARL SCHURZ.
intention wherever they exist; it will give new cour
age, confidence, and inspiration to the well-disposed;
it will weaken the power of the mischievous, by strip
ping off their pretexts and exposing in their nakedness
5 the wicked designs they still may cherish; it will light
anew the beneficent glow of fraternal feeling and of
national spirit; for, sir, your good sense as well as
your heart must tell you that, when this is truly a peo
ple of citizens equal in their political rights, it will
10 then be easier to make it also a people of brothers.

FORENSIC ORATORY.
JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
Born 1810. Died 1883.
THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY— EX-PARTE
MILLIGAN.
[The circumstances which gave rise to the case in which this argu
ment was made were briefly as follows : In October, 1864, Lamdin
P. Milligan was arrested by order of General A. P. Hovey, command
ing the military district of Indiana, and tried before a military com
mission at Indianapolis. He was charged with joining and aiding a
secret society known as the " Order of American Knights or Sons of
Liberty," for the purpose of overthrowing the Government, holding
communication with the enemy, conspiring to seize munitions of war,
and liberating prisoners. An objection by Milligan to the authority
of the commission to try him was overruled, he was found guilty and
sentenced to be hanged. Several days before the sentence was to
have been executed he filed a petition in the United States Circuit
Court setting forth that he had never been in the military service of
the United States, nor within the limits of any State engaged in
rebellion, but for twenty years had been an inhabitant and citizen of
Indiana. He denied, therefore, the jurisdiction of the commission
and prayed that he should either be turned over to the proper civil
tribunal, or discharged altogether. At the hearing of the petition,
the judges of the Circuit Court were divided in opinion on three
questions: (l) should the writ of habeas corpus be issued? (2)
should Milligan be discharged? (3) did the commission have juris
diction ? These questions were then certified to the Supreme Court
of the United States and, with a further question of jurisdiction,
were the points argued at the- hearing which took place in the Decem
ber Term, 1866. Associated in the case with Judge Black were
James A. Garfield, David Dudley Field, and J. E. McDonald ; assist
ing the Attorney-General Mr. Speed, were Benjamin F. Butler and

132 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
Heniy Stanbery. The court decided that the writ should issue and
that Milligan was entitled to his discharge, on the ground that the
military commission was illegal and without jurisdiction.
The importance of the case and the questions involved will be seen
from the following excerpt, taken from Great Speeches by Great
Lawyers, p. 482. " This defense of the right of trial by juiy is a
marvelous display of Judge Black's extraordinary power and abilities
as a lawyer, and the enduring importance of the subject will render
it interesting as long as the individual liberty of the citizen shall be
preserved as a part of the framework of human government. It was
delivered during a period of great political excitement, before the
passions and prejudices stored up by the greatest civil war in history
had been allayed. It affected the destiny of one whose crimes were
aimed at the destruction of the Government itself, and the public
desire to see the sentence of the commission executed was very
general. Since the anger and excitement of the times have passed
away, and the great questions involved in this case present them
selves in their true aspect and importance, the argument of Judge
Black becomes conspicuous as a defense of the dearest right of the
citizen, and stands as a monument to which the eyes of mankind will
turn in the hour when their rights are assailed. It will be admired
by the student as a comprehensive exposition of the fundamental
principles upon which the law of civil liberty depends, and the causes
which led to their perfection and adoption under our system. The
subject loses the dry, tedious detail of a legal argument, and becomes
animated with the spirit and genius of the speaker, while presenting
a review of the struggle between freedom and arbitrary power which
the world has witnessed for centuries. It will be considered precious
by persons in every walk of life, for it defines in a masterly manner
the natural rights guaranteed to each individual by the organic law,
and its importance in this respect clothes it with the heritage of
immortality." The speech is reprinted, through the courtesy of the Hon. Chauncey
F. Black, from the Essays and Speeches of Jeremiah S. Black, pub
lished by Messrs. D. Appleton and Company.]
May it please your Honors:
I am not afraid that you will underrate the impor
tance of this case. It concerns the rights of the whole
people. Such questions have generally been settled

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 133
by arms. But since the beginning of the world no
battle has ever been lost or won upon which the
liberties of a nation were so distinctly staked as they
are on the results of this argument. The pen that
writes the judgment of the court will be mightier for 5
good or for evil than any sword that ever was wielded
by mortal arm.
As might be expected from the nature of the sub
ject, it has been a good deal discussed elsewhere, in
legislative bodies, in public assemblies, and in the 10
newspaper press of the country. But there it has been
mingled with interests and feelings not very friendly
to a correct conclusion. Here we are in a higher
atmosphere, where no passion can disturb the judg
ment or shake the even balance in which the scales i5
of reason are held. Flere it is purely a judicial ques
tion; and I can speak for my colleagues as well as my
self when I say that we have no thought to suggest
which we do not suppose to be a fair element in the
strictly legal judgment which you are required to 20
make up.
In performing the duty assigned to me in the case,
I shall necessarily refer to the mere rudiments of con
stitutional law; to the most commonplace topics of
history, and to those plain rules of justice and right 25
which pervade alj our institutions. I beg your honors
to believe that this is not done because I think that
the court, or any member of it, is less familiar with
these things than I am, or less sensible of their value;
but simply and only because, according to my view 30
of the subject, there is absolutely no other way of
dealing with it. If the fundamental principles of
American liberty are attacked, and we are driven be-

134 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
hind the inner walls of the Constitution to defend
them, we can repel the assault only with those same
old weapons which our ancestors used a hundred years
ago. You must not think the worse of our armor
5 because it happens to be old-fashioned and looks a
little rusty from long disuse.
The case before you presents but a single point, and
that an exceedingly plain one. It is not encumbered
with any of those vexed questions that might be ex-
10 pected to arise out of a great war. You are not called
upon to decide what kind of rule a military commander
may impose upon the inhabitants of a hostile country
which he occupies as a conqueror, or what punishment
he may inflict upon the soldiers of his own army or
15 the followers of his camp; or yet how he may deal
with civilians in a beleaguered city or other place in
a state of actual siege, which he is required to de
fend against a public enemy. This contest covers no
such ground as that. The men whose acts we com-
20 plain of erected themselves into a tribunal for the trial
and punishment of citizens who were connected in no
way whatever with the Army or Navy. And this they
did in the midst of a community whose social and legal
organization had never been disturbed by any war or
25 insurrection, where the courts were wide open, where
judicial process was executed every day without inter
ruption, and where all the civil authorities, both State
and national, were in full exercise of their functions.
My clients * were dragged before this strange tri-
30 bunal, and, after a proceeding which it would be mere
mockery to call a trial, they were ordered to be hung.
* Two other men were arrested with Milligan and tried and con
victed at the same time.

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 135
The charge against them was put into writing and is
found on this record, but you will not be able to de
cipher its meaning. The relators were not accused
of treason ; for no act is imputed to them which, if true,
would come within the definition of that crime. It 5
was not conspiracy under the act of 1861 ; for all
concerned in this business must have known that con
spiracy was not a capital offense. If the commis
sioners were able to read English, they could not help
but see that it was made punishable, even by fine and 10
imprisonment, only upon condition that the parties
should first be convicted before a Circuit or District
Court of the United States. The Judge-Advocate
must have meant to charge them with some offense
unknown to the laws, which he chose to make capital 15
by legislation of his own, and the commissioners were
so profoundly ignorant as to think that the legal inno
cence of the parties made no difference in the case. I
do not say, what Sir James Mackintosh said of a simi
lar proceeding, that the trial was a mere conspiracy to 20
commit willful murder upon three innocent men. The
commissioners are not on trial; they are absent and
undefended; and they are entitled to the benefit of
that charity which presumes them to be wholly un
acquainted with the first principles of natural justice, 25
and quite unable to comprehend either the law or the
facts of a criminal cause.
Keeping the character of the charges in mind, let
us come at once to the simple question upon which
the court below divided in opinion : Had the commis- 3°
sioners jurisdiction — were they invested with legal
authority to try the relators and put them to death for
the offense of which they were accused? We answer,

136 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
No; and therefore the whole proceeding, from begin
ning to end, was utterly null and void. On the other
hand, it is absolutely necessary for those who oppose
us to assert, and they do assert, that the commissioners
5 had complete legal jurisdiction, both of the subject-
matter and of the parties, so that their judgment upon
the law and the facts is absolutely conclusive and bind
ing, not subject to correction, nor open to inquiry in
any court whatever. Of these two opposite views,
10 you must adopt one or the other; for there is no mid
dle ground on which you can possibly stand.
I need not say (for it is the law of the horn-books)
that where a court (whatever may be its power in other
respects) presumes to try a man for an offense of which
15 it has no right to take judicial cognizance, all its pro
ceedings in that case are null and void. If the party
is acquitted, he cannot plead the acquittal afterward in
bar of another prosecution; if he is found guilty and
sentenced, he is entitled to be relieved from the pun-
20 ishment. If a Circuit Court of the United States
should undertake to try a party for an offense clearly
within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State courts,
the judgment could have no effect. If a county
court in the interior of a State should arrest an officer
25 of the Federal navy, try him, and order him to be hung
for some offense against the law of nations, commit
ted upon the high seas or in a foreign port, nobody
would treat such a judgment otherwise than with mere
derision. The Federal courts have jurisdiction to try
30 offenses against the laws of the United States, and
the authority of the State courts is confined to the
punishment of acts which are made penal by State
laws. It follows that where the accusation does not

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 137
amount to an offense against the law of either the State
or Federal Government, no court can have jurisdiction
to try it. Suppose, for example, that the judges of
this court should organize themselves into a tribunal
to try a man for witchcraft, or heresy, or treason 5
against the Confederate States of America, would any
body say that your judgment had the least validity?
I care not, therefore, whether the relators were in
tended to be charged with treason or conspiracy or
with some offense of which the law takes no notice, to
Either or any way, the men who undertook to try
them had no jurisdiction of the subject-matter.
Nor had they jurisdiction of the parties. It is not
pretended that this was a case of impeachment, or a
case arising in the land or naval forces. It is either 15
nothing at all, or else it is a simple crime against the
United States, committed by private individuals not
in the public service, civil or military. Persons stand
ing in that relation to the Government are answer
able for the offenses which they may commit only to 20
the civil courts of the country. So says the Constitu
tion, as we read it; and the act of Congress of March
3, 1863, which was passed with express reference to
persons precisely in the situation of these men, de
clares that they shall be delivered up for trial to the 25
proper civil authorities.
There being no jurisdiction of the subject matter or
of the parties, you are bound to relieve the petitioners.
It is as much the duty of a judge to protect the inno
cent as it is to punish the guilty. Suppose that the 3°
secretary of some department should take it into his
head to establish an ecclesiastical tribunal here in the
city of Washington, composed of clergymen " organ-

138 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
ized to convict " everybody who prays after a fashion
inconsistent with the supposed safety of the State. If
he would select the members with a proper regard to
the odium theologicum, I think I could insure him a
5 commission that would hang every man and woman
who might be brought before it. But would you, the
judges of the land, stand by and see their sentences
executed? No; you would interpose your writ of
prohibition, your habeas corpus, or any other process
10 that might be at your command, between them and
their victims. And you would do that for precisely
the reason which requires your intervention here: be
cause religious errors, like political errors, are not
crimes which anybody in this country has jurisdiction
15 to punish, and because ecclesiastical commissions, like
military commissions, are not among the judicial in
stitutions of this people. Our fathers long ago cast
them both aside among the rubbish of the Dark Ages ;
and they intended that we, their children, should know
20 them only that we might blush and shudder at the
shameless injustice and the brutal cruelties which they
were allowed to perpetrate in other times and other
countries. But our friends on the other side are not at all im-
25 pressed with these views. Their brief corresponds ex
actly with the doctrines propounded by the Attorney-
General, in a very elaborate official paper which
he published last July, upon this same subject.
He then avowed it to be his settled and de-
30 liberate opinion that the military might " take
and kill, try and execute" (I use his own words)
persons who had no sort of connection with
the Army or Navy. And, though this be done in

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 139
the face of the open courts, the judicial authority,
according to him, are utterly powerless to prevent the
slaughter which may thus be carried on. Tliat is the
thesis which the Attorney-General and his assistant
counselors are to maintain this day, if they can main- 5
tain it, with all the power of their artful eloquence.
We, on the other hand, submit that a person not in
the military or naval service cannot be punished at
all until he has had a fair, open, public trial before an
impartial jury, in an ordained and established court, 10
to which the jurisdiction has been given by law to try
him for that specific offense. There is our propo
sition. Between the ground we take and the ground
they occupy there is and there can be no compromise.
It is one way or the other. 15
Our proposition ought to be received as true with
out any argument to support it; because if that, or
something precisely equivalent to it, be not a part of
our law, this is not, what we have always supposed it
to be, a free country. Nevertheless, I take upon my- 20
self the burden of showing affirmatively not only that
it is true, but that it is immovably fixed in the very
framework of the Government, so that it is utterly
impossible to detach it without destroying the whole
political structure under which we live. By remov- 25
ing it you destroy the life of this nation as completely
as you would destroy the life of an individual by cut
ting the heart out of his body. I proceed to the proof.
In the first place, the self-evident truth will not be
denied that the trial and punishment of an offender 30
against the Government is the exercise of judicial
authority. That is a kind of authority which would
be lost by being diffused among the masses of the peo-

I40 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
pie. A judge would be no judge if everybody else
were a judge as well as he. Therefore in every so
ciety, however rude or however perfect its organiza
tion, the judicial authority is always committed to the
5 hands of particular persons, who are trusted to use it
wisely and well; and their authority is exclusive; they
cannot share it with others to whom it has not been
committed. Where, then, is the judicial power in this
country? Who are the depositaries of it here? The
10 Federal Constitution answers that question in very
plain words, by declaring that " the judicial power of
the United States shall be vested in one Supreme
Court, and in such inferior courts as Congress may
from time to time ordain and establish." Congress
15 has, from time to time, ordained and established cer
tain inferior courts; and in them, together with the
one Supreme Court to which they are subordinate, is
vested all the judicial power, properly so called, which
the United States can lawfully exercise. That was
20 the compact made with the General Government at
the time it was created. The States and the people
agreed to bestow upon that Government a certain por
tion of the judicial power, which otherwise would have
remained in their own hands, but gave it on a solemn
25 trust, and coupled the grant of it with this express
condition that it should never be used in any way but
one; that is, by means of ordained and established
courts. Any person, therefore, who undertakes to ex
ercise judicial power in any other way not only vic^-
30 lates the law of the land, but he . treacherously
tramples upon the most important part of that sacred
covenant which holds these States together.
May it please your honors, you know, and I know.

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 14I
and everybody else knows, that it was the intention of
the men who founded this Republic to put the life,
liberty, and property of every person in it under the
protection of a regular and permanent judiciary, sepa
rate, apart, distinct, from all other branches of the 5
Government, whose sole and exclusive business it
should be to distribute justice among the people ac
cording to the wants of each individual. It was to
consist of courts, always open to the complaint of the
injured, and always ready to hear criminal accusations 10
when founded upon probable cause; surrounded with
all the machinery necessary for the investigation of
truth, and clothed with sufficient power to carry their
decrees into execution. In these courts it was ex
pected that judges would sit who would be upright, 15
honest, and sober men, learned in the laws of their
country, and lovers of justice from the habitual prac
tice of that virtue; independent, because their salaries
could not be reduced; and free from party passion,
because their tenure of office was for life. Although 20
this would place them above the clamors of the mere
mob and beyond the reach of Executive influence, it
was not intended that they should be wholly irre
sponsible. For any willful or corrupt violation of their
duty, they are liable to be impeached; and they cannot 25
escape the control of an enlightened public opinion,
for they must sit with open doors, listen to full dis
cussion, and give satisfactory reasons for the judg
ments they pronounce. In ordinary tranquil times the
citizen might feel himself safe under a judicial system 30
so organized.
But our wise forefathers knew that tranquillity was
not to be always anticipated in a republic; the spirit

142 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
of a free people is often turbulent. They expected
that strife would rise between classes and sections, and
even civil war might come, and they supposed that
in such times judges themselves might not be safely
5 trusted in criminal cases — especially in prosecutions
for political offenses, where the whole power of the
Executive is arrayed against the accused party. All
history proves that public officers of any government,
when they are engaged in a severe struggle to retain
10 their places, become bitter and ferocious, and hate
those who oppose them, even in the most legitimate
way, with a rancor which they never exhibit toward
actual crime. This kind of malignity vents itself in
prosecutions for political offenses, sedition, con-
15 spiracy, libel, and treason, and the charges are gener
ally founded upon the information of hireling spies
and common delators, who make merchandise of their
oaths, and trade in the blood of their fellow-men.
During the civil commotions in England, which lasted
20 from the beginning of the reign of Charles I.
to the revolution of 1688, the best men and
the purest patriots that ever lived fell by the
hand of the public executioner. Judges were
made the instruments for inflicting the most
25 merciless sentences on men the latchet of whose
shoes the ministers that prosecuted them were not
worthy to stoop down and unloose. Let me say here
that nothing has occurred in the history of this coun
try to justify the doubt of judicial integrity which our
30 forefathers seem to have felt. On the contrary, the
highest compliment that has ever been paid to the
American bench is embodied in this simple fact:
that if the Executive officers of this Govern-

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL B Y JUR Y. 143
ment have ever desired to take away the life
or the liberty of a citizen contrary to law, they
have not come into the courts to get it done;
they have gone outside of the courts, and stepped
over the Constitution, and created their own tribunals, 5
composed of men whose gross ignorance and supple
subservience could always be relied on for those base
uses to which no judge would ever lend himself. But
the framers of the Constitution could act only upon
the experience of that country whose history they 10
knew most about, and there they saw the brutal feroc
ity of Jeffreys and Scroggs, the timidity of Guilford,
and the base venality of such men as Saunders and
Wright. It seemed necessary, therefore, not only to
make the judiciary as perfect as possible, but to give 15
the citizen yet another shield against the wrath and
malice of his Government. To that end they could
think of no better provision than a public trial before
an impartial jury.
I do not assert that the jury trial is an infallible 20
mode of ascertaining truth. Like everything human,
it has its imperfections. I only say that it is the best
protection for innocence, and the surest mode of pun
ishing guilt, that has yet been discovered. It has
borne the test of a longer experience, and borne it bet- 25
ter than any other legal institution that ever existed
among men. England owes more of her freedom, her
grandeur, and her prosperity to that than to all other
causes put together. It has had the approbation not
only of those who lived under it, but of great thinkers 30
who looked at it calmly from a distance, and judged it
impartially: Montesquieu and De Tocqueville speak
of it with an admiration as rapturous as Coke and

144 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
Blackstone. Within the present century, the most
enlightened states of Continental Europe have trans
planted it into their countries; and no people ever
adopted it once and were afterward willing to part
5 with it. It was only in 1830 that an interference with
it in Belgium provoked a successful insurrection which
permanently divided one kingdom into two. In the
same year, the revolution of the Barricades gave the
right of trial by jury to every Frenchman.
10 Those colonists of this country who came from the
British Islands brought this institution with them, and
they regarded it as the most precious part of their in
heritance. The immigrants from other places, where
trial by jury did not exist, became equally attached to
15 it as soon as they understood what it was. There was
no subject upon which all the inhabitants of the coun
try were more perfectly unanimous than they were in
their determination to maintain this great right un
impaired. An attempt was made to set it aside, and
20 substitute military trials in its place, by Lord Dun-
more in Virginia, and General Gage in Massachusetts,
accompanied with the excuse, which has been repeated
so often in late days, namely, that rebeUion had made
it necessary; but it excited intense popular anger, and
25 every colony, from New Hampshire to Georgia, made
common cause with the two whose rights had been
especially invaded. Subsequently the Continental
Congress thundered it into the ear of the world, as an
unendurable outrage, sufficient to justify universal
30 insurrection against the authority of the Government
which had allowed it to be done.
If the men who fought out our revolutionary con
test, when they came to frame a government for them-

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 14S
selves and their posterity, had failed to insert a pro
vision making the trial by jury perpetual and univer
sal, they would have covered themselves all over with
infamy as with a garment ; for they would have proved
themselves basely recreant to the principles of that 5
very liberty of which they professed to be the special
champions. But they were guilty of no such treach
ery. They not only took care of the trial by jury,
but they regulated every step to be taken in a crimi
nal trial. They knew very well that no people could 10
be free under a government which had the power to
punish without restraint. Hamilton expressed in The
Federalist the universal sentiment of his time when
he said that the arbitrary power of conviction and pun
ishment for pretended offenses had been the great 15
engine of despotism in all ages and all countries. The
existence of such a power is utterly incompatible with
freedom. The difference between a master and his
slave consists only in this: that the master holds the
lash in his hands, and he may use it without legal re- 20
straint, while the naked back of the slave is bound to
take whatever is laid on it.
But our fathers were not absurd enough to put un
limited power in the hands of the ruler, and take away
the protection of law from the rights of individuals. 25
It was not thus that they meant " to secure the bless
ings of liberty to themselves and their posterity."
They determined that not one drop of the blood which
had been shed on the other side of the Atlantic, dur
ing seven centuries of contest with arbitrary power, 30
should sink into the ground; but the fruits of every
popular victory should be garnered up in this new
government. Of all the great rights already won they

146 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
threw not an atom away. They went over Magna
Charta, the Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights, and
the rules of the common law, and whatever was found
there to favor individual liberty they carefully inserted
5 in their own system, improved by clearer expression,
strengthened by heavier sanctions, and extended by a
more universal application. They put all those pro
visions into the organic law, so that neither tyranny
in the Executive nor party rage in the Legislature
10 could change them without destroying the Govern
ment itself.
Look for a moment at the particulars, and see how
carefully everything connected with the administra
tion of punitive justice is guarded.
15 I. No ex post facto law shall be passed. No man
shall be answerable criminally for any act which was
not defined and made punishable as a crime by some
law in force at the time when the act was done.
2. For an act which is criminal he cannot be ar-
20 rested without a judicial warrant founded on proof of
probable cause. He shall not be kidnaped and shut
up on the mere report of some base spy, who gathers
the materials of a false accusation by crawling into his
house and listening at the key-hole of his chamber
25 door. 3. He shall not be compelled to testify against him
self. He may be examined before he is committed,
and tell his own story if he pleases; but the rack shall
be put out of sight, and even his conscience shall not
30 be tortured; nor shall his unpublished papers be used
against him, as was done most wrongfully in the case
of Algernon Sidney.
4. He shall be entitled to a speedy trial; not kept

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 147
in prison for an indefinite time without the opportunity
of vindicating his innocence.
5. He shall be informed of the accusation, its na
ture, and grounds. The public accuser must put the
charge into the form of a legal indictment, so that the 5
party can meet it full in the face.
6. Even to the indictment he need not answer unless
a grand jury, after hearing the evidence, shall say
upon their oaths that they believe it to be true.
7. Then comes the trial, and it must be before a 10
regular court, of competent jurisdiction ordained and
established for the State and district in which the crime
was committed; and this shall not be evaded by a
legislative change in the district after the crime is
alleged to be done. 15
8. His guilt or innocence shall be determined by an
impartial jury. These English words are to be under
stood in their English sense, and they mean that the
jurors shall be fairly selected by a sworn officer from
among the peers of the party, residing within the local 20
jurisdiction of the court. When they are called into
the box he can purge the panel of all dishonesty, preju
dice, personal enmity, and ignorance, by a certain
number of peremptory challenges, and as many more
challenges as he can sustain by showing reasonable 25
cause. 9. Tlie trial shall be public and open, that no under
hand advantage may be taken. The party shall be
confronted with the witnesses against him, have com
pulsory process for his own witnesses, and be entitled 30
to the assistance of counsel in his defense.
10. After the evidence is heard and discussed, unless
the jury shall, upon their oaths, unanimously agree to

148 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
surrender him up into the hands of the court as a
guilty man, not a hair of his head can be touched by
way of punishment.
II. After a verdict of guilty he is still protected.
5 No cruel or unusual punishment shall be inflicted, nor
any punishment at all, except what is annexed by the
law to his offense. It cannot be doubted for a mo
ment that, if a person convicted of an offense not
capital were to be hung on the order of a judge, such
10 judge would be guilty of murder, as plainly as if he
should come dovv^n from the bench, tuck up the sleeves
of his gown, and let out the prisoner's blood with his
own hand.
12. After all is over, the law continues to spread its
15 guardianship around him. Whether he is acquitted
or condemned, he shall never again be molested for
that offense. No man shall be twice put in jeopardy
of life or limb for the same cause.
These rules apply to all criminal prosecutions. But,
20 in addition to these, certain special regulations were
required for treason — the one great political charge
under which more innocent men have fallen than any
other. A tyrannical government calls everybody a
traitor who shows the least unwillingness to be a slave.
25 The party in power never fails, when it can, to stretch
the law on that subject by construction, so as to cover
its honest and conscientious opponents. In the ab
sence of a constitutional provision, it was justly feared
that statutes might be passed v.hich would put the
30 lives of the most patriotic citizens at the mercy of the
basest minions that skulk about under the pay of the
Executive. Tlierefore a definition of treason was
given in the fundamental law, and the legislative au-

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 149
thority could not enlarge it to serve the purpose of
partisan malice. The nature and amount of evidence
required to prove the crime was also prescribed, so
that prejudice and enmity might have no share in the
conviction. And, lastly, the punishment was so 5
limited that the property of the party could not be con
fiscated, and used to reward the agents of his perse
cutors, or strip his family of their subsistence.
If these provisions exist in full force, unchangeable
and irrepealable, then we are not hereditary bonds- 10
men. Every citizen may safely pursue his lawful call
ing in the open day; and at night, if he is conscious
of innocence, he may lie down in security and sleep the
sound sleep of a freeman.
I say they are in force, and they will remain in force. 15
We have not surrendered them, and we never will.
If the worst comes to the worst we will look to the liv
ing God for his help, and defend our rights and the
rights of our children to the last extremity. Those
men who think we can be subjected and abjected to the 20
condition of mere slaves are wholly mistaken. The
great race to which we belong has not degenerated so
fatally. But how am I to prove the existence of these rights?
I do not propose to do it by a long chain of legal argu- 25
mentation, nor by the production of numerous books
with the leaves dog-eared and the pages marked.
If it depended upon judicial precedents, I think
I could produce as many as might be necessary.
If I claimed this freedom, under any kind of prescrip- 30
tion, I could prove a good long possession in our
selves and those under whom we claim it. I might
begin with Tacitus and show how the contest arose

ISO JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
in the forests of Germany more than two thousand
years ago; how the rough virtues and sound common
sense of that people established the right of trial by
jury, and thus started on a career which has made
5 their posterity the foremost race that ever lived in all
the tide of time. The Saxons carried it to England,
and were ever ready to defend it with their blood. It
was crushed out by the Danish invasion; and all that
they suffered of tyranny and oppression during the
lo period of their subjugation resulted from the want of
trial by jury. If that had been conceded to them,
the reaction would not have taken place which drove
back the Danes to their frozen homes in the North.
But those ruffian sea-kings could not understand that,
15 and the reaction came. Alfred, the greatest of revo
lutionary heroes, and the wisest monarch that ever
sat on a throne, made the first use of his power, after
the Saxons restored it, to re-establish their ancient
laws. He had promised them that he would, and he
20 was true to them, because they had been true to him.
But it was not easily done; the courts were opposed to
it, for it limited their power — a kind of power that
everybody covets — the power to punish without re
gard to law. He was obliged to hang forty-four
25 judges in one year for refusing to give his subjects a
trial by jury. When the historian says that he hung
them, it is not meant that he put them to death with
out a trial. He had them impeached before the grand
council of the nation, the Wittenagemote, the Parlia-
30 ment of that time. During the subsequent period of
Saxon domination no man on English soil was power
ful enough to refuse a legal trial to the meanest peas
ant. If any minister or any king, in war or in peace.

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 151
had dared to punish a freeman by a tribunal of his own
appointment, he would have roused the wrath of the
whole population ; all orders of society would have re
sisted it; lord and vassal, knight and squire, priest and
penitent, bocman and socman, master and thrall, copy- 5
holder and villein, would have risen in one mass and
burned the offender to death in his castle, or followed
him in his flight and torn him to atoms. It was again
trampled down by the Norman conquerors; but the
evils resulting from the want of it united all classes in 10
the effort which compelled King John to restore it by
the Great Charter. Everybody is familiar with the
struggles which the English people, during many gen
erations, made for their rights with the Plantagenets,
the Tudors, and the Stuarts, and which ended finally 15
in the revolution of 1688, when the liberties of Eng
land were placed upon an impregnable basis by the
Bill of Rights.
Many times the attempt was made to stretch the
royal authority far enough to justify military trials ; 20
but it never had more than temporary success. Five
hundred years ago Edward II. closed up a great rebel
lion by taking the life of its leader, the Earl of Lan
caster, after trying him before a military court.
Eight years later that same king, together with his 25
lords and commons in Parliament assembled, acknowl
edged with shame and sorrow that the execution of
Lancaster was a mere murder, because the courts were
open and he might have had a legal trial. Queen
Elizabeth, for sundry reasons affecting the safety of 30
the State, ordered that certain offenders not of her
army should be tried according to the law martial.
But she heard the storm of popular vengeance rising,

152 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
and, haughty, imperious, self-willed as she was, she
yielded the point; for she knew that upon that subject
the English people would never consent to be trifled
with. Strafford, as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, tried
5 the Viscount Stormont before a military commission.
When impeached for it, he pleaded in vain that Ire
land was in a state of insurrection, that Stormont was
a traitor, and the army would be undone if it could
not defend itself without appealing to the civil courts.
10 The Parliament was deaf; the king himself could not
save him; he was condemned to suffer death as a
traitor and a murderer. Charles I. issued commis
sions to divers officers for the trial of his enemies ac
cording to the course of military law. If rebellion
15 ever was an excuse for such an act, he could surely
have pleaded it; for there was scarcely a spot in his
kingdom, from sea to sea, where the royal authority
was not disputed by somebody. Yet the Parliament
demanded in their Petition of Right, and the king was
20 obliged to concede, that all his commissions were ille
gal. James II. claimed the right to suspend the
operation of the penal laws — a power which the
courts denied; but the experience of his predecessors
taught him that he could not suspend any man's right
25 to a trial. He could easily have convicted the seven
bishops of any offense he saw fit to charge them with,
if he could have selected their judges from among the
mercenary creatures to whom he had given com
mands in his army. But this he dared not do. He
30 was obliged to send the bishops to a jury and endure
the mortification of seeing them acquitted. He, too,
might have had rebellion for an excuse, if rebellion be
an excuse. Tlie conspiracy was already ripe, which a

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 153
few months afterward made him an exile and an out
cast; he had reason to believe that the Prince of
Orange was making his preparations on the other side
of the Channel to invade the kingdom, where thou
sands burned to join him; nay, he pronounced the 5
bishops guilty of rebellion by the very act for which
he arrested them. He had raised an army to meet the
rebellion, and he was on Hounslow Heath, reviewing
the troops organized for that purpose, when he heard
the great shout of joy that went up from Westminster 10
Hall, was echoed back from Temple Bar, spread
down the city and over the Thames, and rose from
every vessel on the river — the simultaneous shout of
two hundred thousand men for the triumph of justice
and law. 15
If it were worth the time, I might detain you by
showing how this subject was treated by the French
Court of Cassation, in Geoffroy's case, under the Con
stitution of 1830, when a military judgment was un
hesitatingly pronounced to be void, though ordered 20
by the king, after a proclamation declaring Paris in a
state of siege. Fas est ah hoste doceri: we may lawfully
learn something from our enemies — at all events, we
should blush at the thought of not being equal on such
a subject to the courts of Virginia, Georgia, Mississ- 25
ippi, and Texas, whose decisions, my colleague. Gen
eral Garfield, has read and commented on.
The truth is, that no authority exists anywhere in
the world for the doctrine of the Attorney-General.
No judge or jurist, no statesman or parliamentary 30
orator, on this or the other side of the water, sustains
him. Every elementary writer from Coke to Wharton
is against him. All military authors, who profess to

154 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
know the duties of their profession, admit themselves
to be under, not above, the laws. No book can be
found in any library to justify the assertion that mili
tary tribunals may try a citizen at a place where the
5 courts are open. When I say no book, I mean, of
course, no book of acknowledged authority. I do not
deny that hireling clergymen have often been found to
disgrace the pulpit by trying to prove the divine right
of kings and other rulers to govern as they please. It
lo is true, also, that court sycophants and party hacks
have many times written pamphlets, and perhaps large
volumes, to show that those whom they serve should
be allowed to work out their bloody will upon the peo
ple. No abuse of power is too flagrant to find
15 its defenders among such servile creatures. Those
butchers' dogs, that feed upon garbage and fatten
upon the offal of the shambles, are always ready to
bark at whatever interferes with the trade of their
master.
20 But this case does not depend on authority. It is
rather a question of fact than of law.
I prove my right to a trial by jury, just as I would
prove my title to an estate if I held in my hand a
solemn deed conveying it to me, coupled with unde-
35 niable evidence of long and undisturbed possession
under and according to the deed. There is the
charter by which we claim to hold it. It is called the
Constitution of the United States. It is signed by the
sacred name of George Washington, and by thirty-
30 nine other names, only less illustrious than his. Tliey
represented every independent State then upon this
continent, and each State afterward ratified their work
by a separate convention of its own people. Every

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 15S
State that subsequently came in acknowledged that
this was the great standard by which their rights were
to be measured. Every man that has ever held office
in this country, from that time to this, has taken an
oath that he would support and stistain it through good 5
report and through evil. The Attorney-General him
self became a party to the instrument when he laid
his hand upon the Gospel of God and solemnly swore
that he would give to me and every other citizen the
full benefit of all it contains. 10
What does it contain? This among other things:
" The trial of all crimes except in cases of impeach
ment shall be by jury."
Again : " No person shall be held to answer for a
capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a pre- 15
sentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in
cases arising in the land and n'.val forces, or in the
militia when in actual service in time of war or pub
lic danger; nor shall any person be subject for the
same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, 20
nor be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law; nor shall private
property be taken for public use without just com
pensation." 25
This is not all; another article declares that " in all
criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right
to a speedy and public trial, by an'impartial jury of the
State and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed, which district shall have been previously 30
ascertained by law; and to be informed of the nature
and cause of the accusation ; to be confronted with the
witnesses against him; to have compulsory process

156 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
for the witnesses in his favor, and to have the assist
ance of counsel for his defense."
Is there any ambiguity there? If that does not sig
nify that a jury trial shall be the exclusive and only
5 means of ascertaining guilt in criminal cases, then I
demand to know what words or what collocation of
words in the English language would have that effect?
Does this mean that a fair, open, speedy, public trial
by an impartial jury shall be given only to those per-
10 sons against whom no special grudge is felt by the
Attorney-General, or the Judge-Advocate, or the head
of a department? Shall this inestimable privilege be
extended only to men whom the administration does
not care to convict? Is it confined to vulgar crimi-
15 nals, who commit ordinary crimes against society, and
shall it be denied to men who are accused of such
offenses as those for which Sidney and Russell were
beheaded, and Alice Lisle was hung, and Elizabeth
Gaunt was burned alive, and John Bunyan was im-
20 prisoned fourteen years, and Baxter was whipped at
the cart's tail, and Prynne had his ears cut off? No;
the words of the Constitution are all-embracing —
"As broad and general as the casing air."
The trial of ALL crimes shall be by jury. ALL
25 persons accused shall enjoy that privilege — and NO
person shall be held to answer in any other way.
That would be sufficient without more. But there
is another consideration which gives it tenfold power.
It is a universal rule of construction that general
30 words in any instrument, though they may be weak
ened by enumeration, are always strengthened by ex
ceptions. Here is no attempt to enumerate the

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 157
particular cases in which men charged with criminal
offenses shall be entitled to a jury trial. It is simply
declared that all shall have it. But that is coupled
with a statement of two specific exceptions: cases of
impeachment, and cases arising in the land or naval 5
forces. These exceptions strengthen the application
of the general rule to all other cases. Where the law
giver himself has declared when and in what circum
stances you may depart from the general rule, you
shall not presume to leave that onward path for other 10
reasons, and make different exceptions. To excep
tions, the maxim is always applicable, that expressio
uiiius exclusio est alterius.
But we are answered that the judgment under con
sideration was pronounced in time of war, and it is 15
therefore, at least morally, excusable. There may, or
there may not be something in that. I admit that the
merits or demerits of any particular act, whether it in
volve a violation of the Constitution or not, depend
upon the motives that prompted it, the time, the occa- 20
sion, and all the attending circumstances. When the
people of this country come to decide upon the acts
of their rulers, they will take all these things into con
sideration. But that presents the political aspect of
the case, with which, I trust, we have nothing to do 25
here. I decline to discuss it. I would only say, in
order to prevent misapprehension, that I think it is
precisely in a time of war and civil commotion that we
should double the guards upon the Constitution. If
the sanitary regulations which defend the health of a 30
city are ever to be relaxed, it ought certainly not to be
done when pestilence is abroad. When the Mississ
ippi shrinks within its natural channel, and creeps

158 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
lazily along the bottom, the inhabitants of the adjoin
ing shore have no need of a dike to save them from
inundation. But when the booming flood comes
down from above, and swells into a volume which rises
5 high above the plain on either side, then a crevasse in
the levee becomes a most serious thing. So in peace
able and quiet times our legal rights are in little dan
ger of being overborne; but when the wave of arbi
trary power lashes itself into violence and rage, and
10 goes surging up against the barriers which are made
to confine it, then we need the whole strength of an
unbroken Constitution to save us from destruction.
But this is a question which properly belongs to the
jurisdiction of the stump and the newspaper.
15 There is another 5«a.yj-political argument — neces
sity. If the law was violated because it could not be
obeyed, that might be an excuse. But no absolute
compulsion is pretended here. These commissioners
acted, at most, under what they regarded as a moral
20 necessity. The choice was left them to obey the law
or disobey it. The disobedience was only necessary
as means to an end which they thought desirable; and
now they assert that though these means are unlawful
and wrong, they are made right, because without them
25 the object could not be accomplished; in other words,
the end justifies the means. There you have a rule of
conduct denounced by all law, human and divine, as
being pernicious in policy and false in morals. See
how it applies to this case. Here were three men
30 whom it was desirable to remove out of this world,
but there was no proof on which any court would
take their lives; therefore it was necessary, and being
necessary it was right and proper, to create an illegal

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY fURY. 159
tribunal which would put them to death without proof.
By the same mode of reasoning you can prove it
equally right to poison them in their food or stab
them in their sleep.
Nothing that the worst men ever propounded has 5
produced so much oppression, misgovernment, and
suffering as this pretense of State necessity. A great
authority calls it " the tyrant's devilish plea "; and the
common honesty of all mankind has branded it with
everlasting infamy. 10
Of course, it is mere absurdity to say that these re
lators were necessarily deprived of their right to a fair
and legal trial, for the record shows that a court of
competent jurisdiction was sitting at the very time and
in the same town, where justice would have been done 15
without sale, denial, or delay. But concede, for the
argument's sake, that a trial by jury was wholly im
possible; admit that there was an absolute, overwhelm
ing, imperious necessity operating so as literally to
compel every act which the commissioners did : would 20
that give their sentence of death the validity and force
of a legal judgment pronounced by an ordained and es
tablished court? The question answers itself. This
trial was a violation of law, and no necessity could be
more than a mere excuse for those who committed it. 25
If the commissioners were on trial for murder or con
spiracy to murder, they might plead necessity if the
fact were true, just as they would plead insanity or
anything else to show that their guilt was not willful.
But we are now considering the legal effect of their 30
decision, and that depends on their legal authority to
make it. They had no such authority; they usurped
a jurisdiction which the law not only did not give them,

l6o JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
but expressly forbade them to exercise, and it follows
that their act is void, whatever may have been the real
or supposed excuse for it.
If these commissioners, instead of aiming at the life
5 and liberty of the relators, had attempted to deprive
them of their property by a sentence of confiscation,
would any court in Christendom declare that such a
sentence divested the title? Or would a person claim
ing under the sentence make his right any better by
lo showing that the illegal assumption of jurisdiction was
accompanied by some excuse which might save the
commissioners from a criminal prosecution?
Let me illustrate still further. Suppose you, the
judges of this court, to be surrounded in the hall where
15 you are sitting by a body of armed insurgents, and
compelled by main force to pronounce sentence of
death upon the President of the United States for
some act of his upon which you have no legal au
thority to adjudicate. There would be a valid sen-
20 tence if necessity alone could create jurisdiction. But
could the President be legally executed under it?
No; the compulsion under which you acted would be
a good defense for you against an impeachment or an
indictment for murder, but it would add nothing to the
25 validity of a judgment which the law forbade you to
give. That a necessity for violating the law is nothing
more than a mere excuse to the perpetrator, and does
not in any legal sense change the quality of the act
30 itself in its operation upon other parties, is a proposi
tion too plain on original principles to need the aid of
authority. I do not see how any man of common sense
is to stand up and dispute it. But there is decisive

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. i6i
authority upon the point. In 1815, at New Orleans,
General Jackson took upon himself the command of
every person in the city, suspended the functions of
all the civil authorities, and made his own will for a
time the only rule of conduct. It was believed to be 5
absolutely necessary. Judges, officers of the city cor
poration, and members of the State Legislature
insisted on it as the only way to save the " booty and
beauty " of the place from the unspeakable outrages
committed at Badajos and St. Sebastian by the very 10
same troops then marching to the attack. Jackson
used the power thus taken by him moderately, spar
ingly, benignly, and only for the purpose of prevent
ing mutiny in his camp. A single mutineer was re
strained by a short confinement, and another was sent 15
four miles up the river. But, after he had saved the
city, and the danger was all over, he stood before the
court to be tried by the law; his conduct was decided
to be illegal by the same judge who had declared it to
be necessary, and he paid the penalty without a mur- 20
mur. The Supreme Court of Louisiana, in Johnson
vs. Duncan, decided that everything done during the
siege in pursuance of martial rule, but in conflict with
the law of the land, was void and of none effect, with
out reference to the circumstances which made it nee- 25
essary. Long afterward the fine imposed upon
Jackson was refunded, because his friends, while they
admitted him to have violated the law, insisted that
the necessity which drove him to it ought to have
saved him from the punishment due only to a willful 30
offender. The learned counsel on the other side will not assert
that there was war at Indianapolis in 1864, for they

l62 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
have read " Coke's Institute," and Judge Grier's opin
ion in the prize cases, and of course they know it to be
a settled rule that war cannot be said to exist where
the civil courts are open. They will not set up the
5 absurd plea of necessity, for they are well aware that
it would not be true in point of fact. They will hardly
take the ground that any kind of necessity could give
legal validity to that which the law forbids.
This, therefore, must be their position: That al
io though there was no war at the place where this com
mission sat, and no actual necessity for it, yet if there
was a war anywhere else, to which the United States
were a party, the technical effect of such war was to
take the jurisdiction away from the civil courts and
15 transfer it to army officers.
General Butler: We do not take that position.
Mr. Black: Then they can take no ground at all,
for nothing else is left. I do not wonder to see them
recoil from their own doctrine when its nakedness is
20 held up to their eyes. But they must stand upon that
or give up their cause. They may not state their propo
sition precisely as I state it; that is too plain a way of
putting it. But, in substance, it is their doctrine —
has been the doctrine of the Attorney-General's office
25 ever since the advent of the present incumbent — and
is the doctrine of their brief, printed and filed in this
case. What else can they say? They will admit that
the Constitution is not altogether without a meaning;
that at a time of universal peace it imposes some kind
30 of obligation upon those who swear to support it.
If no war existed they would not deny the exclusive
jurisdiction of the civil courts in criminal cases. How,
then, did the military get jurisdiction in Indiana?

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 163
All men who hold the Attorney-General's opinion
to be true answer the question I have put by saying
that military jurisdiction comes from the mere exist
ence of war; and it comes in Indiana only as the legal
result of a war which is going on in Mississippi, Ten- 5
nessee, or South Carolina. The Constitution is re
pealed, or its operation suspended, in one State be
cause there is war in another. The courts are open,
the organization of society is intact, the judges are on
the bench, and their process is not impeded; but their 10
jurisdiction is gone. Why? Because, say our oppo
nents, war exists, and the silent, legal, technical opera
tion of that fact is to deprive all American citizens of
their right to a fair trial.
That class of jurists and statesmen, who hold that 15
the trial by jury is lost to the citizen during the ex
istence of war, carry out their doctrine, theoretically
and practically, to its ultimate consequences. The
right of trial by jury being gone, all other rights are
gone with it ; therefore a man may be arrested without 20
an accusation, and kept in prison during the pleasure
of his captors; his papers may be searched without a
warrant; his property may be confiscated behind his
back, and he has no earthly means of redress. Nay,
an attempt to get a just remedy is construed as a new 25
crime. He dare not even complain, for the right of
free speech is gone with the rest of his rights. If you
sanction that doctrine, what is to be the consequence?
I do not speak of what is past and gone; but in case of
a future war, what results will follow from your de-30
cision indorsing the Attorney-General's views? They
are very obvious. At the instant when war begins,
our whole system of legal government will tumble into

l64 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
ruin, and if we are not all robbed, and kidnaped, and
hanged, and drawn, and quartered, we will owe our
immunity, not to the Constitution and laws, but to the
mere mercy or policy of those persons who may then
5 happen to control the organized physical force of the
country. This certainly puts us in a most precarious con
dition ; we must have war about half the time, do what
we may to avoid it. The President or Congress can
lo wantonly provoke a war whenever it suits the purpose
of either to do so; and they can keep it going as long
as they please, even after the actual conflict of arms is
over. When Peace wooes them they can ignore her ex
istence ; and thus they can make war a chronic condition
15 of the country, and the slavery of the people perpetual.
Nay, we are at the mercy of any foreign potentate who
may envy us the possession of those liberties which
we boast of so much; he can shatter our Constitution
without striking a single blow or bringing a gun to
20 bear upon us. A simple declaration of hostilities is
more terrible to us than an army with banners.
To me this seems the wildest delusion that ever took
possession of a human brain. If there be one princi
ple of political ethics more universally acknowledged
25 than another, it is that war, and especially civil war,
can be justified only when it is undertaken to vindi
cate and uphold the legal and constitutional rights of
the people; not to trample them down. He who car
ries on a system of wholesale slaughter for any other
30 purpose must stand without excuse before God or man.
In a time of war, more than at any other time, public
liberty is in the hands of the public officers. And she
is there in double trust: first, as they are citizens, and

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 165
therefore bound to defend her by the common obliga
tion of all citizens; and, next, as they are her special
guardians —
" Who should against her murderers shut the door.
Not bear the knife themselves." 5
The opposing argument, when turned into plain Eng
lish, means this, and this only: that when the Consti
tution is attacked upon one side, its official guardians
may assail it upon the other; when rebellion strikes it
in the face, they may take advantage of the blindness 10
produced by the blow to sneak behind it and stab it
in the back.
The convention when it framed the Constitution,
and the people when they adopted it, could have had
no thought like that. If they had supposed that it 15
would operate only while perfect peace continued, they
certainly would have given us some other rule to go
by in time of war; they would not have left us to wan
der about in a howling wilderness of anarchy, without
a lamp to our feet, or a guide to our path. Another 20
thing proves their actual intent still more strikingly.
They required that every man in any kind of public
employment. State or national, civil or military, should
swear, without reserve or qualification, that he would
support the Constitution. Surely our ancestors had 25
too much regard for the moral and religious welfare
of their posterity to impose upon them an oath like
that, if they intended and expected it to be broken half
the time. The oath of an officer to support the Con
stitution is as simple as that of a witness to tell the 30
truth in a court of justice. What would you think of
a witness who should attempt to justify perjury upon
the ground that he had testified when civil war was

l66 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
raging, and he thought that by swearing to a lie he
might promote some public or private object con
nected with the strife?
No, no, the great men who made this country what it
5 is — the heroes who won her independence, and the
statesmen who settled her institutions — had no such
notions in their minds. Washington deserved the
lofty praise bestowed upon him by the President of
Congress when he resigned his commission — that he
10 had always regarded the rights of the civil authority
through all changes and through all disasters. When
his duty as President afterward required him to arm
the public force to suppress a rebellion in Western
Pennsylvania, he never thought that the Constitution
15 was abolished, by virtue of that fact, in New Jersey,
or Maryland, or Virginia. It would have been a dan
gerous experiment for an adviser of his at that time,
or at any time, to propose that he should deny a citi
zen his right to be tried by a jury, and substitute in
20 place of it a trial before a tribunal composed of men
elected by himself from among his own creatures and
dependents. You can well imagine how that great
heart would have swelled with indignation at the bare
thought of such an insulting outrage upon the liberty
25 and law of his country.
In the war of 1812, the man emphatically called the
Father of the Constitution was the supreme Executive
Magistrate. Talk of perilous times! There was the
severest trial this Union ever saw. That was no half-
30 organized rebellion on the one side of the conflict, to
be crushed by the hostile millions and unbounded re
sources of the other. The existence of the nation was
threatened by the most formidable military and naval

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 167
power then upon the face of the earth. Every town
upon the northern frontier, upon the Atlantic seaboard,
and upon the Gulf coast was in daily and hourly dan
ger. The enemy had penetrated the heart of Ohio.
New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia were all of 5
them threatened from the west as well as the east.
This Capitol was taken, and burned, and pillaged, and
every member of the Federal Administration was a
fugitive before the invading army. Meanwhile, party
spirit was breaking out into actual treason all over 10
New England. Four of those States refused to fur
nish a man or a dollar even for their own defense.
Their public authorities were plotting the dismember
ment of the Lfnion, and individuals among them were
burning blue-lights upon the coast as a signal to the 15
enemy's ships. But in all this storm of disaster, with
foreign war in his front, and domestic treason on his
flank, Madison gave out no sign that he would aid Old
England and New England to break up this Govern
ment of laws. On the contrary, he and all his sup- 20
porters, though compassed round with darkness and
with danger, stood faithfully between the Constitution
and its enemies " To shield it and save it, or perish there, too."
The framers of the Constitution and all their con- 25
temporaries died and were buried; their children suc
ceeded them and continued on the stage of public
affairs until they, too,
" Lived out their lease of life, and paid their breath
To time and mortal custom " ; 30
and a third generation was already far on its way to the
grave before this monstrous doctrine was conceived

i68 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
or thought of, that public officers all over the country
might disregard their oaths whenever a war or a re
bellion was commenced.
Our friends on the other side are quite conscious that
5 when they deny the binding obligation of the Consti
tution they must put some other system of law in its
place. Their brief gives notice that, while the Consti
tution, and the acts of Congress, and Magna Charta,
and the common law, and all the rules of natural jus-
10 tice shall remain under foot, they will try American
citizens according to the law of nations! But the law
of nations takes no notice of the subject. If that sys
tem did contain a special provision that a government
might hang one of its own citizens without a judge
15 or jury, it would still be competent for the American
people to say, as they have said, that no such thing
should ever be done here. That is my answer to the
law of nations.
But then they tell us that the laws of war must be
20 treated as paramount. Here they become mysterious.
Do they mean that code of public law which defines
the duties of two belligerent parties to one another,
and regulates the intercourse of neutrals with both?
If yes, then it is simply a recurrence to the law of
25 nations, which has nothing on earth to do with the
subject. Do they mean that portion of our municipal
code which defines our duties to the Government in
war as well as in peace? Then they are speaking of
the Constitution and laws, which declare in plain words
30 that the Government owes every citizen a fair legal trial,
as much as the citizen owes obedience to the Govern
ment. They are in search of an argument under diffi
culties. When they appeal to international law, it is

I HE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 169
silent; and when they interrogate the law of the land,
the answer is an unequivocal contradiction of their
whole theory.
The Attorney-General tells us that all persons whom
he and his associates choose to denounce for giving aid 5
to the rebellion are to be treated as being themselves
a part of the rebellion — they are public enemies, and
therefore they may be punished without being found
guilty by a competent court or a jury. This conven
ient rule would outlaw every citizen the moment he is 10
charged with a political offense. But political offend
ers are precisely the class of persons who most need
the protection of a court and jury, for the prosecu
tions against them are most likely to be unfounded
both in fact and in law. Whether innocent or guilty, 15
to accuse is to convict them before the ignorant and
bigoted men who generally sit in military courts. But
this court decided in the prize cases that all who live
in the enemy's territory are public enemies, without
regard to their personal sentiments or conduct ; and 20
the converse of the proposition is equally true — that
all who reside inside of our own territory are to be
treated as under the protection of the law. If they
help the enemy they are criminals, but they cannot be
punished without legal conviction. 25
You have heard much (and you will hear more very
soon) concerning the natural and inherent right of the
Government to defend itself without regard to law.
Tliis is wholly fallacious. In a despotism the auto
crat is unrestricted in the means he may use for the 30
defense of his authority against the opposition of his
own subjects or others; and that is precisely what
makes him a despot. But in a limited monarchy the

170 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
prince must confine himself to a legal defense of his
government. If he goes beyond that, and commits
aggressions on the rights of the people, he breaks the
social compact, releases his subjects from all their
5 obligations to him, renders himself liable to be hurled
from his throne, and dragged to the block or driven
into exile. This principle was sternly enforced in the
cases of Charles I. and James II. , and we have it an
nounced on the highest official authority here that the
10 Queen of England cannot ring a little bell on her table
and cause a man by her arbitrary order to be arrested
under any pretense whatever. If that be true there,
how much more true must it be here, where we have
no personal sovereign, and where our only Govern-
15 ment is the Constitution and laws. A violation of
law, on pretense of saving such a Government as ours,
is not self-preservation, but suicide.
Salus populi suprciiia lex. Observe it is not saliis
regis; the safety of the people, not the safety of the
20 ruler, is the supreme law. When those who hold the
authority of the Government in their hands behave
in such manner as to put the liberties and rights of
the people in jeopardy, the people may rise against
them and overthrow them without regard to that law
25 which requires obedience to them. The maxim is
revolutionary, and expresses simply the right to resist
tyranny without regard to prescribed forms. It can
never be used to stretch the powers of government
against the people.
30 If this Government of ours has no power to defend
itself without violating its own laws, it carries the seeds
of destruction in its own bosom; it is a poor, weak,
blind, staggering thing, and the sooner it tumbles over

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 171
the better. But it has a most efficient legal mode of
protecting itself against all possible danger. It is
clothed from head to foot in a complete panoply of
defensive armor. What are the perils which may
threaten its existence? I am not able at this moment 5
to think of more than these which I am about to
mention: foreign invasion, domestic insurrection,
mutiny in the Army and Navy, corruption in the
civil administration, and last, but not least, criminal
violations of its laws committed by individuals among 10
the body of the people. Have we not a legal mode of
defense against all these? Yes: military force repels
invasion and suppresses insurrection; you preserve
discipline in the Army and Navy by means of courts-
martial; you preserve the purity of the civil adminis- 15
tration by impeaching dishonest magistrates; and
crimes are prevented and punished by the regular
judicial authorities. You are not merely compelled
to use these weapons against your enemies, because
they and they only are justified by the law: you ought 20
to use them because they are more efficient than any
other, and less liable to be abused.
There is another view of the subject which settles
all controversy about it. No human being in this
country can exercise any kind of public authority 25
which is not conferred by law; and under the United
States it must be given by the express words of a
written statute. Whatever is not so given is withheld,
and the exercise of it is positively prohibited. Courts-
martial in the Army and Navy are authorized; they 30
are legal institutions; their jurisdiction is limited, and
their whole code of procedure is regulated by act of
Congress. LTpon the civil courts all the jurisdiction

172 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
they have or can have is bestowed by law; and if one
of them goes beyond what is written, its action is
ultra vires and void. But a military commission is not
a court-martial, and it is not a civil court. It is not
5 governed by the law which is made for either, and has
no law of its own. Within the last five years we have
seen, for the first time, self-constituted tribunals not
only assuming power which the law did not give them,
but thrusting aside the regular courts to which the
10 power was exclusively given.
What is the consequence? This terrible authority
is wholly undefined, and its exercise is without any
legal control. Undelegated power is always un
limited. The field that lies outside of the Constitution
15 and laws has no boundary. Thierry, the French his
torian of England, says that when the crown and
scepter were offered to Cromwell he hesitated for
several days, and answered, " Do not make me a king;
for then my hands will be tied up by the laws which
20 define the duties of that office; but make me protector
of the Commonwealth, and I can do what I please;
no statute restraining and limiting the royal preroga
tive will apply to me." So these commissions have
no legal origin and no legal name by which they are
25 known among the children of men; no law applies to
them; and they exercise all power for the paradoxical
reason that none belongs to them rightfully.
Ask the Attorney-General what rules apply to mili
tary commissions in the exercise of their assumed au-
30 thority over civilians. Come, Mr. Attorney, " gird up
thy loins now like a man ; I will demand of thee, and
thou shalt declare unto me if thou hast understand
ing." How is a military commission organized?

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 173
What shall be the number and rank of its members?
What offenses come within its jurisdiction? What is
its code of procedure? How shall witnesses be com
pelled to attend it? Is it perjury for a witness to
swear falsely? What is the function of the Judge- 5
Advocate? Does he tell the members how they must
find, or does he only persuade them to convict? Is he
the agent of the Government, to command them what
evidence they shall admit and what sentence they shall
pronounce ; or does he always carry his point, right or 10
wrong, by the mere force of eloquence and ingenuity?
What is the nature of their punishment? May they
confiscate property and levy fines as well as imprison
and kill? In addition to strangling their victim, may
they also deny him the last consolations of religion, 15
and refuse his family the melancholy privilege of giv
ing him a decent grave?
To none of these questions can the Attorney-Gen
eral make a reply, for there is no law on the subject.
He will not attempt to " darken counsel by words 20
without knowledge," and therefore, like Job, he can
only lay his hand upon his mouth and keep silence.
The power exercised through those military com
missions is not only unregulated by law, but it is in
capable of being so regulated. What is it that you 25
claim, Mr. Attorney? I will give you a definition, the
correctness of which you will not attempt to gainsay.
You assert the right of the Executive Government,
without the intervention of the judiciary, to capture,
imprison, and kill any person to whom that Govern- 30
ment or its paid dependents may choose to impute an
offense. This, in its very essence, is despotic and law
less. It is never claimed or tolerated except by those

174 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
governments which deny the restraints of all law. It
has been exercised by the great and small oppressors
of mankind ever since the days of Nimrod. It
operates in different ways; the tools it uses are not
5 always the same; it hides its hideous features under
many disguises; it assumes every variety of form;
" It can change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school."
But in all its mutations of outward appearance it is
10 still identical in principle, object, and origin. It is
always the same great engine of despotism which
Hamilton described it to be.
Under the old French monarchy the favorite fash
ion of it was a lettre de cachet, signed by the king, and
15 this would consign the party to a loathsome dungeon
until he died, forgotten by all the world. An imperial
ukase will answer the same purpose in Russia. The
most faithful subject of that amiable autocracy may
lie down in the evening to dream of his future pros-
2o perity, and before daybreak he will find himself be
tween two dragoons on his way to the mines of Si
beria. In Turkey the verbal order of the Sultan or
any of his powerful favorites will cause a man to be
tied up in a sack and cast into the Bosphorus. Nero
25 accused Peter and Paul of spreading a " pestilent
superstition," which they called the Gospel. He heard
their defense in person, and sent them to the cross.
Afterward he tried the whole Christian Church in one
body, on a charge of setting fire to the city, and he
30 convicted them, though he knew not only that they
were innocent, but that he himself had committed the
crime. The judgment was followed by instant exe-

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 175
cution; he let loose the Praetorian guards upon men,
women, and children, to drown, butcher, and burn
them. Herod saw fit, for good political reasons,
closely affecting the permanence of his reign in Judea,
to punish certain possible traitors in Bethlehem by 5
anticipation. This required the death of all the chil
dren in that city under two years of age. He issued
his "general order"; and his provost-marshal car
ried it out with so much alacrity and zeal that in one
day the whole land was filled with mourning and 10
lamentation. Macbeth understood the whole philosophy of the
subject. He was an unlimited monarch. His power
to punish for any offense or for no offense at all was
as broad as that which the Attorney-General claims 15
for himself and his brother officers under the United
States. But he was more cautious how he used it.
He had a dangerous rival, from whom he apprehended
the most serious peril to the " life of his government."
The necessity to get rid of him was plain enough, but 20
he could not afford to shock the moral sense of the
world by pleading political necessity for a murder.
He must " Mask the business from the common eye."
Accordingly he sent for two enterprising gentlemen 25
whom he took into his service upon liberal pay —
" made love to their assistance " — and got them to
deal with the accused party. He acted as his own
Judge-Advocate. He made a most elegant and stir
ring speech to persuade his agents that Banquo was 30
their oppressor, and had " held them so under for
tune " that he ought to die for that alone. When

176 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
they agreed that he was their enemy, then said the
king: " So is he mine, and though I could
With barefaced power sweep him from my sight
5 And bid my will avouch it ; yet I must not.
For certain friends, who are both his and mine.
Whose loves I may not drop."
For these, and " many weighty reasons " besides, he
thought it best to commit the execution of his design
10 to a subordinate agency. The commission thus
organized in Banquo's case sat upon him that very
night, at a convenient place beside the road where it
was known he would be traveling; and they did pre
cisely what the Attorney-General says the military
15 officers may do in this country — they took and killed
him, because their employer at the head of the govern
ment wanted it done, and paid them for doing it out
of the public treasury.
But of all the persons that ever wielded this kind o£
20 power, the one who went most directly to the purpose
and object of it was Lola Montez. She reduced it to
the elementary principle. In 1848, when she was
minister and mistress to the King of Bavaria, she dic
tated all the measures of the Government. The times
25 were troublesome. All over Germany the spirit of
rebellion was rising; everywhere the people wanted to
see a first-class revolution, like that which had just
exploded in France. Many persons in Bavaria dis
liked to be governed so absolutely by a lady of the
30 character which Lola Montez bore, and some of them
were rash enough to say so. Of course that was trea
son, and she went about to punish it in the simplest of
all possible ways. She bought herself a pack of Eng-

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 177
lish bulldogs, trained to tear the flesh, and mangle the
limbs, and lap the life-blood: and with these dogs at
her heels, she marched up and down the streets of
Munich with a most majestic tread, and with a sense
of power which any Judge-Advocate in America might 5
envy. When she saw any person whom she chose to
denounce for " thwarting the government," or " using
disloyal language," her obedient followers needed but
a sign to make them spring at the throat of their vic
tim. It gives me unspeakable pleasure to tell you the 10
sequel. The people rose in their strength, smashed
down the whole machinery of oppression, and drove
out into uttermost shame king, strumpet, dogs, and
all. From that time to this neither man, woman, nor
beast, has dared to worry or kill the people of Bavaria. 15
All these are but so many different ways of using
the arbitrary power to punish. The variety is merely
in the means which a tyrannical government takes to
destroy those whom it is bound to protect. Every
where it is but another construction, on the same 20
principle, of that remorseless machine by which des
potism wreaks its vengeance on those who offend it.
In a civilized country it nearly always uses the mili
tary force, because that is the sharpest, and surest, as
well as the best-looking instrument that can be found 25
for such a purpose. But in none of its forms can it
be introduced into this country; we have no room for
it; the ground here is all preoccupied by legal and free
institutions. Between the officers who have a power like this, and 30
the people who are liable to become its victims, there
can be no relation except that of master and slave. The
master may be kind, and the slave may be contented

178 JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
in his bondage; but the man who can take your Hfe,
or restrain your liberty, or despoil you of your prop
erty at his discretion, either with his own hands or by
means of a hired overseer, owns you and he can force
5 you to serve him. All you are and all you have, in
cluding your wives and children, are his property.
If my learned and very good friend, the Attorney-
General, had this right of domination over me, I
should not be very much frightened, for I should ex-
10 pect him to use it as moderately as any man in all the
world; but still I should feel the necessity of being very
discreet. He might change in a short time. The
thirst for blood is an appetite which grows by what it
feeds upon. We cannot know him by present ap-
15 pearances. Robespierre resigned a country judgeship
in early life because he was too tender-hearted to pro
nounce sentence of death upon a convicted criminal.
Caligula passed for a most amiable young gentleman
before he was clothed with the imperial purple, and
20 for about eight months afterward. It was Trajan, I
think, who said that absolute power would convert any
man into a wild beast, whatever was the original be
nevolence of his nature. If you decide that the
Attorney-General holds in his own hands, or shares
25 with others, the power of life and death over us all,
I mean to be very cautious in my intercourse with him ;
and I warn you, the judges whom I am now address
ing, to do likewise. Trust not to the gentleness and
kindness which have always marked his behavior here-
3otofore. Keep your distance; be careful how you
approach him; for you know not at what moment or
by what a trifle you may rouse the sleeping tiger. Re
member the injunction of Scripture: " Go not near to

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 179
the man who hath power to kill ; and if thou come unto
him, see that thou make no fault, lest he take away thy
life presently; for thou goest among snares and walk-
est upon the battlements of the city."
The right of the Executive Government to kill and 5
imprison citizens for political offenses has not been
practically claimed in this country, except in cases
where commissioned officers of the army were the in
struments used. Why should it be confined to them?
Why should not naval officers be permitted to share lo
in it? What is the reason that common soldiers and
seamen are excluded from all participation in the busi
ness? No law has bestowed the right upon army
officers more than upon other persons. If men are to
be hung up without that legal trial which the Consti- 15
tution guarantees to them, why not employ commis
sions of clergymen, merchants, manufacturers, horse-
dealers, butchers, or drovers, to do it? It will not be
pretended that military men are better qualified to
decide questions of fact or law than other classes of 20
people ; for it is known, on the contrary, that they are,
as a general rule, least of all fitted to perform the duties
that belong to a judge.
The Attorney-General thinks that a proceeding
which takes away the lives of citizens without a con- 25
stitutional trial is a most merciful dispensation. His
idea of humanity as well as law is embodied in the
bureau of military justice, with all its dark and bloody
machinery. For that strange opinion he gives this
curious reason: that the duty of the commander-in- 30
chief is to kill, and unless he has this bureau and these
commissions he must "butcher" indiscriminately, with
out mercy or justice. I admit that if the commander-

l8o JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
in-chief or any other officer of the Government has
the power of an Asiatic king, to butcher the people at
pleasure, he ought to have somebody to aid him in
selecting his victims, as well as to do the rough work
5 of strangling and shooting. But if my learned friend
will only condescend to cast an eye upon the Consti
tution, he will see at once that all the executive and
military officers are completely relieved by the pro
vision that the life of a citizen shall not be taken at
lo all until after legal conviction by a court and jury.
You cannot help but see that military commissions,
if suffered to go on, will be used for most pernicious
purposes. I have criticised none of their past pro
ceedings, nor made any allusion to their history in the
15 last five years. But what can be the meaning of this
effort to maintain them among us? Certainly not to
punish actual guilt. All the ends of true justice are at
tained by the prompt, speedy, impartial trial which the
courts are bound to give. Is there any danger that
20 crime will be winked upon by the judges? Does any
body pretend that courts and juries have less ability to
decide upon facts and law than the men who sit in
military tribunals? The counsel in this cause will not
insult you by even hinting such an opinion. What
25 righteous or just purpose, then, can they serve?
None, whatever.
But while they are utterly powerless to do even a
shadow of good, they will be omnipotent to trample
upon innocence, to gag the truth, to silence patriotism,
30 and crush the liberties of the country. They will al
ways be organized to convict, and the conviction will
follow the accusation as surely as night follows the day.
The Government, of course, will accuse none before

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. i8i
such a commission except those whom it predeter
mines to ruin and destroy. The accuser can choose
the judges, and will certainly select those who are
known to be the most ignorant, the most unprincipled,
and the most ready to do whatever may please the 5
power which gives them pay, promotion, and plun
der. The willing witness can be found as easily as
the superserviceable judge. The treacherous spy, and
the base informer — those loathsome wretches who do
their lying by the job — will stock such a market with lo
abundant perjury, for the authorities that employ
them will be bound to protect as well as reward them.
A corrupt and tyrannical government, with such an
engine at its command, will shock the world with the
enormity of its crimes. Plied as it may be by the arts 15
of a malignant priesthood, and urged on by the mad
ness of a raving crowd, it will be worse than the popish
plot, or the French revolution — it will be a combi
nation of both, with Fouquier-Tinville on the bench,
and Titus Oates in the witness' box. You can save us 20
from this horrible fate. You alone can " deliver us
from the body of this death." To that fearful extent
is the destiny of this nation in your hands.

DEMONSTRATIVE ORATORY.
THE EULOGY.
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Born 1811. Died 1S84.
DANIEL O'CONNELL.
[Prefacing this oration, in the second volume of Mr. Phillips'
Speeches, Lectures, and Addresses, is the following explanatory note ;
" On the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Daniel O'Connell,
August 6, 1875, a celebration was held in Music Hall, Boston. Mr.
Phillips was the orator of the occasion. No subject could have been
more congenial, for no statesman of his own day had more deeply
impressed Mr. Phillips than O'Connell, and the name of the Irish
agitator was often on the American agitator's lips. The oration was
often repeated and takes rank with the orator's masterpieces."
The oration is here printed from the volume mentioned above,
with the permission of the publishers, Messrs. Lee and Shepard.]
A hundred years ago to-day Daniel O'Connell was
born. The Irish race, wherever scattered over the
globe, assembles to-night to pay fitting tribute to his
memory — one of the most eloquent men, one of the
5 most devoted patriots, and the most successful states
man which that race has given to history. We of
other races may well join you in that tribute, since the
cause of constitutional government owes more to
O'Connell than to any other political leader of the last
10 two centuries. The English-speaking race, to find his
equal among statesmen, must pass by Chatham and

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 183
Walpole, and go back to Oliver Cromwell, or the
able men who held up the throne of Queen Elizabeth.
If to put the civil and social elements of your day into
successful action, and plant the seeds of continued
strength and progress for coming times — if this is to 5
be a statesman, then most emphatically was O'Connell
one. To exert this control, and secure this progress,
while and because ample means lie ready for use under
your hand, does not rob Walpole and Colbert, Chat
ham and Richelieu, of their title to be considered 10
statesmen. To do it, as Martin Luther did, when one
must ingeniously discover or invent his tools, and
while the mightiest forces that influence human
affairs are arrayed against him, that is what ranks
O'Connell with the few masterly statesmen the Eng- 15
lish-speaking race has ever had. When Napoleon's
soldiers bore the negro chief Toussaint L'Ouverture
into exile, he said, pointing back to San Domingo,
" You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty,
but I am only a branch. I have planted the tree itself 20
so deep that ages will never root it up." And what
ever may be said of the social or industrial condition
of Hayti during the last seventy years, its nationality
has never been successfully assailed.
O'Connell is the only Irishman who can say as 25
much of Ireland. From the peace of Utrecht, 1713,
till the fall of Napoleon, Great Britain was the lead
ing state in Europe; while Ireland, a comparatively
insignificant island, lay at its feet. She weighed next
to nothing in the scale of British politics. The Con- 30
tinent pitied and England despised her. O'Connell
found her a mass of quarreling races and sects, di
vided, dispirited, broken-hearted, and servile. He

1 84 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
made her a nation whose first word broke in pieces the
iron obstinacy of Wellington, tossed Peel from the
Cabinet, and gave the government to the Whigs;
whose colossal figure, like the helmet in Walpole's
5 romance, has filled the political sky ever since; whose
generous aid thrown into the scale of the three great
British reforms, — the ballot, the corn-laws, and sla
very, — secured their success; a nation whose contin
ual discontent has dragged Great Britain down to be
lo a second-rate power on the chess-board of Europe. I
know other causes have helped in producing this re
sult, but the nationality which O'Connell created has
been the main cause of this change in England's im
portance. Dean Swift, Molyneux, and Henry Flood
15 thrust Ireland for a moment into the arena of British
politics, a sturdy suppliant clamoring for justice; and
Grattan held her there an equal, and, as he thought,
a nation, for a few years. But the unscrupulous hand
of William Pitt brushed away in an hour all Grattan's
20 works. Well might he say of the Irish Parliament
which he brought to life, " I sat by its cradle, I fol
lowed its hearse"; since after that infamous union,
which Byron called a " union of the shark with its
prey," Ireland sank back, plundered and helpless.
25 O'Connell lifted her to a fixed and permanent place
in English affairs — no suppliant, but a conqueror dic
tating her terms.
This is the proper standpoint from which to look
at O'Connell's work. This is the consideration that
30 ranks him, not with founders of states, like Alexander,
Caesar, Bismarck, Napoleon, and William the Silent,
but with men who, without arms, by force of reason,
have revolutionized their times — with Luther, Jeffer-

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 185
son, Mazzini, Samuel Adams, Garrison, and Franklin.
I know some men will sneer at this claim — those who
have never looked at him except through the spectacles
of English critics, who despised him as an Irishman
and a Catholic, until they came to hate him as a con- 5
queror. As Grattan said of Kirwan, " The curse of
Swift was upon him, to have been born an Irishman
and a man of genius, and to have used his gifts for his
country's good." Mark what measure of success at
tended the able men who preceded him, in circum- 10
stances as favorable as his, perhaps even better; then
measure him by comparison.
An island soaked with the blood of countless re
bellions; oppression such as would turn cowards into
heroes; a race whose disciplined valor had been proved 15
on almost every battlefield in Europe, and whose
reckless daring lifted it, any time, in arms against
England, with hope or without — what inspired them?
Devotion, eloquence, and patriotism seldom paralleled
in history. Who led them? Dean Swift, according 20
to Addison, " the greatest genius of his age," called
by Pope " the incomparable," a man fertile in re
sources, of stubborn courage and tireless energy,
master of an English style unequaled, perhaps, for its
purpose then or since, a man who had twice faced 25
England in her angriest mood, and by that masterly
pen subdued her to his will; Henry Flood, eloquent
even for an Irishman, and sagacious as he was elo
quent — the eclipse of that brilliant life one of the sad
dest pictures in Irish biography; Grattan, with all the 30
courage, and more than the eloquence, of his race, a
statesman's eye quick to see every advantage, bound
less devotion, unspotted integrity, recognized as an

1 86 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
equal by the world's leaders, and welcomed by Fox
to the House of Commons as the " Demosthenes of
Ireland "; Emmet in the field, Sheridan in the senate,
Curran at the bar; and, above all, Edmund Burke,
5 whose name makes eulogy superfluous, more than
Cicero in the senate, almost Plato in the academy.
All these gave their lives to Ireland; and when the
present century opened, where was she? Sold like a
slave in the market place by her perjured master,
lo William Pitt.
It was then that O'Connell flung himself into the
struggle, gave fifty years to the service of his country;
and where is she to-day? Not only redeemed, but her
independence put beyond doubt or peril. Grattan and
15 his predecessors could get no guaranties for what
rights they gained. In that sagacious, watchful, and
almost omnipotent public opinion, which O'Connell
created, is an all-sufficient guaranty of Ireland's future.
Look at her! almost every shackle has fallen from her
20 limbs ; all that human wisdom has as yet devised to
remedy the evils of bigotry and misrule has been done.
O'Connell found Ireland a " hissing and a byword "
in Edinburgh and London. He made her the pivot of
British politics; she rules them, directly or indirectly,
25 with as absolute a sway as the slave question did the
United States from 1850 to 1865. Look into Earl
Russell's book, and the history of the Reform Bill of
1832, and see with how much truth it may be claimed
that O'Connell and his fellows gave Englishmen the
30 ballot under that act. It is by no means certain that
the corn-laws could have been abolished without their
aid. In the Anti-slavery struggle O'Connell stands,
in influence and ability, equal with the best, I know

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 187
the credit all those measures do to English leaders;
but, in my opinion, the next generation will test the
statesmanship of Peel, Palmerston, Russell, and Glad
stone, almost entirely by their conduct of the Irish
question. All the laurels they have hitherto won in that 5
field are rooted in ideas which Grattan and O'Con
nell urged on reluctant hearers for half a century.
Why do Bismarck and Alexander look with such con
temptuous indifference on every attempt of England
to mingle in European affairs? Because they know 10
they have but to lift a finger, and Ireland stabs her in
the back. Where was the statesmanship of English
leaders when they allowed such an evil to grow so for
midable? This is Ireland to-day. What was she
when O'Connell undertook her cause? The saddest 15
of Irish poets has described her:

" O Ireland, my country, the hour of thy pride and thy splendor hath
passed,
And the chain that was spurned in thy moments of power hangs heavy
around thee at last !
There are marks in the fate of each clime, there are turns in the for
tunes of men ;
But the changes of realms or the chances of time shall never restore
thee again. 20

' ' Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe by links which a world can
not sever :
With thy tyrant through storm and through calm thou shalt go, and
thy sentence is bondage forever.
Thou art doomed for the thankless to toil, thou art left for the proud
to disdain :
And the blood of thy sons and the wealth of thy soil shall be lavished
and lavished in vain.

1 88 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
" Thy riches with taunts shall be taken, thy valor with coldness be
paid ;
And of millions who see thee thus sunk and forsaken not one shall
stand forth in thine aid.
In the nations thy place is left void ; thou art lost in the list of the
free ;
Even realms by the plague and the earthquake destroyed may revive,
but no hope is for thee."
5 It was at this moment, when the cloud came down
close to earth, that O'Connell, then a young lawyer
just admitted to the bar, flung himself in front
of his countrymen, and begged them to make
one grand effort. The hierarchy of the Church
lo disowned him. They said, " We have seen every
attempt lead always up to the scaffold; we are
not willing to risk another effort." The peerage
of the island repudiated him. They said, " We
have struggled and bled for a half dozen cen-
i5turies; it is better to sit down content." Alone, a
young man, without office, without wealth, without
renown, he flung himself in front of the people, and
asked for a new effort. What was the power left him?
Simply the people — poverty-stricken, broken-hearted
20 peasants standing on a soil soaked with the blood of
their ancestors, cowering under a code of which
Brougham said that " they could not lift their hands
without breaking it." It was a community impover
ished by five centuries of oppression — four millions of
25 Catholics robbed of every acre of their native land; it
was an island torn by race-hatred and religious bigo
try, her priests indifferent, and her nobles hopeless or
traitors. The wiliest of her enemies, a Protestant
Irishman, ruled the British senate; the sternest of her
30 tyrants, a Protestant Irishman, led the armies of

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 189
Europe. Puritan hate, which had grown blinder and
more bitter since the days of Cromwell, gave them
weapons. Ireland herself lay bound in the iron links
of a code which Montesquieu said could have been
" made only by devils, and should be registered only in 5
hell." Her millions were beyond the reach of the
great reform engine of modern times, since they could
neither read nor write.
Well, in order to lead Ireland in that day an Irish
man must have four elements, and he must have them 10
also to a large extent to-day. The first is, he must be
what an Irishman calls a gentleman, every inch of him,
from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot —
that is, he must trace his lineage back to the legends
of Ireland. Well, O'Connell could do that; he be- 15
longed to one of the perhaps seven royal families of
the old history. Secondly, he must have proved his
physical courage in the field or by the duel. Well,
O'Connell knew this; his enemies knew it. Bred at
St. Omer, with a large leaning to be a priest, he had 20
the most emphatic scruples against the duel, and so
announced himself; so that when he had got his head
above the mass and began to be seen, a Major
d'Esterre, agent of the Dublin Corporation, visited
him with continuous insult. Every word that had in- 25
suit in it was poured upon his head through the
journals. O'Connell saw the dread alternative — he
must either give satisfaction to the gentleman or leave
the field; and at last he consented to a challenge. He
passed the interval between the challenge and the day 30
of meeting in efforts to avoid it, which were all at
tributed to cowardice. When at last he stood oppo
site his antagonist, he said to his second, " God forbid

igo WENDELL PHILLIPS.
that I should risk a life; mark me, I shall fire below
the knee." But you know in early practice with the
pistol you always fire above the mark; and O'Con
nell's pistol took effect above the knee, and D'Esterre
5 fell mortally wounded. O'Connell recorded in the
face of Europe a vow against further dueling. He
settled a pension on the widow of his antagonist; and
a dozen years later, when he held ten thousand dol
lars' worth of briefs in the northern courts, he flung
lo them away, and went to the extreme south to save for
her the last acre she owned. After this his sons
fought his duels; and when Disraeli, anxious to prove
himself a courageous man, challenged O'Connell, he
put the challenge in his pocket. Disraeli, to get the
15 full advantage of the matter, sent his letter to the
London Times; whereupon Maurice O'Connell sent
the Jew a message that there was an O'Connell who
would fight the duel if he wanted it, but his name
was not Daniel. Disraeli did not continue the corre-
20 spondence. Thirdly, an Irish leader must not only be a lawyer
of great acuteness, but he must have a great reputa
tion for being such. He had to lift three millions of
people, and fling them against a government that
25 held in its hand a code which made it illegal for any
one of them to move; and they never had moved prior
to this that it did not end at the scaffold. For twenty
long years O'Connell lifted these three millions of
men, and flung them against the British government
30 at every critical moment, and no sheriff ever put his
hand on one of his followers; and when late in life the
Queen's Bench of Judges, sitting in Dublin, sent him
to jail, he stood almost alone in his interpretation of

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 191
the statutes against the legal talent of the island. He
appealed to the House of Lords, and the judges of
England confirmed his construction of the law and
set him free. Fourthly, an Irish leader must be an
orator; he must have the magic that molds millions of 5
souls into one. Of this I shall have more to say in a
moment. In this mass of Irish ignorance, weakness, and quar
rel, one keen eye saw hidden the elements of union
and strength. With rarest skill he called them forth, 10
and marshaled them into rank. Then this one man,
without birth, wealth, or office, in a land ruled by birth,
wealth, and office, molded from those unsuspected ele
ments a power which, overawing king, senate, and
people, wrote his single will on the statute-book of the 15
most obstinate nation in Europe. Safely to emanci
pate the Irish Catholics, and, in spite of Saxon-Prot
estant hate, to lift all Ireland to the level of British
citizenship — this was the problem which statesman
ship and patriotism had been seeking for two centu- 20
ries to solve. For this, blood had been poured out like
water. On this, the genius of Swift, the learning of
Molyneux, and the eloquence of Bushe, Grattan, and
Burke had been wasted. English leaders ever since
Fox had studied this problem anxiously. They saw 25
that the safety of the empire was compromised. At
one or two critical moments in the reign of George
HI., one signal from an Irish leader would have
snapped the chain that bound Ireland to his throne.
His ministers recognized it; and they tried every ex- 30
pedient, exhausted every device, dared every peril,
kept oaths or broke them, in order to succeed. All
failed; and not only failed, but acknowledged they

192 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
could see no way in which success could ever be
achieved. O'Connell achieved it. Out of this darkness, he
called forth light. Out of this most abject, weak, and
5 pitiable of kingdoms, he made a power; and dying, he
left in Parliament a specter which, unless appeased,
pushes Whig and Tory ministers alike from their
stools. But Brougham says he was a demagogue. Fie on
10 Wellington, Derby, Peel, Palmerston, Liverpool, Rus
sell, and Brougham, to be fooled and ruled by a dema
gogue! What must they, the subjects, be, if O'Con
nell, their king, be only a bigot and a demagogue? A
demagogue rides the storm; he has never really the
15 ability to create one. He uses it narrowly, ignorantly,
and for selfish ends. If not crushed by the force
which, without his will, has flung him into power, he
leads it with ridiculous miscalculation against some
insurmountable obstacle that scatters it forever. Dy-
20 ing, he leaves no mark on the elements with which he
has been mixed. Robespierre will serve for an illus
tration. It took O'Connell thirty years of patient and
sagacious labor to mold elements whose existence no
man, however wise, had ever discerned before. He
25 used them unselfishly, only to break the yoke of his
race. Nearly fifty years have passed since his tri
umph, but his impress still stands forth clear and sharp
on the empire's policy. Ireland is wholly indebted to
him for her political education. Responsibility edu-
3ocates; he lifted her to broader responsibilities. Her
possession of power makes it the keen interest of other
classes to see she is well informed. He associated her
with all the reform movements of Great Britain. This

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 193
is the education of affairs, broader, deeper, and more
real than what school or college can give. This and
power, his gifts, are the lever which lifts her to every
other right and privilege. How much England owes
him we can never know; since how great a danger and 5
curse Ireland would have been to the empire, had she
continued the cancer Pitt and Castlereagh left her, is a
chapter of history which, fortunately, can never be
written. No demagogue ever walked through the
streets of Dublin, as O'Connell and Grattan did more 10
than once, hooted and mobbed because they opposed
themselves to the mad purpose of the people, and
crushed it by a stern resistance. No demagogue
would have offered himself to a race like the Irish as
the apostle of peace, pledging himself to the British 15
government that, in the long agitation before him,
with brave millions behind him spoiling for a fight,
he would never draw a sword.
I have purposely dwelt long on this view, because
the extent and the far-reaching effects of O'Connell's 20
work, without regard to the motives which inspired
him, or the methods he used, have never been fully
recognized. Briefly stated, he did what the ablest and bravest of
his forerunners had tried to do and failed. He created 25
a public opinion and unity of purpose, — no matter
what be now the dispute about methods, — which
made Ireland a nation; he gave her British citizenship,
and a place in the imperial Parliament; he gave her a
press and a public : with these tools her destiny is in 30
her own hands. When the Abolitionists got for the
negro schools and the vote, they settled the slave
question; for they planted the sure seeds of

194 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
civil equality. O'Connell did this for Ireland
— this which no Irishman before had ever dreamed
of attempting. Swift and Molyneux were able.
Grattan, Bushe, Saurin, Burrowes, Plunket, Cur-
5 ran, Burke, were eloquent. Throughout the island
courage was a drug. They gained now one
point, and now another; but, after all, they left the
helm of Ireland's destiny in foreign and hostile hands.
O'Connell was brave, sagacious, eloquent; but, more
lo than all, he was a statesman, for he gave to Ireland's
own keeping the key of her future. As Lord Bacon
marches down the centuries, he may lay one hand on
the telegraph and the other on the steam-engine, and
say, " These are mine, for I taught you how to study
15 Nature." In a similar sense, as shackle after shackle
falls from Irish limbs, O'Connell may say, " This vic
tory is mine; for I taught you the method, and I gave
you the arms."
I have hitherto been speaking of his ability and suc-
20 cess; by and by we will look at his character, motives,
and methods. This unique ability even his enemies
have been forced to confess. Harriet Martineau, in
her incomparable history of the " Thirty Years'
Peace," has, with Tory hate, misconstrued every action
25 of O'Connell, and invented a bad motive for each one.
But even she confesses that " he rose in power, influ
ence, and notoriety to an eminence such as no other
individual citizen has attained in modern times " in
Great Britain. And one of his by no means partial
30 biographers has well said :
" Any man who turns over the magazines and nevi's-
papers of that period will easily perceive how grandly
O'Connell's figure dominated in politics, how com-

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 195
pletely he had dispelled the indifference that had so
long prevailed on Irish questions, how clearly his agi
tation stands forth as the great fact of the time. . .
The truth is, his position, so far from being a common
one, is absolutely unique in history. We may search 5
in vain through the records of the past for any man,
who without the effusion of a drop of blood, or the
advantages of office or rank, succeeded in governing
a people so absolutely and so long, and in creating so
entirely the elements of his power. . . There was no 10
rival to his supremacy, there was no restriction to his
authority. He played with the enthusiasm he had
aroused, with the negligent ease of a master; he gov
erned the complicated organization he had created,
with a sagacity that never failed. He made himself 15
the focus of the attention of other lands, and the center
around which the rising intellect of his own revolved.
He had transformed the whole social system of Ire
land; almost reversed the relative positions of Protes
tants and Catholics; remodeled by his influence the 20
representative, ecclesiastical, and educational institu
tions, and created a public opinion that surpassed the
wildest dreams of his predecessors. Can we wonder
at the proud exultation with which he exclaimed,
' Grattan sat by the cradle of his country, and followed 25
her hearse; it was left for me to sound the resurrection
trumpet, and to show that she was not dead, but
sleeping '? "
But the method by which he achieved his success is
perhaps more remarkable than even the success itself. 30
An Irish poet, one of his bitterest assailants thirty
years ago, has laid a chaplet of atonement on his altar,
and one verse runs :

196 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
' ' O great world-leader of a mighty age !
Praise unto thee let all the people give.
By thy great name of Liberator live
In golden letters upon history's page ;
5 And this thy epitaph while time shall be, —
Hi found his country chained, but left her free."
It is natural that Ireland should remember him as
her Liberator. But, strange as it may seem to you,
I think Europe and America will remember him by a
10 higher title. I said in opening, that the cause of con
stitutional government is more indebted to O'Connell
than to any other political leader of the last two cen
turies. What I mean is, that he invented the great
method of constitutional agitation. Agitator is a
15 title which will last longer, which suggests a broader
and more permanent influence, and entitles him to the
gratitude of far more millions than the name Ireland
loves to give him. The " first great agitator " is his
proudest title to gratitude and fame. Agitation is the
20 method that puts the school by the side of the ballot-
box. The Fremont canvass was the nation's best
school. Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace,
and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained
forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals; agi-
25 tation is the atmosphere of brains. The old Hindoo
saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its
various fortunes. First, men were in chains which
went back to an iron hand; then he saw them led by
threads from the brain which went upward to an un-
30 seen hand. The first was despotism, iron and ruling
by force. The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.
Agitation is an old word with a new meaning. Sir
Robert Peel, the first English leader who felt he was

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 197
its tool, defined it to be " the marshaling of the con
science of a nation to mold its laws." O'Connell
was the first to show and use its power, to lay down
its principles, to analyze its elements, and mark out
its metes and bounds. It is voluntary, public, and 5
above-board, — no oath-bound secret societies like
those of old time in Ireland, and of the Continent
to-day. Its means are reason and argument — no ap
peal to arms. Wait patiently for the slow growth of
public opinion. 'o
The Frenchman is angry with his government; he
throws up barricades, and shots his guns to the lips.
A week's fury drags the nation ahead a hand-breadth ;
reaction lets it settle halfway back again. As Lord
Chesterfield said, a hundred years ago, " You French- 15
men erect barricades, but never any barriers." An
Englishman is dissatisfied with public affairs. He
brings his charges, offers his proofs, waits for preju
dice to relax, for public opinion to inform itself.
Then every step taken is taken forever; an abuse once 20
removed never reappears in history. Where did
he learn this method? Practically speaking, from
O'Connell. It was he who planted its corner stone —
argument, no violence ; no political change is worth a
drop of human blood. His other motto was, " Tell 25
the whole truth "; no concealing half of one's convic
tions to make the other half more acceptable; no de
nial of one truth to gain hearing for another; no com
promise; or, as he phrased it, " Nothing is politically
right which is morally wrong." 30
Above all, plant yourself on the millions. The sym
pathy of every human being, no matter how ignorant
or how humble, adds weight to public opinion. At

198 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
the outset of his career the clergy turned a deaf ear
to his appeal. They had seen their flocks led up to
useless slaughter for centuries, and counseled sub
mission. The nobility repudiated him; they were
5 either traitors or hopeless. Protestants had touched
their Ultima Thule with Grattan, and seemed settling
down in despair. English Catholics advised waiting
till the tyrant grew merciful. O'Connell, left alone,
said, " I will forge these four millions of Irish hearts
10 into a thunderbolt which shall suffice to dash this des
potism to pieces." And he did it. Living under an
aristocratic government, himself of the higher class,
he anticipated Lincoln's wisdom, and framed his
movements " for the people, of the people, and by the
15 people." It is a singular fact that the freer a nation becomes,
the more utterly democratic the form of its institu
tions, this outside agitation, this pressure of public
opinion to direct political action, becomes more and
20 more necessary. The general judgment is that the
freest possible government produces the freest pos
sible men and women — the most individual, the least
servile to the judgment of others. But a moment's
reflection will show any man that this is an unreason-
25 able expectation, and that, on the contrary, entire
equality and freedom in political forms almost inevi
tably tend to make the individual subside into the mass,
and lose his identity in the general whole. Suppose
we stood in England to-night. There is the nobility,
30 and here is the Church. There is the trading class,
and here is the literary. A broad gulf separates the
four; and provided a member of either can conciliate
his own section, he can afford, in a very large meas-

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 199
ure, to despise the judgment of the other three. He
has, to some extent, a refuge and a breakwater
against the tyranny of what we call public opinion.
But in a country like ours, of absolute democratic
equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is 5
omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny;
there is no hiding from its reach; and the result is
that, if you take the old Greek lantern, and go about
to seek among a hundred, you will find not one single
American who really has not, or who does not fancy 10
at least that he has something to gain or lose in his
ambition, his social life, or his business, from the good
opinion and the votes of those about him. And the
consequence is, that, — instead of being a mass of indi
viduals, each one fearlessly blurting out his own con- 15
victions, — as a nation, compared with other nations,
we are a mass of cowards. More than any other
people, we are afraid of each other.
If you were a caucus to-night, Democratic or Re
publican, and I were your orator, none of you could 20
get beyond the necessary and timid limitations of
party. You not only would not demand, you would
not allow me to utter, one word of what you really
thought, and what I thought. You would demand of
me — and my value as a caucus speaker would depend 25
entirely on the adroitness and the vigilance with
which I met the demand — that I should not utter
one single word which would compromise the
vote of next week. That is politics; so with
the press. Seemingly independent, and some- 30
times really so, the press can afford only to
mount the cresting wave, not go beyond it. The
editor might as well shoot his reader with a bullet

200 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
as with a new idea. He must hit the exact line of the
opinion of the day. I am not finding fault with him;
I am only describing him. Some three years ago I
took to one of the freest of the Boston journals a
5 letter, and by appropriate consideration induced its
editor to print it. And as we glanced along its con
tents, and came to the concluding statement, he said,
"Couldn't you omit that?" L said, "No; I wrote it
for that; it is the gist of the statement." " Well," said
lo he, "it is true; there is not a boy in the streets that
does not know it is true; but I wish you could
omit it."
I insisted; and the next morning, fairly and justly,
he printed the whole. Side by side he put an article
15 of his own, in which he said, " We copy in the next
column an article from Mr. Phillips, and we only re
gret the absurd and unfounded statement with which
he concludes it." He had kept his promise by print
ing the article; he saved his reputation by printing the
20 comment. And that, again, is the inevitable, the
essential limitation of the press in a republican com
munity. Our institutions, floating unanchored on
the shifting surface of popular opinion, cannot afford
to hold back, or to draw forward, a hated question,
25 and compel a reluctant public to look at it and to con
sider it. Hence, as you see at once, the moment a
large issue, twenty years ahead of its age, presents
itself to the consideration of an empire or of a republic,
just in proportion to the freedom of its institutions is
30 the necessity of a platform outside of the press, of poli
tics, and of its Church, whereon stand men with no
candidate to elect, with no plan to carry, with no repu
tation to stake, with no object but the truth, no pur-

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 201
pose but to tear the question open and let the light
through it. So much in explanation of a word in
finitely hated, — agitation and agitators, — but an ele
ment which the progress of modern government has
developed more and more every day. 5
The great invention we trace in its twilight and
seed to the days of the Long Parliament. Defoe and
L'Estrange, later down, were the first prominent Eng
lishmen to fling pamphlets at the House of Commons.
Swift ruled England by pamphlets. Wilberforce sum- 10
moned the Church, and sought the alliance of influen
tial classes. But O'Connell first showed a profound
faith in the human tongue. He descried afar off the
coming omnipotence of the press. He called the
millions to his side, appreciated the infinite weight of 15
the simple human heart and conscience, and grafted
democracy into the British empire. The later Aboli
tionists — Buxton, Sturge, and Thompson — borrowed
his method. Cobden flung it in the face of the almost
omnipotent landholders of England, and broke the 20
Tory party forever. They only haunt upper air now
in the stolen garments of the Whigs. The English
administration recognizes this new partner in the
government, and waits to be moved on. Garrison
brought the new weapon to our shores. The only 25
wholly useful and thoroughly defensible war Chris
tendom has seen in this century, the greatest civil and
social change the English race ever saw, are the result.
This great servant and weapon, peace and consti
tutional government owe to O'Connell. Who has 30
given progress a greater boon? What single agent
has done as much to bless and improve the world for
the last fifty years ?

202 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
O'Connell has been charged with coarse, violent,
and intemperate language. The criticism is of little
importance. Stupor and palsy never understand life.
White-livered indifference is always disgusted and an-
5 noyed by earnest conviction. Protestants criticised
Luther in the same way. It took three centuries to
carry us far off enough to appreciate his colossal pro
portions. It is a hundred years to-day since O'Con
nell was born. It will take another hundred to put
10 us at such an angle as will enable us correctly to meas
ure his stature. Premising that it would be folly to
find fault with a man struggling for life because his
attitudes were ungraceful, remembering the Scythian
King's answer to Alexander, criticising his strange
15 weapon, — " If you knew how precious freedom was,
you would defend it even with axes," — we must see
that O'Connell's own explanation is evidently sincere
and true. He found the Irish heart so cowed, and
Englishmen so arrogant, that he saw it needed an in-
20 dependence verging on insolence, a defiance that
touched extremest limits, to breathe self-respect into
his own race, teach the aggressor manners, and sober
him into respectful attention.
It was the same with us Abolitionists. Webster
25 had taught the North the bated breath and crouching
of a slave. It needed with us an attitude of inde
pendence that was almost insolent, it needed that we
should exhaust even the Saxon vocabulary of scorn,
to fitly utter the righteous and haughty contempt that
30 honest men had for man-stealers. Only in that way
could we wake the North to self-respect, or teach the
South that at length she had met her equal, if not her
master. On a broad canvas, meant for the public

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 203
square, the tiny lines of a Dutch interior would be in
visible. In no other circumstances was the French
maxim, " You can never make a revolution with rose-
water," more profoundly true. The world has hardly
yet learned how deep a philosophy lies hid in Hamlet's 5
" Nay, an thou 'It mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.''
O'Connell has been charged with insincerity in urg
ing repeal, and those who defended his sincerity have
leaned toward allowing that it proved his lack of com- 10
mon sense. I think both critics mistaken. His ear
liest speeches point to repeal as his ultimate object;
indeed, he valued emancipation largely as a means to
that end. No fair view of his whole life will leave the
slightest ground to doubt his sincerity. As for the 15
reasonableness and necessity of the measure, I think
every year proves them. Considering O'Connell's
position, I wholly sympathize in his profound and un
shaken loyalty to the empire. Its share in the British
empire makes Ireland's strength and importance. 20
Standing alone among the vast and massive sov
ereignties of Europe, she would be weak, insignifi
cant, and helpless. Were I an Irishman I should
cling to the empire.
Fifty or sixty years hence, when scorn of race has 25
vanished, and bigotry is lessened, it may be possible
for Ireland to be safe and free while holding the
position to England that Scotland does. But during
this generation and the next, O'Connell was wise in
claiming that Ireland's rights would never be safe 30
without " home rule." A substantial repeal of the
union should be every Irishman's earnest aim. Were

204 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
I their adviser, I should constantly repeat what Grat
tan said in 1810, " The best advice, gentlemen, I can
give on all occasions is, ' Keep knocking at the
union.' "
5 We imagine an Irishman to be only a zealot on
fire. We fancy Irish spirit and eloquence to be only
blind, reckless, headlong enthusiasm. But, in truth,
Grattan was the soberest leader of his day, holding
scrupulously back the disorderly elements, which
10 fretted under his curb. There was one hour, at least,
when a word from him would have lighted a demo
cratic revolt throughout the empire. And the most
remarkable of O'Connell's gifts was neither his elo
quence nor his sagacity: it was his patience —
15 " patience, all the passion of great souls " ; the tireless
patience which, from 1800 to 1820, went from town to
town, little aided by the press, to plant the seeds of an
intelligent and united, as well as hot patriotism.
Then, after many years and long toil, waiting for
20 rivals to be just, for prejudice to wear out, and for
narrowness to grow wise, using British folly and op
pression as his wand, he molded the enthusiasm of
the most excitable of races, the just and inevitable in
dignation of four millions of Catholics, the hate of
25 plundered poverty, priest, noble, and peasant, into one
fierce though harmonious mass. He held it in care
ful check, with sober moderation, watching every
opportunity, attracting ally after ally, never forfeiting
any possible friendship, allowing no provocation to
go stir him to anything that would not help his cause,
compelling each hottest and most ignorant of his fol
lowers to remember that " he who commits a crime
helps the enemy." At last, when the hour struck, this

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 205
power was made to achieve justice for itself, and put
him in London, — him, this despised Irishman, this
hated Catholic, this mere demagogue and man of
words, him, — to hold the Tory party in one hand, and
the Whig party in the other; all this without shedding 5
a drop of blood, or disturbing for a moment the peace
of the empire.
While O'Connell held Ireland in his hand, her peo
ple were more orderly, law-abiding, and peaceful than
for a century before, or during any year since. Tlie 10
strength of this marvelous control passes comprehen
sion. Out West I met an Irishman whose father held
him up to see O'Connell address the two hundred
thousand men at Tara — literally to see, not to hear
him. I said, " But you could not all hear even his 15
voice." " Oh, no, sir! Only about thirty thousand
could hear him; but we all kept as still and silent as if
we did." With magnanimous frankness O'Connell
once said, " I never could have held those monster
meetings without a crime, without disorder, tumult, 20
or quarrel, except for Father Mathew's aid." Any
man can build a furnace, and turn water into steam
— yes, if careless, make it rend his dwelling in pieces.
Genius builds the locomotive, harnesses this terrible
power in iron traces, holds it with master hand in use- 25
ful limits, and gives it to the peaceable service of man.
The Irish people were O'Connell's locomotive; saga
cious patience and moderation the genius that built
it; Parliament and justice the station he reached.
Everyone who has studied O'Connell's life sees his 30
marked likeness to Luther— the unity of both their
lives; their wit; the same massive strength, even if
coarse-grained; the ease with which each reached the

2o6 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
masses, the power with which they wielded them; the
same unrivaled eloquence, fit for any audience; the
same instinct of genius that led them constantly to
acts which, as Voltaire said, " Foolish men call rash,
5 but wisdom sees to be brave " ; the same broad suc
cess. But O'Connell had one great element which
Luther lacked — the universality of his sympathy; the
far-reaching sagacity which discerned truth afar off,
just struggling above the horizon; the loyal, brave,
lo and frank spirit which acknowledged and served it;
the profound and rare faith which believed that " the
whole of truth can never do harm to the whole of vir
tue." From the serene height of intellect and judg
ment to which God's gifts had lifted him, he saw
15 clearly that no one right was ever in the way of an
other, that injustice harms the wrong-doer even more
than the victim, that whoever puts a chain on another
fastens it also on himself. Serenely confident that
the truth is always safe, and justice always expedient,
20 he saw that intolerance is only want of faith. He
who stifles free discussion secretly doubts whether
what he professes to believe is really true. Coleridge
says, " See how triumphant in debate and notion
O'Connell is! Why? Because he asserts a broad
25 principle, acts up to it, rests his body on it, and has
faith in it."
Coworker with Father Mathew; champion of the
Dissenters ; advocating the substantial principles of the
Charter, though not a Chartist; foe of the corn-laws;
30 battling against slavery, whether in India or the
Carolinas; the great democrat who in Europe seventy
years ago called the people to his side; starting a
movement of the people, for the people, by the people

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 207
— show me another record as broad and brave as this
in the European history of our century. Where is
the English statesman, where the Irish leader, who can
claim one? No wonder every Englishman hated and
feared him! He wounded their prejudices at every 5
point. Whig and Tory, timid Liberal, narrow Dis
senter, bitter Radical — all feared and hated this broad
brave soul, who dared to follow Truth wherever he
saw her, whose toleration was as broad as human
nature, and his sympathy as boundless as the sea. 10
To show you that he never took a leaf from our
American gospel of compromise; that he never filed
his tongue to silence on one truth, fancying so to help
another; that he never sacrificed any race to save even
Ireland — let me compare him with Kossuth, whose 15
only merits were his eloquence and his patriotism.
When Kossuth was in Faneuil Hall, he exclaimed,
" Here is a flag without a stain, a nation without a
crime ! " We Abolitionists appealed to him, " O elo
quent son of the Magyar, come to break chains ! have 20
you no word, no pulse-beat, for four millions of
negroes bending under a yoke ten times heavier than
that of Hungary?" He answered, "I would forget
anybody, I would praise anything, to help Hungary."
O'Connell never said anything like that. When I 25
was in Naples, I asked Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton,
a Tory, " Is O'Connell an honest man?" "As hon
est a man as ever breathed," said he, and then told me
this story: " When, in 1830, O'Connell entered Parlia
ment, the anti-slavery cause was so weak that it had 30
only Lushington and myself to speak for it; and we
agreed that when he spoke I should cheer him, and
when I spoke he should cheer me; and these were the

2o8 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
only cheers we ever got. O'Connell came, with one
Irish member to support him. A large number of
members [I think Buxton said twenty-seven] whom
we called the West-India interest, the Bristol party,
5 the slave party, went to him, saying, ' O'Connell, at
last you are in the House, with one helper. If you
will never go down to Freemasons' Hall with Bux
ton and Brougham, here are twenty-seven votes for
you on every Irish question. If you work with those
10 Abolitionists, count us always against you.' "
It was a terrible temptation. How many a so-
called statesman would have yielded! O'Connell said,
" Gentlemen, God knows I speak for the saddest peo
ple the sun sees; but may my right hand forget its
15 cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth, if to save Ireland, even Ireland, I forget the
negro one single hour!" "From that day," said
Buxton, " Lushington and I never went into the lobby
that O'Connell did not follow us."
20 Some years afterward I went into Conciliation
Hall, where O'Connell was arguing for repeal. He
lifted from the table a thousand-pound note sent them
from New Orleans, and said to be from the slave
holders of that city. Coming to the front of the plat-
25 form he said: " This is a draft of one thousand pounds
from the slave-holders of New Orleans, the unpaid
wages of the negro. Mr. Treasurer, I suppose the
treasury is empty? " The treasurer nodded to show
him that it was, and he went on: "Old Ireland is
30 very poor; but thank God she is not poor enough to
take the unpaid wages of anybody. Send it back."
A gentleman from Boston went to him with a letter
of introduction which he sent up to him at his house

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 209
in Merrion Square. O'Connell came down to the
door, as was his wont, put out both his hands, and
drew him into his library. " I am glad to see you,"
said he; "I am always glad to see anybody from
Massachusetts, a free State." " But," said the guest, 5
" this is slavery you allude to, Mr. O'Connell. I
would hke to say a word to you in justification of that
institution." " Very well, sir — free speech in this
house; say anything you please. But before you be
gin to defend a man's right to own his own brother, 10
allow me to step out and lock up my spoons."
That was the man. The ocean of his philanthropy
knew no shore.
And right in this connection, let me read the follow
ing dispatch: 15
Cincinnati, O,, August 6.
Wendell Phillips, Boston :
The national conference of colored newspaper-men to the O'Con
nell Celebration, greeting :
Resolved, That it is befitting a convention of colored men assembled 20
on the centennial anniversary of the birth of the liberator of Ireland
and friend of humanity, Daniel O'Connell, to recall with gratitude
his eloquent and effective pleas for the freedom of our race ; and we
earnestly commend his example to our countrymen.
J. C. Jackson, Secretary. 25
Peter H. Clark, President.
George T. Ruby.
Lewis D. Easton.
Learn of him, friends, the hardest lesson we ever
have set us — that of toleration. The foremost Catho- 30
lie of his age, the most stalwart champion of the
Church, he was also broadly and sincerely tolerant of
every faith. His toleration had no limit and no
qualification.

210 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
I scorn and scout the word "toleration"; it is an
insolent term. No man, properly speaking, tolerates
another. I do not tolerate a Catholic, neither does
he tolerate me. We are equal, and acknowledge each
5 other's right; that is the correct statement.
That every man should be allowed freely to wor
ship God according to his conscience, that no man's
civil rights should be affected by his religious creed,
were both cardinal principles of O'Connell. He had
10 no fear that any doctrine of his faith could be en
dangered by the freest possible discussion.
Learn of him, also, sympathy with every race and
every form of oppression. No matter who was the
sufferer, or what the form of the injustice — starving
15 Yorkshire peasant, imprisoned Chartist, persecuted
Protestant, or negro slave; no matter of what right,
personal or civil, the victim had been fobbed; no mat
ter what religious pretext or political juggle alleged
" necessity " as an excuse for his oppression; no mat-
20 ter with what solemnities he had been devoted on the
altar of slavery, — the moment O'Connell saw him, the
altar and the god sank together in the dust, the victim
was acknowledged a man and a brother, equal in all
rights, and entitled to all the aid the great Irishman
25 could give him.
I have no time to speak of his marvelous success
at the bar; of that profound skill in the law which
enabled him to conduct such an agitation, always on
the verge of illegality and violence, without once sub-
30 jecting himself or his followers to legal penalty — an
agitation under a code of which Brougham said, " No
Catholic could lift his hand under it without breaking
the law." I have no time to speak of his still more

DANIEL a CONNELL. 21 1
remarkable success in the House of Commons. Of
Flood's failure there Grattan had said, " He was an
oak of the forest, too old and too great to be trans
planted at fifty." Grattan's own success there was but
moderate. The power O'Connell wielded against 5
varied, bitter, and unscrupulous opposition was
marvelous. I have no time to speak of his personal
independence, his deliberate courage, moral and physi
cal, his unspotted private character, his unfailing hope,
the versatility of his talent, his power of tireless work, 10
his ingenuity and boundless resource, his matchless
self-possession in every emergency, his ready and in
exhaustible wit; but any reference to O'Connell that
omitted his eloquence would be painting Wellington
in the House of Lords without mention of Torres 15
Vedras or Waterloo.
Broadly considered, his eloquence has never been
equaled in modern times, certainly not in English
speech. Do you think I am partial? I will vouch
John Randolph of Roanoke, the Virginia slave- 20
holder, who hated an Irishman almost as much as he
hated a Yankee, himself an orator of no mean level.
Hearing O'Connell, he exclaimed, " This is the man,
these are the lips, the most eloquent that speak Eng-
hsh in my day." I think he was right. I remember 25
the solemnity of Webster, the grace of Everett, the
rhetoric of Choate; I know the eloquence that lay hid
in the iron logic of Calhoun; I have melted beneath
the magnetism of Seargeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi,
who wielded a power few men ever had. It has been 30
my fortune to sit at the feet of the great speakers of the
English tongue on the other side of the ocean. But I
think all of them together never surpassed, and no one

212 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
of them ever equaled, O'Connell. Nature intended
him for our Demosthenes. Never since the great
Greek, has she sent forth anyone so lavishly gifted for
his work as a tribune of the people. In the first place,
5 he had a magnificent presence, impressive in bearing,
massive like that of Jupiter. Webster himself hardly
outdid him in the majesty of his proportions. To be
sure, he had not Webster's craggy face, and precipice
of brow, nor his eyes glowing like anthracite coal; nor
lo had he the lion roar of Mirabeau. But his presence
filled the eye. A small O'Connell would hardly have
been an O'Connell at all. These physical advantages
are half the battle.
I remember Russell Lowell telling us that Mr.
15 Webster came home from Washington at the time the
Whig party thought of dissolution a year or two be
fore his death, and went down to Faneuil Hall to pro
test; drawing himself up to his loftiest proportion, his
brow clothed with thunder, before the listening thou-
20 sands, he said, " Well, gentlemen, I am a Whig, a
Massachusetts Whig, a Faneuil-Hall Whig, a revo
lutionary Whig, a constitutional Whig. If you break
the Whig party, sir, where am I to go?" And says
Lowell, " We held our breath, thinking where he could
25 go. If he had been five feet three, we should have
said, ' Who cares where you go? ' " So it was with
O'Connell. There was something majestic in his
presence before he spoke; and he added to it what
Webster had not, what Clay might have lent — in-
30 finite grace, that magnetism that melts all hearts into
one. I saw him at over sixty-six years of age; every
attitude was beauty, every gesture grace. You could
only think of a greyhound as you looked at him; it

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 213
would have been delicious to have watched him, if he
had not spoken a word. Then he had a voice that
covered the gamut. The majesty of his indignation,
fitly uttered in tones of superhuman power, made him
able to " indict " a nation, in spite of Burke's protest. 5
I heard him once say, " I send my voice across the
Atlantic, careering like the thunderstorm against the
breeze, to tell the slave-holder of the Carolinas that
God's thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the bond
man that the dawn of his redemption is already break- 10
ing." You seemed to hear the tones come echoing
back to London from the Rocky Mountains. Then,
with the slightest possible Irish brogue, he would tell
a story, while all Exeter Hall shook with laughter.
The next moment, tears in his voice like a Scotch 15
song, five thousand men wept. And all the while no
effort. He seemed only breathing.
' ' As effortless as woodland nooks
Send violets up, and paint them blue."
We used to say of Webster, " This is a great 20
effort "; of Everett, " It is a beautiful effort "; but you
never used the word " effort " in speaking of O'Con
nell. It provoked you that he would not make an
effort. I heard him perhaps a score of times, and I do
not think more than three times he ever lifted himself 25
to the full sweep of his power.
And this wonderful power, it was not a thunder
storm: he flanked you with his wit, he surprised you
out of yourself; you were conquered before you knew
it. He was once summoned to court out of the hunt- 30
ing-field, when a young friend of his of humble birth
was on trial for his life. The evidence gathered
around a hat found by the body of the murdered man.

214 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
which was recognized as the hat of the prisoner. The
lawyers tried to break down the evidence, confuse the
testimony, and get some relief from the directness of
the circumstances ; but in vain, until at last they called
5 for O'Connell. He came in, flung his riding-whip and
hat on the table, was told the circumstances, and tak
ing up the hat said to the witness, " Whose hat is
this?" "Well, Mr. O'Connell, that is Mike's hat."
" How do you know it? " " I will swear to it, sir."
10 " And did you really find it by the murdered man?"
" I did that, sir." " But you're not ready to swear
that?" " I am, indeed, Mr. O'Connell." " Pat, do
you know what hangs on your word? A human soul.
And with that dread burden, are you ready to tell this
15 jury that the hat, to your certain knowledge, belongs
to the prisoner?" " Y-yes, Mr. O'Connell; yes,
I am."O'Connell takes the hat to the nearest window, and
peers into it — " J-a-m-e-s, James. Now, Pat, did you
2o see that name in the hat? " " I did, Mr. O'Connell."
" You knew it was there? " " Yes, sir; I read it after
I picked it up." " No name in the hat, your Honor."
So again in the House of Commons. When he
took his seat in the House of 1830, the London Times
25 visited him with its constant indignation, reported his
speeches awry, turned them inside out, and made non
sense of them; treated him as the New York Herald
used to treat us Abolitionists twenty years ago. So
one morning he rose and said, "Mr. Speaker, you know
30 I have never opened my lips in this house, and I ex
pended twenty years of hard work in getting the right
to enter it — I have never lifted my voice in this House,
but in behalf of the saddest people the sun shines on.

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 215
Is it fair play, Mr. Speaker, is it what you call ' Eng
lish fair play,' that the press of this city will not let
my voice be heard?" The next day the Times sent
him word that, as he found fault with their manner of
reporting him, they never would report him at all, 5
they never would print his name in their parliamentary
columns. So the next day when prayers were ended,
O'Connell rose. Those reporters of the Times who
were in the gallery rose also, ostentatiously put away
their pencils, folded their arms, and made all the show 10
they could, to let everybody know how it was. Well,
you know, nobody has any right to be in the gallery
during the session, and if any member notices them,
the mere notice clears the gallery; only the reporters
can stay after that notice. O'Connell rose. One of 15
the members said, " Before the member from Clare
opens his speech, let me call his attention to the gal
lery and the instance of that ' passive resistance '
which he is about to preach." " Thank you," said
O'Connell: " Mr. Speaker, I observe strangers in the 20
gallery." Of course they left ; of course the next day,
in the columns of the London Times, there were no
parliamentary debates. And for the first time, except
in Richard Cobden's case, the London Times cried for
quarter, and said to O'Connell, " If you give up the 25
quarrel, we will."
Later down, when he was advocating the repeal of
the land law, when forty or fifty thousand people were
gathered at the meeting, O'Connell was sitting at the
breakfast-table. The London Tiines for that year had 30
absolutely disgraced itself, — and that is saying a great
deal, — and its reporters, if recognized, would have
been torn to pieces. So, as O'Connell was breakfast-

2l6 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
ing, the door opened, and two or three English re
porters — Gurney and, among others, our weU-known
friend Russell, of Bull Run notoriety — entered the
room and said, " Mr. O'Connell, we are the reporters
5 of the TimesT " And," said Russell, " we dared not
enter that crowd."
" Shouldn't think you would," replied O'Connell.
" Have you had any breakfast? "
"No, sir," said he; "we hardly dared to ask for
10 any." " Shouldn't think you would," answered O'Connell;
" sit down here." So they shared his breakfast.
Then he took Bull Run in his own carriage to the
place of meeting, sent for a table, and seated him by
15 the platform, and asked him whether he had his pen
cils well sharpened and had plenty of paper, as he in
tended to make a long speech. Bull Run answered,
" Yes." And O'Connell stood up, and addressed the
audience in Irish.
20 His marvelous voice, its almost incredible power
and sweetness, Bulwer has well described:
" Once to my sight that giant form was given.
Walled by wide air; and roofed by boundless heaven.
Beneath his feet the human ocean lay,
25 And wave on wave rolled into space away.
Methought no clarion could have sent its sound
Even to the center of the hosts around ;
And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell,
As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell.
30 Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide
It glided, easy as a bird may glide ;
Even to the verge of that vast audience sent,
It played with each wild passion as it went, —
Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled,
35 And sobs or laughter answered as it willed."

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 217
Webster could awe a senate, Everett could charm
a college, and Choate could cheat a jury; Clay could
magnetize the million, and Corwin led them captive.
O'Connell was Clay, Corwin, Choate, Everett, and
Webster in one. Before the courts, logic; at the bar 5
of the senate, unanswerable and dignified; on the plat
form, grace, wit, pathos; before the masses, a whole
man. Carlyle says, " He is God's own anointed king
whose single word melts all wills into his." This de
scribes O'Connell. Emerson says, " There is no true 10
eloquence, unless there is a man behind the speech."
Daniel O'Connell was listened to because all England
and all Ireland knew that there was a man behind the
speech — one who could be neither bought, bullied, nor
cheated. He held the masses free but willing sub- 15
jects in his hand.
He owed this power to the courage that met every
new question frankly, and concealed none of his con
victions; to an entireness of devotion that made the
people feel he was all their own; to a masterly brain 20
that made them sure they were always safe in his
hands. Behind them were ages of bloodshed: every
rising had ended at the scaffold; even Grattan brought
them to 1798. O'Connell said, " Follow me: put your
feet where mine have trod, and a sheriff shall never 25
lay hand on your shoulder." And the great lawyer
kept his pledge.
This unmatched, long-continued power almost
passes belief. You can only appreciate it by com
parison. Let me carry you back to the mob-year of 30
1835, in this country, when the Abolitionists were
hunted; when the streets roared with riot; when from
Boston to Baltimore, from St. Louis to Philadelphia,

2i8 WENDELL PHILLIPS.
a mob took possession of every city; when private
houses were invaded and public halls were burned;
press after press was thrown into the river; and Love-
joy baptized freedom with his blood. You remem-
5 ber it. Respectable journals warned the mob that
they were playing into the hands of the Abolitionists.
Webster and Clay and the staff of Whig statesmen
told the people that the truth floated farther on the
shouts of the mob than the most eloquent lips could
10 carry it. But law-abiding, Protestant, educated
America could not be held back. Neither Whig
chiefs nor respectable journals could keep these peo
ple quiet. Go to England. When the Reform Bill
of 183 1 was thrown out from the House of Lords, the
15 people were tumultuous; and Melbourne and Grey,
Russell and Brougham, Lansdowne, Holland, and
Macaulay, the Whig chiefs, cried out, " Don't violate
the law: you help the Tories! Riots put back the
bill." But quiet, sober John Bull, law-abiding, could
20 not do without it. Birmingham was three days in the
hands of a mob; castles were burned; Wellington
ordered the Scots Greys to rough-grind their swords
as at Waterloo. This was the Whig aristocracy of
England. O'Connell had neither office nor title. Be-
25 hind him were three million people steeped in utter
wretchedness, sore with the oppression of centuries,
ignored by statute.
For thirty restless and turbulent years he stood in
front of them, and said, " Remember, he that com-
30 mits a crime helps the enemy." And during that long
and fearful struggle, I do not remember one of his
followers ever being convicted of a political offense,
and during this period crimes of violence were very

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 219
rare. There is no such record in our history.
Neither in classic nor in modern times can the man
be produced who held a million of people in his right
hand so passive. It was due to the consistency and
unity of a character that had hardly a flaw. I do not 5
forget your soldiers, orators, or poets — any of your
leaders. But when I consider O'Connell's personal
disinterestedness, — his rare, brave fidelity to every
cause his principles covered, no matter how unpopu
lar, or how embarrassing to his main purpose, — that 10
clear, far-reaching vision, and true heart which, on
most moral and political questions, set him so much
ahead of his times; his eloquence, almost equally effect
ive in the courts, in the senate, and before the masses;
that sagacity which set at naught the malignant vigi- 15
lance of the whole imperial bar, watching thirty years
for a misstep; when I remember that he invented his
tools, and then measure his limited means with his
vast success, bearing in mind its nature; when I see
the sobriety and moderation with which he used his 20
measureless power, and the lofty, generous purpose of
his whole life, — I am ready to affirm that he was, all
things considered, the greatest man the Irish race
ever produced.

THE COMMEMORATIVE ORATION.
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
Born 1834.
THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF
THE INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT
WASHINGTON.
[The one hundreth anniversary of the inauguration of President
Washington was celebrated in New York City, April 29 and 30 and
May I, i88g, with appropriate ceremonies. The first of these days
was devoted to a naval parade and a ball given at the Metropolitan
Opera House. On the morning of the second, after services in St.
Paul's Chapel, which Washington had attended before he was in
augurated, literary exercises were held on the site of the old Federal
Hall, where the oath of office had been administered. In the after
noon there was a great land parade of soldiery and in the evening a
banquet given by the city to the visiting guests, who included the
President and Vice-President of the United States, two ex-Presidents,
the judges of the Supreme Court, and the governors of many States.
At the literary exercises of this day, after the reading of a poem
written for the occasion by Whittier, Mr. Depew delivered this
oration. The oration is here reprinted, through the courtesy of Mr. Depew
and with the permission of the Cassell Publishing Company, from Mr.
Depew's Orations and After-Dinner Speeches.']
We celebrate to-day the Centenary of our Nation
ality. One hundred years ago the United States be
gan their existence. The powers of government were
assumed by the people of the Republic, and they
5 became the sole source of authority. The solemn cere-

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 221
monial of the first inauguration, the reverent oath of
Washington, the acclaim of the multitude greeting
their President, marked the most unique event of
modern times in the development of free institutions.
The occasion was not an accident, but a result. It 5
was the culmination of the working out, by mighty
forces through many centuries, of the problem of self-
government. It was not the triumph of a system, the
application of a theory, or the reduction to practice of
the abstractions of philosophy. The time, the coun- 10
try, the heredity and environment of the people, and
the folly of its enemies, and the noble courage of its
friends, gave to liberty, after ages of defeat, of trial, of
experiment, of partial success and substantial gains,
this immortal victory. Henceforth it had a refuge and 15
recruiting station. The oppressed found free homes
in this favored land, and invisible armies marched from
it by mail and telegraph, by speech and song, by pre
cept and example, to regenerate the world.
Puritans in New England, Dutchmen in New York, 20
Catholics in Maryland, Huguenots in South Carolina,
had felt the fires of persecution and were wedded to
religious liberty. They had been purified in the fur
nace, and in high debate and on bloody battle-fields
had learned to sacrifice all material interests and to 25
peril their lives for human rights. The principles of
constitutional government had been impressed upon
them by hundreds of years of struggle, and for each
principle they could point to the grave of an ancestor
whose death attested the ferocity of the fight and the 30
value of the concession wrung from arbitrary power.
They knew the limitations of authority; they could
pledge their lives and fortunes to resist encroach-

22 2 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
ments upon their rights; but it required the lesson of
Indian massacres, the invasion of the armies of France
from Canada, the tyranny of the British Crown, the
seven years' war of the Revolution, and the five years
5 of chaos of the Confederation, to evolve the idea upon
which rest the power and permanency of the Republic,
that liberty and union are one and inseparable.
The traditions and experience of the colonists had
made them alert to discover, and quick to resist, any
lo peril to their liberties. Above all things, they feared
and distrusted power. The town meeting and the
colonial legislature gave them confidence in them
selves and courage to check the royal governors.
Their interests, hopes, and affections were in their
15 several commonwealths, and each blow by the British
Ministry at their freedom, each attack upon their
rights as Englishmen, weakened their love for the
Motherland and intensified their hostility to the
Crown. But the same causes which broke down their
20 allegiance to the Central Government increased their
confidence in their respective colonies, and their faith
in liberty was largely dependent upon the maintenance
of the sovereignty of their several States. The
farmer's shot at Lexington echoed round the world;
25 the spirit which it awakened from its slumbers could
do and dare and die; but it had not yet discovered
the secret of the permanence and progress of free
institutions. Patrick Henry thundered in the Vir
ginia convention; James Otis spoke with trumpet
30 tongue and fervid eloquence for united action in
Massachusetts; Hamilton, Jay, and Qinton pledged
New York to respond with men and money for the
common cause; but their vision only saw a league of

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 223
independent colonies. The veil was not yet drawn
from before the vista of population and power, of em
pire and liberty, which would open with National
Union. The Continental Congress partially grasped, but 5
completely expressed, the central idea of the American
Republic. More fully than any other that ever assem
bled did it represent the victories won from arbitrary
power for human rights. In the New World it was
the conservator of liberties secured through centuries 10
of struggle in the Old. Among the delegates were the
descendants of the men who had stood in the brilliant
array upon the field of Runnymede, which wrested
from King John Magna Charta, that great charter of
liberty, to which Hallam, in the nineteenth century, 15
bears witness " that all which has been since obtained
is little more than a confirmation or commentary."
There were the grandchildren of the statesmen who
had summoned Charles before Parliament and com
pelled his assent to the Petition of Rights which trans- 20
ferred power from the Crown to the Commons, and
gave representative government to the English-speak
ing race. And there were those who had sprung from
the iron soldiers who had fought and charged with
Cromwell at Naseby and Dunbar and Marston Moor. 25
Among its members were Huguenots, whose fathers
had followed the White Plume of Henry of Navarre,
and in an age of bigotry, intolerance, and the deifica
tion of absolutism, had secured the great edict of reli
gious liberty from French despotism, and who had 30
become a people without a country rather than sur
render their convictions and forswear their consciences.
In this Congress were those whose ancestors were

2 24 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
the countrymen of William of Orange, the Beg
gars of the Sea, who had survived the cruelties of Alva
and broken the yoke of proud Philip of Spain, and who
had two centuries before made a declaration of inde-
5 pendence and formed a federal union which were
models of freedom and strength.
These men were not revolutionists, they were the
heirs and the guardians of the priceless treasures of
mankind. The British King and his Ministers were
lo the revolutionists. They were reactionaries, seeking
arbitrarily to turn back the hands upon the dial of
time. A year of doubt and debate, the baptism of
blood upon the battle-fields, where soldiers from every
colony fought under a common standard, and con-
15 solidated the Continental Army, gradually lifted the
soul and understanding of this immortal Congress to
the sublime declaration: "We, therefore, the repre
sentatives of the United States of America, in Gen
eral Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme
20 Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions,
do, in the name and by the authority of the good peo
ple of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare
that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to
be, free and independent States."
25 To this Declaration John Hancock, proscribed and
threatened with death, affixed a signature which has
stood for a century like the pointers to the North Star
in the firmament of freedom, and Charles Carroll,
taunted that, among many Carrolls, he, the richest
30 man in America, might escape, added description and
identification with " of Carrollton." Benjamin Har
rison, a delegate from Virginia, the ancestor of the dis
tinguished statesman and soldier who to-day so

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 225
worthily fills the chair of Washington, voiced the un
alterable determination and defiance of the Congress.
He seized John Hancock, upon whose head a price
was set, in his arms, and placing him in the Presiden
tial chair, said: "We will show Mother Britain how 5
little we care for her, by making our President a
Massachusetts man, whom she has excluded from
pardon by public proclamation " ; and when they were
signing the Declaration, and the slender Elbridge
Gerry uttered the grim pleasantry, " We must hang 10
together, or surely we will hang separately," the
portly Harrison responded with the more daring
humor, " It will be all over with me in a moment;
but you will be kicking in the air half an hour after
I am gone." Thus flashed athwart the great Charter, 15
which was to be for its signers a death-warrant or a
diploma of immortality, as with firm hand, high pur
pose, and undaunted resolution, they subscribed their
names, this mockery of fear and the penalties of
treason. 20
The grand central idea of the Declaration of Inde
pendence was the sovereignty of the People. It re
lied for original power, not upon States or colonies,
or their citizens as such, but recognized as the au
thority for nationality the revolutionary rights of the 25
people of the United States. It stated with marvelous
clearness the encroachments upon liberties which
threatened their suppression and justified revolt, but
it was inspired by the very genius of freedom, and the
prophetic possibilities of united commonwealths 30
covering the continent in one harmonious republic,
when it made the people of the thirteen colonies all
Americans, and devolved upon them to administer.

2 26 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
by themselves and for themselves, the prerogatives
and powers wrested from Crown and Parliament. It
condensed Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, the
great body of English liberties embodied in the com-
5 mon law and accumulated in the decisions of the
courts, the statutes of the realm, and an undisputed
though unwritten Constitution; but this original
principle and dynamic force of the people's power
sprang from these old seeds planted in the virgin soil
lo of the New World.
More clearly than any statesman of the period did
Thomas Jefferson grasp and divine the possibilities of
popular government. He caught and crystallized the
spirit of free institutions. His philosophical mind
15 was singularly free from the power of precedents or
the chains of prejudice. He had an unquestioning
and abiding faith in the people, which was accepted
by but few of his compatriots. Upon his famous
axiom of the equality of all men before the law, he
20 constructed his system. It was the trip-hammer
essential for the emergency to break the links binding
the colonies to imperial authority, and to pulverize the
privileges of caste. It inspired him to write the
Declaration of Independence, and persuaded him to
25 doubt the wisdom of the powers concentrated in the
Constitution. In his passionate love of liberty he be
came intensely jealous of authority. He destroyed the
substance of royal prerogative, but never emerged
from its shadow. He would have the States as the
30 guardians of popular rights, and the barriers against
centralization, and he saw in the growing power of
the nation ever-increasing encroachments upon the
rights of the people. For the success of the pure de-

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 227
mocracy which must precede presidents and cabinets
and congresses, it was perhaps providential that its
apostle never believed a great people could grant and
still retain, could give and at will reclaim, could dele
gate and yet firmly hold, the authority which ulti- 5
mately created the power of their republic and
enlarged the scope of their own liberty.
Where this master-mind halted, all stood still. The
necessity for a permanent union was apparent; but
each State must have hold upon the bowstring which 10
encircled its throat. It was admitted that union gave
the machinery required to successfully fight the com
mon enemy; but yet there was fear that it might be
come a Frankenstein and destroy its creators. Thus
patriotism and fear, difficulties of communication be- 15
tween distant communities, and the intense growth of
provincial pride and interests, led this Congress to
frame the Articles of Confederation, happily termed
the League of Friendship The result was not a gov
ernment, but a ghost. By this scheme the American 20
people were ignored and the Declaration of Inde
pendence reversed. The States, by their legislatures,
elected delegates to Congress, and the delegate repre
sented the sovereignty of his commonwealth.
All the States had an equal voice, without regard to 25
their size or population. It required the vote of nine
States to pass any bill, and five could block the wheels
of government. Congress had none of the powers
essential to sovereignty. It could neither levy taxes
nor impose duties nor collect excise. For the support 30
of the Army and Navy, for the purposes of war, for the
preservation of its own functions, it could only call
upon the States, but it possessed no power to enforce

228 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
its demands. It had no president or executive au
thority, no supreme court with general jurisdiction,
and no national power. Each of the thirteen States
had seaports and levied discriminating duties against
5 the others, and could also tax and thus prohibit inter
state commerce across its territory. Had the Confed
eration been a Union instead of a League, it could
have raised and equipped three times the number of
men contributed by reluctant States, and conquered
10 independence without foreign assistance. This para
lyzed government — without strength, because it could
not enforce its decrees; without credit, because it
could pledge nothing for the payment of its debts;
without respect, because without inherent authority —
15 would, by its feeble life and early death, have added
another to the historic tragedies which have in many
lands marked the suppression of freedom, had it not
been saved by the intelligent, inherited, and invincible
understanding of liberty by the people, and the genius
20 and patriotism of their leaders.
But while the perils of war had given temporary
strength to the Confederation, peace developed its
fatal weakness. It derived no authority from the peo
ple, and could not appeal to them. Anarchy threat-
25 ened its existence at home, and contempt met its
representatives abroad.
" Can you fulfill or enforce the obligations of the
treaty on your part if we sign one with you? " was the
sneer of the courts of the Old World to our ambassa-
30 dors. Some States gave a half-hearted support to its
demands; others defied them. The loss of public
credit was speedily followed by universal bankruptcy.
The wildest fantasies assumed the force of serious

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION 229
measures for the relief of the general distress. States
passed exclusive and hostile laws against each other,
and riot and disorder threatened the disintegration of
society. " Our stock is stolen, our houses are plun
dered, our farms are raided," cried a delegate in the 5
Massachusetts convention; "despotism is better than
anarchy! " To raise four millions of dollars a year
was beyond the resources of the Government, and
three hundred thousand was the limit of the loan it
could secure from the money-lenders of Europe. 10
Even Washington exclaimed in despair: " I see one
head gradually changing into thirteen ; I see one army
gradually branching into thirteen; which, instead of
looking up to Congress as the supreme controlling
power, are considering themselves as depending on 15
their respective States." And later, when independ
ence had been won, the impotency of the Government
wrung from him the exclamation: "After gloriously
and successfully contending against the usurpation of
Great Britain, we may fall a prey to our own folly and 20
disputes." But even through this Cimmerian darkness shot a
flame which illumined the coming century, and kept
bright the beacon-fires of liberty. The architects of
constitutional freedom formed their institutions with 25
wisdom which forecasted the future. They may not
have understood at first the whole truth; but, for that
which they knew, they had the martyrs' spirit and the
crusaders' enthusiasm. Though the Confederation
was a government of checks without balances, and of 30
purpose without power, the statesmen who guided it
demonstrated often the resistless force of great souls
animated by the purest patriotism; and united in

230 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
judgment and effort to promote the common good, by
lofty appeals and high reasoning, to elevate the masses
above local greed and apparent self-interest to their
own broad plane.
5 The most significant triumph of these moral and in
tellectual forces was that which secured the assent of
the States to the limitation of their boundaries, to the
grant of the wilderness beyond them to the General
Government, and to the insertion in the ordinance
10 erecting the Northwest Territory of the immortal pro
viso prohibiting " slavery or involuntary servitude "
within all that broad domain. The States carved out
of this splendid concession were not sovereignties
which had successfully rebelled, but they were the
15 children of the Union, born of the covenant and
thrilled with its life and liberty. They became the
bulwarks of nationality and the buttresses of freedom.
Their preponderating strength first checked and then
broke the slave power; their fervid loyalty halted and
20 held at bay the spirit of State rights and secession for
generations; and when the crisis came, it was with
their overwhelming assistance that the nation killed
and buried its enemy. The corner stone of the edi
fice whose centenary we are celebrating was the Ordi-
25 nance of 1787. It was constructed by the feeblest of
congresses, but few enactments of ancient or modern
times have had more far-reaching and beneficent in
fluence. It is one of the sublimest paradoxes of his
tory that this weak Confederation of States should
30 have welded the chain against which, after seventy-
four years of fretful efforts for release, its own spirit
frantically dashed and died.
The government of the Republic by a Congress of

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 231
States, a diplomatic convention of the ambassadors of
petty commonwealths, after seven years' trial, was fall
ing asunder. Threatened with civil war among its
members, insurrection and lawlessness rife within the
States, foreign commerce ruined and internal trade 5
paralyzed, its currency worthless, its merchants bank
rupt, its farms mortgaged, its markets closed, its labor
unemployed, it was like a helpless wreck upon the
ocean, tossed about by the tides and ready to be en
gulfed in the storm. Washington gave the warning 10
and called for action. It was a voice accustomed to
command, but not entreat. The veterans of the war
and the statesmen of the Revolution stepped to the
front. The patriotism which had been misled, but
had never faltered, rose above the interests of the 15
States and the jealousies of jarring confederates to
find the basis for union. " It is clear to me as A B C,"
said Washington, " that an extension of federal
powers would make us one of the most happy,
wealthy, respectable, and powerful nations that ever 20
inhabited the terrestrial globe. Without them we
shall soon be everything which is the direct reverse.
I predict the worst consequences from a half-starved,
limping government, always moving upon crutches
and tottering at every step." The response of the 25
country was the Convention of 1787, at Philadelphia.
The Declaration of Independence was but the vesti
bule of the temple which this illustrious assembly
erected. With no successful precedents to guide, it
auspiciously worked out the problem of constitutional 30
government, and of imperial power and home rule sup
plementing each other in promoting the grandeur of
the nation and preserving the liberty of the individual.

232 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
The deliberations of great councils have vitally
affected, at different periods, the history of the world
and the fate of empires; but this Congress builded,
upon popular sovereignty, institutions broad enough
5 to embrace the continent, and elastic enough to fit all
conditions of race and traditions. The experience of
a hundred years has demonstrated for us the perfec
tion of the work for defense against foreign foes, and
for self-preservation against domestic insurrection, for
lo limitless expansion in population and material de
velopment, and for steady growth in intellectual free
dom and force. Its continuing influence upon the
welfare and destiny of the human race can only be
measured by the capacity of man to cultivate and en-
15 joy the boundless opportunities of liberty and law.
The eloquent characterization of Mr. Gladstone con
denses its merits : " The American Constitution is the
most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time
by the brain and purpose of man."
20 The statesmen who composed this great senate were
equal to their trust. Their conclusions were the re
sult of calm debate and wise concession. Their char
acter and abilities were so pure and great as to com
mand the confidence of the country for the reversal
25 of the policy of the independence of the State of the
power of the General Government, which had hitherto
been the invariable practice and almost universal
opinion, and for the adoption of the idea of the nation
and its supremacy.
30 Towering in majesty and influence above them all
stood Washington, their president. Beside him was
the venerable Franklin, who, though eighty-one years
of age, brought to the deliberation of the Convention

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 233
the unimpaired vigor and resources of the wisest brain,
the most hopeful philosophy, and the largest experi
ence of the times. Oliver Ellsworth, afterward Chief
Justice of the United States, and the profoundest jurist
in the country; Robert Morris, the wonderful financier 5
of the Revolution, and Gouverneur Morris, the most
versatile genius of his period; Roger Sherman, one of
the most eminent of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, and John "Rutledge, Rufus King, El
bridge Gerry, Edmund Randolph, and the Pinckneys, 10
were leaders of unequaled patriotism, courage, abiHty,
and learning; while Alexander Hamilton and James
Madison, as original thinkers and constructive states
men, rank among the immortal few whose opinions
have for ages guided ministers of state, and deter- 15
mined the destinies of nations.
This great convention keenly felt, and with devout
and serene intelligence met its tremendous responsi
bilities. It had the moral support of the few whose
aspirations for liberty had been inspired or renewed 20
by the triumph of the American Revolution, and the
active hostility of every government in the world.
There were no examples to follow, and the experi
ence of its members led part of them to lean toward
absolute centralization as the only refuge from the 25
anarchy of the Confederation, while the rest clung to
the sovereignty of the States, for fear that the concen
tration of power would end in the absorption of lib
erty. The large States did not want to surrender the
advantage of their position, and the smaller States saw 30
the danger to their existence. The Leagues of the
Greek cities had ended in loss of freedom, tyranny,
conquest, and destruction. Roman conquest and

234 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
assimilation had strewn the shores of time with the
wrecks of empires, and plunged civilization into the
perils and horrors of the Dark Ages. The govern
ment of Cromwell was the isolated power of the
5 mightiest man of his age, without popular authority
to fill his place or the hereditary principle to protect
his successor.
The past furnished no light for our state-builders;
the present was full of doubt and despair. The future,
10 the experiment of self-government, the perpetuity and
development of freedom, almost the destiny of man
kind, was in their hands.
At this crisis the courage and confidence needed to
originate a system weakened. The temporizing spirit
15 of compromise seized the Convention, with the allur
ing proposition of not proceeding faster than the peo
ple could be educated to follow. The cry, " Let us
not waste our labor upon conclusions which will not
be adopted, but amend and adjourn," was assuming
20 startling unanimity. But the supreme force and
majestic sense of Washington brought the assemblage
to the lofty plane of its duty and opportunity. He
said: " It is too probable that no plan we propose will
be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to
25 be sustained. If to please the people we offer what
we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward de
fend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the
wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hands of
God." "I am the state," said Louis XIV.; but his
30 line ended in the grave of absolutism. " Forty cen
turies look down upon you," was Napoleon's address
to his army, in the shadow of the Pyramids; but his
soldiers saw the dream of Eastern Empire vanish in

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 235
blood. Statesmen and parliamentary leaders have
sunk into oblivion, or led their party to defeat, by
surrendering their convictions to the passing passions
of the hour; but Washington, in his immortal speech,
struck the keynote of representative obligation, and 5
propounded the fundamental principle of the purity
and perpetuity of constitutional government.
Freed from the limitations of its environment, and
the question of the adoption of its work, the Conven
tion erected its government upon the eternal founda- 10
tions of the power of the people.
It dismissed the delusive theory of a compact be
tween independent States, and derived national power
from the people of the United States. It broke up the
machinery of the Confederation, and put in practical 15
operation the glittering generalities of the Declaration
of Independence. From chaos came order, from inse
curity came safety, from disintegration and civil war
came law and liberty, with the principle proclaimed in
the preamble of the great charter: " We, the people of 20
the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to our
selves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this 25
Constitution for the United States." With a wisdom
inspired of God, to work out upon this continent the
liberty of man, they solved the problem of the ages by
blending, and yet preserving, local self-government
with national authority, and the rights of the States 30
with the majesty and power of the Republic. The
government of the States, under the Articles of the
Confederation, became bankrupt because it could not

236 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
raise four millions of dollars; the government of the
Union, under the Constitution of the United States,
raised six thousand millions of dollars, its credit grow
ing firmer as its power and resources were demon-
5 strated. The Congress of the Confederation fled
from a regiment which it could not pay; the Congress
of the Union reviewed the comrades of a million of its
victorious soldiers, saluting as they marched the flag
of the nation whose supremacy they had sustained.
10 The promises of the Confederacy were the scoff of its
States; the pledge of the Republic was the honor of
its people.
The Constitution, which was to be strengthened by
the strain of a century, to be a mighty conqueror with-
15 out a subject province, to triumphantly survive the
greatest of civil wars without the confiscation of an
estate or the execution of a political offender, to create
and grant home rule and state sovereignty to twenty-
nine additional commonwealths, and yet enlarge its
20 scope and broaden its power, and to make the name
of an American citizen a title of honor throughout the
world, came complete from the great Convention to
the people for adoption. As Hancock rose from his
seat in the old Congress, eleven years before, to sign
25 the Declaration of Independence, Franklin saw em
blazoned on the back of the President's chair the sun
partly above the horizon, but it seemed setting in a
blood-red sky. During the seven years of the Con
federation he had gathered no hope from the glittering
30 emblem, but now as with clear vision he beheld fixed
upon eternal foundations the enduring structure of
constitutional liberty, pointing to the sign, he forgot
his eighty-two years, and, with the enthusiasm of

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 237
youth, electrified the Convention with the declaration:
" Now I know that it is the rising sun."
The pride of the States and the ambition of their
leaders, sectional jealousies and the overwhelming dis
trust of centralized power, were all arrayed against the 5
adoption of the Constitution. North Carolina and
Rhode Island refused to join the Union until long
after Washington's inauguration. For months New
York was debatable ground. Her territory, extend
ing from the sea to the lakes, made her the keystone 10
of the arch. Had Arnold's treason in the Revolution
not been foiled by the capture of Andre, England
would have held New York and subjugated the colo
nies; and in this crisis, unless New York assented, a
hostile and powerful commonwealth dividing the 15
States made the Union impossible.
Success was due to confidence in Washington and
the genius of Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson was the
inspiration of Independence, but Hamilton was the
incarnation of the Constitution. In no age or country 20
has there appeared a more precocious or amazing
intelligence than Hamilton's. At seventeen he anni
hilated the president of his college, upon the question
of rights of the colonies, in a series of anonymous
articles which were credited to the ablest men in the 25
country; at forty-seven, when he died, his briefs had
become the law of the land, and his fiscal system was,
and after a hundred years remains, the rule and policy
of our Government. He gave life to the corpse of
national credit, and the strength for self-preservation 30
and aggressive power to the Federal Union. Both as
an expounder of the principles and an administrator of
the affairs of the Government he stands supreme and

238 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
unrivaled in American history. His eloquence was so
magnetic, his language so clear, and his reasoning so
irresistible that he swayed with equal ease popular
assemblies, grave senates, and learned judges. He
5 captured the people of the whole country for the Con
stitution by his papers in The Federalist, and conquered
the hostile majority in the New York Convention by
the splendor of his oratory.
But the multitudes whom no argument could con-
10 vince, who saw in the executive power and centralized
force of the Constitution, under another name, the
dreaded usurpation of king and ministry, were satis
fied only with the assurance, " Washington will be
President." " Good," cried John Lamb, the able
15 leader of the Sons of Liberty, as he dropped his oppo
sition; " for to no other mortal would I trust authority
so enormous." " Washington will be President,"
was the battle-cry of the Constitution. It quieted
alarm, and gave confidence to the timid and courage
20 to the weak.
The country responded with enthusiastic unanimity,
but the Chief with the greatest reluctance. In the su
preme moment of victory, when the world expected
him to follow the precedents of the past, and perpetu-
25 ate the power a grateful country would willingly have
left in his hands, he had resigned and retired to Mount
Vernon to enjoy in private station his well-earned
rest. The Convention created by his exertions to
prevent, as he said, " the decline of our federal dignity
30 into insignificant and wretched fragments of empire,"
had called him to preside over its deliberations. Its
work made possible the realization of his hope that
" we might survive as an independent republic," and

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 239
again he sought the seclusion of his home. But after
the triumph of war, and the formation of the Consti
tution came the third and final crisis; the initial move
ments of government which were to teach the infant
state the steadier steps of empire. 5
He alone could stay assault and inspire confidence
while the great and complicated machinery of organ
ized government was put in order and set in motion.
Doubt existed nowhere except in his modest and unam
bitious heart. " My movements to the chair of gov- 10
ernment," he said, " will be accompanied with feel
ings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the
place of his execution. So unwilling am I, in the
evening of life, nearly consumed in public cares, to
quit a peaceful abode for an ocean of difficulties, with- 15
out that competency of political skill, abilities, and in
clination, which are necessary to manage the helm."
His whole life had been spent in repeated sacrifices for
his country's welfare, and he did not hesitate now,
though there is an undertone of inexpressible sadness 20
in this entry in his diary on the night of his departure:
" About ten o'clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon,
to private life, and to domestic felicity, and with a
mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensa
tions than I have words to express, set out for New 25
York with the best disposition to render service to my
country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of
answering its expectations."
No conqueror was ever accorded such a triumph, no
ruler ever received such a welcome. In this memo- 30
rable march of six days to the Capitol, it was the
pride of the States to accompany him with the masses
of their people to their borders, that the citizens of the

240 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
next commonwealth might escort him through its
territory. It was the glory of the cities to receive
him with every civic honor at their gates, and enter
tain him as the savior of their liberties. He rode
5 under triumphal arches from which children lowered
laurel wreaths upon his brow. The roadways were
strewn with flowers, and, as they were crushed beneath
his horse's hoofs, their sweet incense wafted to Heaven
the ever-ascending prayers of his loving countrymen
10 for his life and safety. The swelling anthem of grati
tude and reverence greeted and followed him along
the country-side and through the crowded streets:
" Long live George Washington! Long live the
Father of his People!"
15 His entry into New York was worthy the city and
State. He was met by the chief officers of the retiring
Government of the country, by the Governor of the
Commonwealth, and the whole population. This
superb harbor was alive with fleets and flags; and the
20 ships of other nations, with salutes from their guns,
and the cheers of their crews, added to the joyous
acclaim. But as the captains, who had asked the privilege,
bending proudly to their oars, rowed the President's
25 barge swiftly through these inspiring scenes, Wash
ington's mind and heart were full of reminiscence and
foreboding. He had visited New York thirty-three years before,
also in the month of April, in the full perfection of his
30 early manhood, fresh from Braddock's bloody field,
and wearing the only laurels of the battle, bearing the
prophetic blessing of the venerable President Davies,
of Princeton College, as " That heroic youth. Colonel

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 241
Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has
hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some im
portant service to the country." It was a fair daugh
ter of our State whose smiles allured him here, and
whose coy confession that her heart was another's re- 5
corded his only failure, and saddened his departure.
Twenty years passed, and he stood before the New
York Congress, on this very spot, the unanimously
chosen Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army,
urging the people to more vigorous measures, and lo
made painfully aware of the increased desperation of
the struggle, from the aid to be given to the enemy by
domestic sympathizers, when he knew that the same
local military company which escorted him was to per
form the like service for the British Governor Tryon 15
on his landing on the morrow. Returning for the de
fense of the city the next summer, he executed the
retreat from Long Island, which secured from Freder
ick the Great the opinion that a great commander had
appeared, and at Harlem Heights he won the first 20
American victory of the Revolution, which gave that
confidence to our raw recruits against the famous
veterans of Europe which carried our army tri
umphantly through the war. Six years more of un
told sufferings, of freezing and starving camps, of 25
marches over the snow by barefooted soldiers to heroic
attack and splendid victory, of despair with an unpaid
army, and of hope from the generous assistance of
France, and peace had come and independence tri
umphed. As the last soldier of the invading enemy 30
embarks, Washington at the head of the patriot host
enters the city, receives the welcome and gratitude of
its people, and in the tavern which faces us across the

242 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
way, in silence more eloquent than speech, and with
tears which choke the words, he bids farewell forever
to his companions in arms. Such were the crowding
memories of the past suggested to Washington in
5 1789 by his approach to New York. But the future
had none of the splendor of precedent and brilliance
of promise which have since attended the inaguration
of our presidents. An untried scheme, adopted mainly
because its administration was to be confided to him,
10 was to be put in practice. He knew that he was to
be met at every step of constitutional progress by fac
tions temporarily hushed into unanimity by the ter
rific force of the tidal wave which was bearing him to
the President's seat, but fiercely hostile upon questions
15 affecting every power of nationality and the existence
of the Federal Government.
Washington was never dramatic, but on great oc
casions he not only rose to the full ideal of the event,
he became himself the event. One hundred years ago
20 to-day the procession of foreign ambassadors, of states
men and generals, of civic societies and military com
panies, which escorted him, marched from Franklin
Square to Pearl Street, through Pearl to Broad to this
spot; but the people saw only Washington. As he
25 stood upon the steps of the old Government Building
here, the thought must have occurred to him that it
was a cradle of liberty, and as such giving a bright
omen for the future.
In these halls, in 1735, in the trial of John Zenger,
30 had been established, for the first time in its history,
the liberty of the press. Here the New York Assem
bly, in 1764, made the protest against the Stamp Act,
and proposed the General Conference, which was the

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 243
beginning of the united colonial action. In this old
State House, in 1765, the Stamp Act Congress — the
first and the father of American congresses — assembled
and presented to the English government that vigor
ous protest which caused the repeal of the Act, and 5
checked the first step toward the usurpation which lost
the American Colonies to the British Empire. Within
these walls the Congress of the Confederation had
commissioned its ambassadors abroad, and in ineffec
tual efforts at government had created the necessity 10
for the concentration of Federal authority, now to be
consummated. The first Congress of the United States, gathered in
this ancient temple of liberty, greeted Washington and
accompanied him to the balcony. The famous men 15
visible about him were Chancellor Livingston, Vice-
President John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Gov
ernor Clinton, Roger Sherman, Richard Henry Lee,
General Knox, and Baron Steuben. But we believe
that among the invisible host above him at this 20
supreme moment of the culmination in permanent
triumph of the thousands of years of struggle for
self-government, were the spirits of soldiers of the
Revolution who had died that their countrymen might
enjoy this blessed day, and with them were the Barons 25
of Runnymede, and William the Silent, and Sidney,
and Russell, and Cromwell, and Hampden, and the
heroes and martyrs of liberty of every race and age.
As he came forward, the multitude in the streets, in
the windows, and on the roofs sent up such a raptur- 30
ous shout that Washington sat down, overcome with
emotion. As he slowly rose, and his tall and majestic
form again appeared, the people, deeply affected, in

244 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
awed silence viewed the scene. The chancellor
solemnly read to him the oath of office, and Washing
ton, repeating, said: " I do solemnly swear that I will
faithfully execute the office of President of the United
5 States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United
States." Then he reverently bent low and kissed the
Bible, uttering with profound emotion, " So help me,
God." The chancellor waved his robes and shouted:
10 " It is done. Long live George Washington, Presi
dent of the United States! " " Long live George
Washington, our first President! " was the answering
cheer of the people, and from the belfries rang the
bells, and from forts and ships thundered the cannon,
15 echoing and repeating the cry with responding acclaim
all over the land: " Long live George Washington,
President of the United States!"
The simple and imposing ceremony over, the in
augural read, the blessing of God prayerfully peti-
20 tioned in old St. Paul's, the festivities passed: and
Washington stood alone. No one else could take the
helm of State, and enthusiast and doubter alike trusted
only him. The teachings and habits of the past had
educated the people to faith in the independence of
25 their States; and for the supreme authority of the new
Government there stood, against the precedent of a
century and the passions of the hour, little beside the
arguments of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in The
Federalist, and the judgment of Washington.
30 With the first attempt to exercise national power
began the duel to the death between State Sov
ereignty, claiming the right to nullify federal laws or
secede from the LTnion, and the power of the Repub-

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 245
lie to command the resources of the country, to en
force its authority, and protect its life. It was the
beginning of the sixty-years' war for the Constitution
and the nation. It seared consciences, degraded poli
tics, destroyed parties, ruined statesmen, and retarded 5
the advance and development of the country; it sacri
ficed hundreds of thousands of precious lives, and
squandered thousands of millions of money; it deso
lated the fairest portion of the land and carried mourn
ing into every home North and South ; but it ended at 10
Appomattox in the absolute triumph of the Republic.
Posterity owes to Washington's Administration the
policy and measures, the force and direction which
made possible this glorious result. In giving the
organization of the Department of State and Foreign 15
Relations to Jefferson, the Treasury to Hamilton, and
the Supreme Court to Jay, he selected for his Cabinet
and called to his assistance the ablest and most emi
nent men of his time. Hamilton's marvelous versa
tility and genius designed the armory and the weapons 20
for the promotion of national power and greatness,
but Washington's steady support carried them
through. Parties crystallized, and party passions were
intense, debates were intemperate, and the Union
openly threatened and secretly plotted against, as the 25
firm pressure of this mighty personality funded the
debt and established credit; assumed the State debts
incurred in the War of the Revolution, and superseded
the local by the national obligation; imposed duties
upon imports and excise upon spirits, and created 30
revenue and resources; organized a National Banking
system for public needs and private business, and
called out an army to put down by force of arms re-

246 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
sistance to the Federal laws imposing unpopular taxes.
Upon the plan marked out by the Constitution this
great architect, with unfailing faith and unfaltering
courage, builded the Republic. He gave to the Gov-
5 ernment the principles of action and sources of power
which carried it successfully through the wars with
Great Britain in 1812 and Mexico in 1848, which en
abled Jackson to defeat nullification, and recruited and
equipped millions of men for Lincoln, and justified and
10 sustained his Proclamation of Emancipation.
The French Revolution was the bloody reality of
France and the nightmare of the civilized world. The
tyranny of centuries culminated in frightful reprisals
and reckless revenges. As parties rose to power and
15 passed to the guillotine, the frenzy of the revolt against
all authority reached every country and captured the
imaginations and enthusiasm of millions in every land,
who believed they saw that the madness of anarchy,
the overturning of all institutions, the confiscation and
20 distribution of property, would end in a millennium
for the masses and the universal brotherhood of man.
Enthusiasm for France, our late ally, and the terrible
commercial and industrial distress occasioned by the
failure of the Government under the Articles of Con-
25 federation, aroused an almost unanimous cry for the
young Republic, not yet sure of its existence, to
plunge into the vortex. The ablest and purest states
men of the time bent to the storm, but Washington
was unmoved. He stood like the rock-ribbed coast
30 of a continent between the surging billows of fanati
cism and the child of his love. Order is Heaven's first
law, and the mind of Washington was order. The Rev
olution defied God and derided the law. Washing-

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 247
ton devoutly reverenced the Deity, and believed lib
erty impossible without law. He spoke to the sober
judgment of the nation and made clear the danger.
He saved the ancient Government from ruin, and ex
pelled the French Minister who had appealed from 5
him to the people. The whole land, seeing safety only
in his continuance in office, joined Jefferson in urging
him to accept a second term. " North and South,"
pleaded the Secretary, " will hang together while they
have you to hang to." 10
No man ever stood for so much to his country and
to mankind as George Washington. Hamilton, Jef
ferson, and Adams, Madison, and Jay, each repre
sented some of the elements which formed the Union:
Washington embodied them all. They fell at times 15
under popular disapproval, were burned in effigy, were
stoned; but he with unerring judgment was always
the leader of the people. Milton said of Cromwell,
that " war made him great, peace greater." The su
periority of Washington's character and genius was 20
more conspicuous in the formation of our Government
and in putting it on indestructible foundations, than
in leading armies to victory and conquering the in
dependence of his country. " The Union in any
event " is the central thought of his Farewell Address ; 25
and all the years of his grand life were devoted to its
formation and preservation. He fought as a youth
with Braddock and in the capture of Fort Du Quesne
for the protection of the whole country. As Com
mander-in-chief of the Continental Army, his com- 30
mission was from the Congress of the United Colo
nies. He inspired the movement for the Republic,
was the President and dominant spirit of the Conven-

248 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
tion which framed its Constitution, and its President
for eight years, and guided its course until satisfied
that moving safely along the broad highway of time,
it would be surely ascending toward the first place
5 among the nations of the world, the asylum of the
oppressed, the home of the free.
Do his countrymen exaggerate his virtues? Listen
to Guizot, the historian of civilization: "Washington
did the two greatest things which in politics it is per-
10 mitted to man to attempt. He maintained by peace
the independence of his country which he conquered
by war. He founded a free government in the name
of the principles of order and by re-establishing their
sway." Hear Lord Erskine, the most famous of Eng-
15 lish advocates: " You are the only being for whom I
have an awful reverence." Remember the tribute of
Charles James Fox, the greatest parliamentary orator
who ever swayed the British House of Commons:
" Illustrious man, before whom all borrowed greatness
20 sinks into insignificance." Contemplate the character
of Lord Brougham, pre-eminent for two generations in
every department of human activity and thought, and
then impress upon the memories of your children his
deliberate judgment: " LTntil time shall be no more,
25 will a test of the progress which our race has made in
wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid
to the immortal name of Washington."
Chatham, who, with Clive, conquered an empire in
the East, died broken-hearted at the loss of the empire
30 in the West, by follies which even his power and elo
quence could not prevent. Pitt saw the vast creations
of his diplomacy shattered at Austerlitz, and fell mur
muring: "My country! how I leave my country!"

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 249
Napoleon caused a noble tribute to Washington to be
read at the head of his armies; but, unable to rise to
Washington's greatness, witnessed the vast structure
erected by conquest and cemented by blood, to minis
ter to his own ambition and pride, crumble into frag- 5
ments, and an exile and a prisoner he breathed his
last, babbling of battle-fields and carnage. Wash
ington, with his finger upon his pulse, felt the presence
of death, and calmly reviewing the past and fore
casting the future, answered to the summons of the 10
grim messenger, " It is well "; and as his mighty soul
ascended to God, the land was deluged with tears and
the world united in his eulogy. Blot out from the
page of history the names of all the great actors of his
time in the drama of nations, and preserve the name 15
of Washington, and still the century would be
renowned. We stand to-day upon the dividing line between the
first and second century of constitutional government.
There are no clouds overhead, and no convulsions 20
under our feet. We reverently return thanks to Al
mighty God for the past, and with confident and hope
ful promise march upon sure ground toward the
future. The simple facts of these hundred years para
lyze the imagination, and we contemplate the vast 25
accumulations of the century with awe and pride.
Our population has grown from four to sixty-five
millions. Its center moving westward five hundred
miles since 1789, is eloquent with the founding of
cities and the birth of States. New settlements, clear- 30
ing the forests and subduing the prairies, and adding
four millions to the few thousands of farms which were
the support of Washington's Republic, create one of

250 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
the great granaries of the world and open exhaustless
reservoirs of national wealth.
The infant industries, which the first Act of our
Administration sought to encourage, now give remu-
5 nerative employment to more people than inhabited
the Republic at the beginning of Washington's Presi
dency. The grand total of their annual output of
seven thousand millions of dollars in value places the
United States first among the manufacturing coun-
10 tries of the earth. One-half of all the railroads, and
one-quarter of all the telegraph lines of the world
within our borders, testify to the volume, variety, and
value of an internal commerce which makes these
States, if need be, independent and self-supporting.
15 These hundred years of development under favorable
political conditions have brought the sum of our na
tional wealth to a figure which is past the results of a
thousand years for the mother-land, herself otherwise
the richest of modern empires.
20 During this generation a civil war of unequaled mag
nitude caused the expenditure and loss of eight thou
sand millions of dollars, and killed six hundred thou
sand and permanently disabled over a million young
men ; and yet the impetuous progress of the North and
25 the marvelous industrial development of the new and
free South have obliterated the evidences of destruc
tion and made the war a memory, and have stimulated
production until our annual surplus nearly equals that
of England, France, and Germany combined. The
30 teeming millions of Asia till the patient soil and work
the shuttle and loom as their fathers have done for
ages; modern Europe has felt the influence and re
ceived the benefit of the incalculable multiplication of

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 251
force by inventive genius since the Napoleonic wars;
and yet, only two hundred and sixty-nine years after
the little band of Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock,
our people, numbering less than one-fifteenth of the
inhabitants of the globe, do one-third of its mining, 5
one-fourth of its manufacturing, one-fifth of its agri
culture, and own one-sixth of its wealth.
This realism of material prosperity, surpassing the
wildest creation of the romancers who have astonished
and delighted mankind, would be full of danger for the 10
present and menace for the future, if the virtue, intelli
gence, and independence of the people were not equal
to the wise regulation of its uses and the stern pre
vention of its abuses. But following the growth and
power of the great factors, whose aggregation of 15
capital made possible the tremendous pace of the settle
ment of our national domain, the building of our great
cities and the opening of the lines of communication
which have unified our country and created our re
sources, have come national and state legislation and 20
supervision. Twenty millions — a vast majority of our
people of intelligent age — acknowledging the au
thority of their several churches, twelve millions of
children in the common schools, three hundred and
forty-five universities and colleges for the higher edu- 25
cation of men and two hundred for women, four hun
dred and fifty institutions of learning for science, law,
medicine, and theology, are the despair of the scoffer
and the demagogue, and the firm support of civiliza
tion and liberty. 30
Steam and electricity have not only changed the
commerce, they have also revolutionized the govern
ments of the world. They have given to the press its

252 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
powers, and brought all races and nationalities into
touch and sympathy. They have tested and are try
ing the strength of all systems to stand the strain and
conform to the conditions which follow the germinat-
5 ing influences of American democracy. At the time
of the inauguration of Washington, seven royal fami
lies ruled as many kingdoms in Italy, but six of them
have seen their thrones overturned and their coun
tries disappear from the map of Europe. Most of the
10 kings, princes, dukes, and margraves of Germany, who
reigned despotically and sold their soldiers for for
eign service, have passed into history, and their heirs
have neither prerogatives nor domain. Spain has
gone through many violent changes, and the perma-
15 nency of her present government seems to depend upon
the feeble life of an infant prince. France, our an
cient friend, with repeated and bloody revolutions, has
tried the government of Bourbon and Convention, of
Directory and Consulate, of Empire and Citizen King,
20 of hereditary Sovereign and Republic, of Empire, and
again Republic. The Hapsburg and the Hohenzol-
lern, after convulsions which have rocked the founda
tions of their thrones, have been compelled to concede
constitutions for their people, and to divide with them
25 the arbitrary power wielded so autocratically and bril
liantly by Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great.
The royal will of George III. could crowd the Ameri
can colonies into rebellion, and wage war upon them
until they were lost to his kingdom; but the authority
30 of the Crown has devolved upon ministers who hold
office subject to the approval of the representatives of
the people, and the equal powers of the House of

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 253
Lords have become vested in the Commons, leaving
to the Peers only the shadow of their ancient privi
leges. But to-day the American people, after all the
dazzling developments of the century, are still happily
living under the Government of Washington. The 5
Constitution during all that period has been amended
only upon the lines laid down in the original instru
ment, and in conformity with the recorded opinions
of the Fathers. The first great addition was the incor
poration of a Bill of Rights, and the last the embed- 10
ding into the Constitution of the immortal principle
of the Declaration of Independence — of the equal
ity of all men before the law. No crisis has been too
perilous for its powers, no evolution too rapid for its
adaptation, and no expansion beyond its easy grasp 15
and administration. It has assimilated diverse na
tionalities with warring traditions, customs, condi
tions, and languages, imbued them with its spirit, and
won their passionate loyalty and love.
The flower of the youth of the nations of Conti- 20
nental Europe are conscripted from productive indus
tries and drilling in camps. Vast armies stand in
battle array along the frontiers, and a Kaiser's whim or
a Minister's mistake may precipitate the most destruc
tive war of modern times. 25
Both monarchical and republican governments are
seeking safety in the repression and suppression of
opposition and criticism. The volcanic forces of
democratic aspiration and socialistic revolt are
rapidly increasing and threaten peace and security. 30
We turn from these gathering storms to the British
Isles and find their people in the throes of a political

254 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
crisis involving the form and substance of their Gov
ernment, and their statesmen far from confident that
the enfranchised and unprepared masses will wisely
use their power.
5 But for us no army exhausts our resources nor con
sumes our youth. Our navy must needs increase in
order that the protecting flag may follow the expand
ing commerce which is to successfully compete in all
the markets of the world. The sun of our destiny is
10 still rising, and its rays illumine vast territories as yet
unoccupied and undeveloped, and which are to be the
happy homes of millions of people. The questions
which affect the powers of government and the expan
sion or limitation of the authority of the Federal Con-
15 stitution are so completely settled, and so unanimously
approved, that our political divisions produce only the
healthy antagonism of parties which is necessary for
the preservation of liberty. Our institutions furnish
the full equipment of shield and spear for the battles
20 of freedom ; and absolute protection against every dan
ger which threatens the welfare of the people will
always be found in the intelligence which appreciates
their value, and the courage and morality with which
their powers are exercised. The spirit of Washington
25 fills the executive office. Presidents may not rise to
the full measure of his greatness, but they must not
fall below his standard of public duty and obligation.
His life and character, conscientiously studied and
thoroughly understood by coming generations, will be
30 for them a liberal education for private life and public
station, for citizenship and patriotism, for love and de
votion to Union and liberty. With their inspiring past

WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 255
and splendid present, the people of these United
States, heirs of a hundred years marvelously rich in
all which adds to the glory and greatness of a nation,
with an abiding trust in the stability and elasticity of
their Constitution, and an abounding faith in them
selves, hail the coming century with hope and joy.

THE PLATFORM ORATION.
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
Born 1824. Died iSgs.
THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN.
[The subject with which this oration deals, the place of the edu
cated man in public affairs, was a particularly congenial one to Mr.
Curtis, as it has been to other men who have thought deeply over the
problems of our democracy. In 1856, in an address which Mr. Curtis
delivered before the literary societies of Wesleyan University, his
first platform oration of any note, he chose for his topic " The duty
of the American Scholar to Politics and the Times." A year later, in
1857, when he spoke to the graduating class of Union College on
' ' Patriotism " he took as his theme this question : ' ' How can you,
as educated young Americans, best serve the great cause of human
development to which all nationalities are subservient?" Again,
twenty years after this, in another address before the students of
Union College, he had for his subject " The Public Duty of Educated
men.'' The present oration, therefore, which was delivered before
the alumni of Brown University, at Providence, June 20, 1882, is
not only one of the most eloquent Mr. Curtis ever delivered, but
it represents a theme to which he gave much thought throughout his
life. The oration is reprinted, by permission, from the Orations and
Addresses of George IVilliam Curtis : Copyright, 1893, by Messrs.
Harper and Brothers.]
There is a modern English picture which the genius
of Hawthorne might have inspired. The painter calls
it, " How they met themselves." A man and a woman,
haggard and weary, wandering lost in a somber wood,
5 suddenly meet the shadowy figures of a youth and a
256

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 257
maid. Some mysterious fascination fixes the gaze
and stills the hearts of the wanderers, and their amaze
ment deepens into awe as they gradually recognize
themselves as once they were ; the soft bloom of youth
upon their rounded cheeks, the dewy light of hope in 5
their trusting eyes, exulting confidence in their spring
ing step, themselves blithe and radiant with the glory
of the dawn. To-day, and here, we meet ourselves.
Not to these familiar scenes alone — yonder col
lege-green with its reverend traditions; the hal- 10
cyon cove of the Seekonk, upon which the
memory of Roger Williams broods like a bird
of calm; the historic bay, beating forever with
the muffled oars of Barton and of Abraham
Whipple; here, the humming city of the living; 15
there, the peaceful city of the dead ; — not to these only
or chiefly do we return, but to ourselves as we once
were. It is not the smiling freshmen of the year, it is
your own beardless and unwrinkled faces, that are
looking from the windows of University Hall and of 20
Hope College. Under the trees upon the hill it is
yourselves whom you see walking, full of hopes and
dreams, glowing with conscious power, and " nourish
ing a youth sublime " ; and in this familiar temple,
which surely has never echoed with eloquence so fer- 25
vid and inspiring as that of your commencement ora
tions, it is not yonder youths in the galleries who, as
they fondly believe, are whispering to yonder maids;
it is your younger selves who, in the days that are no
more, are murmuring to the fairest mothers and grand- 30
mothers of those maids.
Happy the worn and weary man and woman in the
picture could they have felt their older eyes still glis-

258 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
tening with that earlier light, and their hearts yet beat
ing with undiminished sympathy and aspiration.
Happy we, brethren, whatever may have been
achieved, whatever left undone, if, returning to the
5 home of our earlier years, we bring with us the illimit
able hope, the unchilled resolution, the inextinguish
able faith of youth.
It was as scholars that you were here; it is to the
feeling and life of scholars that you return. I mean
10 the scholar not as a specialist or deeply proficient stu
dent, not like Darwin, a conqueror greater than Alex
ander, who extended the empire of human knowledge;
nor like Emerson, whose serene wisdom, a planet in
the cloudless heaven, lighted the path of his age to
15 larger spiritual liberty; nor like Longfellow, sweet
singer of our national spring-time, whose scholarship
decorated his pure and limpid song as flowers are mir
rored in a placid stream^ — not as scholars like these,
but as educated men, to whom the dignity and honor
20 and renown of the educated class are precious, how
ever remote from study your lives may have been, you
return to the annual festival of letters. " Neither
years nor books," says Emerson, speaking of his own
college days, " have yet availed to extirpate a preju-
25 dice then rooted in me that a scholar is the favorite of
heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the
happiest of men."
But every educated man is aware of a profound
popular distrust of the courage and sagacity of the
30 educated class. Franklin and Lincoln are good
enough for us, exclaims this jealous skepticism; as if
Franklin and Lincoln did not laboriously repair by
vigorous study the want of early opportunity. The

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 259
scholar appealing to experience is proudly told to close
his books, for what has America to do with experi
ence? as if books were not the ever-burning lamps of
accumulated wisdom. When Voltaire was insulted
by the London mob, he turned at his door and com- 5
plimented them upon the nobleness of their national
character, their glorious constitution, and their love
of liberty. The London mob did not feel the sar
casm. But when I hear that America may scorn ex
perience because she is a law to herself, I remember 10
that a few years ago a foreign observer came to the
city of Washington, and said: " I did not fully com
prehend your greatness until I saw your Congress.
Then I felt that if you could stand that you could stand
anything, and I understood the saying that God takes 15
care of children, drunken men, and the United States."
The scholar is denounced as a coward. Humanity
falls among thieves, we are told, and the college Le-
vite, the educated Pharisee, pass by on the other side.
Slavery undermines the Republic, but the clergy in 20
America are the educated class, and the Church makes
itself the bulwark of slavery. Strong drink slays its
tens of thousands, but the educated class leaves the
gospel of temperance to be preached by the ignorant
and the enthusiast, as the English Establishment left 25
the preaching of regeneration to Methodist itinerants
in fields and barns. Vast questions cast their shadows
upon the future: the just relations of capital and labor;
the distribution of land ; the towering power of corpo
rate wealth ; reform in administrative methods ; but the 30
educated class, says the critic, instead of advancing to
deal with them promptly, wisely, and courageously,
and settling them as morning dissipates the night.

26o GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
without a shock, leaves them to be kindled to fury by
demagogues, lifts a panic cry of communism, and
sinks paralyzed with terror. It is the old accusation.
Erasmus was the great pioneer of modern scholarship.
5 But in the fierce contest of the Reformation Luther
denounced him as a time-server and a coward. With
the same feeling, Theodore Parker, the spiritual child
of Luther, asked of Goethe, " Tell me, what did he ever
do for the cause of man? " and when nothing remained
10 for his country but the dread alternative of slavery or
civil war, Parker exclaimed sadly of the class to which
he belonged, " If our educated men had done their
duty, we should not now be in the ghastly condition
we bewail."
15 Gentlemen, we belong to the accused class. Its
honor and dignity are very precious to us. Is this
humiliating arraignment true? Does the educated
class of America especially deserve this condemnation
of political recreancy and moral cowardice? Faithless
20 scholars, laggard colleges, bigoted pulpits, there may
be; signal instances you may find of feebleness and
pusillanimity. This has been always true. Leigh
Hunt said, " I thought that my Horace and Demos
thenes gave me a right to sit at table with any man,
25 and I think so still." But when De Quincey met Dr.
Parr, who knew Horace and Demosthenes better than
any man of his time, he described him as a lisping
scandal-monger, retailing gossip fit only for washer
women to hear. During the earthquake of the great
30 civil war in England, Sir Tliomas Browne sat tran
quilly in scholarly seclusion, polishing the conceits of
the " Urn Burial," and modulating the long-drawn
music of the " Religio Medici." Looking at Browne

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 261
and Parr, at Erasmus and Goethe, is it strange that
scholars are impatiently derided as useless pedants or
literary voluptuaries, and that the whole educated class
is denounced as feeble and impracticable?
But remember what Coleridge said to Washington 5
Alston, " Never judge a work of art by its defects."
The proper comment to make upon recreant scholars
is that of Brummell's valet upon the tumbled cambric
in his hands, " These are our failures." Luther, impa
tient of the milder spirit of Erasmus and Colet and 10
Sir Thomas More, might well have called them our
failures, because he was of their class, and while they
counseled moderation, his fiery and impetuous soul
sought to seize triple-crowned error and drag it
from its throne. But Luther was no less a scholar, 15
and stands equally with them for the scholarly class
and the heroism of educated men. Even Erasmus
said of him with friendly wit, " He has hit the Pope
on the crown and the monks on the belly." If the
cowled scholars of the Church rejected him, and uni- 20
versifies under their control renounced and con
demned him, yet Luther is justified in saying, as he
sweeps his hand across them and speaks for himself
and for the scholars who stood with him, " These are
not our representatives; these are our failures." 25
So on our side of the sea the educated body of Puri
tan Massachusetts Bay, the clergy and the magistrates,
drove Roger Williams from their borders — Roger
Williams, also a scholar and a clergyman, and, with
John Milton, the bright consummate flower of Puri- 30
tanism. But shall not he stand for the scholar rather
than Cotton Mather, torturing terrified old women to
death as witches! I appeal from Philip drunk to

262 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
Philip sober — from the scholarship that silenced Mrs.
Hutchinson and hung Mary Dyer and pressed Giles
Corey to death, to the scholarship that argued with
George Fox and founded a political commonwealth
5 upon soul-liberty. A year ago I sat with my brethren
of the Phi Beta Kappa at Cambridge, and seemed to
catch echoes of Edmund Burke's resounding im
peachment of Warren Hastings in the sparkling de
nunciation of the timidity of American scholarship.
10 Under the spell of Burke's burning words Hastings
half believed himself to be the villain he heard
described. But the scholarly audience of the schol
arly orator * of the Phi Beta Kappa, with an exquisite
sense of relief, felt every count of his stinging indict-
15 ment recoil upon himself. He was the glowing refu
tation of his own argument. Gentleman, scholar,
orator — his is the courage that never quailed; his the
white plume of Navarre that flashed meteor-like in
the front of battle; his the Amphion music of an elo-
2o quence that leveled the more than Theban walls of
American slavery. At once judge, culprit, and ac
cuser, in the noble record of his own life he and his
class are triumphantly acquitted.
Must we count such illustrations as exceptions?
25 But how can we do so when we see that the Reforma
tion, the mental and moral new birth of Christendom,
was the work of the educated class? Follow the
movement of liberty in detail, and still the story is the
same. The great political contest in England, in-
30 spired by the Reformation, was directed by University
men. John Pym in the Commons, John Hampden in
the field, John Milton in the Cabinet — three Johns,
*.Wendell Phillips.

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 263
and all of them well-beloved disciples of liberty — with
the grim Oliver himself, purging England of royal
despotism, and avenging the slaughtered saints on
Alpine mountains cold, were all of them children of
Oxford and Cambridge. In the next century, like a 5
dawn lurid but bright, the French Revolution broke
upon the world. But the only hope of a wise direc
tion of the elemental forces that upheaved France van
ished when the educated leadership lost control, and
Marat became the genius and the type of the Revolu- 10
tion. Ireland also bears witness. As its apostle and
tutelary saint was a scholar, so its long despair of
justice has found its voice and its hand among edu
cated Irishmen. Swift and Molyneux, and Flood and
Grattan and O'Connell, Duffy, and the young en- 15
thusiasts around Thomas Davis who sang of an Erin
that never was and dreamed of an Ireland that cannot
be, were men of the colleges and the schools, whose
long persistence of tongue and pen fostered the life
of their country and gained for her all that she has 20
won. For modern Italy, let Silvio Pellico and Foresti
and Maroncelli answer. It was Italian education
which Austria sought to smother, and it was not less
Cavour than Garibaldi who gave constitutional liberty
to Italy. When Germany sank at Jena under the heel 25
of Napoleon, and Stein — whom Napoleon hated, but
could not appall — asked if national life survived, the
answer rang from the universities, and from them
modern Germany came forth. With prophetic im
pulse Theodore Koerner called his poems " The Lyre 30
and the Sword," for, like the love which changed the
sea-nymph into the harp, the fervent patriotism of
the educated youth of Germany turned the poet's lyre

264 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
into the soldier's victorious sword. In the splendor
of our American day let us remember and honor our
brethren, first in every council, dead upon every field
of freedom from the Volga to the Rhine, from John
5 o' Groat's to the Adriatic, who have steadily drawn
Europe from out the night of despotism, and have
vindicated for the educated class the leadership of
modern civilization.
Here in America, where as yet there are no ruins
10 save those of ancient wrongs, undoubtedly New Eng
land has inspired and molded our national life. But
if New England has led the Union, what has led New
England? Her scholarly class. Her educated men.
And our Roger Williams gave the key-note. " He
15 has broached and divulged new and dangerous opin
ions against the authority of magistrates," said Massa
chusetts as she banished him. A century later his
dangerous opinions had captured Massachusetts.
Young Sam Adams, taking his Master's degree at
20 Cambridge, argued that it was lawful to resist the
supreme magistrate if the State could not otherwise
be preserved. He was a college stripling. But seven
years afterward, in 1750, the chief pulpit orator in
New England, Jonathan Ma)'hew, preached in Bos-
25 ton the famous sermon which Thornton called the
morning gun of the Revolution, applying to the politi
cal situation the principles of Roger Wilhams. The
New England pulpit echoed and re-echoed that morn
ing gun, arousing the country, and twenty-five years
30 later its warning broke into the rattle of musketry at
Lexington and Concord and the glorious thunder of
Bunker Hill.
It was a son of Harvard, James Otis, who proposed

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 265
the assembly of an American congress without asking
the king's leave. It was a son of Yale, John Morin
Scott, who declared that if taxation without repre
sentation were to be enforced, the colonies ought to
separate from England. It was a group of New 5
York scholars, John Jay and Scott and the Living
stones, which spoke for the colony in response to the
Boston Port Bill and proposed the Continental Con
gress. It was a New England scholar in that Con
gress, whom Rufus Choate declared to be the 10
distinctive and comprehensive orator of the Revolu
tion, John Adams, who, urging every argument,
touching every stop of passion, pride, tenderness, in
terest, conscience, and lofty indignation, swept up his
country as into a chariot of fire and soared to 15
independence. I do not forget that Virginian tongue of flame,
Patrick Henry, nor that patriotism of the field and
fireside which recruited the Sons of Liberty. The
inspiring statue of the Minute Man at Concord — and 20
a nobler memorial figure does not stand upon our soil
— commemorates the spirit that left the plow stand
ing in the furrow, that drew Nathaniel Greene from
his anvil and Esek Hopkins from his farm; the spirit
that long before had sent the poor parishioners of 25
Scrooby to Holland, and filled the victorious ranks
of the Commonwealth at Naseby and at Marston
Moor. But in America as in England they were edu
cated men who in the pulpit, on the platform, and
through the press, conducted the mighty preliminary 30
argument of the Revolution, defended the ancient tra
ditions of English liberty against reactionary England,
aroused the colonists to maintain the cause of human

266 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
nature, and led them from the Gaspee and Bunker
Hill across the plains of Saratoga, the snows of Valley
Forge, the sands of Monmouth, the hills of Carolina,
until at Yorktown once more the king surrendered to
5 the people, and educated America had saved constitu
tional liberty.
In the next brief and critical period, when through
the travail of a half-anarchical confederation the inde
pendent States, always instinctively tending to union,
lo rose into a rural constitutional republic, the good
genius of America was still the educated mind of the
country. Of the fifty-five members of the Conven
tion, which Bancroft, changing the poet's line, calls
" the goodliest fellowship of law-givers whereof this
15 world holds record," thirty-three were college grad
uates, and the eight leaders of the great debate were all
college men. The Convention adjourned, and while
from out the strong hand of George Clinton, Hamil
ton, the son of Columbia, drew New York into the
20 Union, that placid son of Princeton, James Madison,
withstanding the fiery energy of Patrick Henry,
placed Virginia by her side. iThen Columbia and
Princeton uniting in Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, in
terpreted the Constitution in that greatest of com-
25 mentaries, which, as the dome crowns the Capitol,
completed the majestic argument which long before
the sons of Harvard had begun. Take away the
scholarly class from the discussion that opened the
Revolution, from the deliberations that guided it,
30 from the debates of the Constitutional Convention that
ended it — would the advance of America have been
more triumphant? Would the guarantees of individ
ual liberty, of national union, of a common prosperity.

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 267
have been more surely established? The critics
laughed at the pictured grapes as unnatural. But the
painter was satisfied when the birds came and pecked
at them. Daily the educated class is denounced as
impracticable and visionary. But the Constitution of 5
the United States is the work of American scholars.
Doubtless the leaders expressed a sentiment which
was shared by the men and women around them. But
it was they who had formed and fostered that senti
ment. They were not the puppets of the crowd, light 10
weathercocks which merely showed the shifting gusts
of popular feeling. They did not follow what they
could not resist, and make their voices the tardy echo
of a thought they did not share. They were not
dainty and feeble hermits because they were educated 15
men. They were equal citizens with the rest; men of
strong convictions and persuasive speech, who showed
their brethren what they ought to think and do. That
is the secret of leadership. It is not servility to the
mob, it is not giving vehement voice to popular 20
frenzy, that makes a leader. That makes a dema
gogue; Cleon, not Pericles; Catiline, not Cicero.
Leadership is the power of kindling a sympathy and
trust which will eagerly follow. It is the genius that
molds the lips of the stony Memnon to such sensitive 25
hfe that the first sunbeam of opportunity strikes them
into music. In a great crisis it is thinking so as to
make others think, feeling so as to make others feel,
which tips the orator's tongue with fire that lights as
well as burns. So when Lord Qiatham stood at the 30
head of England organizing her victories by land and
sea, and told in Parliament their splendid story, his
glowing form was Britain's self, and the roar of British

268 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
guns and the proud acclamation of British hearts all
around the globe flashed and thundered in his elo
quence. "This is a glorious morning," said the
scholar Samuel Adams, with a price set on his head,
5 as he heard the guns at Lexington. " Decus et de
corum est," said the young scholar Joseph Warren
gayly, as he passed to his death on Bunker Hill.
They spoke for the lofty enthusiasm of patriotism
which they had kindled. It was not a mob, an igno-
lo rant multitude swayed by a mysterious impulse; it
was a body of educated men, wise and heroic because
they were educated, who lifted this country to inde
pendence and laid deep and strong the foundations of
the Republic.
15 Is this less true of the maintenance and develop
ment of the government? Thirty years ago, walking
on the Cliff at Newport with Mr. Bancroft, I asked
him to what point he proposed to continue his history.
He answered: " If I were an artist painting a picture
20 of this ocean, my work would stop at the horizon.
I can see no further. My history will end with the
adoption of the Constitution. All beyond that is ex
periment." This was long ago. But the RepubHc
is an experiment no longer. It has been strained to
25 the utmost along the very vital fiber of its frame, and
it has emerged from the ordeal recreated. Happy
venerable historian, who has survived both to witness
the triumph of the experiment, and to complete his
stately story to the very point which he contemplated
30 thirty years ago! He has reached what was then the
horizon, and may a gracious Providence permit him
yet to depict the new and further and radiant prospect
which he and all his countrymen behold!

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 269
In achieving this great result has educated America
been sluggish or skeptical or cowardly? The Consti
tution was but ten years old when the author of the
Declaration of Independence, speaking with great
authority and for a great party, announced that the 5
Constitution was a compact of which every State must
judge for itself both the fact of violation and the mode
of redress. Jefferson sowed dragon's teeth in the
fresh soil of the young Union. He died, but the
armed men appeared. The whole course of our poll- 10
tics for nearly a century was essentially revolutionary.
Beneath all specific measures and party policies lay
the supreme question of the nature of the government
which Jefferson had raised. Is the Union a league
or a nation? Are we built upon the solid earth oris
unstably encamped, like Sindbad's company, upon the
back of a sea-monster which may dive at any moment?
Until this doubt was settled there could be no peace.
Yet the question lay in our politics only like the far
black cloud along the horizon, flashing and muttering 20
scarce heard thunders until the slavery agitation be
gan. That was a debate which devoured every other,
until the slave-power, foiled in the hope of continental
empire, pleaded Jefferson's theory of the Constitution
as an argument for national dissolution. This was 25
the third great crisis of the country, and in the
tremendous contention, as in the war that fol
lowed, was the American scholar recreant and
dumb? I do not ask, for it is not necessary, whether in the 30
ranks of the powerful host that resisted agitation there
were not scholars and educated men. I do not ask
whether the educated or any other class alone main-

270 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
tained the fight, nor whether there were not unquail-
ing leaders who were not educated men, nor whether
all were first, or all approved the same methods, or all
were equally wise or equally zealous. Of course, I
5 make no exclusive claim. I do not now speak of
men like Garrison, whose name is that of a great
patriot and a great human benefactor, and whose
sturdy leadership was that of an old Hebrew prophet.
But was the great battle fought and won while we
10 and our guild stood passive and hostile by?
The slavery agitation began with the moral appeal,
and as in the dawn of the Revolution educated Amer
ica spoke in the bugle note of James Otis, so in the
moral onset of the antislavery agitation rings out the
15 clear voice of a son of Otis' college, himself the Otis
of the later contest, Wendell Phillips. By his side, in
the stormy dawn of the movement, stands a grandson
of Quincy of the Revolution, and among the earliest
antislavery leaders is more than a proportionate part
20 of liberally educated men. In Congress the com
manding voice for freedom was that of the most
learned, experienced, and courageous of American
statesmen, the voice of a scholar and an old college
professor, John Quincy Adams. Whittier's burning
25 words scattered the sacred fire, Longfellow and Low
ell mingled their songs with his, and Emerson gave
to the cause the loftiest scholarly heart in the Union.
And while Parker's and Beecher's pulpits echoed
Jonathan Mayhew's morning gun and fired words like
30 cannon-balls, in the highest pulpit of America, fore
most among the champions of liberty stood the slight
and radiant figure of the scholarly son of Rhode
Island, upon whom more than upon any of her chil-

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 271
dren the mantle of Roger WilHams had worthily fallen,
William Ellery Channing.
When the national debate was angriest, it was the
scholar of the Senate of the United States who held
highest in his undaunted hands the flag of humanity 5
and his country. While others bowed and bent and
broke around him, the form of Charles Sumner tow
ered erect. Commerce and trade, the mob of the
clubs and of the street, hissed and sneered at him as
a pedantic dreamer and fanatic. No kind of insult 10
and defiance was spared. But the unbending scholar
revealed to the haughty foe an antagonist as proud
and resolute as itself. He supplied what the hour de
manded, a sublime faith in liberty, the uncompromis
ing spirit which interpreted the Constitution and the 15
statutes for freedom and not for slavery. The fiery
agitation became bloody battle. Still he strode on
before. " I am only six weeks behind you," said
Abraham Lincoln, the Western frontiersman, to the
New England scholar; and along the path that the 20
scholar blazed in the wild wilderness of civil war, the
path of emancipation, and the constitutional equality
of all citizens, his country followed fast to union, peace,
and prosperity. The public service of this scholar
was not less than that of any of his predecessors or 25
any of his contemporaries. Criticise him as you will,
mark every shadow you can find,
" Though round his base the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on his head."
It would indeed be a sorrowful confession for this 30
day and this assembly, to own that experience proves
the air of the college to be suffocating to generous

2 72 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
thought and heroic action. Here it would be espe
cially unjust, for what son of this college does not
proudly remember that when, in the Revolution,
Rhode Island was the seat of war, the college
5 boys left the recitation-room for the field, and the
college became a soldiers' barrack and hospital? And
what son of any college in the land, what educated
American, does not recall with grateful pride that
legion of college youth in our own day — " Integer
lo vitse scelerisque purus " — who were not cowards or
sybarites because they were scholars, but whose con
secration to the cause of country and man vindicated
the words of John Milton, " A complete and generous
education is that which fits a man to perform justly,
15 skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both
private and public, of peace and war"? That is the
praise of the American scholar. The glory of this
day and of this Commencement season is that the
pioneers, the courageous and independent leaders in
20 public affairs, the great apostles of religious and civil
liberty, have been, in large part, educated men, sus
tained by the sympathy of the educated class.
But this is not true of the past alone. As educated
America was the constructive power, so it is still the
25 true conservative force of the Republic. It is decried
as priggish and theoretical. But so Richard Henry
Lee condemned the Constitution as the work of
visionaries. They are always called visionaries
who hold that morality is stronger than a majority.
30 Goldwin Smith says that Cobden felt that at heart
England was a gentleman and not a bully. So
thinks the educated American of his own country.
He has faith enough in the people to appeal to

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 273
them against themselves, for he knows that the car
dinal condition of popular government is the ability
of the people to see and correct their own errors. In
a Republic, as the majority must control action, the
majority tends constantly to usurp control of opinion. 5
Its decree is accepted as the standard of right and
wrong. To differ is grotesque and eccentric. To pro
test is preposterous. To defy is incendiary and revo
lutionary. But just here interposes educated intelli
gence, and asserts the worth of self-reliance and the 10
power of the individual. Gathering the wisdom of
ages as into a sheaf of sunbeams, it shows that prog
ress springs from the minority, and that if it will but
stand fast time will give it victory.
It is the educated voice of the country which teaches 15
patience in politics and strengthens the conscience of
the individual citizen by showing that servility to a
majority is as degrading as servility to a Sultan or
a Grand Lama. Emerson said that of all his friends
he honored none more than a quiet old Quaker lady 20
who, if she said yea and the whole world said nay,
still said yea. One of the pleasantest stories of Gar
field is that of his speech to his constituents in which
he quaintly vindicated his own independence. " I
would do anything to win your regard," he said, " but 25
there is one man whose good opinion I must have
above all, and without whose approval I can do
nothing. That is the man with whom I get up every
morning and go to bed every night, whose thoughts
are my thoughts, whose prayers are my prayers ; I 30
cannot buy your confidence at the cost of his respect."
Never was the scholarly Garfield so truly a man, so
patriotically an American, and his constituents were

274 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
prouder than ever of their representative who com
plimented them by asserting his own manhood.
It is the same voice which exposes the sophists who
mislead the mob and pitilessly scourges the dema-
5 gogues who flatter it. " All men know more than
any man," haughtily shout the larger and lesser
Talleyrands. That is a French epigram, replies the
scholar, but not a general truth. A crowd is not
wiser than the wisest man in it. For the purposes of
10 the voyage the crew does not know more than the
rraster of the ship. The Boston town-meeting was
not more sagacious than Sam Adams. " Vox populi
vox Dei," screams the foaming rhetoric of the stump;
the voice of the people is the voice of God. The
15 voice of the people in London, says history, declared
against street-lamps and denounced inoculation as
wanton wickedness. The voice of the people in Paris
demanded the head of Charlotte Corday. The voice
of the people in Jerusalem cried, " Away with Himl
20 crucify Him! crucify Him! " " God is on the side of
the strongest battalions," sneers the party swindler
who buys a majority with money or place. On the
contrary, answers the cool critic, reading history and
interpreting its lessons, God was with Leonidas, and
25 not with Xerxes. He was with the exile John Robin
son at Leyden, not with Laud and the hierarchy at
Westminster. Despite Napoleon even battles are not sums in
arithmetic. Strange that a general, half of whose
30 success was due to a sentiment, the glory of France,
which welded his army into a thunderbolt, and still
burns for us in the fervid song of Beranger, should
have supposed that it is numbers and not conviction

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 275
and enthusiasm which win the final victory. The ca
reer of no man in our time illustrates this truth more
signally than Garibaldi's. He was the symbol of the
sentiment which the wise Cavour molded into a na
tion, and he will be always canonized more universally 5
than any other Italian patriot, because no other repre
sents so purely and simply to the national imagination
the Italian ideal of patriotic devotion. His enthusi
asm of conviction made no calculation of defeat, be
cause while he could be baffled he could not be beaten. 10
It was a stream flowing from a mountain height,
which might be delayed or diverted, but knew instinct
ively that it must reach the sea. " Italia fard da se."
Garibaldi was that faith incarnate, and the prophecy is
fulfilled. Italy, more proud than stricken, bears his 15
bust to the Capitol, and there the eloquent marble will
say, while Rome endures, that one man with God,
with country, with duty and conscience, is at last the
majority. But still further, it is educated citizenship which, 20
while defining the rightful limitation of the power of
the majority, is most loyal to its legitimate authority,
and foremost always in rescuing it from the treachery
of political peddlers and parasites. Tlie rural states
men who founded the Republic saw in vision a homo- 25
geneous and intelligent community, the peace and
prosperity and intelligence of the State reflected in the
virtue and wisdom of the government. But is this
our actual America or a glimpse of Arcadia? Is this
the United States or Plato's Republic or Harrington's 30
Oceana or Sir Thomas More's Utopia? What are the
political maxims of the hour? In Rome, do as the
Romans do. Fight fire with fire. Beat the devil with

276 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
his own weapons. Take men as they are, and don't
affect superior goodness. Beware of the politics of
the moon and of Sunday-school statesmanship. This
is our current political wisdom and the results are
5 familiar. " This is a nasty State," cries the eager par
tisan, " and I hope we have done nasty work enough
to carry it." " The conduct of the opposition," says
another, " was infamous. They resorted to every
kind of base and contemptible means, and, thank God,
10 we have beaten them at their own game." The ma
jority is overthrown by the political machinery in
tended to secure its will. The machinery is oiled by
corruption and grinds the honest majority to powder.
And it is educated citizenship, the wisdom and energy
15 of men who are classed as prigs, pedants, and imprac-
ticables, which is first and most efficient in breaking
the machinery and releasing the majority. It was this
which rescued New York from Tweed, and which
everywhere challenges and demolishes a Tweed
20 tyranny by whatever name it may be known.
Every year at the college Commencement the
American scholar is exhorted to do his duty. But
every newspaper proves that he is doing it. For he
is the most practical politician who shows his fellow-
25 citizens, as the wise old sailor told his shipmates, that
" God has somehow so fixed the world that a man can
afford to do about right." Take from the country at
this moment the educated power, which is contemned
as romantic and sentimental, and you would take
30 from the army its general, from the ship its compass,
from national action its moral mainspring. It is not
the demagogue and the shouting rabble; it is the
people heeding the word of the thinker and the lesson

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 21-j
of experience, which secures the welfare of the Ameri
can republic and enlarges human liberty. If Ameri
can scholarship is not in place, it is in power. If it
does not carry the election to-day, it determines the
policy of to-morrow. Calm, patient, confident, heroic, 5
in our busy and material life it perpetually vindicates
the truth that the things which are unseen are eternal.
So in the cloudless midsummer sky serenely shines the
moon, while the tumultuous ocean rolls and murmurs
beneath, the type of illimitable and unbridled power; lo
but, resistlessly marshaled by celestial laws, all the
wild waters, heaving from pole to pole, rise and re
cede, obedient to the mild queen of heaven.
Brethren of Brown, we have come hither as our
fathers came, as our children will come, to renew our 15
observation of that celestial law; and here, upon the
old altar of fervid faith and boundless anticipation, let
us pledge ourselves once more that, as the courage
and energy of educated men fired the morning gun
and led the contest of the Revolution, founded and 20
framed the Union and, purifying it as with fire, have
maintained the national life to this hour, so, day by
day, we will do our part to lift America above the
slough of mercenary politics and the cunning snares
of trade, steadily forward toward the shining heights 25
which the hopes of its nativity foretold.

THE AFTER-DINNER ADDRESS.
HENRY W. GRADY.
Born 1850. Died i88g.
THE NEW SOUTH.
[The New England Society of New York City, whose dinners are
famous for their oratory, has had, at one time or another, nearly all
the great speakers of the North as guests at its board. But no South
erner was ever so honored until, to the eighty-first annual banquet held
on December 22, 1886, Mr. Grady, then known only as the progress
ive editor of the leading paper of Atlanta, was invited and asked to
speak on the South. Although not his first visit, the occasion was
his real introduction to the North. Around him were men distin
guished in all walks of life, among them General Sherman, whose
name no Georgian in many years is likely to forget. Preceding him
next but one in the order of speaking was Dr. Talmage, who
described the review of the Federal armies in Washington in
1865. Afterward Mr. Grady said, "When I found myself on my
feet, every nerve in my body was strung as tight as a fiddle string,
and all tingling. I knew then that I had a message for that assem
blage, and as soon as I opened my mouth it came rushing out."
What he said was as successful as it was unpremeditated. The speech
was reported over the whole country and at once gave him a national
reputation. It was called by the New York Times the greatest
speech ever made by a Southerner in New York.]
" There was a South of slavery and secession — that
South is dead. There is a South of union and free
dom — that South, thank God, is living, breathing,
growing every hour." These words, delivered from
5 the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany
378

THE NEW SOUTH. 279
Hall, in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make
my text to-night.
Mr. President and Gentlemen: Let me express to
you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am
permitted to address you. I make this abrupt ac- 5
knowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I
raised my provincial voice in this ancient and august
presence, I could find courage for no more than the
opening sentence, it would be well if, in that sentence,
I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, 10
and had perished, so to speak, with courtesy on my
lips and grace in my heart.
Permitted, through your kindness, to catch my
second wind, let me say that I appreciate the signifi
cance of being the first Southerner to speak at this 15
board, which bears the substance, if it surpasses the
semblance of original New England hospitality, and
honors a sentiment that in turn honors you, but in
which my personality is lost and the compliment to
my people made plain. 20
I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to
night. I am not troubled about those from whom I
come. You remember the man whose wife sent him
to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping
on the top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as 25
the landings afforded, into the basement; and, while
picking himself up, had the pleasure of hearing his
wife call out:
" John, did you break the pitcher? "
" No, I didn't," said John, " but I be dinged if I 30
don't." So, while those who call to me from behind may in
spire me with energy, if not with courage, I ask an

28o HENRY W. GRADY.
indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you will
bring your full faith in American fairness and frank
ness to judgment upon what I shall say. There was
an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible
5 lesson he was going to read in the morning. The
boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting
pages. The next morning he read on the bottom of
one page : " When Noah was one hundred and twenty
years old he took unto himself a wife, who was " then
lo turning the page, " one hundred and forty cubits long,
forty cubits wide, built of gopher wood, and covered
with pitch inside and out." He was naturally puzzled
at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said:
" My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in
IS the Bible, but I accept it as an evidence of the asser
tion that we are fearfully and wonderfully made." If
I could get you to hold such faith to-night, I could
proceed cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach
with a sense of consecration.
20 Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the
sole purpose of getting into the volumes that go out
annually freighted with the rich eloquence of your
speakers — the fact that the Cavalier, as well as the
Puritan, was on the continent in its early days, and
25 that he was " up and able to be about." I have read
your books carefully and I find no mention of that
fact, which seems to me an important one for preserv
ing a sort of historical equilibrium, if for nothing else.
Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first
30 challenged France on this continent, that Cavalier
John Smith gave New England its very name, and
was so pleased with the job that he has been handing
his own name around ever since, and that while Miles

THE NEW SOUTH. 28 1
Standish was cutting off men's ears for courting a
girl without her parents' consent, and forbade men to
kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting
everything in sight, and that the Almighty had vouch
safed great increase to the Cavalier colonies, the huts 5
in the wilderness being as full as the nests in the
woods. But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in
your charming little book, I shall let him work out his
own salvation, as he has always done with engaging 10
gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his
merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cava
lier long survived as such. The virtues and traditions
of both happily still live for the inspiration of their
sons and the saving of the old fashion. Both Puritan 15
and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolu
tion, and the American citizen, supplanting both, and
stronger than either, took possession of the republic
bought by their common blood and fashioned to wis
dom, and charged himself with teaching men govern- 20
ment and establishing the voice of the people as the
voice of God.
My friend. Dr. Talmage, has told you that the
typical American has yet to come. Let me tell you
that he has already come. Great types, like valuable 25
plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the
union of these colonist Puritans and Cavaliers, from
the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of
their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came
he who stands as the first typical American, the first 30
who comprehended within himself all the strength and
gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic,
Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and

282 HENRY W. GRADY.
Cavalier; for in his ardent nature were fused the vir
tues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the
faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puri
tan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American,
5 and that in his homely form were first gathered the
vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government
charging it with such tremendous meaning, and so
elevating it above human suffering, that martyrdom,
though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to
lo a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty.
Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honoring
his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of his
simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored;
and in our common glory as Americans there will be
15 plenty and some to spare for your forefathers and for
mine. In speaking to the toast with which you have hon
ored me, I accept the term, " The New South," as in
no sense disparaging to the old. Dear to me, sir, is
20 the home of my childhood, and the traditions of my
people. I would not, if I could, dim the glory they
won in peace and war, or by word or deed take aught
from the splendor and grace of their civilization, never
equaled, and perhaps never to be equaled in its chiv-
25 alric strength and grace. There is a New South, not
through protest against the old, but because of new
conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new
ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address my
self, and to the consideration of which I hasten, lest it
30 become the Old South before I get to it. Age does
not endow all things with strength and virtue, nor are
all new things to be despised. The shoemaker who
put over his door, " John Smith's shop, founded 1760,"

THE NEW SOUTH. 283
was more than matched by his young rival across the
street who hung out this sign: " Bill Jones. Estab
lished 1886. No old stock kept in this shop."
Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master hand,
the picture of your returning armies. He has told 5
you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they
came back to you, marching with proud and victorious
tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will
you bear with me while I tell you of another army that
sought its home at the close of the late war? An 10
army that marched home in defeat and not in victory
— in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that
equaled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever wel
comed heroes home. Let me picture to you the foot
sore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded 15
gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to
his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face
southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of
him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled
by want and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he 20
surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades
in silence, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face
for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia
hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the
slow and painful journey. What does he find? — let 25
me ask you who went to your homes eager to find, in
the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for
four years' sacrifice — what does he find when, having
followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelm
ing odds, dreading death not half so much as sur- 30
render he reaches the home he left so prosperous and
beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm
devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barn

284 HENRY W. GRADY.
empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his
social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away;
his people without law or legal status; his comrades
slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoul-
5 ders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone;
without money, credit, employment, material training;
and besides all this, confronted with the gravest prob
lem that ever met human intelligence — the establish
ing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.
10 What does he do — this hero in gray, with a heart of
gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair?
Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of
his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restora-
15 tion swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches
into the furrow ; horses that had charged Federal guns
marched before the plow, and the fields that ran red
with human blood in April were green with the har
vest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their
20 dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and,
with a patience and heroism that fit women always as
a garment, gave their hands to work. There was little
bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and frankness pre
vailed. " Bill Arp " struck the keynote when he said:
45 " Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and
now 1 am going to work." Or the soldier returning
home after defeat and roasting some corn on the road
side, who made the remark to his comrades : " You
may leave the South if you want to, but I am going
30 to Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if
the Yankees fool with me any more I will whip 'em
again." I want to say to General Sherman— who is
considered an able man in our parts, though some

THE NEW SOUTH. 285
people think he is kind of careless about fire — that
from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a
brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we
have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of
our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble 5
prejudice or memory.
But in all this what have we accomplished? What
is the sum of our work? We have found out that in
the general summary the free negro counts more than
he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse 10
on the hilltop and made it free to white and black.
We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theo
ries, and put business above politics. We have learned
that the $400,000,000 annually received from our cot
ton crop will make us rich, when the supplies that 15
make it are home-raised. We have reduced the com
mercial rate of interest from twenty-four to four per
cent., and are floating four per cent, bonds. We have
learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty for
eigners, and have smoothed the path to the south- 20
ward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's
line used to be, and hung out our latchstring to you
and yours.
We have reached the point that marks perfect har
mony in every household, when the husband confesses 25
that the pies which his wife cooks are as good as those
his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun
shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did
" before the war." We have established thrift in the
city and country. We have fallen in love with work. 30
We have restored comforts to homes from which cul
ture and elegance never departed. We have let
economy take root and spread among us as rank as

286 HENRY W. GRADY.
the crab grass which sprung from Sherman's cavalry
camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia
Yankee, as he manufactures relics of the battlefield in
a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive oil out of
5 his cotton seed, against any downeaster that ever
swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel sausages in the
valley of Vermont.
Above all, we know that we have achieved in these
" piping times of peace," a fuller independence for the
lo South than that which our fathers sought to win in
the forum by their eloquence, or compel on the field
by their swords.
It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had a part, however
humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty con-
15 fided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuild
ing of the prostrate and bleeding South, misguided,
perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest,
brave, and generous always. In the record of her
social, industrial, and political restoration we await
20 with confidence the verdict of the world.
But what of the negro? Have we solved the prob
lem he presents, or progressed in honor and equity to
ward the solution? Let the record speak to the point.
No section shows a more prosperous laboring popula-
25 tion than the negroes of the South; none in fuller sym
pathy with the employing and land-owning class. He
shares our school fund, has the fullest protection of
our laws, and the friendship of our people. Self-
interest, as well as honor, demands that they should
30 have this. Our future, our very existence, depends
upon our working out this problem in full and exact
justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation, your victory was assured;

THE NEW SOUTH. 287
for he then committed you to the cause of human
liberty, against which the arms of man cannot prevail;
while those of our statesmen who trusted to make
slavery the corner-stone of the Confederacy doomed
us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a 5
cause that reason could not defend or the sword main
tain in the sight of advancing civilization. Had Mr.
Toombs said, which he did not say, that he would call
the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill, he
would have been foolish, for he might have known 10
that whenever slavery became entangled in war it
must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended
forever in New England when your fathers — not to be
blamed for parting with what did not pay — sold their
slaves to our fathers, not to be praised for knowing a 15
paying thing when they saw it.
The relations of the Southern people with the negro
are close and cordial. We remember with what
fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless
women and children, whose husbands and fathers ao
were fighting against his freedom. To his credit be
it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own
liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he
raised his black and humble hands that the shackles
might be struck off, those hands were innocent of 25
wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be
taken in loving grasp by every man who honors
loyalty and devotion.
Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled
him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but 30
the South with the North protest against injustice to
this simple and sincere people. To liberty and enfran
chisement is as far as the law can carry the negro.

288 HENRY W. GRADY.
The rest must be left to conscience and common sense.
It should be left to those among whom his lot is cast,
with whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose
prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelli-
5 gent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept
with him in spite of calumnious assertions to the con
trary by those who assume to speak for us, or by frank
opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future,
if the South holds her reason and integrity.
10 But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest
sense, yes. When Lee surrendered — I don't say
when Johnston surrendered, because I understand he
still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman
last as the time when he " determined to abandon any
15 further prosecution of the struggle " — when Lee sur
rendered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South became,
and has been, loyal to the Union. We fought hard
enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect
frankness accepted as final the arbitrament of the
2o sword to which we had appealed. The South found
her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles
that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever
when the shackles of the negro slave were broken.
Under the old regime the negroes were slaves to the
25 South, the South was a slave to the system. The old
plantation, with its simple police regulations and its
feudal habit, was the only type possible under slavery.
Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and
chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have
30 been diffused among the people, as the rich blood,
under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the
heart, filling that with affluent rupture, but leaving the
body chill and colorless.

THE NEW SOUTH. aSg
The old South rested everything on slavery and
agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give
nor maintain healthy growth. The new South pre
sents a perfect Democracy, the oligarchs leading in
the popular movement — a social system compact and 5
closely knitted, less splendid on the surface but
stronger at the core; a hundred farms for every plan
tation, fifty homes for every palace, and a diversified
industry that meets the complex needs of this complex
age. lo
The new South is enamored of her new work. Her
soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light
of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is
thrilling with the consciousness of a growing power
and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured 15
and equal among the people of the earth, breathing
the keen air and looking out upon the expanding hori
zon, she understands that her emancipation came be
cause in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest
purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten. 20
This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology.
The South has nothing for which to apologize. She
believes that the late struggle between the States was
war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy,
and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I 25
should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South
and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain
in this presence. The South has nothing to take back.
In my native town of Athens is a monument that
crowns its central hills — a plain, white shaft. Deep 30
cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above
the names of men, that of a brave and simple man who
died in a brave and simple faith. Not for all the

290 HENRY W. GRADY.
glories of New England — from Plymouth Rock all
the way — would I exchange the heritage he left me in
his soldier's death. To the feet of that shaft I shall
send my children's children to reverence him who
5 ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir,
speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I
honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the
cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his
life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than
10 his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God
held the balance of battle in His Almighty Hand,
and that human slavery was swept ' forever from
American soil — the American Union saved from the
wreck of war.
15 This message, Mr. President, comes to you from
consecrated ground. Every foot of the soil about the
city in which I live is sacred as a battle-ground of the
republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to you
by the blood of your brothers who died for your vic-
20 tory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blood of those
who died hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat — sacred
soil to all of us, rich with memories that make us purer
and stronger and better, silent but stanch witnesses
in its red desolation of the matchless valor of Ameri-
25 can hearts and the deathless glory of American arms —
speaking an eloquent witness, in its white peace and
prosperity, to the indissoluble union of American
States and the imperishable brotherhood of the Ameri
can people.
30 Now what answer has New England to this mes
sage? Will she permit the prejudice of war to remain
in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has died in
the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this

THE NEW SOUTH. 29!
prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts,
which never felt the generous ardor of conflict, it may
perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in strained
courtesy, the hand which, straight from his soldier's
heart. Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will 5
she make the vision of a restored and happy people,
which gathered above the couch of your dying cap
tain, filling his heart with grace, touching his lips with
praise and glorifying his path to the grave; will she
make this vision, on which the last sigh of his expiring 10
soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion?
If she does, the South, never abject in asking for com
radeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she
does not — if she accepts with frankness and sincerity
this message of good will and friendship, then will the 15
prophesy of Webster, delivered in this very Society
forty years ago, amid tremendous applause, be verified
in its fullest and final sense, when he said : " Standing
hand to hand and clasping hands, we should remain
united as we have for sixty years, citizens of the same 20
country, members of the same government, united all,
united now, and united forever. There have been
difficulties, contentions, and controversies, but I tell
you that in my judgment "' Those opposed eyes, 25
Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock.
Shall now, in mutual, well-beseeming ranks
March all one way.' " 30

PULPIT ORATORY.
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Born 1813. Died 1887.
THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN— A SER
MON TO THE SORROWING.
[This sermon was delivered by Mr. Beecher in Plymouth Church,
Brooklyn, on Sunday morning, July i, i860. It is reprinted from
Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher (New York, 1868), through the
kindness of the publishers, Messrs. Harper and Brothers.]
" Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and
in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid.
There laid they Jesus." — John xix. 41, 42.
" And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting
over against the sepulcher." — Matt, xxvii. 61.
How strange a watch was that! but how oftentimes
repeated since! How strange a combination of cir
cumstances, that the cross should have been lifted up
so near to a garden; that the garden, of all places,
5 should have held, amid its treasures, such a thing as
a sepulcher hewn in a rock; that thus a cold grave
should have been embosomed among flowers, and
waited, for weeks, and months, and years, the coming
of its sacred guest! And now, how striking the pic-
10 ture! A few words, and the whole stands open to the
imagination as to the very sight! The two women,
side by side, silent, and yet knowing each other's

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 293
thoughts, with one grief — with one yearning — with
one suffering! Home was forgotten, and nature itself
was unheeded. The odorous vines, the generous
blossoms, the world of sights around them, were as if
they were not. There was the rock, and only that to 5
them. There was neither daylight, nor summer, nor
balm, nor perfume. There were no lilies by their feet,
nor roses around them; for though there were ten
thousand of them, there was to them only that cold,
gray sepulchral rock. 10
See what a life theirs had been. First was their
own birth. It is strange that one should be grown in
years before being able to recognize his own birth;
and so it is. We are not born when the body is — we
are born afterward — sometimes through silent influ- 15
ences developing, and oftentimes rudely born by the
stroke of some overmastering sorrow, or led forth by
some exceeding joy. So it was with them. They had
lived years without fulfilling one year. They had
loved without really loving. They had known with- 20
out really knowing. Their nature and full power lay
in them, but as buds lie in branches, and there had
been no summer to bring them forth. Only when
Christ came did they find themselves, for men never
can find themselves of themselves, but always in the 25
touch of some other and higher one. And only then,
when these women saw a nature full of strength, full
of purity, with a heart that went like summer through
the land, did they know what it was to live. Before,
they had been as they are who, neither asleep nor 30
awake, hover between dreams and realities, fully pos
sessed by neither. But in the full presence of Christ
these Marys received their own life. They loved, and

294 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
loved worthily and upwardly. And then they knew
what hidden life the soul possesses.
Now life blossomed at every step to them. There
can be no barrenness in full summer. The very sand
5 will yield something. Rocks will have mosses, and
every rift will have its wind-flower, and every crevice
a leaf, while from the fertile soil will be reared a gor
geous troop of growths that will carry their life in ten
thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so it
lo is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its
weakness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty,
and makes its very desert to bud and blossom as the
rose. And these two Marys had in the presence of
Christ waked into life. They were not born until he
15 gave them their life. They followed, therefore, rever
ently, all his goings. They waited for him when ab
sent as they that wait for the morning. Now there
was a future to them. Every day increased their con
scious treasure. Each day, however, they knew that
20 they had come to the end and bound of their capacity,
were full, and could hold no more love, nor joy of lov
ing. And yet every next day they smiled at the bar
renness of the past, and wondered how that could have
seemed enough which was so much less than the
25 present. The future glowed brighter and brighter to them.
Not that they were not mortal, and did not expect
troubles. But storms, even, are radiant when the sun
shines upon them, and troubles upon an orb of hope
30 and love are sunlit clouds, whose gorgeous hues take
all terror from the bolt and the stroke.
And so these loving souls, I suppose, followed Christ,
and found a daily heaven. His serene nature; his

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 295
beneficence; his all-encompassing sympathy; his dis
interestedness, that gave everything but asked nothing;
his supernal wisdom ; his power over life ; his regency
over nature; his lordship over the winds that flew to his
hand as a dove to its nest; his mastery over darkness 5
and death itself, calling back the departed spirit from
its far-off wandering to life again; his effluent glory, as
he hung in mid-air, sustained by white clouds, or as
he walked the night-sea, carpeted with darkness; but,
above all, that inspiration, that heavenly purity, that 10
spiritual life that touched their life, and aroused them
as never before were they aroused — in short, the pres
ence of their God! — all these things, abiding with
them, traveling from day to day with them, measuring
out their golden year, gave them their first full knowl- 15
edge of life as the soul recognizes it! And these were,
to their fond hope, doubtless, a perpetual gift.
Nothing seems ever to have awakened the disciples
to such instant fear, even to chiding and rebuke, as
the intimation of their Master that he would leave 20
them! It seemed like a threat of destruction to them.
They were the more amazed and confounded, there
fore, when the treacherous disciple betrayed him,
when he yielded himself to authority, when injustice
condemned him, smote him, tortured him, crucified 25
him. Life was to them, now, no longer a waking
bhss, but the torment of a wild and hideous dream. A
horrible insanity it seemed. Yet it was constantly be
fore them. They followed him to the city; they fol
lowed him out of the city ; they followed him till the 30
procession stopped upon the hill; they saw; they
heard; they agonized. And when the earthquake
shook the ground, not another thing did it jar so heed-

296 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
less and so griefful as those wondering, amazed, and
disappointed women. They stood in a very darkness,
and their life was like a grave. All the past was a gar
den, and this present hour stood up in the midst of it
5 like a sepulcher.
At first grief was too great. They were winter-
stricken. The very rigor of their sorrow would let
nothing flow. But as warmth makes even glaciers
trickle, and opens streams in the ribs of frozen moun-
10 tains, so the heart knows the full flow and life of its
grief only when it begins to melt and pass away.
There, then, sat these watchers. The night came,
and the night went, " and there was Mary Magdalene,
and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepul-
15 cher." What to them was that sepulcher? It was
the end and sum of life. It was the evidence and fact
of vanity and sorrow. It was an exposition of their
infatuation. It proved to them the folly of love and
the weakness of purity. The noblest experience of
20 the purest souls had ended in such bitter disappoint
ment they now knew that they only are wise who
can say, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die." Could such a one be stricken and die? Could
such a one be gathered into the shapeless rock?
25 Could such a light go out, and such a soul be over
whelmed? What star, then, was there for hope in
human life? What was safe? What use in love, in
trust, in honor, in purity, since the Head and Glory of
them all was not saved by them?
30 This rebuke of life, of soul, of their heart-love, at
length drove them away. There was no garden to
them where such a sepulcher stood. They returned;
but oh, what a return! There was no more life when

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 297
they went away from him that had awakened by love
true life in them. The night was not half so dark as
were their souls. In a great affliction there is no light
either in the stars or in the sun. For when the inner
light is fed with fragrant oil, there can be no darkness 5
though the sun should go out; but when, like a sacred
lamp in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there
is no light outwardly, though a thousand suns should
preside in the heavens. To them life was all dark
ness. 10
And yet, while that garden held the sepulcher, and
the women sat watching it, and saw only darkness and
desolation, how blind they were! How little, after all,
did they know! When first all was a bright certainty,
how little then did they know! And when, afterward, 15
all was dark woe, how little yet did they know! The
darkness and the light were both alike to them, for
they were ignorant alike of both. How little did they
expect or suspect! Of all the garden, only the rock
itself was a true soil, for in it lay the " root of David." 20
Forth from that unlikely spot should come a flower
whose blossom would restore Eden to the world; for
if a garden saw man's fall, forth from the garden came
his life again. But their eyes were holden that they
should not see. Their hearts were burdened that they 25
should not know. They saw only the sepulcher, and
the stone rolled against the door. They saw, they felt,
they despaired !
And yet, against sight, against sense, against hope,
they lingered. If they departed, they could not abide 30
away; they must needs come again; for " in the end of
the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day
of the week, came Mary Magdalene, and the other

298 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Mary, to see the sepulcher. And behold, there was a
great earthquake ; for the angel of the Lord descended
from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from
the door, and " (like them that triumph) " sat upon it."
5 But now their sad musings, the utter despair of the
reason and of the senses, the anxiety, the vigilance of
the heart — these were the only things that were left to
them. And yet, as in many cases, their hearts proved
surer and better guides than their reason or their
10 thoughts ; for as a root scents moisture in a dry place,
or a plant even in darkness aims always at the light,
so the heart forever aims at hope and at immortality.
And it was a woman's heart here that hung as the
morning star of that bright rising of the Sun of Right-
15 eousness. In the end of the Sabbath Christ came
forth, and they were the ones whose upturned faces
took his first light.
Such is this brief history; and if we were to carry it
out in all its analogies, if we were to stretch forth its
20 light so as to encompass all those who have had a like
experience with these two women, how wide would be
its reaches ! how long would be the rehearsal !
I. There is a sepulcher in every garden. We are
all of us in this life seeking for beauty and seeking for
25 joy, following the blind instincts of our nature, every
one of which was made to point up to something
higher than that which the present realizes. We are
often, almost without aim, without any true guidance,
seeking to plant this life so that it shall be to us what
30 a garden is. And we seek out the fairest flowers, and
will have none but the best fruits. Striving against
the noxious weed, striving against the stingy soil,
striving against the inequalities of the season, still

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 299
these are our hope. Whatever may be our way of life,
whatever may be the instrumentalities which we em
ploy, that which we mean is Eden. It is this that they
mean who seek the structures of power, and follow the
leadings of ambition. This they mean who dig for 5
golden treasures, not to see the shining of the gold,
but to use it as a power for fashioning happiness.
They who build a home and surround themselves with
all the sweet enjoyments of social life are but planting
a garden. The scholar has his garden. The states- 10
man, too, has a fancied Eden with fruit and flower.
The humble, and those that stand high, are all of them
seeking to clothe the barren experiences of this world
with buds that blossom, blossoms that shall bear fruit.
No man sees the sepulcher among his flowers. There 15
shall be no lurking corner for the tempter overleaping
the wall of their happiness, to hover around their fair
paradise! There shall be nothing there that shall
represent time, and decay, and wickedness, and sor
row! Man's uninstructed idea of happiness in this life 20
is that of a serene heaven without a cloud — a smooth
earth without a furrow — a fair sward without a rock.
It is the hope and expectation of men, the world over
(and it makes no difference what their civilization is,
what their culture, or what their teaching), that they 25
shall plant their garden, and have flowers without
thorns, summer without a winter, a garden without a
rock, a rock without a sepulcher !
It makes very little difference that we see other
men's delusions. Nay, we stand upon the wall of our 30
particular experience, as upon the walls of a garden,
to moralize upon the follies of other men. And when
they have their hands pierced in plucking their best

300 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
fruits, when disappointments come to their plantings,
we wonder that they should be so blind as to expect
that this worid could have joys without sorrows, or
sunshine without storms. We carry instructions to
5 them, and comfort them with the talk that this life is
short and full of affliction; we speak to them of the
wreaths to be worn by those who bear sorrows; and
yet we go as fondly and expectantly to our dream of
hope as ever. Ah ! it was the cradle of your neighbor
10 that was left empty, and not your own! That fair
blossom that was picked was plucked from the next
household! You turn with even more than your
wonted infatuation to your own cradle, to rejoice in its
security. It shall never be desolate !
15 The experience of every fresh mourner is, " I knew
that Death was in the world, but I never thought that
my beloved could die." Everyone that comes to the
grave says, coming, " I never thought that I should
bury my heart here." Though from the beginning of
20 the world it hath been so; though the ocean itself
would be overflowed if the drops of sorrow unexpected
that have flowed should be gathered together and
rolled into its deep places; though the life of man,
without an exception, has been taken away in the
25 midst of his expectations, and dashed with sorrow, yet
no man learns the lesson taught by these facts, and
every man lays out his paradise afresh, and runs the
furrow of execution around about it, and marks out its
alleys and beds, and plants flowers and fruits, and cul-
30 tures them with a love that sees no change and expects
no sorrow!
No man means to have anything in his paradise but
flowers and fruits. If there is a rock in it, it is only a

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 301
rock for shadow and coolness, or a rock for decoration
and beauty. No man will have a garden with a sepul
cher in it. Your garden has no sepulcher in it. If
you are young and fresh, if you are beginning life, you
will hear this sermon as a poetic descant, as a tender, 5
musing homily. In the opening out of your expectant
wealth and life it is all garden-like, but no sepulcher is
there! There is no open mouth of consuming bank
ruptcies; there are no disappointments, miscalcula
tions, and blunders that bring you to the earth ; there 10
is no dismaying of ambition — no thwarting or turning
back of all-encompassing desires. There is fresh dew
on the leaf, and rain at the root, and in your mind a
full expectation that your garden shall blossom as the
rose. 15
And thus men live as they have lived, every man
making his life a garden planted; every man saying,
"Flowers! flowers! flowers!" and when they come,
every man saying, " They shall abide; they shall blos
som in an endless summer." And we go round and 20
round the secret place, the central place — we go round
and round the point where in every man's experience
there is a sepulcher — and we heed it not, and will not
know it.
2. But, in spite of all this care and painstaking, 25
there is no garden in the world, let it be as beautiful as
it may, that has not in the midst of it a sepulcher.
When we sit over against it with untaught hearts, we
find out what we would not permit ourselves to know
in all the eadier stages, though it was there all the 30
time. Every one of us is traveling right toward the
grave. I mean not the extreme of life; I mean not
that common truth that every man is born to die; I

302 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
include that; but I mean that every man has a sphere
of life where there is a sepulcher in which all that
makes his life valuable to him while he yet lives in
this world is liable to be buried and hidden from his
5 sight. There is no man that is sure of anything ex
cept of dying and living again. We see on every side
such revelations, such changes, such surprises, such
unexpected happenings and events, that it is not mere
poetical moralizing to say that no man is certain of
lo anything except death, to be succeeded by life.
A plow is coming from the far end of a long field,
and a daisy stands nodding, and full of dew-dimples.
That furrow is sure to strike the daisy. It casts its
shadow as gayly, and exhales its gentle breath as
15 freely, and stands as simple, and radiant, and expect
ant as ever; and yet that crushing furrow, which is
turning and turning others in its course, is drawing
near, and in a moment it whirls the heedless flower
with sudden reversal under the sod!
20 And as is the daisy, with no power of thought, so
are ten thousand thinking sentient flowers of life,
blossoming in places of peril and yet thinking that no
furrow of disaster is running in toward them — that no
iron plow of trouble is about to overturn them. Some-
25 times it dimly dawns upon us, when we see other
men's mischiefs and wrongs, that we are in the same
category with them, and that perhaps the storms
which have overtaken them will overtake us, also.
But it is only for a moment, for we are artful to cover
30 the ear and not listen to the voice that warns us of our
danger. And so, although every man's garden is planted
without a sepulcher, yet every man's garden has a

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 303
sepulcher, and he stands near it, and oftentimes lays
his hand upon it, and is utterly ignorant of it. But
it will open. No man will ever walk through this life
and reverse the experience, " Man that is born of a
woman is of few days, and full of trouble." It comes 5
to us all; not to make us sad, as we shall see by and
by, but to make us sober; not to make us sorry, but
to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its
darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day;
not to impoverish us, but to enrich us, as the plow en- 10
riches the field — to multiply our joy, as the seed is
multiplied a hundredfold by planting. Our concep
tion of life is not divine, and our thought of garden-
making is not inspired. Our earthly flowers are
quickly planted, and they quickly bloom, and then 15
they are gone; while God would plant those flowers
which, by transplantation, shall live forever.
3. When, then, our sorrow comes, when we are in
the uninstructed surprise of our trouble, when we first
discover this sepulcher in our garden, we sit, as these 20
women sat, over against the sepulcher, seeing, in our
grief, nothing else but that. How strangely stupid is
grief! How it neither learns nor knows, nor wishes
to learn nor know! Grief is like the stamping of in
visible ink. Great and glorious things are written 25
with it, but they do not come out till they are brought
out. It is not until heat has been applied to it, or until
some chemical substance has been laid upon it, that
that which was invisible begins to come forth in letter,
and sentence, and meaning. In the first instance we 30
see in life only death — we see in change destruction.
When the sisters sat over against the door of the
sepulcher, did they see the two thousand years that

304 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
have passed triumphing away? Did they see any
thing but this: " Our Christ is gone "? And yet your
Christ and my Christ came from their loss; myriad,
myriad mourning hearts have had resurrection in the
5 midst of their grief ; and yet the sorrowful watchers
looked at the seed-form of this result and saw nothing.
What they regarded as the end of life was the very
preparation for coronation; for Christ was silent that
he might live again in tenfold power. They saw it
10 not. They looked on the rock, and it was rock.
They looked upon the stone door, and it was the stone
door that estopped all their hope and expectation.
They mourned, and wept, and went away, and came
again, drawn by their hearts, to the sepulcher. Still it
15 was a sepulcher, unprophetic, voiceless, lusterless.
So with us. Every man sits over against the sepul
cher in his garden, in the first instance, and says, " It
is grief; it is woe; it is immedicable trouble. I see no
benefit in it. I will take no comfort from it." And
20 yet, right in our deepest and worst mishaps, often and
often, our Christ is lying, waiting for resurrection.
Where our death seems to be, there our Saviour is.
Where the end of hope is, there is the brightest begin
ning of fruition. Where the darkness is thickest,
25 there the bright, beaming light that never is to set is
about to emerge.
When the whole experience is consummated, then
we find that a garden is not disfigured by a sepulcher.
Our joys are made better if there be a sorrow in the
30 midst of them, and our sorrows are made bright by
the joys that God had planted around about them.
The flowers may not be pleasing to us, they may not
be such as we are fond of plucking, but they are heart-

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 305
flowers. Love, hope, faith, joy, peace — these are
flowers which are planted around about every grave
that is sunk in a Christian heart. For the present it
is not "joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward
it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness." 5
In so great a congregation as this, where there are
so many thousands that by invisible threads are con
nected with this vital teaching-point, sorrow becomes
almost literature, and grief almost a lore, and we are
in danger of walking over the road of consolation so 10
frequently that at last it becomes to us a road hard and
dusty. We are accustomed to take certain phrases, as
men take medicinal herbs, and apply them to bruised,
and wounded, and suffering hearts, until we come to
have a kind of ritualistic formality. It is good, there- 15
fore, that every one of us, now and then, should be
brought back to the reality of the living truth of the
Gospel by some heart-quake — by some sorrow — by
some suffering. Flowers mislead us, beguile us,
enervate us, and make us earthly, even if they assume 20
the most beautiful forms of loveliness; while troubles
translate us, develop us, win us from things that are
too low to be worthy of us, and bring us into the pres
ence and under the conscious power of God.
4. But it is Christ in the sepulcher that is to give us 25
all our joy and all our hope in the midst of disappoint
ments and reversals. Blessed are the dead that die in
the Lord. Blessed are they that sleep in Jesus.
Blessed are they that have heard the Bridegroom's
voice, and have gone out to meet him. Blessed are 30
they that are able to see in their troubles such a resur
rection of Christ that, in the joy they experience from
the realization of the rising of the Sun of Righteous-

3o6 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
ness upon them, they shall quite forget the troubles
themselves. When once the sisters that watched had been per
mitted to gaze upon the risen Christ, to clasp his hand,
5 to worship him, where was the memory of their past
trouble? What was their thought of the arrest, of the
shameful trial — which was no trial — of the crucifixion,
and death, and burial? These were all gone from
their minds. As when the morning comes we are apt
10 to forget the night out of which it came, so when out
of trouble comes new happiness, when out of affliction
comes new joy, when out of the crucifixion of the
lower passions comes purification, we are apt to forget
the process through which this happiness, this joy,
15 this purification came. As there can be no sepulcher
which can afford consolation that hath not a Christ
ready to be revealed in it, so there can be no sorrow
from which we can be well delivered that hath not in
it a Christ ready to be revealed.
20 As, then, these Marys, in their very weakness, were
stronger than when they thought themselves strong,
as in the days of their sorrow they were nearer joy
than when they were joyful, as when their expecta
tions were cut off they were nearer a glorious realiza-
25 tion than at any other period of their life, so, when we
are weakest we may be strongest, when we are most
cast down we may be nearest the moment of being
lifted up, when we are most oppressed we are nearest
deliverance, when we are most cut off we are nearest
30 being joined forever and ever to him who is life indeed
and joy indeed.
My Christian friends, we are very apt, in the regu
larity of teaching, to carry forward our faith of Christ

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 307
to the dying hour, and to think of a Christ that can
rise upon us in that mortal strife with healing in his
beams. We are not apt to have Christ with us every
day in its vicissitudes and disappointments; we are
not apt to take Christ into that which belongs to uni- 5
versal life; we are not apt to take Christ into the
checks, and frets, and hindrances, and misdirections of
this world, into our bereavements and misfortunes.
We are apt to regard Christ as remote from us, and to
put him forward to the time of our final dismission 10
from this world.
He that knows how to die in his passions every day,
he that knows how to die in his pride from hour to
hour, he that has Christ in each particular thwarting
and event of life, he that knows how from the varied 15
experiences of life to bring forth day by day a Chris
tian character, need not fear the grand and final ex
perience of earth to which he is coming. There is no
death to those that know how to die beforehand.
Those who know how to lay themselves upon Christ, 20
and take the experiences of every-day life in the faith
of Christ; those who see the will of God in everything
that abounds, whether wounding or healing — they
have nothing left at the end of life except peace, trans
lation, and the beginning of immortality. 25
It is this Saviour that has so sweetened life, if we
would but know it, who is our Master; and he stands
in our midst to-day, saying to us, " In this world ye
shall have tribulation." I am sent to say it to every
one in this congregation. Tribulation may not come 30
to you in the way in which you expect it, or in the way
in which you see it developed in other persons. It
may come unheralded. But the voice of the Lord

3o8 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
hath spoken to every one of you, and said, " In the
world ye shall have tribulation."
More than that. It pleased God to comfort you be
forehand by the assurance that affliction is the token
5 of paternal love. Nay, God puts it so strongly that
one almost shrinks: "If ye be without chastisement,
whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and
not sons." Christ says, again and again, that if you
belong to his family you shall have trouble. Is it
lo worth your while, then, to go on making your Eden
without a sepulcher? Is it worth your while to go on
making your picture all lights and no shadows? Is
it worth your while to go on building and rebuilding
the structure of life without considering that it is a
15 part of human necessity, and a part of God's plan of
mercy, that every man should have trouble, not once,
not twice, but often; as he has his food — as he has his
very being itself?
This is one side of Christ's message to every one of
20 you to-day. How many of you have I seen in your
troubles! How many of you have I walked with in
your hour of anguish for sin! I look upon a congre
gation with one in every six of whom, it seems to me,
I have gone down to the baptismal water, or sprinkled,
25 and walked with through all the stages of their heart-
distress. For how many of you have I spoken words
of consolation at funerals? Where are the children,
where are the brothers and sisters, where are the
parents, where are the kindred of this church?
30 Where are our old friends and co-workers? Where
are those that were in the height of personal expecta-
tation ten years ago? We have lived ten years to
gether, most of us — some of us longer than that — and

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 309
have we not tracked God at every step, verifying his
declaration, "Ye shall have tribulation"? And are
we to look forward to the time to come with less ex
pectation of tribulation? Look upon your household.
Who shall be unclothed next? I desire to take this to 5
myself. I desire to look at my plans and expectations
in the light of this inquiry. For I, too, have made a
garden, and have forgotten to put a sepulcher in it.
I desire to commence a new survey. Let me go up to
that central mound covered with flowers, and let me lo
see if underneath those flowers there is not an opening
mouth — the darkness of the grave. And if there is,
then let me rejoice, for I am sure that that is an un-
watered garden which has no sepulcher. May God
grant that I shall have no garden in which there is no 15
sepulcher with a Christ about to emerge from a fruitful
death. Will you look into your gardens — your money-
garden, your pleasure garden, your love-garden, your
household-garden, your taste-garden? All the plants
of your various gardens — will you look at them, and 20
see if in the midst of them there is a place for a sepul
cher? Will you see that there is a sepulcher in your
gardens? And will you make that the center of all
your plantings?
I am sent by Christ to say to you another thing. 25
First, "In the world ye shall have tribulation; but,"
next, " be of good cheer; I have overcome the world,"
and ye shall overcome it also. " Because I live, ye
shall live also." That is the end of trouble. Now sor
row is crowned with hope. Now the gate is thrown 30
open! Now the angel sits upon the stone! Now the
emergent Christ walks forth, light and glorious as the
sun in the heavens ! Now the lost is found ! Now all

310 HENRY WARD BEECHER.
the stars hang like gems, and jewels, and treasures for
us ! Now, since Christ says that out of all these experi
ences he shall bring forth life, even as his own life was
brought forth out of the tomb, what is there that we
5 need trouble ourselves about?
Christian brethren, do you know how to be glad,
and to make others glad, in the midst of your trouble?
Do you know how to stand in the midst of your losses
and disappointments so that men shall say, " After all,
10 it is not troublesome to be afflicted "? Do you know
how to be peaceful in the midst of deepest bereave
ments? Do you know how to seek Christ in the very
tomb? Do you know how to employ the tomb as the
astronomer employs the lens, which in the darkness
15 reveals to him vast depths and infinite stretches of
created things in the space beyond? Do you know
how to look through the grave and see what there is
on the other side — the glory and power of God?
Blessed are they to whom Christ hath revealed the
20 meaning of the sepulcher.
And when, after a very little time, we go away from
our sorrows and our sepulchral burying-places, we
shall, as did these faithful watching women, meet our
Christ victorious from the grave, glorified, exalted.
25 And whatever we lose here that is worth weeping for
we shall find again. When man reaps there is some
thing for the gleaner's hands behind him. He shakes
out many kernels for the soil, and drops many heads
of wheat for the gleaner. But when God reaps he loses
30 not one kernel, and drops not one single heavy head
of grain. And whatever that is good has been taken
from you — every straw, and every kernel, and every
head, shall be garnered. Only that will remain in

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 311
the earth which you would fain give to the earth, while
that which the heart claims, and must have if it live,
awaits you. Great are the joys that are before you,
but they do not lie level with the earth. Great are the
joys to which we are to come; we are traveling up to 5
them. Let us, then, to-day, renew, in the presence of our
Master, our consecration to Christ, the Deliverer.*
Let us accept him once more as our life. Let our life
be hid in him. And when he shall appear, then we 10
also, at last, shall be made known to each other. We
shall see him as he is, and we shall be like him.
After the blessing is pronounced, we will remain,
Christian brethren, a short time at this joyful hour,
not to mourn over a broken Christ symbolized — for 15
we know better — but to rejoice that the broken Saviour
is now the ever-living Prince, risen and clothed with
immortal victory. We meet around these memorials.
We take them for a starting point. But we may go
beyond them, and rest and rejoice in the bosom of 20
ever-living love.
If there be present any that mourn for their sins,
that despair of help in themselves, that feel their need
of Christ, that yearn toward him, that long for him,
and that are willing to accept him, them also I bid 25
come home. This is your Father's house,' and this is
your Father's table. If you will be children of Christ,
come and partake with us of these emblems. May
God grant that every one of us who sit together in
these earthly places in Christ Jesus may have the un- 30
speakable joy, by and by, of sitting together in heav
enly places.
* The Lord's Supper was administered at the close of the sermon.

NOTES.
CARL SCHURZ.
POLITICAL DISABILITIES.
I. Biographical Note. — Carl Schurz was born at Liblar, near
Cologne, Prussia, March 2, 1829. He was educated at the
gymnasium of Cologne, and at the University of Bonn,
which he entered in 1846. Concerned in the political
troubles of 1848, and compelled to leave Bonn, he joined
the revolutionary army. He took part in the defense of
Rastadt, and on the surrender of that fortress fled to
Switzerland. The next two years he spent in Paris and
London, acting as correspondent to several German news
papers and in teaching. In 1852 he came to the United
States. He resided in Philadelphia for three years, and then
settled in Watertown, Wis. As a member of the Republican
party, he took an active interest in the campaigns of 1856
and i860, and delivered speeches in both English and Ger
man. When Mr. Lincoln became President, Mr, Schurz was
sent as Minister to Spain, but he resigned in December, 1861,
to enter the army. In 1862 he was made a brigadier general
of volunteers, and the following year, a major general in the
same service. In i86g he was elected to represent the State
of Missouri in the Senate, serving until 1875, While in the
Senate he opposed many of the principal measures of the
Grant administration. He was prominent in the " Liberal
Republican " movement, and in 1872 presided over the con
vention which nominated Horace Greeley for President. In

314 NOTES.
1876, however, he supported the candidacy of General Hayes,
and, in 1877, he entered the latter's cabinet as Secretary of
the Interior, holding office until 1881. For the next three
years, until 1884, he was editor of the New York Even
ing Post. Since then he has been engaged in literary work
in New York City. In 1892, on the death of George William
Curtis, he was made president of the National Civil Service
Reform Association. A volume of Mr. Schurz's most impor
tant speeches on slavery and the Rebellion was published in
1865. Since this date his principal public addresses have
been those in the Senate, — on the annexation of San Do
mingo, the sales of arms, the currency, and general amnesty;
— his eulogy on Charles Sumner; his speeches in the cam
paign of 1884, when he supported Mr. Cleveland; and his
addresses on civil service reform.
II. The Structure of the Oration. — In dealing with the ora
tions in this volume, students are strongly recommended to
make briefs or outlines which will indicate at a glance the
way in which the ideas and arguments are marshaled under
the different divisions. Such an outline in the case of the
first oration might be as follows:

I. Introduction.
A. As reasons no longer exist for taking no part in the de
bate, and there being no inducement left to waive criti
cism, the whole question may be considered open.
II. Narration.
A. I beg to say that I am in favor of general amnesty, and
that I shall heartily support an amendment to the pres
ent bill striking out the exceptions to the relief.
B. In discussing this question we must not forget that we
have to deal not only with the past but with the present
and future interests of the republic.

POLITICAL DISABILITIES. 315
III. Partition.
A. It may be assumed that those who favor a continuance of
disabilities do so because of some higher object of pub
lic usefulness they have in view.
B. All, however, are agreed that the supreme end to be at
tained is to secure to all the States good and honest
government and to revive in all citizens love for the
Union.
C. But all must also agree that this end has not yet been ac
complished. I. Some of the Southern States are in a condition
bordering upon anarchy.
2. The objection that civil wars are likely to produce
such results is scarcely valid.
a. Had the right policy been followed, the re
cuperative power of the country would have
very materially alleviated the consequences
of the war.
D. The question is, therefore:
1. Was the policy we followed wise?
2.* Can the continuance of the system of disabilities
do any good to make up for the harm it has
already wrought and is still working?
3. Is there any practical advantage to be gained from
the provisions of the present bill?
IV. Discussion.
A. The policy we followed was not wise.
I. The enfranchisement of the colored people having
been gained, the problem was to secure good
government for all.
a. Nothing would have been more calculated to
* For the purpose of indicating the precise structure of the argument the three
issues are brought together here at the end of the narration. In the speech itself,
however, for excellent reasons, the issues are not so stated.

3l6 NOTES.
remove discontent and to reconcile men to
the new order, than the wise and honest
administration of public affairs.
1.' But the measures taken were those least likely to
attain good government.
a. When public business demanded, more than
ordinarily, the co-operation of all the intel
ligence and political experience that could
be mustered in the South, a large propor
tion of that intelligence and experience was
excluded from public affairs by political
disabilities.
b. The controlling power was put into the hands
of negroes, who were ignorant and inex
perienced and who could not have been
expected to manage the business of public
administration with the wisdom and skill
required.
c. The traditional prejudices of the Southern
people were affronted.
.*¦. White men were asked to recognize
negroes in a political status not
only as high but higher than their
own,
d. The objection that the rebels deserved all
this in the way of punishment is not the
question. X. The question is, what was the best
way to secure the rights of the col
ored people and restore the har
mony of society?
y. The disabilities inflamed the preju
dices which stood in the way of the
acceptance of the new order of
things and increased the dangers
of the emancipated class.
B. The continuance of the system of disabilities can do no
good to make up for the harm it has already wrought
and is still working.

POLITICAL DISABILITIES. 3^7
1. The disabilities protect no one in his life, his liberty,
or his property.
2. We hear that the disabilities should not be removed
because of the Ku Klux outrages; but this argu
ment is not tenable.
o. These outrages happened while the disabili
ties were in existence.
h. They serve to keep this spirit alive.
3. The disabilities tended to put the damper of dis
couragement on any good intentions the South
ern whites might have had.
4. It is said that the system of disabilities should be
maintained to show disapprobation of the Rebel
lion; but this is absurd.
o. This disapprobation has been expressed in a
much more forcible way by conquering the
armies of the rebels, and by sweeping the
system of slavery out of existence.
S. It is also said that the law must be vindicated.
a. But since no attempt has been made to punish
the rebels for treason, the idea of vindicat
ing the law by the exclusion of a certain
number of persons from eligibility to office
is ridiculous.
6. It is also said that rebels should not be pardoned
when other criminals are punished; but this is
not in point.
o. History shows that political crimes have
never been regarded in the same light as
moral delinquencies.
X. We see this from the examples of
Germany and Austria.
C. The provisions of the present bill are unwise.
I. The exclusions are unwise.
a. The exclusion of the men who left Congress
to join the Rebellion is unwise.
X. The exclusion of those of this class
who were not original conspirators
is unwise.

3i8 NOTES.

o. These men were in no way
more responsible for the Re
bellion than other prominent
men in the South who do not
fall under the exception.
/3. Granting it wise to readmit to
the management of public af
fairs all the intelligence and
political experience the South
has, we should not exclude as
a class men who may be pre
sumed to possess these quali
ties in a higher degree than
the rest.
7. There is no more reason for
excluding these men than for
eign ministers who left their
posts, or judges.
y. To exclude the original conspirators
is unwise.
a. The exclusion gives these men
an importance which they
otherwise would not possess.
b. The exclusion of officers of the Army and
Navy who joined the Rebellion is unwise.
X. The argument that the turning
against the Government of these
men who had been ediicated at
public expense, was an act of par
ticular ingratitude and justifies the
exclusion, is not a strong one.
u. One of these men has already
been given an important pub
lic office.
/3. The conduct since the war of
no other class of men has
been so unexceptional as that
of members of the Army and
Navy.

POLITICAL DISABILITIES. 319
c. The exclusion of members of State conven
tions who voted for ordinances of seces
sion is unwise.
X. These men were drawn into the
whirl of rebellion just like the rest
of the Southern people.
y. They are men whose co-operation
would be very valuable because of
their local influence.
z. The objection that these men are
more guilty than the rest is not
sound. a. In many cases they are only
apparently more guilty.
(3. Amnesty is designed for those
who have a certain degree of
guilt — not for the innocent.
2. The requirements of the bill in respect to the taking
of an oath is unwise.
a. History shows how little political oaths are
worth in improving the morality of a
people or in securing the stability of a
government.
b. The act should be made as straightforward
and simple as possible.
V. Conclusion.
A. Since political disabilities do not protect anyone in his
life or rights, and since our object is to produce a con
ciliatory effect and to secure good and honest govern
ment for the South, and since the teaching of reason
and experience is that the completest amnesty is the
best, this bill should be passed and the subject dismissed
from our minds forever.
B. The Rebellion has not gone unpunished, as some assert:
the South has been subdued; thousands of her sons have
been killed; slavery has been abolished. The loyal

320 NOTES.
people of the North, it is true, have also suffered, but
their suffering has appeared in a blaze of glory.
C. The measure before us will not only benefit the rebels
but the whole country, and especially the colored
people.
D. The statesmanship of the period is not exhausted by dec
lamation about the crime of rebellion. The American
people are coming to realize that good and honest gov
ernment is a much greater essential in restoring loyalty
than the useless degradation of certain classes of
people.
E. Amnesty will not obscure the past. No one wishes that.
But it will tend to bind together in a common feeling
the people of this country, and to remedy the evils
which we now deplore.
III. Suggestions for the further Study of Deliberative Ora
tory.- — Some difficulty is found in naming other examples to
illustrate this division of oratory. Every student will like, of
course, to turn to the works of Conkling, Blaine, and Gar
field, the most prominent of the congressional speakers of
this epoch; but these men were all skillful debaters, rather
than great orators. Occasional speeches from less known
senators and representatives are just as worthy of note.
When some modern speeches have been examined, the stu
dent will do well to turn back and compare with them the
product of other epochs more celebrated than the present for
delfBerative orators. He should read at least one of Sum
ner's slavery speeches, and should be familiar with such
efforts as Seward's " State of the Union "; Corwin's " On
the Mexican War"; Hayne's "Reply to Webster"; Web
ster's " Greek Revolution "; Clay's " Emancipation of South
America"; John Randolph's "Speech on Gregg's Resolu
tion"; and Ames' " British Treaty," Then, if he has more
time, he can read profitably some of the more noted of the
English parliamentary orators: Fox, Sheridan, Pitt, Bright,
and Gladstone.

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY. 32 1
JEREMIAH S. BLACK.
THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY.
I. Biographical Note. — ^Jeremiah Sullivan Black was born
in Somerset County, Pa., January 10, 1810. After an educa
tion in the public schools of his home he studied law, and
was admitted to the bar in 1831. Rising rapidly he was ap
pointed, in 1842, president-judge of the Court of Common
Pleas of his judicial district. Nine years later, in 1851, he
became chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania,
and in 1854 was re-elected to the same office, this time for
fifteen years. When Mr, Buchanan became President, Judge
Black was appointed his Attorney General, Later, in De
cember, i860, he was made Secretary of State, succeeding
General Cass. On the question of secession, he differed
radically from Mr. Buchanan, believing that the Union
should be preserved by force, if necessary, while Buchanan
held that there was no authority to coerce a State. After he
retired from the Cabinet he was for a short time reporter of
the Supreme Court of the United States; but thereafter he
kept out of public life and devoted himself to the practice of
the law. In his later years he was connected with many
important cases, among them the Vanderbilt will contest,
the McCardle case, the Milliken case and the McGarrahan
claim. He died at York, Pa., August 19, 1883. Some of his
writings and speeches have been collected by his son:
Essays and Speeches of Jeremiah S. Black (New York, 1885);
but the record is by no means complete. The proceedings
of the Supreme Court on his death will be found of interest;
also the articles on his life and services as a jurist in the
Catholic World, vol. xliii, p. 753, and in Green Bag, vol. ii.
p, 189.
II. Suggestions for the further Study of Forensic Oratory.—
The speeches of but few of the leading advocates of the past
two or three decades have been collected in volumes. Many

322 NOTES.
such speeches, too, because they were inadequately reported
have been lost forever. Of such as remain and are acces
sible, these may be named: J. S. Black, "United States vs.
Blyew et al"; W. M, Evarts, "Impeachment of President
Johnson"; Reverdy Johnson, "Military Commissions";
M, H. Carpenter, "McCardle Case"; D. D. Field, "Mc
Cardle Case"; B. R. Curtis, "Defense of President John
son "; D. W. Voorhees, " Trial of John E. Cook "; James T.
Brady, " Case of the Savannah Privateers."
In earlier periods are, S. P. Chase's " Case of Vanzandt";
W. H, Seward's "Case of William Freeman"; Rufus Choate's
"Dalton Case"; Daniel Webster's "Trial of Knapp," "De
fense of the Kennistons," and " Gerard Will Case "; William
Pinckney's " Case of the Nereide " ; William Wirt's " Trial
of Aaron Burr.'" No student of forensic eloquence can,
however, afford to be ignorant of the speeches of Lord
Erskine. Those for Captain Baillie, the Dean of St, Asaph,
John Stockdale, and Thomas Hardy, stand as models for all
time.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.
DANIEL O'CONNELL.
I. Biographical Note. — Wendell Phillips was born in Bos
ton November 29, 181 1. He attended the Boston Latin
School, was graduated in 1831 from Harvard College, and
after spending three years at the Harvard Law School was
admitted to the bar in 1834. Handsome, with charming
manners, and coming from a wealthy and influential family,
he gave no promise in college of being the future reformer.
But in 183s when he saw William Lloyd Garrison, the
leader of the abolition movement, dragged by a mob through
the streets of Boston, he dedicated his life to the anti-
slavery cause. Two years later, at a meeting held in Fan
euil Hall to denounce the murderers of E. P, Lovejoy at
Alton, 111,, he made the first and the most famous of his

DANIEL O'CONNELL. 323
speeches. Thereafter, the record of these speeches was the
record of his life. He became the leading advocate on the
platform of the doctrine of the abolitionists — the immediate
and unconditional emancipation of the slaves — and spoke and
lectured constantly for its promulgation. When the War
had freed the slaves he lent his voice to many causes and
reforms: the rights of the negroes, the protection of the
Indians, prohibition, the wrongs of Ireland, the labor move
ment. In 1870 he accepted from the Labor Party and from
the Prohibitionists the nomination for Governor of Massa
chusetts. He died February 2, 1884. He was the greatest
orator of his time; a man of impatient and often mistaken
judgment, but of great moral conviction, and unswerving in
courage and in devotion to what he believed to be the right.
His speeches have been collected in two volumes: Speeches,
Lectures, and Addresses (Boston, 1891), An excellent and dis
criminating biographical sketch by Thomas Wentworth
Higginson is to be found in the Nation, vol, xxxviii. p. 116.
Other articles, dealing with his characteristics as an orator,
are in the Forum, vol, viii, p. 305; the Andover Review, vol,
i. p, 309; Every Saturday, vol, x, p, 378; and the Fortnightly
Review, vol. xiv. p, 59, A melodramatic and unjudicial life
of him has been written for the American Reformers series
by Carlos Martyn (New York, 1890),
II. Suggestions for the further Study of the Eulogy. — There
is no lack in our oratory of great eulogies, Phillips' " Tous
saint L'Ouverture," " John Brown," and " Abraham Lin
coln''; Curtis' "Charles Sumner," "Wendell Phillips," and
"Garfield"; Schurz' "Charles Sumner"; Beecher's "Ser
mon on Lincoln," and " U, S, Grant"; Depew's "General
Sherman," and "Chester A, Arthur"; General Devens'
" General Meade," and " General Grant " ; Lamar's " Tribute
to Sumner"; Blaine's "James A. Garfield"; and John D.
Long's " Daniel Webster " — are all notable orations. In
other periods we have, E, D. Baker's " Senator Broderick":
Winthrop's " Death of Everett"; Sumner's " Scholar, Jurist,
Artist, and Philanthropist"; Everett's "Adams and Jeffer
son," " Lafayette," " John Quincy Adams," " The Character

324 NOTES.
of Washington," and "Webster"; Choate's "Webster"; John
Quincy Adams' " Lafayette "; Webster's " Adams and Jeffer
son," and "Character of Washington"; Wirt's "Jefferson
and Adams ''; and Dr, Nott's " Hamilton,"

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
THE INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON.
I. Biographical Note. — Chauncey Mitchell Depew was born
at Peekskill, N. Y., April 23, 1834. After graduating from
Yale in 1856, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in
1858, Speaking in support of Lincoln and the Republican
ticket, he took part in the political campaign of i860. One
year later he was elected, and the following year re-elected, to
the State Assembly, In 1863 he was chosen Secretary of
State of New York, and served two years. Shortly after
leaving this office he was appointed by President Johnson
Minister to Japan, but after holding the commission a month
he resigned to devote himself to the law. In 1866 he became
counsel for the New York and Harlem Railroad Company;
and in 1869, at the consolidation of this road with the New
York Central, he was made attorney for the united organi
zation. In 1872 he was a candidate on the Liberal Repub
lican ticket for Lieutenant Governor, In 1874 he was made
a regent of the State University, In 1881, in the contest to
elect a successor to Mr, Piatt in the United States Senate,
although he had received two-thirds of the entire vote, on
the assassination of President Garfield, he withdrew that the
deadlock might be broken and the State represented. In
1882, at the reorganization of the New York Central, he was
made Vice President of the company, and three years later
he became its President, His speeches, delivered principally
at public dinners and at the commemorations of important
events, covering a period of thirty years, have been collected
in two volumes: Orations and After-Dinner Speeches (New
York, 1890), and Life, and Later Speeches (New York, 1894).

THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN. 325
In the last of these, as the title indicates, is a brief biography.
Other sketches of his life are to be found in the various
cyclopedias, and in the Chautauquan, vol, xx, p, 694.
II, Suggestions for the further Study of Commemorative
Oratory. — Many anniversary orations will be found in the
two volumes of Mr, Depew's works. Others in this period
are, Curtis' " Major General John Sedgwick,'' " Burgoyne's
Surrender," " The Society of the Army of the Potomac,"
and "Centennial Celebration of Concord Fight"; Evarts'
"Centennial Oration"; Winthrop's "One Hundredth Anni
versary of the Surrender of Lord Cornwallis " ; H, A,
Brown's "Oration at Valley Forge"; Devens' "Battle of
Bunker Hill"; Frederick Douglass' "Unveiling the Monu
ment of Lincoln"; Greenhalge's "Battle of Chickamauga " ;
J, W, Daniel's " Unveiling the Figure of General Lee "; and
Garfield's " Oration at Arlington." Earlier are Lincoln's
and Everett's Gettysburg addresses; Seward's "Plymouth
Oration"; Choate's "Fourth of July Oration"; Everett's
" First Settlement of New England," " First Battles of the
Revolutionary War," and "Battle of Bunker Hill"; Pren
tiss' " Address before the New England Society of New
Orleans"; Webster's Bunker Hill orations, "Plymouth
Oration," and " Laying of the Corner-stone of the addition
to the Capitol"; and John Quincy Adams' "Oration at
Plymouth."

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
THE LEADERSHIP OF EDUCATED MEN.
I. Biographical Note. — George William Curtis was born at
Providence, R. I., February 24, 1824. After attending school
at Jamaica Plain, Mass., he moved with his father in 1839 to
New York and entered a mercantile house. Business prov
ing distasteful, in 1842 he became a member of the Brook
Farm community, at West Roxbury, Mass. After remaining
there a year and a half he went to Concord, Mass., where he

326 NOTES.
divided his time between farming and the society of Emer
son, Hawthorne, and other interesting people. In 1846 he
went abroad. He lived first in Italy and Germany and after
ward traveled in Egypt and Syria. In 1850 he returned to
this country and joined the editorial staff of the New York
Tribune. From 1852-57 he was associated with Putnam's
Monthly; in 1853 he began his " Easy Chair " papers in
Harper's Magazine; and in 1857 he became the leading edi
torial writer for Harper's Weekly, then just started. His con
nection with public affairs dates from 1856, when, in the
campaign of that year, he spoke for the Republican Presi
dential candidates. In i860 and 1864 he was a delegate to
the Republican national conventions, and in the latter year
was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. In 1869 he de
clined the Republican nomination for Secretary of State of
New York. He also declined in 1876, when offered by Presi
dent Hayes, the position of Minister to England. In 1871
he became identified with the civil service as a member of
the commission appointed to draw up rules for its regulation.
Subsequently, in 1881, when the National Civil Service Re
form League was founded he became its president. From 1864
he was a regent, and later was made chancellor of the Uni
versity of the State of New York. He died August 31, 1892.
As a lecturer and lyceum orator he was very popular. Be
fore and during the War he spoke on the question of slavery;
later his addresses were chiefly on the subject of civil service
reform and on occasional and scholarly topics. His speeches.
Orations and Addresses (New York, 1894) have been edited in
three volumes by Charles Eliot Norton. His life by Edward
Cary in the American Men of Letters series (Boston, 1894)
is an interesting although not a final book. An address by
Parke Godwin, originally delivered before the Century
Association of New York and afterward printed in Mr. God
win's Commemorative Addresses (New York, 1895) is the
tribute of a lifelong friend.
II. Suggestions for the further Study of Platform Oratory. —
Many platform orations, little inferior to the one given here,

THE NEW SOUTH. 327
will be found in the first volume of the Addresses of Mr.
Curtis. Many will also be found in the works of Wendell
Phillips. Mr. Depew has an oration on the " Political Mis
sion of the United States," and one on the " Liberty of the
Press." In the collection of Grady's speeches is one before
the literary societies of the University of Virginia. Earlier
orations of the more formal type are Sumner's " True
Grandeur of Nations," Choate's " Eloquence of Revolu
tionary Periods," and " The Power of a State Developed by
Mental Culture"; Everett's "Phi Beta Kappa Oration,"
" The Uses of Astronomy," and " Education Favorable to
Liberty, Morals, and Knowledge"; Webster's "Lecture be
fore the Mechanics' Institute"; and Story's "Phi Beta Kappa
Oration."
HENRY W. GRADY.
THE NEW SOUTH.
I. Biographical Note. — Henry Woodfin Grady was born at
Athens, Ga., May 24, 1850, His education consisted in a
course at the University of Georgia, from which he was gradu
ated at the age of eighteen, and in a post-graduate course
of two years at the University of Virginia, On leaving col
lege he entered journalism as a profession. He first edited
the Rome Courier, and, for a time, the Rome Commercial, and
then moved in 1871 to Atlanta to take the position of Georgia
correspondent of the New York Herald. In 1871 he also
bought an interest in the Atlanta Herald, which he ran with
varying success until it was suspended in 1876. Finally, in
1880, he became associated with the paper with which his
name is most identified, the Atlanta Constitution, and with
this, as editor and part owner, he remained until his death.
As an orator Mr. Grady became generally known first in
1886 from the speech printed in this volume. This was fol
lowed in 1887 by his prohibition speech at Atlanta; in 1888
by his speech at Dallas, Tex.; and in 1889 by his oration
before the literary societies of the University of Virginia,

328 NOTES.
and by his two addresses in Boston. He died December 23,
1889. More perhaps than any other man, he stood for the
obliteration of sectional prejudices resulting from the War.
Two collections of his works have been published. The
better is edited by Joel Chandler Harris: Henry W. Grady,
His Life, Writings, and Speeches (New York, 1890) ; the other
is the Life and Labors of Henry W. Grady (Atlanta, 1890), In
both of these volumes some account of Mr, Grady's oratory
is given. An appreciative tribute from his associate on the
Constitution, Clark Howell, will be found in the Chautauquan,
vol. xxi. p. 703; and there is also an article on him in the
Arena, vol. ii. p. 9.
II. Suggestions for the further Study of After-Dinner Ora
tory. — Mr. Grady made two other after-dinner speeches of
high order: those which he delivered in Boston in 1889.
George William Curtis spoke often at dinners, but not many
such speeches have been included in his works. In the
volumes of Mr. Depew are responses to toasts of many
kinds. Several thoughtful addresses have been published
by Senator Lodge: Speeches (Boston, 1892); and other good
examples are to be found in ex-Governor Long's After-
Dinner and Other Speeches (Boston, 1895).

HENRY WARD BEECHER.
THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN.
I. Biographical Note. — Henry Ward Beecher was born at
Litchfield, Conn., June 24, 1813. He was graduated from
Amherst College in 1834 and then studied theology at Lane
Seminary, Cincinnati, O. His first church was at Lawrence-
burg, Ind, Thence he went to Indianapolis, where he re
mained eight years. In 1847 he was called to take charge
of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and as the pastor of this
church served until his death. Early in his career he became
famous as a pulpit and platform speaker. He was a leading

THE SEPULCHER IN THE GARDEN. 329
spirit in the abolition movement. In 1863 he went to Eng
land and delivered the five addresses, which, as examples of
popular oratory and persuasion, before hostile audiences,
are unequaled. For many years, although he preached
regularly in his church, he was in great demand as a lecturer,
and filled countless engagements over the whole country.
He was one of the founders of the New York In
dependent, and later of the Christian Union. In 1886
he made a lecture tour in England. The following
year, March 8, 1887, he died. Mr. Beecher's sermons
were printed regularly after 1859, and many of them
have been collected in volumes. A collection has also been
made, under the title of Patriotic Addresses (New York,
1887), of his principal political speeches. A number of
biographies of him have been written. Suggestive articles
on his power as a preacher will be found in the Contemporary
Review, vol. xix, p, 317, and in the New Englander, vol, xxix.
p. 421 ; and there is an interesting account of his English ex
periences in 1863, in the Century, vol, xv, p, 240,
II, Suggestions for the further Study of Pulpit Oratory. — The
name in recent years that deserves most to be compared
with Mr, Beecher's is Phillips Brooks, The methods of the
two men, were, however, very different, and Brooks' ser
mons (which have been collected in half a dozen volumes)
lose even more than Beecher's in the reading. Other men
who have gained reputations as pulpit speakers in this period,
and who have printed sermons, are, R, H, Storrs, David
Swing, Lyman Abbott, Morgan Dix, and T, De Witt Tal
mage, Further examples of pulpit eloquence, both early and
modern, may be found in Fish's Pulpit Eloquence of the Nine
teenth Century (New York, 1874).

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ORATORS AND ORATORY

TREATISES.
Adams, John Quincy. Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory.
2 vols. Cambridge, 1810.
Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by J. E. C. Welldon.
London, 1886.
Baker, G. P. The Principles of Argumentation. Boston,
1895-
Bautain, Louis. The Art of Extempore Speaking. New
York, 1859.
Beeton's Complete Orator. London (1881 ?).
Blair, Hugh. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.
Many editions.
Broadus, J. A. The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons.
New York, 1891.
Brookings, W. du B. and Ringrwalt, R. C. Briefs for
Debate. With an Introduction on the ' ' Art of De
bate." New York, 1896.
Brougham, Henry, Lord. Rhetorical and Literary Dis
sertations. (Works, vol. vii.) London, 1856.
Bryce, James. The American Commonwealth. 2 vols.
New York, 1895. vol. ii. chap. civ.
Campbell, George. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Many
editions.
Carlyle, Thomas. " Stump Orator " in Latter -Day Pam
phlets. I. No. V.
Channing, Edward T. Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory.
Boston, 1856. 331

332 BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Cicero. On Oratory and Orators. Translated or edited
by J. S. Watson, New York, 1871.
Coppens, Charles, The Art of Oratorical Composition.
New York, 1888.
Curry, S, S. The Province of Expression. Boston, 1891.
Donovan, J. W. Speeches and Speech-Making. Detroit,
1895.
Emerson, R. W, " Eloquence," in Society and Solitude,
and in Letters and Social Aims. Many editions.
Fenelon, Francois. Dialogues concerning Eloquence. Trans
lated by William Stevenson. Boston, 1810.
Foster, J. Edgar. The Art of Speaking. Ipswich,
(1896?).
Genung, John F. The Practical Elements of Rhetoric.
Boston, 1886. Chaps, vii. viii.
Higginson, T. W. Hints on Writing and Speech-Making.
Boston, 1887.
Hill, A. S. The Principles of Rhetoric. New York, 1895.
pp. 327-400.
Holyoake, G. J. Public Speaking and Debate. London,
(1895).
Lawson, John. Lectures Concerning Oratory. Dublin,
1759-
Longinus. On the Sublime. Translated by H. L. Havell.
London, 1890,
Maury, J. S. The Principles of Eloquence. Translated by
J. N. Lake, New York, 1807.
" The Peculiarities of Popular Oratory " in Afternoon
Lectures on Literature and Art. Dublin, 1869. pp.
183-2J1.
Phelps, Austin. The Theory of Preaching. New York,
1881.
Pittenger, William. How to Become a Public Speaker.
Philadelphia, 1887.
 . Oratory Sacred and Secular. New York, 1868.
The Pulpit Orator. Boston, 1804.
Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory. Translated by J. S.
Watson. 2 vols. London, 1856.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 333
Robinson, W. C. Forensic Oratory. Boston, 1893.
Sears, Lorenzo. The Occasional Address. New York,
1897.
Sheppard, Nathan. Before an Audience. New York, 1886.
Smith, Wilder. Extempore Preaching. Hartford, 1884,
Tacitus. A Dialogue Concerning Oratory. In Works.
2 vols. London, 1854, ii. 390-452.
Theremin, Francis. Eloquence a Virtue. Andover, 1854.
Ward, John. A System of Oratory. 2 vols. London, 1759.
Whately, Richard. Elements of Rhetoric. Many editions.
HISTORIES.
Butler, Charles. Reminiscences. 2 vols. London, 1822.
i. 128-214.
Cochrane, Robert. Great Orators, Statesmen, and Di
vines. Edinburgh, 1881.
Cormenin, L. M. The Orators of France. New York,
1847.
Hardwicke, Henry. History of Oratory and Orators.
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Harsha, David A. The Most Eminent Orators and
Statesmen of Ancient and Modern Times. New
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Jebb, R. C. The Attic Orators, 2 vols. London, 1876,
Jephson, Henry. The Platform : Its Rise and Progress. 2
vols. London, 1892.
Magoon, E. L. Orators of the Revolution. Cincinnati,
1847.
Mathews, William. Oratory and Orators. Chicago, 1879.
Nicoll, H. J. Great Orators. Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Pitt.
Edinburgh, 1880.
Parker, E. G. The Golden Age of American Oratory.
Boston, 1857.
Roberts, W. C. The Leading Orators of Twenty-five
Campaigns. New York, 1884.
Scott, H. W. Distinguished American Lawyers. New
York, 1891.
Sears, Lorenzo. The History of Oratory. Chicago, 1896.

334 BIBLIOGRAPHY.

COLLECTIONS OF SPEECHES.
Adams, C. K. Representative British Orations. 3 vols.
New York, 1884.
American Oratory. Philadelphia, 1849.
Baker, G. P. Speci?nens of Argumentation. Modern.
New York, 1893.
Bradley, C. B. Orations and Arguments. Boston, 1895.
Carpenter, S. C. Select American Speeches. Philadelphia,
1815.
Clarke, William. Political Orations. London (i8go).
Cochrane, Robert. The Treasury of British Eloquence.
London, 1877.
Fish, H. C. Pulpit Eloquence of the Nineteenth Century.
New York, 1874.
Goodrich, Chauncey A. Select British Eloquence. New
York, 1852.
Hazlitt, William. The Eloquence of the British Senate. 2
vols. Brooklyn, 18 10.
Johnson, Alexander. American Orations. Re-edited by J.
A. Woodburn. 4 vols. New York, 1896.
Memorial Addresses and After-Dinner Speeches in The
Tribune Monthly. Vol. iv. No. 4. (April, 1892).
Moore, Frank. American Eloquence. 2 vols. New York,
1857.
The Household Book of Irish Eloquence. New York, (1870.)
Saunders, Frederick. Our National Centennial Jubilee.
New York, 1877.
Snyder, William L. Great Speeches by Great Lawyers.
New York, 1881.
Stephens, H. Morse. Orators of the French Revolution.
2 vols. Oxford, 1892.
Wagner, Leopold. Modern Political Orations. New York,
1896.
Whitman, G. M. American Orators and Oratory. Chicago,
1884.
Williston, E. B. Eloquence of the United States. 5 vols.
Middletown, 1827.

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