LOA: American Speeches

American Speeches: Political Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War
Edited by Ted Widmer

American Speeches is one of the more recent publications by the Library of America. I had initially considered going more systematically through the series, being on the road means I am at the mercy of local library collections. Nevertheless, this is a good place to start.

I can imagine this collection working well in a U.S. survey class since is does such a good job of following the narrative generally presented to freshmen history students. I suppose this does not say much about the U.S. survey. Despite the title, most of the speeches Widmer collected focus on the sectional crisis and the Civil War. The Revolution is only briefly introduced through speeches by James Otis, Patrick Henry, and John Hancock. This is not the most diverse collection either. Only one Amerindian is represented. Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and Sojourner Truth are included as African-American abolitionist voices. Women are more broadly represented (Frances Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angelica Grimke, and Truth). These interesting speeches are dwarfed by around one hundred pages of Senate floor speeches on the 1850 Compromise. Since complaining about the selections in an anthology is about the lowest form of criticism, I will say no more about it. I only include this for those interested in exploring this collection. To his credit, Widmer did produce a volume that contains many of the important speeches of the era and thus could be a handy reference

Some of the most memorable selections are the briefest. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech in Akron is always interesting as is John Brown’s defense and challenge to the court in 1859. To this list we could add the “Gettysburg Address,” which could not have been excised from the collection.

I went at these political speeches with the goal of extracted to what degree these figures engaged the world outside of the American republic. As expected, most political speeches elevated the American system of government and pointed out the particular historical mission of Americans. In 1825 Daniel Webster gave an address commemorating the Bunker Hill Monument. He certainly highlighted this view: "Let our object be, OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid Monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty." The Revolutionary-era speeches, saw their struggle in more universal terms. They could not ignore that their struggle was taking place within an empire with a global reach. Yet, John Hancock, like Webster a half century later, saw Americans as unique. Unlike other people who "deserve to be enslaved" America "abounds in men who are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can divert from a steady pursuit of the interest of their country." So much for the struggle of American being the struggle of all mankind.

One way we can go at this is by remembering that the United States was born of an empire and was itself an empire at its birth. This point was not lost of Red Jacket, when he responded to George Washington in 1792. He was acutely aware that the settlement of the Revolutionary War meant the transfer of trans-Appalacian lands from one empire (the British) to another (the American.) He also points out that liberty is not unique to white Americans. "The President, in effect, observed to us that we of the Five Nations were our own proprietors -- were freemen, and might speak with freedom." In a very different context, Frances Wright extended the notion of liberty universally. Taking inspiration, she claims, from European notions of patriotism, she defined a patriot as a "lover of human liberty and human improvement" and "a useful member of the human family." She ends her July 4th speech: "So shall we rejoice to good purpose, and in good feeling; so shall we improve the victory once on this day achieved, until all mankind hold with us the jubilee of independence."

While Red Jacket pointed out that the Iroquois were victims of an imperial game, Ely Moore, in a speech to the General Trades' Union in 1833 pointed out who it was who actually build the empire. "Who were the pioneer of the West? What class of society prepared the way for the agriculturist, the merchant, and the professional man? Were they not artificers? Was not the forest made to bow before the stroke of the axe? . . . No country can be cleared and settled, nor colony founded, without the aid of the mechanic arts." I will only add that it is important that students of empire do not forget the willing and sometimes unwilling working class agents of empire. I will perhaps blog on Jack London in this regard in the future.

Theodore Parker narrowly avoids American exceptionalism by claiming that every group of people have a "peculiar genius or character which does not change, it has also an accordingly a particular work to perform in the economy of the world."

I could go on. Anti-slavery voices, well-represented in this volume, could not afford to ignore the global nature of slavery, yet some such as Henry Highland Garnet's speech in 1843, presented slavery as an American problem, ignoring the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans across the hemisphere. While American political speeches may not be the first place some would go to find a dialogue between the United States, its empire, and the world, I do think there is enough here to allow an investigation of this question.