American Rhetorical Excellence: 101 Public Addresses That Shaped the Nation’S History and Culture

Copyright © 2017 Perry C. Cotham.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-4454-4 (sc)

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Contents

The Gift of Rhetoric and Public Address: Some Introductory Thoughts

Part I:   The Top Ten Public Addresses In American History

Part II:   Ninety-One Other Great And/Or Representative Public Addresses In American History

Part III:   Filling Gaps In The American Rhetorical Landscape

1. Not Quite a Traditional Public Speech, Yet Instructional, Persuasive, and Often Inspirational, Nonetheless

2. Town Meeting of the Mind—Forums for American Public Address

3. Honored Guests—Top Speeches by World Leaders Presented in the United States

4. Tragic Eloquence—Top Speeches by Native Americans

5. Preaching the Word—Top Sermons by American Preachers

6. Hall Of Shame—Something Less Than Rhetorical Excellence

7. Missing the Cut—American Speakers Not Quite Making the List of 101 Top Speeches, Yet Deserving Honorable Mention

Acknowledgments and Bibliographic Essay

About the Author

The Gift of Rhetoric and Public Address: Some Introductory Thoughts

Public addresses make a difference—a huge difference! Whether we think of public addresses as orations, as speeches, or as persuasive written documents, so many of these public addresses are intricately linked to the kind of nation and society we experience in the United States in the early twenty-first century. This is the underlying, foundational premise of this book. There are many ways to study American politics, culture, religion, and reform, and public addresses provide a fascinating window to our shared past. The public addresses referenced in this work provide insights into our history and reflections of their times, but they are significant because they were strategic forces in actually shaping our history.

This study is about American rhetoric. And for the most part, American rhetoric is about oratory (public speaking). The sum of national public speaking has wielded a far greater impact on the course of American history than has the printed word. One might argue that the colonists talked themselves into a revolution, that the Founding Fathers clearly explained the need for a written constitution, that these same founders and political philosophers debated the nature and provisions of that important document, that they publicly argued for its ratification, and that political and reform speakers gave direction and shape—whether right or wrong, good or evil—to every important movement and dimension of the American life and character in every era of our history.

There is dynamic immediacy of the spoken message, including the speaker standing (or sitting, in some rare cases) in front of a live audience dealing with a vital issue or concern of the moment, and the stakes may be high. Nothing quite compares to that experience. Little wonder some of us enjoy the challenge of teaching public speaking and building self-confidence that translates into the speaking occasion—not simply to enable students to demonstrate their competence, control others, or gain extra attention but to instruct and coach students to employ those skills in advancing their own values and convictions. This makes a positive difference in the thinking and behavior of their listeners.

Of course, rhetoric does not require oral deliberation. We may think of oratory as public speaking, but there is written as well as spoken rhetoric. Indeed, there have been some published materials that truly changed the course of history, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Common Sense, to name two examples. We will cite at least two great written pieces of rhetoric in our listing of the top 101 public addresses in our history. And, in fact, one of those pieces of written rhetoric begins our listing of the top ten addresses.

How impossible it is to imagine that the influence of written rhetoric could, generally speaking, begin to compare to the cumulative impact of spoken rhetoric! Millions might view and listen to political debates in an election campaign year, and there is interest in the follow-up reviews and discussion after each debate. Could one imagine possible interest in a debate where the candidates all agreed to remain nonconfrontational and silent, simply released position papers, and asked the public to read them? Most of us would rather hear a speech than read one anytime!

Now here’s the corollary: Oratorical literature deserves to be valued and studied at all levels of education. Obviously, students can learn much from these great speeches, as they shine a light on the past and the present. These speeches illuminate—with insight, wisdom, eloquence, wit, and sometimes sharp words—significant aspects of the national character and consciousness. Many speeches have such enduring value. There are many frequently studied addresses about freedom, and they can be studied with the same purpose as the study of major documents, such as the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights. Some of the most thought-provoking and influential expositions on the themes of rights, liberties, and freedom were first presented not in books or pamphlets but were advocated and debated from stumps, podiums, and grandstands in the form of nontranscribed oratory and public address.

Freedom and liberty are words we hear on the campaign trail and in press conferences—public officials appeal to the cause of freedom every day. The world of political and campaign oratory provides a living laboratory for studying the place of freedom and liberty within public discourse. (Of course, we recognize there are nuances and ambiguities inherent within the rhetorical use of such abstract concepts as freedom and liberty.) If nothing else, reading through this book can be an abbreviated course in American history, though admittedly there would be gaps and omissions in such an approach. Not every important event in American history inspired a great oration, memorable poem, or stirring song. Yet there can be more to be learned in terms of helping students to be better public speakers. I hope today’s students can learn what works and what does not work with any specific audience. That is why I have attempted to write a brief contemporary application as a part of each of the major speeches discussed in this book.

Behind every great epic, whether poetry, narrative, or novel, there is a story as to what motivated the writer and what kind of story the writer seeks to tell. Behind every great song, there is a story that might well explain the meaning of the lyrics. Knowing that background, our understanding and appreciation for that song are enriched. One basic premise, then, of this book is that behind every great oration is a story, too. While a poem, narrative, novel, song, or musical piece might stand on its own and still be appreciated and enjoyed, it seems we only understand the great speeches in history by understanding the larger narrative or context.

Understanding Rhetoric

A big, all-caps, headline in the front section of the Sunday, July 10, 2016, edition of USA Today caught my attention: RHETORIC NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY? This lead article of the day, written by Rick Hampton, begins by citing voters who are put off by some of the candidate’s promises, like mass deportation of illegal immigrants and a ban on Muslim immigration. And then there is citation of the pledge to build a high, impenetrable border wall between the United States and Mexico. The idea, according to many political observers, is that there are numerous presidential campaign promises that are made in rhetorical flourish, but these promises are expected to be ignored, fudged, or just plain broken. The author cites some historical perspective.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt attacked Herbert Hoover for excessive spending, although later the New Deal spent sums vastly greater than Hoover could have imagined.

• Richard Nixon had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, yet that war continued past his years in the Oval Office.

• George H. W. Bush proclaimed, Read my lips. No new taxes! Yet once in office, he signed a bill that increased taxes.

• The Clintons in 1993 promised to revamp health care but could not deliver on that pledge.

• Barack Obama never made good on a 2008 campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

So all of these unattainable or vain promises and pledges are mere rhetoric?

The last people to embrace the change in meaning of a word or term, or even to embrace a new spelling of some word or term, are the most intelligent, traditional-minded citizens. Some might be offended by the change, and others might resist such changes because they seem to be another step down the cultural ladder. University and college professors are among those most resistant to such change.

Rhetoric is one of those words that has changed in meaning over the centuries. One might argue the meaning of that word has devolved from something high and noble in logical and ethical persuasion down to mere language that is divorced from realities. We academic instructors in rhetoric and public address can insist on restoring the word to its original, classic meaning and connotation, but we are likely fighting a losing battle.

Not that rhetoric has disappeared in usage in Western society. Indeed, I have found the word used in USA Today headlines as well as other newspaper headlines. Every night as one watches any cable news broadcast, one is likely to hear the word uttered scores of times. In my folder of articles and cartoons on this subject is a cartoon in the Tennessean that has a most unflattering caricature of Donald Trump with the word Campaign across his famous hairstyle (with a dynamite stick wedged in his brain) and the word Rhetoric across the flames of fire shooting out his mouth.

Sometimes we hear expressions such as The president’s speech was nothing more than rhetoric. The idea in common usage is that rhetoric is all empty talk and meaningless campaign promises and, thus, easily divorced from actions. When a public person engages in fulsome talk and exaggeration, even falsehood, that message is sometimes dismissed as mere rhetoric. It is difficult to find a nice-sounding word to communicate the same meaning as found for slang terms, such as b. s., malarkey, hogwash, or baloney, to cite just a few. Yet the popular use of rhetoric carries almost the same negative meaning with contemporary listeners. I have sometimes used the term bloviation as a substitute word for verbal nonsense, but then again, many students may have no clue as to the meaning of such a word.

All too often, rhetoric is considered not simply as empty talk divorced from reality. The word now has a connotation of something much worse—a political weapon employed by one faction or candidate against political opponents. That is why we hear or read terms such as irresponsible rhetoric, hollow rhetoric, angry rhetoric, inflammatory rhetoric, distractive rhetoric, extremist rhetoric, ugly rhetoric, volatile rhetoric, incendiary rhetoric, bigoted rhetoric, racist rhetoric, polarizing rhetoric, hateful rhetoric, caustic rhetoric, bellicose rhetoric, nativist rhetoric, reckless rhetoric, harsh rhetoric, authoritarian rhetoric, xenophobic rhetoric, divisive rhetoric, hatchet rhetoric, scary rhetoric, or even acidic rhetoric. (And where did I find all those adjectives describing rhetoric cited in the previous sentence? Answer: They have all been used by the media to describe statements in speeches and debates of the 2016 presidential campaign.) At the top of my USA Today for Monday, July 18, 2016, a bold headline runs all across the page: Obama urges politicians to temper rhetoric. In the story below, the President is quoted as making an appeal to tone down volatile rhetoric and focus on unity. We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric, Obama counseled. Someone once wrote: ‘A bullet need happen only once, but for peace to work we have to be reminded of its existence again and again and again.’

So, it just might be that Donald Trump, as well as other political speakers (and especially demagogues), are quite effective in their use of rhetoric in the more contemporary connotation—as a political weapon or at least as empty, meaningless talk—yet most deficient in the use of rhetoric in the classical, Aristotelian sense. What do you think? Is it fair to say that whenever there is an adjective in front of the word rhetoric in today’s popular usage, that adjective is always a negative one? Can you remember a time in which the adjective in front of the word rhetoric is a positive one (such as positive rhetoric or meaningful rhetoric, or healing rhetoric or conciliatory rhetoric or peaceful rhetoric?) Clearly, words have enormous power to either unite or divide, to heal or wound.

So we academic instructors in rhetoric and public address can still teach the principles of the subject as laid out by Aristotle and a host of great teachers over the centuries, all the while reminding students of the original meaning of rhetoric—the use of words to persuade someone or others of something that is important to the speaker, who is using the best of logic and ethical credibility to convince the audience of a high and noble position or course of action. And while we make that point, the better part of wisdom acknowledges that hardly anyone else, other than we academic types, means anything noble and uplifting when the word rhetoric is used. Obviously, the foundational premise of this book is that rhetorical excellence does, indeed, exist and has existed throughout our history.

Famous Speeches Make a Difference

Yes, rhetoric is an ancient art. Aristotle called rhetoric an art centuries ago. And rhetorical criticism is almost as ancient, too. Now the electronic era has seen such swift and dramatic changes in the playing field. Communication today can be instantaneous, and more visual than ever before. We have moved from Gutenberg to Apple. Social media seem to have changed everything. In modern times we may speak of visual rhetoric—videos and even still pictures can be more powerful, more emotionally gripping, than actual words. Some scholars of rhetorical theory believe that visual messages are so pervasive that they threaten to eclipse the influence of the spoken and written word in the twenty-first century. Images possess the power to stir deep emotions. A majority of adults, some contend, can readily discuss the last movie they viewed, but have trouble (if not find it impossible) to recall the last speech they heard in a live audience. Yet it seems inconceivable that rhetoric in the form of public address will ever fade from the scene.

Oratory today is, indeed, different from what it was in the past. There was a time when stump speaking was actually speaking on a stump, and no listener then could have imagined a radio or television that might transmit the voice and image of the speaker. There were times when families were willing to ride horse-drawn wagons and carriages several miles to sit outdoors, often on the hillside or flat ground, to listen to sermons lasting at least an hour or to political debates that might last five or six hours. Lincoln’s greatest ceremonial speech is hailed for its brevity, while Daniel Webster could characteristically present a ceremonial address that would last three hours; of course, consider that, unlike Webster’s featured appearances, Lincoln was not the keynote speaker at Gettysburg. (Incidentally, George Caleb Bingham’s [1811-1879] classic painting Stump Speaking [1853] captures a Western political orator standing and speaking before an attentive outdoor gathering; the depiction is likely as authentic as anything we might imagine.)

The public addresses cited here made a difference in people’s lives. All of them in some way both reflected and helped to shape our nation’s political life and general culture. Among the U. S. presidents who cast a long shadow of influence over those who followed, some were great orators. David Gergen, former adviser to several presidents and now a regular political commentator for CNN, writes: In the modern age…there is no weapon more powerful than persuasion by speech (Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000, p. 210). As Winston Churchill once wrote: Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world (Ibid).

The public speech or oration has, for centuries, altered the trajectory of history. Orators have been change agents in every institution in a free society, and even in societies not so free. Can you imagine Greece without Demosthenes or Rome without Cicero? What would Germany have been like without the fiery oratory of Adolph Hitler in the 1930s and 40s? (The world would have been far better off, most of us might claim, without his murderous conquest of Europe and genocidal policy toward the Jewish population.) Can you imagine what Great Britain would have been like during the Second World War, especially the Nazi bombing of London in 1940, without the eloquent and passionate speeches of Prime Minister Winston Churchill? And in our own history, can we imagine the role in national destiny shaped by the rhetorical advocacy of speakers such as Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin D. Roosevelt? To be more specific, can you imagine the 1960 presidential election campaign without thinking about the Kennedy-Nixon debates? And now, can you imagine any U. S. presidential election campaign without nationally televised debates, even if some of those debates degenerated into name-calling and personal insults as happened in the fractured national campaign of 2016?

Sometimes just a single brief speech deeply jolts a large audience, making all listeners suddenly think of ideas and/or feel emotions in a new way. There are so many examples of such a phenomenon, but one of the best examples of such oratory occurred at the closing of the 1976 Republican National Convention. Incumbent President Gerald Ford had won the nomination over challenger, Governor Ronald Reagan of California. As the week’s proceedings were being wrapped up, and Ford had delivered his acceptance address, Reagan supporters began chanting loudly his name, venting their disappointment their candidate did not win nomination. With seeming reluctance, the good-natured and smiling Reagan walked from his seat in the audience and made his way to the platform and then delivered the most stirring and effective oration of the entire convention. The speech, which seemed totally impromptu, displayed Reagan’s superb oratorical skills and closed with his vision of what America should be and could be. One Republican leader was quoted as making a telling confession to fellow party leaders at the end of the speech: My God, this party has just nominated the wrong man [Ford]! Truth be known, Reagan’s speech was simply a re-framed and adapted presentation of his basic stump speech, but this is not to take away from the great oratorical skills of the man who, four years later, would claim his party’s highest prize and then go on to win the White House.

As an example of a stirring speech by someone who is not a professional orator and only speaks briefly, a recent one is poignant: At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, a Muslim-American father named Khizr Khan, with his wife standing silently beside him, addressed the large audience both in the Center and watching television at home. Khan spoke of their courageous son, Army Captain Humayun S. M. Khan, who was killed in 2004 by explosives while protecting other soldiers in his unit. The speech was delivered within the broader context of the Republican candidate Donald Trump having proposed (during his campaign) a ban on all Muslims entering the country. Khan courageously asked a pointed question directly to Trump: Let me ask: Have you ever read the U. S. Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. [Then Khan pulled out a small pocket-sized copy of the Constitution and extended his hand while holding it.] Look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’ Though Khan spoke slowly and deliberately, there was no doubt about his passion and certainly no doubt about his point of view. Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Khan asked on the last night of the convention. Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one. The brief speech was a direct, incisive, impassioned, and courageous presentation that will be long remembered by all who heard it, even if Khan never makes a speech before a large audience again. (Trump’s initial public response was to question why Khan’s wife remained silent and suggested her silence may have been due to religious beliefs. The media focused on the story for several days.)

Entertainers seem to have a special platform for making brief political and reform speeches. At the January 2017 Golden Globes ceremony, Meryl Streep, whom Time called the first lady of Hollywood, used her moment before the camera and a national audience to denounce with both charm and passion the President-elect Donald Trump. With nineteen Academy Award nominations for a wide range of movie performances, Streep had credibility and a diverse audience; understandably, the actor’s presentation was as skillful and artful as any speech could possibly be. Her theme underscored the diversity of Americans and urged respect for all kinds of people. The speech garnered wide national attention along with a response from Trump calling the actress over-rated. What might be considered by one segment of the population as a courageous moral statement might be adjudged by another segment of citizens as a shameless and disgraceful injection of partisan politics into an occasion intended only to honor and entertain.

The great changes and reform movements in our national experience have been powered by great speeches, delivered by one speaker to one particular audience at one particular time, and then many of these speeches reached a wider audience by television and/or print media. These mighty movements, both religious and political, that have shaped the destiny of the American nation surely began in small and obscure places from the talk and dialogue among intelligent though nameless men and women. As ideas took hold and were disseminated to larger groups, they gathered momentum and spread to other institutions and environments. Then, there emerged leaders who could give voice in both plain and eloquent language the needs, values, and hopes of ordinary people.

Defining Presidential Greatness by Media Style

One way to define presidential greatness is how well our political leaders have seized the available technology of communication and used such technology to advance worthwhile causes and who successfully adapted their style with the shifting times. Abraham Lincoln was a gifted orator in an era when political rallies were both important civic events, but also a major source of popular entertainment. Theodore Roosevelt was a master of taking his cause directly to the people through the major medium available to him in his era. He understood the value of the expanding popular press along with the public podium it provided as a bully pulpit (a phrase he himself coined) to gain public support for his progressive reform and trust busting of large corporations, as well as for his military campaigns overseas. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, TR’s Democratic cousin, was willing to seize radio and adapt his oral style, thus speaking conversationally to a national audience and offering information and reassurance during some of the darkest hours of national history. FDR’s use of radio, particularly in his fireside chats, broke new media ground to explain New Deal programs and gain public support.

John F. Kennedy elevated the media presidency to new heights with effective mastery of television. JFK felt secure enough to become the first president to permit televised press conferences; after all, he had already effectively debated his 1960 Republican opponent in a live televised format. The young president projected a media image of grace, charm, and wit; he also used television effectively in creating an image of himself as a tough Cold War warrior, vigorous athlete (despite serious chronic disabilities), and devoted family man (despite extramarital affairs). Perhaps no president could use the electronic media more effectively than Ronald Reagan, earning him the label the great communicator. Reagan was the first professional actor elected to the American presidency. His seeming total ease in front of camera and microphone, whether in the oval office or at his party’s national convention, permitted him to achieve a personal connection with his audience.

In the 1990s Bill Clinton went one step further, appearing on talk shows, MTV, and comedy programs, where he played his saxophone, discussed his family life, and answered personal questions on such topics as the style of underwear he wore. By the time of Clinton’s election as president, the private lives and sexual conduct of politicians had become fair game for reporters, such a contrast to previous generations of presidents who could count on journalists and editorialists to honor certain boundaries, thus keeping these private behavioral choices undisclosed to the general public.

In recent times, modern electronic communication is ubiquitous and has truly altered the rapid speed of messages to citizens and the nature of the political message. Though the Internet is a little more than two decades old, just a blip on the radar screen of all history, it is clearly a major tool for all kinds of information and advocacy. An audience of millions can be reached by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, texting, email, and many other electronic formats. Internet chatter can catapult an ordinary event or casual statement to a news story. Republican Trent Lott, for example, eventually stepped down as U. S. Senate majority leader after casual comments he made at the celebration of Strom Thurmond’s one hundredth birthday became a national issue. Donald Trump became notorious for his rapid-fire Twitter responses to just about anything and everything with which he objected or disagreed. One writer called Trump’s rapid disdain or insult of anyone who dared to criticize or disagree with him as Twitter torture, but the candidate’s use of 140-character bursts kept his base fired up and the mainline media with a steady stream of new stories to report and discuss.

During his two-term tenure as president, Barack Obama turned to televised, one on one, interviews and social media, and thus have all major political candidates engaged the same rhetorical strategies—all inviting people to follow them on Twitter. Obama has been called the first talk show president, making appearances on late night comedy shows. Flashing his broad smile often and naturally, he has been thought of as a comedic natural, the best president ever at delivering a joke. Seems now that every politician needs to demonstrate he or she is a regular guy or gal. And nothing says real human being like a sense of humor, especially a self-deprecating one. Ronald Reagan often quipped about his advanced age, once claiming to understand what the Founding Fathers intended in the Constitution because he knew them. You will see the names of all these speakers, as well as many more, cited in the pages ahead.

How sobering to think that the carefully crafted public address may be in a period of decline because of the electronic era! During this period of primary and general election campaigning, one may note that candidates campaign not so much for live audiences who long for an eloquent oration, but for television cameras. Rather than aiming to produce that eloquent oration, candidates seem to seek the pointed sound bite or clever figure of speech or cute pithy comment on Twitter that will get them a few seconds on television where they will be heard and seen by millions of viewers. This might represent the busy-ness of active American citizens or a dumbing down of the general public who think a complex issue can be reduced to a clever exclamation of only a few words dispensed electronically. It does mean political leaders and candidates are fully aware that video cameras are everywhere, some even secretly hidden, and that there is a twenty-four hour news cycle that must be constantly federal. Have the electronic media rendered great addresses and great books obsolete? Clearly, oratory in the twenty-first century is different from what it was two centuries ago, having shifted with the new forms and potentialities of media, but it would be a serious mistake to conclude the flame of American oratory has been reduced to a flicker.

Selecting the Top 101 Speeches

Reducing rhetorical excellence to 101 public addresses is a task both formidable and humbling. Judgment must be made by any historian and rhetorical critic. Some speeches are obvious choices. In other cases, the speeches may be more representative of a person’s speaking career than necessarily the best speech the person ever delivered. For example, it would be difficult to name the one most outstanding oration of speakers such as Wendell Phillips, Robert Ingersoll, or Robert LaFollette, to name three, and yet all three were outstanding orators whose effectiveness in public speaking was an integral part of their careers.

There is great variety in speeches that may be considered great pieces of rhetoric. Of course, if we are only selecting 101 addresses, we are zooming in on a miniscule portion of all the speeches that have made any kind of difference in our American society. As rhetorical critics we are forced to make judgment on what is great and effective and what is ineffective and a failure. Along the way we expect to find a good number of addresses that must be judged as eloquent. How do we go about making this selection, finding the best of the best? Sometimes an excellent speech fails to achieve its purpose, but still could be considered great if it sensitizes listeners to a point of view, challenges their thinking, and pushes listeners in the right direction.

There have been some mightily powerful and eloquent religious-moral addresses that have changed the course of American history. Eloquence, of course, is difficult to quantify, but it is the power to impact and move an audience to act or feel in some important way. Eloquence is not simply a matter of supreme self-confidence in front of an audience, the formal education of the communicator, or the speaker’s flawless grammar and vocabulary. Eloquence is a dimension of persuasion wherein the right speaker, the right time, and occasion merge, and the speaker or writer presents a timely message with sincere passion, clarity, and forcefulness—and that message stirs a passionate response in the listener or reader!

Rhetorical critics are compelled to establish criteria or standards of excellence or greatness. Effective delivery is definitely important, and who among us does not enjoy listening to a spell-binding orator who rivets our attention for a period of time? Yet effective delivery alone may not render a speech great. William Jennings Bryan was an outstanding orator, perhaps the best of his generation. Yet in four nominations and hundreds, if not thousands, of campaign speeches for president, Bryan was never elected to the high office. There were some outstanding Southern orators in antebellum days who employed their delivery skills and eloquence in defense of slavery, even some preachers in slaveholding states made a persuasive biblical and moral case justifying slavery, but we would not call these political messages and sermons great because they did not advance noble ideas. Put succinctly, those speakers were on the wrong side of history.

On the flip side, a weak and unimpressive delivery does not necessarily negate the greatness of a speech so long as the ideas and words of the address are available to the wider audience. Thomas Jefferson was one of the most intelligent and thoughtful of all U. S. presidents, perhaps the most intelligent. His First Inaugural Address receives a high rating in this study, but Jefferson was definitely not renowned as a speaker; indeed, he was a reluctant orator, and his oral presentation of this speech was barely audible to those in attendance. And Abraham Lincoln was not a powerful orator, though, like Jefferson, he was a gifted writer and his ideas were profoundly expressed even in an unimpressive delivery. George Washington was a great president yet he believed he should express himself more through his actions than his few speeches. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln are all represented in this study, yet one characteristic they shared: They made almost no public speeches after entering the presidency.

Such a contrast from the president in office during the writing of this book—Barack Obama has delivered all kinds of addresses on almost every conceivable occasion: State of the Union Addresses annually, special policy addresses, special announcements, ceremonial speeches (especially memorial addresses), and numerous funeral eulogies. In a July 12, 2016, address memorializing five Dallas police officers that were ambushed during a peaceful protest march, the President lamented he had been called on too many times to eulogize American victims of gun violence. In modern times, the U. S. president absolutely must speak both to and for the entire nation during periods of national sadness and perplexity. And, then, on January 10, 2017, Obama delivered his Farewell Address, the last public address of his presidency, in which he extolled the virtues of democracy, underscored his self-understanding of legacy, and promised a smooth transition of power to Trump (calling the cooperation a hallmark of our democracy).

Do we look at the immediate response of a speech as a high standard of excellence? Consider that some speeches must be listed because of such a positive immediate response, whether strong emotional response or sustained applause, but that with the perspective of time historians deemed the speech to be self-serving, even demagogic. General Douglas MacArthur received strong positive response in his Farewell Address to the Nation, and Richard Nixon also gained such immediate positive response and support after delivering his famous Checkers Speech, yet neither address has garnered major respect from American political historians.

Eloquent speeches possess a number of traits, but one typical trait is the existence of a memorable phrase that encapsulates the entire address and, as Professor Kathleen Jamieson puts it, serves as the hook on which we hang it in memory (Eloquence in an Electronic Age, p. 90). Eloquent speakers can come up with a memorable phrase, one that serves as a synecdoche, where the part of the speech stands for the whole speech. The synecdochic phrase, as Jamieson calls it, provides something memorable and eloquent that may characterize not only the address but perhaps even an entire administration or an entire generation (as in Churchill’s their finest hour and his blood, sweat, and tears or Tom Brokaw’s the greatest generation).

At that point, few listeners, if any, really care if the memorable phrase was original with the speaker or that it might have been stolen from another source or written by a ghostwriter. We simply associate the memorable phrase with the man or woman who uttered it with no thought of its originality. (As an aside, most do care if an entire speech or a big portion of it was pilfered from another source without the slightest hint of attribution. Consider the brouhaha evoked by Melania Trump taking the stage at the Republican National Convention’s opening night, July 18, 2016, and delivering a plagiarized section from an address by First Lady Michelle Obama some eight years earlier; shortly after the story broke, no one really seemed to care about this ethical breach.)

Interestingly, most famous speeches are not labeled by one official name. Because the apt, memorable phrase is so important in rendering any speech to be a great one, that phrase might become the title of the speech, though typically it would not be listed that way in any official program on the day of delivery. Thus we speak of King’s best known speech as the I Have a Dream Speech rather than The March on Washington Address. We speak of FDR’s Four Freedoms Address rather than his State of the Union Address. Nixon’s Confronting Allegations over Personal Use of Campaign Funds will forever be known as the aforementioned Checkers Speech. And who today really knows or cares what Patrick Henry’s Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech might have been called prior to its delivery to the Virginia Convention?

Rating the Top Ten American Public Addresses

This study attempts a listing of the top ten public addresses in our history. Other rhetorical critics would surely have a different listing. In my selecting and ranking, I have considered two major criteria: great ideas—ideas that advance the cause of truth and justice and which stand the test of time—and the positive, long range effectiveness of the speech. Some of these great speeches cast a vision for the future or establish a philosophy and agenda for the nation to follow. This is why an address such as Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address or Lyndon B. Johnson’s We Shall Overcome Address is included. Sometimes a single speech inspires an entire generation and may contain a famous line that is oft-quoted by future generations, thus JFK’s Inaugural Address is included in our top ten public addresses.

Selecting the other ninety-one addresses surely comes down to judgment, and every critic has a slightly different judgment and opinion. Oratory is always expected at certain annual events, such as the president’s State of the Union report to a joint session of Congress. Major party conventions have always provided a dynamic context for powerful, stirring political speeches. Indeed, one could make a case for including in this volume every one of the following orations: presidential Inaugural Addresses; major party nomination acceptance speeches; presidential ceremonial speeches; major nominee concession speeches; Farewell Addresses; and now even presidential candidates’ spouse’s address. So how do we choose? After all, how might we justify including the vice presidential nomination acceptance speech of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and not including the keynote address of Ann Richards at the Democratic National Convention in 1988? On what basis might we include a commencement address by Michelle Obama in Chicago, but exclude one by Barbara Bush at Wellesley or one by Tom Brokaw at Santa Fe? Our list of examples of American rhetorical excellence could easily become quite lengthy. Maybe by simply raising these questions the point is made that oratory has always been such an integral part of our political and cultural history.

In our history there have been millions upon millions of publicly uttered words by innumerable officials, educators, preachers, attorneys, campaigners, corporate and business leaders, labor leaders, trainers, reformers, satirists, and entertainers that have energized truth and challenged our thinking by inspiring, explaining, lecturing, preaching, advocating, uplifting, rallying, leading, challenging, and ennobling fellow Americans through the extraordinary event of the spoken word to a live audience—all molding and transforming in some way the national character of the past twenty-four decades, though we dare not dismiss the colonial rhetorical legacy!

Each of us will have personal favorites. You, as reader, can decide which addresses are the most important and which are least important. And you will have your reasons for your selections. We will not all concur in our listings, any more than we could agree on some ranking of the nation’s best musical compositions, though typically there is much to be learned from most of our selections.

While we are simply including excerpts of the addresses here, some of these speeches are worth reading in their entirety and not just remembered by way of sound bites on special occasions. It is valuable to know what King’s Dream actually entailed or what the Founding Fathers were actually thinking and hoping some four score and seven years prior to Lincoln’s appearance at the Gettysburg battlefield and cemetery. Once past the first ten addresses, the speeches are listed generally in chronological order, thus enabling the reader to capture a flow of American history through different eras. I have had students in mind as this book is written, thus I have attempted a contemporary application of each of the 101 speeches delivered. I have attempted to hold the 101 essays to around a thousand words each with a uniform format, and sometimes there has been space to include an interesting fact or two.

Ceremonial Speaking in the American Culture

In my top ten listing there is tacit understanding of the significant role of ceremonial speaking within the American democracy, not unlike its role in all other kinds of advanced societies and organizations. Seems that the ceremonial speaking occasion, what Aristotle called epideictic speaking, provides the best context for the highest levels of eloquence. Ceremonial speaking has also been called by other titles, too, such as panegyric, demonstrative, or declamation.

Obviously, ceremonial speaking has been around for centuries, case in point being the funeral oration of Pericles in extolling the fallen sons of a glorious ancient Greece. (Incidentally, we have no text of the great Greek speeches, but depend on the oratorical reconstruction of Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War for any textual accuracy.) Aristotle explained the persuasive goal of epideictic speaking to be establishing honor or shame, that is, some leader or action or institution is to be praised or to be reviled. We know this category of speaking quite well, as we might recall the old-fashioned Fourth of July speeches and other national holiday orations. (Incidentally, the city of Boston declared that the Boston Massacre would be commemorated annually with speeches on the meaning of that unfortunate incident as it was considered to have national importance; in 1783 the city of Boston declared the Boston Massacre Address would be replaced by commemoration of Independence Day in which there would be a keynote address.)

Ceremonial speaking is not simply a tactic to fill time between musical numbers and introductions during special occasions. For this reason, four of the top ten speeches discussed here are ceremonial, beginning with Martin Luther King’s eloquent speech at the March on Washington in August 1963. For decades before King’s address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was considered the greatest speech in American history, and the latter was often required by school teachers to be memorized and recited by young students in the American classroom. One might argue that these and other such addresses constitute sacred texts in the canon of Scriptures for American civil religion.

Is there ever a sense in which silence can be rhetorical? Well, silence alone cannot be considered rhetoric any more than instrumental music alone could be considered rhetoric. Yet one rhetorical strategy is the pregnant pause, a meaningful pausing somewhere in the oration to allow pathos, or emotion, to have its impact on an audience. And silence can, on certain speaking occasions, be more meaningful than words. This topic gives me the opportunity to cite an excerpt from a lengthy speech by James A. Garfield at the first Memorial Day ceremony. On May 30, 1868, Garfield was a Republican congressman and a former Civil War general at the time and eventually was slated to be elected president of the U. S. Addressing an audience of several thousand at Arlington National Cemetery on what was then called Decoration Day, Garfield eloquently declared: If silence is ever golden, it must be beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem the music of which can never be sung. Garfield was an effective speaker, but his assassination early in his term of office robbed him of any opportunity to deliver other stirring orations and establish any place among the nation’s great speakers.

The Nation’s Most Prolific Ceremonial Speaker

Daniel Webster, it might be argued, was the most profound and eloquent ceremonial speaker in our nation’s history. As a speaker, of course, Webster must be praised most for his eloquent defense of the Union and for his interpretation of the Constitution in the great debate in the Senate during the early national period. Yet there were a number of ceremonial speeches he delivered that were widely circulated in print and drawn upon by public school teachers and students alike: First Settlement of New England (December 22, 1820) marked the bicentennial of the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth; The Bunker Hill Monument, delivered open air (June 17, 1725), the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill before an audience of almost 100,000; and Adams and Jefferson (August 2, 1826), delivered at Boston’s famed Faneuil Hall and celebrating the lives of two remarkable Founding Fathers who died on the same day—July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

There were other remarkable Websterian special occasion orations, but they are cited here for the significance of such speaking: First, ceremonial speaking, gives a nation what is greatly needed—heroes, myths, symbols, shibboleths, and catch-phrases. These heroes may seem bigger than life, though only four of them are etched in stone at Mount Rushmore. And how often have we heard the phrases Four score and seven years ago or I have a dream? Second, when ceremonial speaking embraces greater truth and noble ideals, future national leaders can be instructed and inspired. In Webster’s Bunker Hill Address, for example, the speaker emphasized that the American political system was quite young and still remained an experiment, and some of his sentences seem to lie behind Lincoln’s eloquence that was given voice at Gettysburg forty-three years later. We might note the continuity in themes throughout the decades in forty-four presidential Inaugural Addresses.

Let us take it as a given that the hundreds of names mentioned in this book as political, legislative, and reform communicators were sincere in their messages. Let us assume they sought to advance the cause of truth and justice as they understood that cause. They uttered words that enraged, delighted, inspired, chastened, reassured, and comforted Americans in days gone by. Sure, a few were misguided and perhaps misinformed or uninformed. Nonetheless, we may believe that their rhetorical efforts aimed to inspire men and women to learn the truth, be better citizens and, subsequently, to make this land a better nation and society.

Yes, there were some speakers and writers who used their gifts and skills as forces to fight and resist change and reform, who used eloquence in defense of the morally indefensible, or who simply used those skills in defense of the status quo. Those communicators who used fallacious reasoning or sacred texts to defend the peculiar institution of slavery serve as a clear example of speakers on the wrong side of history. Yet there is no need to deny their influence or, in most cases, even question their sincerity. We will discuss some of them in a later chapter, The Hall of Shame.

Thankfully, there were other communicators who grasped the power of an idea whose time had come, whose eloquence advanced worthy causes on the right side of history. Those who most influenced our history and culture in the right direction were men and women of action who were also men and women of words, advocates who used words as instruments of power to stir people to think and then to act for a cause greater than themselves. As you read excerpts of some of their speeches, let your imagination place you in the middle of the audience so that you can feel the impact of the occasion and those words when first uttered and then imagine how those all around you may have been stirred and impelled to conviction and action!

How This Book Originated

Risking to sound like an old man, ahem!, perhaps the beginning point for this study would have been a course in the history and criticism of American public address in the 1960s, as taught by Fred Walker, taken as a religion and speech major at Lipscomb University (then known as David Lipscomb College) in Nashville, Tennessee. My main interest at that point was pulpit oratory, or preaching, but the class introduced to me some of the nation’s better-known speakers. As a text, we used A. Craig Baird’s, American Public Addresses, 1740–1952 (McGraw-Hill, 1956), and the speakers represented ran chronologically from Jonathan Edwards to Adlai Stevenson. Concerned about us students in homiletics not being overly exposed to biblical modernism, Brother Walker, as we called him, asked us to substitute Henry Ward Beecher’s Liverpool Address for Beecher’s sermon included in the volume entitled The Two Revelations. Yet, Beecher fascinated me. All students in the class were required to select a speaker for a term project, presented in writing and orally for the class, and, as a ministry major, I selected Beecher. (In those days, alas, we had no PowerPoint presentation capability and rarely even attempted to use an overhead projector.)

After graduation I accepted a pulpit position in the Detroit metropolitan area. Soon encountering the sobering realities of a preaching minister and pastor, I decided to begin graduate studies in speech communication at Wayne State University. Before even completing my Masters, I began to enjoy the study of American history in general, and American public address specifically; consequently, I took as many courses in that area that were available. My major advisor was Professor George V. Bohman. His specialty was colonial public address and his dissertation on that subject, submitted for his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, consumed some two thousand pages; he justifiably called the dissertation his magnum opus.

Dr. Bohman taught the courses in American public address. He seemed a wealth of knowledge on the subject and he knew a lot of trivia in that field, much of which might wind up as identification questions on his challenging exams. He could speak first-hand of a number of noted speakers in his time, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, though he sometimes told stories about the radio priest he called Twelve Mile Charlie, who was Fr. Charles Coughlin, who pastored a parish in Royal Oak, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit off Woodward Avenue at Twelve Mile Road. I assumed a directed study for credit under Dr. Bohman by compiling an annotated bibliography, some fifty or so pages, for the study of American public address, and the chairman was quite pleased and gave my work a limited, private publication. After returning to Nashville and beginning my full-time professorship, Dr. Bohman mailed me his doctoral dissertation (only hard copies were available then) and asked me to edit the work and reduce it to around three hundred pages so that it would be appealing as a single volume. At the time, I felt his request was one more assignment than I should have been given, but I was honored that