Download or read book Daniel Webster and the Oratory of Civil Religion written by Craig R. Smith and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Daniel Webster (1782-1852) embodied the golden age of oratory in America by mastering each of the major genres of public speaking of the time. Even today, many of his victories before the Supreme Court remain as precedents. Webster served in the House, the Senate, and twice as secretary of state. He was so famous as a political orator that his reply "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" to Senator Robert Hayne in a debate in 1830 was memorized by schoolboys and was on the lips of Northern soldiers as they charged forward in the Civil War. There would have been no 1850 Compromise without Webster, and without the Compromise, the Civil War might well have come earlier to an unprepared North. Webster was also the consummate ceremonial speaker. He advanced Whig virtues and solidified support for the Union through civil religion, creating a transcendent symbol for the nation that became a metaphor for the working constitutional framework. While several biographies have been written about Webster, none has focused on his oratorical talent. This study examines Webster's incredible career from the perspective of his great speeches and how they created a civil religion that moved citizens beyond loyalty and civic virtue to true romantic patriotism. Craig R. Smith places Webster's speeches in their historical context and then uses the tools of rhetorical criticism to analyze them. He demonstrates that Webster understood not only how rhetorical genres function to meet the expectations of the moment but also how they could be braided to produce long-lasting and literate discourse

Download or read book Imagining Deliberative Democracy in the Early American Republic written by Sandra M. Gustafson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deliberation, in recent years, has emerged as a form of civic engagement worth reclaiming. In this persuasive book, Sandra M. Gustafson combines historical literary analysis and political theory in order to demonstrate that current democratic practices of deliberation are rooted in the civic rhetoric that flourished in the early American republic. Though the U.S. Constitution made deliberation central to republican self-governance, the ethical emphasis on group deliberation often conflicted with the rhetorical focus on persuasive speech. From Alexis de Tocqueville’s ideas about the deliberative basis of American democracy through the works of Walt Whitman, John Dewey, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., Gustafson shows how writers and speakers have made the aesthetic and political possibilities of deliberation central to their autobiographies, manifestos, novels, and orations. Examining seven key writers from the early American republic—including James Fenimore Cooper, David Crockett, and Daniel Webster—whose works of deliberative imagination explored the intersections of style and democratic substance, Gustafson offers a mode of historical and textual analysis that displays the wide range of resources imaginative language can contribute to political life.

Download or read book Civil Religion Today written by Rhys H. Williams and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An important concept that scholars have used to help understand the relationship between religion and the American nation and polity has been 'civil religion.' A seminal article by Robert Bellah appeared just over fifty years ago. A multi-disciplinary array of scholars in this volume assess the concept's origins, history, and continued usefulness. In a period of great political polarization, considering whether there is hope for a unifying value and belief system seems more important than ever"--

Download or read book Cords of Affection written by Emily Pears and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2022-01-05 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History Emily Pears investigates efforts by the founding generation’s leadership to construct and strengthen political attachments in and among the citizens of the new republic. These emotional connections between citizens and their institutions were critical to the success of the new nation. The founders recognized that attachments do not form automatically and require constant tending. Emily Pears defines and develops a theory of political attachments based on an analysis of the approaches used in the founding era. In particular, she identifies three methods of political attachment—a utilitarian method, a cultural method, and a participatory method. Cords of Affection offers a comparative analysis of the theories and projects undertaken by a wide array of political leaders in the early republic and antebellum periods that exemplify each of the three methods. The work includes new historical analysis of the implementation of projects of nationalism and attachment, ranging from data on federal funding for internal improvements to analysis of Whig orations. In Cords of Affection Emily Pears offers lessons from history about the strengths, weaknesses, and pitfalls of various approaches to constructing national political attachments. Twenty-first century Americans’ attachments to their national government have waned. While there are multiple narratives of this decline, they all have the same core element: a citizenry unwilling to uphold the norms and institutions of American democracy in the face of challenge. When a demagogue or a populist movement or a foreign power threatens action that undermines American democracy, citizens will not come to its defense. Citizens cheer their own side, regardless of the means it uses, or they are simply apathetic to the role that institutions and institutional constraints play in keeping us all free and equal. At worst, Americans have come to regard their inherited constitutional foundations as unjust, biased, or ill-equipped for the modern world, and the notion of a shared political community as prejudicial and old-fashioned. They feel little sense of attachment to the American regime. By contrast the lessons in Cords of Affection allow us to consider a broader array of possible tools for the maintenance of today’s political attachments.

Download or read book Daniel Webster written by Harold D. Moser and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-03-30 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Webster captured the hearts and imagination of the American people of the first half of the nineteenth century. This bibliography on Webster brings together for the first time a comprehensive guide to the vast amount of literature written by and about this extraordinary man who dwarfed most of his contemporaries. This bibliography also provides references to materials on slavery, the tariff, banking, Indian affairs, legal and constitutional development, international affairs, western expansion, and economic and political developments in general. This bibliography is divided into fifteen sections and covers every aspect of Webster's distinguished career. Sections I and II deal primarily with Webster's writings and with those of his contemporaries. Sections III through X cover the literature dealing with his family background; childhood and education, his long service in the United States House of Representatives and in the Senate, his two stints as secretary of state, and his career in law. Section X provides guidance in locating materials relating to his associates. Finally, Sections XI through XV provide coverage of his personal life, his death, historiographical materials, and iconography.

Download or read book Southern Civil Religions written by Arthur Remillard and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Lost Cause gave white southerners a new collective identity anchored in the stories, symbols, and rituals of the defeated Confederacy. Historians have used the idea of civil religion to explain how this powerful memory gave the white South a unique sense of national meaning, purpose, and destiny. The civil religious perspectives of everyone else, meanwhile, have gone unnoticed. Arthur Remillard fills this void by investigating the civil religious discourses of a wide array of people and groups--blacks and whites, men and women, northerners and southerners, Democrats and Republicans, as well as Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Focusing on the Wiregrass Gulf South region--an area covering north Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama--Remillard argues that the Lost Cause was but one civil religious topic among many. Even within the white majority, civil religious language influenced a range of issues, such as progress, race, gender, and religious tolerance. Moreover, minority groups developed sacred values and beliefs that competed for space in the civil religious landscape.

Download or read book Indivisible written by Joel Richard Paul and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-10-25 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of how Daniel Webster popularized the ideals of American nationalism that helped forge our nation’s identity and inspire Abraham Lincoln to preserve the Union When the United States was founded in 1776, its citizens didn’t think of themselves as “Americans.” They were New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians. It was decades later that the seeds of American nationalism—identifying with one’s own nation and supporting its broader interests—began to take root. But what kind of nationalism should Americans embrace? The state-focused and racist nationalism of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson? Or the belief that the U.S. Constitution made all Americans one nation, indivisible, which Daniel Webster and others espoused? In Indivisible, historian and law professor Joel Richard Paul tells the fascinating story of how Webster, a young New Hampshire attorney turned politician, rose to national prominence through his powerful oratory and unwavering belief in the United States and captured the national imagination. In his speeches, on the floors of the House and Senate, in court, and as Secretary of State, Webster argued that the Constitution was not a compact made by states but an expression of the will of all Americans. As the greatest orator of his age, Webster saw his speeches and writings published widely, and his stirring rhetoric convinced Americans to see themselves differently, as a nation bound together by a government of laws, not parochial interests. As these ideas took root, they influenced future leaders, among them Abraham Lincoln, who drew on them to hold the nation together during the Civil War. As he did in Without Precedent and Unlikely Allies, Joel Richard Paul has written in Indivisible both a compelling history and a fascinating account of one of the founders of our national perspective.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment written by Mark G. Spencer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 1257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first reference work on one of the key subjects in American history, filling an important gap in the literature, with over 500 original essays.

Download or read book The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment written by Mark G. Spencer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 1257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first reference work on one of the key subjects in American history, filling an important gap in the literature, with over 500 original essays.

Download or read book Rhetoric and Human Consciousness written by Craig R. Smith and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two decades, students and instructors have relied on award-winning author Craig Smith’s detailed description and analysis of rhetorical theories and the historical contexts for major thinkers who advanced them. He employs key themes from important philosophical schools in this well-researched chronicle of rhetoric and human consciousness. One is that rhetoric is a response to uncertainty. The modern philosophers, like the naturalists of ancient Greece and the Scholastics who preceded them, tried to end uncertainty by combining the discoveries of science and psychology with rationalism. Their aim was progress and a consensus among experts as to what truth is. However, where modernism proved ineffective, rhetoric was revived to fill the breach. Another significant theme is that different conceptions of human consciousness lead to different theories of rhetoric, and for every major school of thought, another school of thought forms in reaction. Classic and contemporary examples demonstrate the usefulness of rhetorical theory, especially its ability to inform and guide. By providing probes for rhetorical criticism, discussions also demonstrate that rhetorical criticism illustrates, verifies, and refines rhetorical theory. Thus, the synergistic relationship between theory and criticism in rhetoric is no different than in other arts: Theory informs practice; analysis of successful practice refines theory. Smith’s absorbing study has been expanded to include thorough treatments of rhetoric in the Romantic Era, feminist and queer theory, and historical context for the creation of rhetorical theory and its use in public address.

Download or read book The Lives of the Constitution written by Joseph Tartakovsky and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a fascinating blend of biography and history, Joseph Tartakovsky tells the epic and unexpected story of our Constitution through the eyes of ten extraordinary individuals—some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Tartakovsky brings to life their struggles over our supreme law from its origins in revolutionary America to the era of Obama and Trump. Sweeping from settings as diverse as Gold Rush California to the halls of Congress, and crowded with a vivid Dickensian cast, Tartakovsky shows how America’s unique constitutional culture grapples with questions like democracy, racial and sexual equality, free speech, economic liberty, and the role of government. Joining the ranks of other great American storytellers, Tartakovsky chronicles how Daniel Webster sought to avert the Civil War; how Alexis de Tocqueville misunderstood America; how Robert Jackson balanced liberty and order in the battle against Nazism and Communism; and how Antonin Scalia died warning Americans about the ever-growing reach of the Supreme Court. From the 1787 Philadelphia Convention to the clash over gay marriage, this is a grand tour through two centuries of constitutional history as never told before, and an education in the principles that sustain America in the most astonishing experiment in government ever undertaken.

Download or read book New Chapters in the History of Rhetoric written by Laurent Pernot and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-09-28 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers over forty papers by leading scholars in the field of the history of rhetoric. It illustrates the current trends of this new area of research and covers the Bible, Classical Antiquity, Medieval and Modern Europe, Chinese and Corean civilization, and the contemporary world. One major topic is Rhetoric and Religion.

Download or read book Skepticism and American Faith written by Christopher Grasso and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the dialogue of religious skepticism and faith shaped struggles over the place of religion in politics. It produced different visions of knowledge and education in an "enlightened" society. It fueled social reform in an era of economic transformation, territorial expansion, and social change. Ultimately, as Christopher Grasso argues in this definitive work, it molded the making and eventual unmaking of American nationalism. Religious skepticism has been rendered nearly invisible in American religious history, which often stresses the evangelicalism of the era or the "secularization" said to be happening behind people's backs, or assumes that skepticism was for intellectuals and ordinary people who stayed away from church were merely indifferent. Certainly the efforts of vocal "infidels" or "freethinkers" were dwarfed by the legions conducting religious revivals, creating missions and moral reform societies, distributing Bibles and Christian tracts, and building churches across the land. Even if few Americans publicly challenged Christian truth claims, many more quietly doubted, and religious skepticism touched--and in some cases transformed--many individual lives. Commentators considered religious doubt to be a persistent problem, because they believed that skeptical challenges to the grounds of faith--the Bible, the church, and personal experience--threatened the foundations of American society. Skepticism and American Faith examines the ways that Americans--ministers, merchants, and mystics; physicians, schoolteachers, and feminists; self-help writers, slaveholders, shoemakers, and soldiers--wrestled with faith and doubt as they lived their daily lives and tried to make sense of their world.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson written by Christopher Hanlon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-04 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most expansive collection of critical essays on Emerson to date, a survey that approaches Emerson from the vantages of climate change, racial justice, print culture, the digital humanities, the new religious studies, hemispheric American Studies, health humanities, and affect theory among other critical perspectives. Curated between a forward by editor Christopher Hanlon--who makes the case for a capacious and contemporary Emerson--and Cornel West--the activist-scholar whose influential work on Emerson merges with a career of advocacy for economic and racial justice?this collection assesses the history and state of Emerson scholarship while charting pathways for new work on this most essential American writer. Comprised of new works by leading figures in nineteenth-century Americanist literary studies, the volume suggests directions into underexamined facets of Emerson's writing, life, and reputation. From Emerson's engagements with energy infrastructure and the processes of extraction that undergirded the locomotives he rode and the energy economies he sometimes extolled; to the vicissitudes of age he experienced alongside the romantic tropes of youthful vigour he both re-circulated and re-tooled; to Emerson's poetry, both in its philosophical formulations and in its reflections of the material circumstances of nineteenth-century print culture; to Emerson's resonance beyond the United States, elsewhere in the western hemisphere; to the Black press and its refractions of Emersonian transcendentalism in the midst of ante- and post-bellum justice struggles; to the legacies of Emerson to be found in the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, and in the versions of ?Emerson? to be found in children's literature; to his often-fraught and often-fruitful engagements with reform movements of various sorts; to the prospects for digital processes of re-reading Emerson and his contemporaries' styles of textual production and engagement, The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a necessary resource for students, scholars, and general readers committed to the study of Emerson, transcendentalism, and current critical approaches to United States literature.

Download or read book American Statesmanship written by Joseph R. Fornieri and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 1004 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, much needed in our public discourse, examines some of the most significant political leaders in American history. With an eye on the elusive qualities of political greatness, this anthology considers the principles and practices of diverse political leaders who influenced the founding and development of the American experiment in self-government. Providing both breadth and depth, this work is a virtual “who’s who” from the founding to modern times. From George Washington to Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to FDR and Ronald Reagan, the book’s twenty-six chapters are thematically organized to include a brief biography of each subject, his or her historical context, and the core principles and policies that led to political success or failure. A final chapter considers the rhetorical legacy of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Nearly all readers agree that statesmanship makes a crucial difference in the life of a nation and its example is sorely needed in America today. These concise portraits will appeal to experts as well as history buffs. The volume is ideal for leadership and political science classroom use in conjunction with primary sources. Contributors: Kenneth L. Deutsch, Gary L. Gregg II, David Tucker, Sean D. Sutton, Bruce P. Frohnen, Stephanie P. Newbold, Phillip G. Henderson, Michael P. Federici, Troy L. Kickler, Johnathan O’Neill, H. Lee Cheek, Jr., Carey Roberts, Hans Schmeisser, Joseph R. Fornieri, Peter C. Myers, Emily Krichbaum, Natalie Taylor, Jean M. Yarbrough, Christopher Burkett, Will Morrisey, Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, Patrick J. Garrity, Giorgi Areshidze, William J. Atto, David B. Frisk, Mark Blitz, Jeffrey Crouch, and Mark J. Rozell.

Download or read book A Visitation of God written by Sean A. Scott and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Confined geographically to: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa." (p. 5).

Download or read book The Frederick Douglass Papers written by Frederick Douglass and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The journalism and personal writings of the great American abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass Launching the fourth series of The Frederick Douglass Papers, designed to introduce readers to the broadest range of Frederick Douglass's writing, this volume contains sixty-seven pieces by Douglass, including articles written for North American Review and the New York Independent, as well as unpublished poems, book transcriptions, and travel diaries. Spanning from the 1840s to the 1890s, the documents reproduced in this volume demonstrate how Douglass's writing evolved over the five decades of his public life. Where his writing for publication was concerned mostly with antislavery advocacy, his unpublished works give readers a glimpse into his religious and personal reflections. The writings are organized chronologically and accompanied by annotations offering biographical information as well as explanations of events mentioned and literary or historical allusions.