The Colonial IdiomDavid Potter, Gordon L. Thomas In The Colonial Idiom, David Potter and Gordon L. Thomas have selected representative and important speeches and exhortations delivered by famous Americans from the beginning of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. To a much greater extent than realized, public speaking and dispuĀtation were important features of daily life in Colonial America, because with the printing presses turning out only limited materials speeches were the major vehicles of expression. Thus the reader not only confronts the ideas and ideals that nurtured the founding of this nation but experiences the impact of freedom to express them, the sense of individual worth pointing the direction of a people "unfolding into sovereignty." The selections are arranged in five categories--those dealing with academic, legal, occasional, political, and religious matters. They are drawn from every stratum of colonial activity--from the classrooms, clerical studies, town meetings, provincial assemblies, and the bar. Great names abound in these pages, but, frequently, expounders of great ideas found here are unremembered figures whose works cannot be found easily elsewhere. The editors have carried out careful research on each speech to assure the authenticity of the text. They have added, for each selection, a note on the speaker and on the place where he delivered his address. This collection, made especially for students of rhetoric and public address, will engage the interest of all students of intellectual movements. The speeches here presented are indispensable sources of information to those readers wishing to follow the political and social ideas that made the history of this fateful century. |
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... liberty . You know liberty is your birthright , and if this is taken away , we may in part adopt the language of Micah , " What have we more ? " Besides , how unreasonable is it , that this wide extended continent , formed by nature for ...
... liberty is incom- patible and inconsistent with authority , and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority . The exercise and maintain- ing of this liberty makes men grow more evil , and in time to be worse than brute ...
... liberty does that country enjoy . To pursue liberty , then , in a manner not warranted by law , what- ever the pretence may be , is clearly to be hostile to liberty : and those persons who thus promise you liberty , are themselves the ...
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References to this book
Delightful Conviction: Jonathan Edwards and the Rhetoric of Conversion Stephen R. Yarbrough,John C. Adams No preview available - 1993 |