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 American Legal Orators and Oratory

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orator that Choate was. Unfortunately Choate's speeches of this character were

there a speech which dealt so subtly and philosophically with the nature of in

not reported, and thus the two great

sanity and yet succeeded in giving a beautiful expression to the thoughts

New Englanders cannot well be com pared. Choate was undoubtedly more

therein evolved.

The subject was pecu

poetical in sentiment and style, while

liarly adapted to the inquiring mind of

Webster was much the better logician. Choate was by far the better scholar,

study of the sciences and in the con

while Webster possessed the greater and more expanded intellect. This

period before the Civil

War

produced two masterly examples of juridical eloquence in which the plea of insanity was made a defense to crime. In the Freeman trial William H. Seward delivered his masterpiece.

Gladstone

is quoted as saying that it was the ﬁnest forensic discourse ever spoken, though this, like many another alleged

quotation, is to be taken cum grano salis. There is the effect of Erskine’s speeches visible in its general style, but

considered in its entirety it is original

the great judge who delighted in the templation of abstract truths.

It has

been called "the greatest insanity plea ever delivered in America." It differs from those of Erskine and Seward quite as much as two addresses

could well differ. His style was inferior in every quality of grace and strength and elegance to Erskine's, and was not persuasive enough to be adapted to the exigencies of a jury trial, as the English

man's great speech in the Hadfield case. Erskine was persuasive, while Robert son sought to overwhelm with weighty logic, and though inferior as an orator

he was doubtless superior as a theorist. William Evarts made many able ad dresses to juries, though hardly any of

and remarkable. While by no means as smooth in expression as Erskine, Seward nevertheless possessed a deal of that poetic vision which is so effective in an orator, and in this speech he wrought the quality into the beautiful plea in

the accomplishments of oratory.

which he adjured the jurors to forego

plicity, directness and force in expres

vengeance, as it would not restore to life the manly form of the murdered Van Sant, nor “call back the infant boy from

sion have the greatest effect on jurors. Listeners do not wish to be led through

the arms of his Saviour."

his speeches of the kind can be said to be masterpieces. His rotund and

pedantic style was hardly conducive to Sim

the labyrinthine mazes and baffling per plexities of long sentences, and to grapple

vindicating the view which Seward had

with the intricacies of speech, but desire each thought so clearly expressed as to leave them no option but to hear and enjoy. It is a pity that Evarts allowed himself to cultivate this fault as he did,

upheld with rare moral courage, and per

for he was gifted with the learning, the

His client was, however, convicted

and died pending an appeal. On ex amination it was found that his brain was almost entirely rotted away, thus

haps rarer eloquence, in the face of a

imagination and the poetic sentiment

veritable storm of disapproval. Even better than it as a plea of in sanity is the argument of Chief Justice

of the true orator and was not altogether deﬁcient in humor and wit, as his reply

Robertson in the Baker trial.

with him against using long sentences, and he promptly replied that he knew of no one who objected to long sentences

This

Speech is one of the great intellectual

efforts of American oratory.

Never was

to Hoar shows.

Hoar had remonstrated