In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

SENATOR ROBERT TORRICELLI is a member of the Governmental Affairs Committee, Judiciary Committee, Rules Committee, and Foreign Relations Committee. He writes all of his own speeches.


ANDREW CARROLL is the editor of the bestselling Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters, and the founder of The Legacy Project, a national effort to seek out and preserve historically significant correspondence by Americans from all walks of life.


SENATOR ROBERT TORRICELLI is a member of the Governmental Affairs Committee, Judiciary Committee, Rules Committee, and Foreign Relations Committee. He writes all of his own speeches.

ANDREW CARROLL is the editor of the bestselling Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters, and the founder of The Legacy Project, a national effort to seek out and preserve historically significant correspondence by Americans from all walks of life.

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Excerpt

1900-1909

Tonight when the clock strikes twelve, the presentcentury will have come to an end. We look back upon it as acycle of time within which the achievements in science and in civilizationare not less than marvelous. The advance of the human raceduring the past hundred years has not been equaled by the progress ofman within any of the preceding ages. The possibilities of the future formankind are the subjects of hope and imagination....

    On this occasion, which is one of solemnity, I express the earnestwish that the rights of the individual man shall continue to be regardedas sacred, and that the crowning glory of the coming century shall bethe lifting up of the burdens of the poor, the annihilation of all miseryand wrong, and that the peace and goodwill which the angels proclaimedshall rest on the contending nations as the snowflakes uponthe land.

?Randolph Guggenheimer
New York Board of Education
December 31, 1899

Don P. Halsey Extols the Virtues of Great Oratory.

"We frequently hear it said," Virginia State Senator Don P. Halsey ruefully observed,"that the age of great orators is past." But Halsey was unwilling to accept this, and, ina speech he gave throughout the late 1890s and early 1900s, he celebrated the enduringart of oratory and its enormous power to influence and inspire humanity.

Oratory is an abiding faculty in mankind, and the supply never greatly exceedsor falls short of the demand. It may just be at its ebb, but it has been soa hundred times before. It has also been at the flood again as often, and sosurely as prosperity always follows adversity, so truly will a temporary decadencebe followed by a revival in oratory. History shows us that the greatorators have appeared, and the great orations have been delivered, in therevolutionary periods. Great orators have always accompanied great epochs,and whenever there have been wrongs to right, whenever there has beentruth to spread, whenever there has been the vital spark of independence tokindle into flames of mountain height, then there have been heard the voicesof orators, clearing the way and blazing the path for the onward march ofright and justice....

    As a matter of fact, the men who exercise the most influence today arenot the millionaires of whom we hear so much?not the Rockefellers andGoulds and Morgans who dominate the realm of finance, not the meremoney grubbers who inhabit the streets called Lombard and Wall. They havea large part in the world's affairs, it is true, but above and beyond them ininfluence and in power are the statesmen, the preachers, the thinkers, thephilosophers, whose eloquence is molding public opinion?that great silentforce which is under the world, and which is more powerful to move and upliftit than the lever of Archimedes. These are the men who are shaping theworld's future history, and no greater instrumentality is at their commandthan the queenly art of oratory.

    No, my friends, there is no such thing as "decadence of oratory." Thereare as many great orators living today as have ever existed at any period of theworld's history. They may not be known, having never had the opportunityor the occasion to show their powers, but they live, and the world will knowit if the occasion arises. The art of oratory is not in decadence. It survives andwill survive as long as time shall endure. Humanity does not change, and theinfluences which have acted upon it from the beginning will continue to actupon it to the end.

    This is not the first time that men have claimed oratory to be a thing ofthe past. As far back as the days of old Rome, Tacitus lamented that the greatorators were all gone and that oratory had declined, and yet we have everseen that, when occasion called it forth, it is followed in as pure and strong astream as in the days of Cicero himself. Thus it will ever be. As our needs, soshall be our strength. And if ever the time shall come when oppression shallfind a place in our land?when the rights of the people shall be troddendown, when patriotism shall need to be awakened to destroy tyrants, or whenour social fabric shall become rotten and need renewal?then no one needever fear that there will not arise great men who, by the power of oratorygreater perhaps than the world has ever known before, will arouse the peopleto a sense of their dangers and lead the van in the upward march of civilization.Thus may it be.

    Through all the changes that are to come as "the great world goes spinningdown the ringing grooves of change," may the time never come whenthe voices of orators shall be silenced in the councils of our people, or ceaseto mingle with the chime of the Sabbath bells when men are gathered togetherto worship God; but on, on to the time when the shining fabric of ouruniverse shall crumble into unmeaning chaos and take itself where "oblivionbroods and memory forgets"; on, on, until the darkness shall come down overall like "the pall of a past world," the stars wander darkling in eternal space,rayless and pathless, and the icy earth like a "lump of death," a "chaos of hardclay," wings "blind and blackening in the moonless air," may the power of oratorysurvive and wield its mighty influence, consecrated to the cause of libertyand truth, and pointing the way to where the Angel of Progress, leaningover the far horizon of the infinite future, beckons mankind forward and upwardand onward forever.

* * *

Senator Albert J. Beveridge Defends America's Right to Subjugate
"Savage" Peoples and Foreign Governments
&
Senator George F. Hoar Denounces American "Imperialism."

Debate over American "imperialism" in 1902 grew so ferocious in the U.S. Congressthat a fistfight broke out on the Senate floor. Senator Tillman (D?SC) slugged his colleagueSenator McLaurin (D-SC) above the eye, and McLaurin responded by poppingTillman in the nose. At issue was America's annexation of the Philippines. Afterthe U.S. Navy defeated the Spanish fleet in 1898, President William McKinley orderedSpain to evacuate Cuba and surrender the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Ricoto the United States. Filipino natives rebelled, and American troops were sent in tosuppress the insurrection. Senator Albert J. Beveridge (R-IN) traveled to the Philippinesin 1899 and returned more determined than ever to promote the annexation ofthe country. On January 9, 1900, Beveridge stated his case in the Senate.

Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever?"territorybelonging to the United States," as the Constitution calls them.And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will notretreat from either. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. Wewill not renounce our part in the mission of our race: trustee, under God, ofthe civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work, nothowling our regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens, but with gratitudefor a task worthy of our strength, and thanksgiving to Almighty God that Hehas marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regenerationof the world....

    Mr. President, self-government and internal development have been thedominant notes of our first century; administration and the development ofother lands will be the dominant notes of our second century. And administrationis as high and holy a function as...