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ORATIONS

SELECTED AND ARRANGED

BY

JOHN R. HOWARD

66

EDITOR, BEST AMERICAN POEMS," "BEST AMERICAN
ESSAYS"; MANAGING EDITOR, "LIBRARY OF THE
WORLD'S BEST POETRY," ETC.

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1910,

BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

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E.S.

PREFACE

"THERE were giants in the earth in those days." What days? Whenever giants were needed. In the time of personal physical force, as in the ancient Hebrew tradition quoted, "the mighty men of old" were heroes of battle. In succeeding ages, every great national crisis seems to have developed the strong men for its needs. So has it been in America. The Colonial, Revolutionary, and Constructive periods had their giants; the day of expanding territory, commerce, and manufactures, with conflicting sectional interests and discussion of the mutual relations of the States and the Union, had its champions; and the culminating struggle over slavery, involving the very existence of the Union and the Constitution, bred its men of might, both civil and military, on both sides of the vast conflict.

America has always been prolific of orators, as is natural in a land of popular government, where frequent appeal to the people is requisite. Aside from the pulpit invocations to higher personal life, nothing is so important or so universally interesting as the public discussion of public policies. Thus it is that politics, in the larger sense the ethical

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