The American Reader: Words That Moved a NationThe American Reader is a stirring and memorable anthology that captures the many facets of American culture and history in prose and verse. The 200 poems, speeches, songs, essays, letters, and documents were chosen both for their readability and for their significance. These are the words that have inspired, enraged, delighted, chastened, and comforted Americans in days gone by. Gathered here are the writings that illuminate -- with wit, eloquence, and sometimes sharp words -- significant aspects of national conciousness. They reflect the part that all Americans -- black and white, native born and immigrant, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American, poor and wealthy -- have played in creating the nation's character. |
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Had I believed that to be law, I should not have given the court the trouble of
hearing anything that I could say in this cause.... There is heresy in law as well as
in religion, and both have changed very much; and we well know that it is not two
...
But I wish it might be considered at the same time how often it has happened that
the abuse of power has been the primary cause of these evils, and that it was the
injustice and oppression of these great men which has commonly brought them ...
It is the best cause ; it is the cause of liberty ; and I make no doubt but your upright
conduct , this day , will not only entitle you to the love and esteem of your fellow
citizen , but every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and ...
And I take this opportunity to declare that, whether under a fee or not (for in such
a cause as this I despise a fee), I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers
and faculties God has given me all such instruments of slavery, on the one hand,
...
Man has certainly an exalted soul ; and the same principle in human nature —
that aspiring , noble principle founded in benevolence , and cherished by
knowledge ; I mean the love of power , which has been so often the cause of
slavery ...