The Columbian Orator: Containing a Variety of Original and Selected Pieces, Together with Rules, Calculated to Improve Youth and Others in the Ornamental and Useful Art of Eloquence

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Caleb Bingham and Company and sold at their bookstore, no. 45, Cornhill, 1817 - 300 pagina's

The Columbian Orator, Caleb Bingham's classic work of 1797, contains both the oratory of the American Founding Fathers alongside imagined speeches from gifted orators of past epochs.

Exceptional both for its contents and greater impact upon the fledgling society of the United States, this compendium of fine speech carries great historical and cultural value. As well as American speeches, this collection contains historic addresses from Europe, ranging back to ancient Rome. From about 1800 to 1820 it was recited and taught widely in schools across the US, instilling the importance of both patriotic pride in the new nation and the value of eloquent speaking. Bingham hoped to create a new generation of passionate American speakers, that leadership in the future would carry a wellspring of honed rhetorical talent from which to draw.

Notably, several entries in this collection articulate opposition to slavery, which at the time was legal and widely practiced in the USA. It discusses the lack of ethics enslavement entails, thereby capturing the hearts and inspiring the-then fledgling abolitionist movement of America. Bingham's work was paid tribute in later decades by talented speakers such as Frederick Douglass, who read this book many times as an enslaved child, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who authored the famous anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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Pagina 147 - ... to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country; and that in withdrawing the tender of service which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest ; no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness ; but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both. The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in the office...
Pagina 265 - If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms — never — never — never.
Pagina 148 - I have the consolation to believe, that while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.
Pagina 150 - Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations...
Pagina 147 - I beg you at the same time to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country ; and that in withdrawing the tender of service which silence in my...
Pagina 35 - On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.
Pagina 148 - ... uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty, and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped, that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives, which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn.
Pagina 158 - My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong- to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.
Pagina 149 - ... and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment, by services, faithful and persevering, though in usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive example in our annals...
Pagina 35 - No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency...

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