American Orations. Edited by Alex. Johnston. Re-edited by James Albert
Woodburn. (G. P. Patnam's Sons.) — This second volume contains nine orations delivered during the period 1820-1852, on various phases of the Anti-Slavery Struggle. The first two were spoken in the Senate in February, 1820, on the Missouri Struggle, Rufus King, of New York, protesting against, and William Pinkney, of Maryland, defending the admission of Missouri without any prohibition of slavery. Of the other ora- tions, two were spoken by Wendell Phillips, and one each by J. Q. Adams, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and
Charles Sumner. Here is a passage in which Phillips finely defended the "fanatics" of the Abolitionist Movement :—" Sir, when a nation sets itself to do evil, and all its leading forces, wealth, party, and piety, join in the career, it is impossible but that those who offer a constant opposition should be hated and maligned, no matter how wise, cautious, and well planned their course may be. We are peculiar sufferers in this way. The community has come to hate its reproving Nathan so bitterly that even those whom the relenting part of it are beginning to regard as standard- bearers of the anti-slavery host, think it unwise t... avow any con- nection or sympathy with him. They feel it to be their mission to marshal and use as effectively as possible the present con- victions of the people. They cannot afford to encumber them- selves with the odium which twenty years of angry agitation have engendered in great sects sore from unsparing rebuke, parties galled by constant defeat, and leading men provoked by unex- pected exposure." The notes, biographical and political, will be found very useful.
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