We selected one American political orator of the generation that has just gone by as a specimen of the capabilities of extempore speech, and will now give an instance of the present. The speaker we have chosen is widely known. Many have listened to his eloquent words, and in the stormy events of the last few years, his name has become a household word. We make this choice the more readily because the character of eloquence for which Bingham is noted, is that which many persons suppose to be most incompatible with a spontaneous selection of words—beauteous, elegant, melodious, and highly adorned.
Bingham graduated, was admitted to the bar, and speedily became a successful lawyer. He also turned his attention to political affairs, and became known as a most efficient public canvasser for the doctrines of the party with which he acted. This is one of the best schools in the world for ready and vigorous speech, but has a tendency to produce carelessness of expression, and to substitute smartness for logic and principle. This tendency he successfully resisted, and became distinguished for the deep moral tone, as well as for the beauty of the language of his addresses. He was elected to Congress from an Ohio district, and become known as one of the most eloquent members of that body. He took a prominent part in the opposition to the Kansas and Nebraska bill, and met the entire approval of the people. When the Southern States commenced to secede in the winter of 1860–61 he brought forward a force bill to compel them to submit to national authority. This was defeated by those who thought that other means would avail. Time proved the wisdom of his views.
All through the contest that followed, his voice was heard on the side of liberty and Union. He soon became known as one of the leaders of the Republican party, and has nobly held that position to the date of writing.
Mr. Bingham, in speaking, is calm, clear and pointed. His manner indicates confidence, and his words flow freely. Imagination is allowed full play, and the spirit of poetry breathes everywhere. He abounds in lofty and beautiful imagery, that places the truth in the clearest light. While the subject is never lost sight of, a thousand graces and beauties cluster around it from every hand. From the elevation and certainty of his language, many casual hearers have been led to imagine that his speeches were written and committed. But the reverse is the case. Some of his highest efforts have been made with no time even for the prearrangement of thought. This is one secret of his great success as a debater. He is always ready, with or without warning, to speak the thoughts that are in his mind. But he prefers, of course, to have time to arrange his matter in advance.
The following passage will illustrate the force of Mr. Bingham’s thought and expression. It is from a speech in reply to Wadsworth, and was entirely unstudied:
“As the gentleman then and now has chosen to assail me for this, I may be pardoned for calling his attention to the inquiry, what further did I say in that connection, on that day, and in the hearing of the gentleman? I said that every loyal citizen in this land held his life, his property, his home, and the children of his house, a sacred trust for the common defence. Did that remark excite any horror in the gentleman’s mind. Not at all I undertook, in my humble way, to demonstrate that, by the very letter and spirit of the Constitution, you had a right to lay the lives and the property and the homes, the very hearth-stones of the honest and the just and the good, under contribution by law, that the Republic might live. Did that remark excite any abhorrence in the gentleman, or any threat that fifteen slave States would be combined against us? Not at all. I stated in my place just as plainly, that by your law you might for the common defence not only take the father of the house, but the eldest born of his house, to the tented field by force of your conscription, if need be, and subject him to the necessary despotism of military rule, to the pestilence of the camp, and the destruction of the battle-field. And yet the gentleman was not startled with the horrid vision of a violated Constitution, and there burst from his indignant lips no threat that if we did this there would be a union of fifteen slave States against the Federal despotism. I asserted in my place, further, that after you had taken the father and his eldest born away, and given them both to death a sacrifice for their country, you could, by the very terms of the Constitution, take away the shelter of the roof-tree which his own hands had reared for the protection of the wife and the children that were left behind, and quarter your soldiers beneath it, that the Republic might live. And yet the gentleman saw no infraction of the Constitution, and made no threat of becoming the armed ally of the rebellion. But the moment that I declared my conviction that the public exigencies and the public necessities required, that the Constitution and the oaths of the people’s Representatives required, that by your law—the imperial mandate of the people—the proclamation of liberty should go forth over all that rebel region, declaring that every slave in the service of these infernal conspirators against your children and mine, against your homes and mine, against your Constitution and mine, against the sacred graves of your kindred and mine, shall be free, the gentleman rises startled with the horrid vision of broken fetters and liberated bondmen, treason overthrown, and a country redeemed, regenerated, and forever reunited, and cries, No; this shall not be; fifteen States will combine against you. Slavery is the civilizer; you shall neither denounce it as an ‘infernal atrocity,’ nor overthrow it to save the Union. I repeat the word which so moved the gentleman from his propriety, that chattel slavery is an ‘infernal atrocity.’ I thank God that I learned to lisp it at my mother’s knee. It is a logical sequence, sir, disguise it as you may, from that golden rule which was among the first utterances of all of us, ‘whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye so even unto them.’”
The second instance is taken from a speech on the proposal to furnish relief to the Southerners who were in a destitute and starving condition after the close of the war.
“No war rocks the continent, no armed rebellion threatens with overthrow the institutions of the country. The pillars of the holy temple of our liberties do not tremble in the storm of battle; the whole heavens are no longer covered with blackness, and the habitations of the people are no longer filled with lamentation and sorrow for their beautiful slain upon the high places of the land! Thanks be to God! the harvest of death is ended and the sickle has dropped from the hands of the ‘pale reapers’ on the field of mortal combat.
“Sir, you may apply in the day of war the iron rule of war, and say that the innocent and unoffending in the beleagured city shall perish with the guilty; but when war’s dread alarm has ended, as happily it has with us, when the broken battalions of rebellion have surrendered to the victorious legions of the Republic, let no man stand within the forum of the people and utter the horrid blasphemy that you shall not have regard for the famishing poor, that you shall not give a cup of water to him that is ready to perish in the name of our Master, that you shall not even relieve the wants of those who have never offended against the laws. The unoffending little children are not enemies of your country or of mine; the crime of treason is not upon their souls. Surely, surely they are not to be denied your care. The great French patriot, banished from the empire for his love of liberty, gathered little children around him in his exile at Guernsey, and fed them from his own table, uttering the judgment of our common humanity in its best estate; ‘Little children at least are innocent, for God wills it so.’”