Franklin exemplified it in his day. It
is far removed from the pure literary art of a Poe, a Hawthorne,
a Henry James. It aims at action rather than beauty. It seeks to
persuade, to convince, to bring things to pass. We shall observe
it in the oratory of Clay and Webster, as they pleaded for
compromise; in the editorials of Garrison, a foe to compromise
and like Calhoun an advocate, if necessary, of disunion; in the
epochmaking novel of Harriet Beecher Stowe; in the speeches of
Wendell Phillips, in verse white-hot with political passion, and
sermons blazing with the fury of attack and defense of principles
dear to the human heart. We must glance, at least, at the lyrics
produced by the war itself, and finally, we shall observe how
Abraham Lincoln, the inheritor of the ideas of Jefferson, Clay,
and Webster, perceives and maintains, in the noblest tones of our
civic speech, the sole conditions of our continuance as a nation.
Let us begin with oratory, an American habit, and, as many
besides Dickens have thought, an American defect.
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