[Detail] Hezekiah J. Crumpton and Washington B. Crumpton.
Public Oration
"Two Thousand Men Went Mad." Illustration from The Leopard's Spots.
Several of the documents in the collection are transcriptions of speeches. As an important traditional vehicle for conveying ideas, public oratory, often accompanied by dramatic bombast and colorful exaggeration, was popular throughout the country during the period. Many of the speeches in the collection were delivered before clubs ranging in character from abolitionist societies to reunited Confederate military companies.
A search on address yields Howard Melancthon Hamill's The Old South: A Monograph, which is more or less a transcription of a prepared lecture given before the students of Georgia's Emory College. It also yields Rebecca Latimer Felton's speech to the Georgia Legislature's women's clubs, which is excerpted in her autobiography, Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth.
- Why might a group be interested in a written copy of a speech?
- What rhetorical devices would help to adapt a speech to print?
- How is the reading of a speech affected by its presentation within
an autobiography of its author?
Hezekiah J. Crumpton and Washington
B. Crumption.Illustration from The Adventures of Two Alabama Boys.
In almost every instance, lectures grew from life stories that were felt to hold merit for others. In the second volume of The Adventures of Two Alabama Boys, accessible through a search on lectures, Washington, the younger Crumpton boy, relates the series of events that led him to turn his story into a public lecture for the Baptist Young People's Union of Sterling, Kentucky. Delivered under the title "The Original Tramp, or How a Boy Got Through the Lines to the Confederacy," Crumpton opened his speech:
I once heard a blind man sing - I remember one line of the chorus: "A BOY'S BEST FRIEND IS HIS MOTHER." How true is that and the poor boy doesn't realize it until the mother is taken from him. After she is gone out of the home, the world is never again what it was to him. My home was broken up by the death of my mother when I was only thirteen. I became a wanderer.
Page 75, The Adventures of Two Alabama Boys
- Why might Crumpton have begun his speech with a quotation?
- How is this passage from Crumpton's speech suited to his audience?
- What elements of delivery cannot be conveyed on the printed page?
- What are some famous speeches? What makes them memorable?
