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The Active Virtue of the Columbian Orator

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The Active Virtue of the Columbian Orator Memorandaand Documents THE ACTIVE VIRTUE OF THE COLUMBIAN ORATOR GRANVILLE GANTER Na well-knownpassage describinghis earlyeducation, Frederick Douglass identifiesa book he readwhile still a slavein Baltimore. The text,The ColumbianOrator (1797), by Caleb Bingham,enabled Douglass,he said, "to uttermy thoughts and to meet the arguments broughtforward to sustainslavery."' The appeal of Bingham'sOrator is not immediatelyobvious to the modern reader. Containing speechesfrom Greek, Roman, British, French, and Americanpolitical history,dramatic excerpts and adaptations,and severalmillennially in- flectedsermons and religiousselections, the Oratorseems a rather unremarkablevehicle of piety,patriotism, and Enlightenedrepubli- canism.Even its stronganti-slavery sentiments can be foundin other Englishand Americanschoolbooks composed prior to 1820.2 Butwith 200,000 copies sold by 1832, Bingham'sColumbian Orator was a standard,and widelyimitated, text in Americansecondary school edu- cationfrom the late 1790s to 1820.3Because a numberof othertexts werepatterned on theColumbian Orator, it has been treatedas a typ- ical educationalanthology for its era, but by encouraginggenerations The authoris gratefulto the GraduateCenter of the City University of New Yorkfor a dissertationyear fellowship that provided funds for the research on whichthis essay is based. 'FrederickDouglass, Narrativeof the Life of FrederickDouglass, in The Classic Slave Narratives,ed. HenryLouis Gates (New York:Mentor, 1987), p. 279. 2See Ruth Elson, Guardiansof Tradition(Lincoln: Universityof NebraskaPress, 1964),pp. 65-90. 3GeorgeLittlefield, Early Schoolsand School-booksof New England(Boston: Club of Odd Volumes,1904), p. 156. Sales figuresfor Bingham's texts are probablylow. Ac- cordingto WilliamFowle's 1858 "Memoirof Caleb Bingham,"the anthologist cared lit- tle forbusiness and sold permissionto publishrather than take royalty fees (American Journalof Education 10 [September1858]: 325-49). Bingham'smain competition was LindleyMurray's English Reader series, which may have sold one or twomillion in the UnitedStates (see Rollo Lyman,English Grammar in AmericanSchools before 1850 [Washington,D.C.: Departmentof the Interior,Bureau of Education,1921], p. 80). An earliertext by Bingham,The AmericanPreceptor, sold 640,000copies by 1832 (Little- field,Early Schoolsand School-books,p. 156). 463 This content downloaded from 149.68.13.33 on Fri, 2 May 2014 11:43:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 464 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY of Americanstudents, including not onlyDouglass but RalphWaldo Emersonand HarrietBeecher Stowe, to speakand writein a tradition ofnonconformist activism, it had a poweruniquely its own.4 The secondaryschool anthology of the earlynational period was as mucha conductmanual as itwas a literaryprimer. The firstAmerican reader,Noah Webster's1785 An AmericanSelection, drew not only fromEnglish literaryanthologies like Robert Dodsley's Preceptor (1748) but fromEnglish conduct manuals such as The YoungGentle- man and Lady's Monitor.5As vehiclesfor general socialization, school readersemphasized elocution as a meansof disciplineand control,a classic union of physical deportmentand linguisticexpression. Whethercalled a "selection,""preceptor," "assistant," "mentor," or "orator,"the textsuniversally declared their intent to trainstudents in the waysof virtue. The particulartype of virtue the anthologiesillus- trated,however, as well as the linguisticand socialdisciplines they ex- acted,differed considerably from text to text. As historiansof the late eighteenthcentury have recentlyshown, a definitionof virtuewas at the centerof a strugglebetween classical republicanpolitical thought and liberaleconomic theory." The classi- 4Emersondemonstrates his familiaritywith the Oratorby quotingfrom one of its originalpoems in a letterto a friend;see The Lettersof Ralph Waldo Emerson,ed. Ralph Rusk, 6 vols. (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1939), 1:17. Harriet Beecher Stowe reportsthat the Oratorwas a schoolbookof her Litchfieldyouth in PoganucPeople (Hartford, Conn.: Stowe-DayFoundation, 1987), p. 151. "Webster'sAn AmericanSelection of Lessons in Readingand Speaking,first pub- lishedas part3 of his GrammaticalInstitute, had manyeighteenth-century variants but fourbasic versionsprinted between 1785 and 1795. Unlessotherwise noted, I referto theversion Webster issued to competewith Bingham: the 1795 Hartfordedition. "CGordonWood's discussionof virtuein The Creationof the AmericanRepublic (Chapel Hill: Universityof NorthCarolina Press, 1969) promptedfurther, extensive analysis.See J. G. A. Pocock,Virtue, Commerce and History(New York:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1985); Isaac Kramnick,"Republican Revisionism Revisted," American HistoricalReview 87 (June1982): 629-64, and "The Great NationalDiscussion: The Discourse of Politicsin 1787," Williamand Mary Quarterly45 (January1988), pp. 3-32; Lance Banning,"Some Second Thoughtson Virtueand the Course of Revolu- tionaryThinking," in ConceptualChange and the Constitution,ed. Terence Hall and J. G. A. Pocock (Lawrence: UniversityPress of Kansas, 1988), pp. 194-212; Jack Greene,Imperatives, Behaviors and Identities(Charlottesville: University Press of Vir- ginia,1992); JoyceAppleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order(New York:New York UniversityPress, 1984); RobertShalhope, "Republicanism and EarlyAmerican Histori- ography,"William and MaryQuarterly 39 (1982): 334-56; RowlandBertoff, "Indepen- dence and Attachment,Virtue and Interest:From RepublicanCitizen to Free Enter- priser, 1787-1837," in UprootedAmericans, ed. Richard Bushman (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1979), pp. 97-124; RuthBloch, "The GenderedMeanings of Virtuein RevolutionaryAmerica," Signs 13 (1987): 37-58; and Wood's laterThe Radi- calismof theAmerican Revolution (New York:Vintage, 1993). My accountof the syn- thesisof the republicanand manneredvirtues draws heavily from Pocock and Bloch. This content downloaded from 149.68.13.33 on Fri, 2 May 2014 11:43:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MEMORANDA AND DOCUMENTS 465 cal republicanview held virtueto be a disinterestedcivic duty prac- ticedby a "Romanpatriot, self defined in his civicsphere of action."7 Whilenot dismissing that interpretation, the commercialmiddle class began to associatewith it codes ofconduct such as thosedescribed in JosephAddison's Spectator. This expandedconcept, what mightbe called manneredvirtue, accumulated a varietyof stricturesconcern- ing work,social relations,and sexuality.Although the historiography variesaccording to socialgroup and context(e.g., in thenovel virtue is oftendefined as chastity),toward the end of the eighteenthcentury, evencivic virtue took on "mannered"connotations. Most earlyAmerican school anthologiescontained illustrations of bothcivic and manneredvirtue, but themajority tended to accentthe manneredvirtues. Webster, siding with the Federalistsin the after- mathof Shays's Rebellion, claimed in his 1787 editionof An American Selectionthat since republicanvirtue was virtuallymoribund in the new nation,the onlyway to controlself-interest and forestallsocial declinewas through"manners, which are the basis of government."8 Even as he celebratedthe radicaloratory of the Americanpatriots, Webstermaintained that virtue was foundin obedience,industry, and restraint.Many schoolbook writers of the nineteenth century followed Webster'slead.9 Bingham'sColumbian Orator, on the contrary,promoted an un- derstandingof virtuethat was informedby a traditionof Christian radicalism.Steeped in the New LightCongregationalism of his men- tor,Eleazar Wheelock,Bingham maintained that virtue was the per- sonal act of willthrough which people manifestedtheir communitar- 7Pocock,Virtue, Commerce and History,p. 69. 8Webster,American Selection, p. 214. By manners,Webster meant the austere Con- necticutmanners of his childhoodnot the Frenchifiedaffectations of "mannered"con- duct mostAmericans considered a signof corruption.See the satireof Chesterfield's French mannerismsin Webster's"Chesterfield and Cicero" dialogue. Paradoxically, however,in manyeditions of his Selection,Webster endorsed Chesterfield's maxims re- gardingbehavior. 9See, e.g., Milcah Moore's Miscellanies(Philadelphia: Joseph James, 1787); Donald Fraser'sYoung Gentleman and Lady'sAssistant (New York:Tho's Greenleaf,1791) and ColumbianMonitor (New York: Loudon and Brower,1794); JosephDana's A New AmericanSelection (Boston: Samuel Hall, 1792); Caleb Alexander'sIntroduction to and I. Speaking Writing(Boston: Thomas and E. T. Andrews,1794) ancdThe Young Gentlemanand Lady's Instructor(Boston: E. Larkinand L. Blake, 1797); and John Wood's Mentor(New York:John Buel, 1795). AlexanderThomas's Orator's Assistant (Worcester:I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews,1797) was an exceptionbut accordingto Charles Evans's AmericanBibliography (New York:P. Smith,1941-59), it was not reprinted. This content downloaded from 149.68.13.33 on Fri, 2 May 2014 11:43:33 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 466 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY ian impulses.'0Although also pursuinga republicancivic ideal, this in- carnationof virtuedid so withoutthe elitismso oftenevident in Jef- fersonianrhetoric." Bingham's goal was to trainall students,proper- tied or not, to expressthemselves in serviceto theircommunity. While the messageBingham sought to conveyshared certain demo- cratic and egalitariancharacteristics with many other nineteenth- centuryAmerican schoolbooks, which taught the rhetoric of dissent to advance a subtlearray of bourgeoisvalues,
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