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Rh contemporaneous American literature; and the speeches and writings of Daniel Webster (1782-1852), Henry Clay (1777-1852), and J. C. Calhoun (1782-1850), considered merely as literary productions, are among the intellectual triumphs of the country. For dignity of expression, breadth and force of thought, and a style strong, simple, and sometimes grand, the forensic arguments and public and political speeches of Webster may rank with the masterpieces of oratory in any language. The spontaneous, impassioned eloquence of Clay, on the other hand, depended so much for its effect upon the voice and manner of the speaker, that his reputation will be mostly traditional. His published speeches give little indication of the mastery of the feelings for which he was almost unrivalled. Calhoun's eloquence was plain, strong, concise, and only occasionally impassioned; and his power, as Webster has observed, “consisted in the plainness of his propositions, the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner.” To the political orators and statesmen of this period belong also John Quincy Adams (1769-1848), remarkable for the universality of his knowledge and his independence of judgment; John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), an eccentric but powerful and pointed speaker, and a master of invective; Albert Gallatin (1761-1849); R. Y. Hayne (1791-1840), the eloquent antagonist of Webster; De Witt Clinton (1769-1828), Tristam Burges (1770-1853), George McDuffie (1788-1851), Silas Wright (1795-1847), H. S. Legaré (1797-1843), W. C. Preston (1794-1860), S. S. Prentiss (1808-'50), T. H. Benton (1782-1858, whose “Thirty Years' View” and “Abridgment of the Debates in Congress” afford invaluable materials to the historian of national politics), A. H. Everett (1792-1847), J. R. Poinsett (1779-1851), Lewis Cass (1782-1866), Levi Woodbury (1789-1851), Caleb Cushing (born 1800), John Sergeant (1779-1852), J. J. Crittenden (1787-1863), W. H. Seward (1801-'72), J. H. Hammond (1807-'64), R. C. Winthrop (1809), H. A. Wise (1806), S. A. Douglas (1813-'61), and R. M. T. Hunter (1809). The most accomplished orator of the period with respect to rhetorical finish and elocution was Edward Everett (1794-1865), whose productions, including his oration on Washington, which was delivered before public assemblies in many parts of the country, are thoroughly American in tone, and possess a permanent and intrinsic worth. Rufus Choate (1799-1859), in his forensic arguments and occasional public addresses, exhibited not less rhetorical excellence and more fervor than Everett; and Charles Sumner (1811-'74) excelled in strength and clearness of statement, ripe scholarship, and nobility of diction. Among the anti-slavery orators, to which class Mr. Sumner properly belonged, were William Lloyd Garrison (born 1804), whose popular addresses were singularly effective; Wendell Phillips (1811), a vigorous and impulsive speaker,

frequently rising to a strain of impassioned eloquence; J. R. Giddings (1795-1864), Theodore D. Weld (1803), Theodore Parker (1810-'60), Henry Ward Beecher (1813), R. W. Emerson, Frederick Douglass (1817), Anson Burlingame (1820-'70), and G. B. Cheever (1807), whose oratory in general exhibits similar characteristics. The list of occasional orators, in addition to the names of most of the foregoing, includes those of Joseph Story (1779-1845), James Kent (1763-1847), G. C. Verplanck (1786-1870), Horace Binney (1780-1875), T. S. Grimke (1786-1834), Orville Dewey (1794), Horace Bushnell (1802-'76), E. H. Chapin (1814), H. B. Bascom (1796-1850), G. S. Hillard (1808), H. W. Bellows (1814), R. H. Dana, jr. (1815), and many others. The political writers comprise William Sullivan (1774-1839), Mathew Carey (1760-1839), J. T. Buckingham, Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), W. L. Marcy (1786-1857), Thomas Ritchie, Joseph Gales, Robert Walsh, William Leggett (1802-'39), Amos Kendall (1789-1869), Calvin Colton, J. H. Hammond, Nathan Hale, David Hale, Richard Hildreth, Joshua Leavitt, Morton McMichael, Hamilton Pleasants, T. R. R. Cobb, G. D. Prentice, W. C. Bryant, J. G. Palfrey, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Joseph Chandler, James Gordon Bennett, J. D. B. De Bow, John Fletcher, George Fitzhugh, J. L. O'Sullivan, Edwin Croswell, Thurlow Weed, Horace Greeley, J. W. Forney, W. L. Garrison, N. P. Rogers, C. C. Hazewell, John Bigelow, Parke Godwin, H. J. Raymond, E. L. Godkin, N. Paschall, B. Gratz Brown, C. H. Ray, James Brooks, Erastus Brooks, Charles Nordhoff, Charles T. Congdon, and many others. Under this head also come the comprehensive “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” by Justice Story, the lectures on the same subject by W. A. Duer (1780-1858), and the “Constitutional History of the United States,” by G. T. Curtis. The most eminent writers on political economy are H. C. Carey (born 1793), whose “Principles of Political Economy,” “Credit System in France, England, and the United States,” “The Past, the Present, and the Future,” and numerous other works, maintain protection doctrines in a clear, terse style; President Francis Wayland (1796-1865) and Henry Vethake, both advocates of free trade, who have published valuable text books on the subject; Francis Lieber, A. H. Everett, William Leggett, Beverley Tucker, Albert Gallatin, John Bristed, Calvin Colton, Condy Raguet, Stephen Colwell, Francis Bowen, Alonzo Potter, E. C. Seaman, E. Peshine Smith, George Opdyke, W. M. Gouge, William Maclure, Edward Atkinson, and W. G. Sumner. The writers on social science and ethics comprise Francis Lieber, author of treatises on “Liberty and Self-Government” and “Political Ethics;” G. H. Calvert, T. Sedgwick, Adam Gurowski, Bishop J. H. Hopkins, and E. Mulford, who have discussed the subject generally. W. L. Garrison,