The Book That Inspired Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and an Entire Generation
By Nancy Spannaus
Oct. 7, 2024—During my recent years of study of our nation’s fight against slavery and for the American System, I was interested to learn that both the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln had found inspiration in the same book. That volume was The Columbian Orator, a collection of 84 different speeches, poems, or plays (or excerpts thereof) published by educator Caleb Bingham in 1797.
Upon exploration, I learned that The Columbian Orator was one of the most popular books of the early 19th century, used to teach young school boys the art of speaking. It was reprinted 23 times, and is estimated to have circulated in 200,000 copies. But these examples of eloquence were not to be divorced from the content of the orations, which were chosen by Bingham to represent what he considered sterling examples of the exposition of republican virtue.
Inspired, in part, by the recent reading of Jeffrey Rosen’s book on The Pursuit of Happiness, which highlights the role of Classical writings on virtue in the thought of the Founding Fathers, I have just finished reading The Columbian Orator. I found the excerpts to be of varying quality, and sometimes missing the essential context for the documents. Yet, the importance of this book in shaping the minds of two of our greatest statesmen (and perhaps others unknown) has led me to share some of what I have learned.
Douglass’ Testimony
According to his account in his first autobiography, Frederick Douglass (then Bailey) first came across The Columbian Orator at the age of 13 (1830), when he was enslaved in Baltimore. When playing with young white boys his age, he found them practicing recitations of some of the speeches, and upon enquiry, learned of the book. Having already determined that education – especially learning to read – was the key to liberation of the enslaved, young Douglass had to get the book for himself. He got possession by scraping together fifty cents through his work and purchasing it. He called it his “rich treasure.”
From that time forward, Douglass reports, he spent as much time as he could reading the book – simultaneously increasing his ability to read, to speak, and to become familiar with the ideas and arguments which were being presented. Most striking to him was a piece entitled “Dialogue Between a Master and Slave,” in which the master engages in a sustained argument with a slave who has been caught after running away. Why should you try to escape, the master asks. After all, I’ve been kind to you, fed you well, and will care for you in your old age.
Given the rare opportunity to argue on his own behalf, the slave eloquently presses the case for his freedom. You treat me well the same way, and for the same reason, you treat your cattle well, he says. I am a man, and I deserve to be free.
The turning point comes when the master asks: “Is it impossible, then, to hold you by any ties but those of constraint and severity?” The slave replies: “It is impossible to make one, who has felt the value of freedom, acquiesce in being a slave.” Stirred by an innate sense of morality, the master then grants him his freedom.
Douglass comments: “It is scarcely necessary to say, that a dialogue, with such an origin, and such an ending –read when the fact of my being a slave was a constant burden of grief — powerfully affected me; and I could not help feeling that the day might come, when the well-directed answers made by the slave to the master, in this instance, would find their counterpart in myself.”
Lincoln’s Experience
Ironically, the 21-year-old Abraham Lincoln was becoming acquainted with The Columbian Orator at about the same time. While I don’t have Lincoln’s direct testimony to its effect, he is known to have studied the book for the purpose of improving his public speaking.
In this regard, Lincoln likely gave special attention to the opening essay about the art of elocution, which emphasizes the noble purposes of that practice. For example, in its opening essay, Bingham writes:
To cultivate eloquence, then, is to improve the noblest faculties of our nature, the richest talents with which we are intrusted. A more convincing proof of the dignity and importance of our subject need not, cannot be advanced.
The benevolent design and the beneficial effects of eloquence, evince its great superiority over every other art, which ever exercised the ingenuity of man. To instruct, to persuade, to please; these are its objects.
To scatter the clouds of ignorance and error from the atmosphere of reason; to remove the film of prejudice from the mental eye; and thus to irradiate the benighted mind with the cheering beams of truth, is at once the business and the glory of eloquence.
To promote the innocent and refined pleasures of the fancy and intellect; to strip the monster vice of all his borrowed charms, and expose to view his native deformity; to display the resistless attractions of virtue; and, in one word, to rouse to action all the latent energies of man, in the proper and ardent pursuit of the great end of his existence, is the orator’s pleasing, benevolent, sublime employment.
Bingham goes on to note that while eloquence can be abused, its true purpose is to convince his hearers of the truth, addressing the understanding before engaging the passions. The demagogue and the liar are thus ruled out.
While none of Lincoln’s most quoted poets – Shakespeare and Robert Burns – have excerpts in this book, there is no question that The Columbian Orator played a role in his developing Lincoln’s effective public speaking.
The Republican Content
As an avowed abolitionist and social reformer himself, author Caleb Bingham chose his selections to conform to his view of the importance of republican virtue, freedom, and morality. Religious poems are scattered throughout, as well as a sermon or two. Most of these are unattributed to any particular author, and intended to stand on their own merit.
From the Greek Classical period, Bingham chooses a selection from the Apology of Socrates – the philosopher’s argument to the Athenian jury that he will not abandon his life’s work of urging youth to follow the course of virtue, rather than pursuing riches, simply in order to save his life. As a result, of course, Socrates is condemned to death for allegedly “corrupting the youth.” His is a powerful argument, meant to inspire citizens to fight for maintaining honor and virtue at all cost.
From the Romans, Bingham quotes primarily from orations by Cato and Cicero, in the struggles which they waged against the destruction of the Roman republic.[1]
From the political struggles of his own time, around the Revolution, Bingham chooses numerous speeches by British parliamentarians who defended the Americans, celebrations of the achievements of the Revolution, and encomiums to statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin. A section of Washington’s Farewell Address is printed – although not the part warning his fellow citizens of the dangers of faction and sectarianism.
Also included are little dialogues exposing, or mocking, the hypocrisy, greed, and pomposity that Bingham clearly sees infecting the young nation, including one with a Native American. Bingham also includes a dialogue between David and Goliath – a not-so-subtle evocation of his country’s successful war against the British Empire. There is also a second dialogue/drama about freeing slaves, showing a Barbary potentate liberating European captives, in gratitude for their father’s previous aid in freeing him from Venetian captivity.
The Relevance Today
In his synopsis of The Columbian Orator, which he reprinted in 1998, historian David W. Blight stated that there was a resurgence of interest in the art of debating and oratory in America. Other than contests in the Black community on declaiming famous speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass, I am unaware of such a resurgence. However, I do think that our fellow citizens would do themselves and their republic a favor by reading this book, and thinking about its role in shaping the thinking of our early generations.
The first thing that will probably strike you is the difficulty of the language. Many of the excerpts will challenge your vocabulary and your attention span – but for a good purpose! Should we not be familiar with the thinking of those statesmen who shaped our world today? Should we as citizens, not take responsibility for mastering the ideas we need to build a functioning republic?
Douglass and Lincoln both thought so. They refused to “dumb down” their language or ideas in presenting their arguments against tyranny and slavery. They were committed to improving their minds in order to improve society—and they thought their fellow-citizens should do so as well.
The Columbian Orator stretches the mind of the reader, forcing him or her to imagine, to explore historical events, even confront false assumptions. It sometimes does so with humor, other times with moralizing or drama. It is a quintessentially republican document, crafted to bring the essential virtues mankind needs to form a free and thriving society to the proverbial “common man.”
Could someone perhaps be inspired to create an equivalent for our time?
[1] As a student in a classical high school, where Latin was required, I became well acquainted with Ciceronian oratory, which I do consider to be of a high quality.
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Caleb Bingham, Cicero, Frederick Douglass, Nancy Spannaus, oratory, public speaking, slavery