Revolutionary Reader: Reminiscences and Indian Legends

by Sophie Lee Foster

Samuel Adams was one of the foremost orators and patriots of America, and was of Massachusetts' famous bouquet—James Otis, Joseph Warren, Josiah Quincy, John and John Quincy Adams—and left his work on the history of America as a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

James Otis, next in chronological order, was a bold, commanding orator, and the first to speak against the taxing of the colonies. He was called "the silver-tongued orator" and "a flame of fire." His death was as unusual as his gift—he was killed by a stroke of lightning May, 1772.

Joseph Warren and Josiah Quincy were both men of great talents and power, Warren was elected twice to deliver the oration in commemoration of the massacre of the fifth of March; he rendered efficient service by both his writing and addresses; and was distinguished as a physician, especially in the treatment of smallpox. He was killed while fighting as a volunteer at Bunker Hill.

Josiah Quincy's powers as an orator were of a very high order. It is sad to think that he died the very day he reached his native land, after a voyage to Europe in the interest of the colonies. One does not wonder that John Adams possessed influence, when in voting for the Declaration of Independence he exclaimed: "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my heart and hand to this vote;" nor that the son of such a father was called "The Old Man Eloquent" and the "Champion of the Rights of Petition," who thought "no man's vote lost which is cast for the right."

John Adams is the one man who remembered liberty and the people, for when he died July 4, 1826, his last words were, "It is the glorious Fourth of July! God bless it—God bless you all!"

From this cursory glance of the orators of Massachusetts, we can well understand how, like the "alabaster box" of old, the perfume of their noble deeds for the cause of right still lingers.

Alexander Hamilton was an orator that accomplished much for the colonies with his forceful, facile and brilliant pen, as did Madison and Jay, in the "Federalist." Patrick Henry, the red feather, of the Revolutionary period, as is E. W. Carmack of to-day—is by the South regarded the Magna Stella of that marvelous galaxy of stars. It is probable that his oratory was not as much a product of nature as was thought at the time when it was so effective. It was somewhat an inheritance, as he was the great-nephew of the Scotch historian Robertson, and the nephew of William Winston who was regarded as an eloquent speaker in his day.

Patrick, after six weeks study of law, we are told, commenced the practice of law (having the incumbrance of a family and poverty) and with what success, all the world knows. It was in the celebrated "Parson's case" that he won his spurs, and the epithet of "the orator of Nature;" also his election to the House of Burgesses, of Virginia. Nine years after he made his famous speech in which he told George III he might profit by the examples of Caesar and Charles I, he delivered his greatest effort of oratory—in which he said, "I know not what course others may take, but give me liberty, or give me death!"

Thomas Jefferson was the father of that instrument, the Declaration of Independence—that gives us "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," in so far as we trespass not on the moral and civil rights of our neighbor—and was persuasive and eloquent, as well as an acute politician. He was the acknowledged head of his party; and his work was of the uttermost importance to both the colonies and states. No one politician and orator has left a more indelible impression upon succeeding generations than he.

Thomas Paine also did his quota as an orator and writer; and great were the results accomplished by his "Common Sense" and the first "Crisis." Paine was not only a writer and orator, but a soldier. Under General Nathaniel Greene he rendered such efficient and valuable service that he was called the "hero of Fort Mifflin." Although he was an Englishman, who came to America and espoused the cause of the Continentals, the English nation are glad to own him. William Cobbett (the English statesman) says "whoever wrote the Declaration, Paine was its author."