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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... prove does really obtain in Nature : I mean , that the planets are retained in their orbits by forces directed to the sun ; which forces decrease as the squares of their distances encrease . KEPLER also discovered that the planets do ...
... prove an original contract subsisting in any other manner , and on any other conditions , than are naturally and necessarily implied in the very idea of the first institution of a state ; it is the easiest thing imaginable , since the ...
... prove the duty of a cheerful and conscientious subjection to those who forfeit the character of rulers - to those who en- courage the bad and discourage the good ? The argument here used no more proves it to be a sin to resist such ...
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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 |