CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Problem, Purpose, and Method

In 1937 Paul H. Buck wrote that by 1895 the "people of the United States constituted at last a nation integrated in interests and united in sentiments." He went on to remark that "within a single generation true peace had come to those who had been at war."¹ Assuming there is at least a degree of truth in these statements, it is unusual that students of American public address have riot seized upon Buck’s references in an attempt to discover the function and place of speech-making along this road to peace and reunion. What was the nature of the post-war rhetoric of reconciliation? This is the prime motivating question behind the present study. It is assumed that part of the answer may be found in an examination of speeches made by Southerners on ceremonial occasions; this speech situation is the focus for the present investigation.

Rhetorical critics and speech historians have largely overlooked this major area of research: post-bellum Southern speaking. The field of public address history and criticism contains a wealth of articles, theses, and dissertations dealing with various aspects of ante-bellum Southern oratory and orators, but with the end of the Civil War, the door is almost closed on nineteenth century Southern speechmaking.² For example, Robert T. Oliver's survey, History of Public Speaking in America, discusses briefly the post-war speaking of Henry W. Grady, L.Q.C. Lamar, and Booker T. Washington, but leaves the bulk of Southern public address of the period in limbo. The three-volume History and Criticism of American Public Address contains essays on Edwin A. Alderman, Grady, Lamar, and Washington, but ignores other post-war Southern speakers and the reconciliation issue. There have been dissertations on Joseph E. Brown, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, Robert Love Taylor, J.L.M. Curry, Zebulon B. Vance, and Washington, but with these studies, the survey of modern criticisms of post-war nineteenth century Southern public address is about complete.³ Dallas C. Dickey pointed out this vacuum in speech research in 1947 when he said, "The speaking of southerners on the problems of reconstruction is unknown except for that of a few men such as Grady and Lamar"⁴ the situation has not been altered significantly in the intervening two and a half decades. It is hoped that this dissertation will begin to open the door to this virtually untouched resource and thereby help fill this gap in American public address history.

It should be pointed out that the reconciliation process had already begun by 1875. The General Amnesty Act of 1872, L.Q.C. Lamar's "Eulogy on Charles Sumner," and countless lesser-known events had encouraged the reunion process beginning practically with the meeting between Grant and Lee at Appomattox Courthouse. Therefore, for many Southerners, a feeling of a re-united nation was already part of their life-style, and orators aimed their rhetoric at reinforcing this spirit of harmony.

To further illustrate the probability that many Southern orators were facing audiences at least partly reconciled, one simply needs to recall the statement Patrick Henry made a century before in the Virginia Ratifying Convention of 1788. Henry, and probably many other Southerners, obviously had an affection for the new concept of America. In a speech opposing the proposed American Constitution Henry remarked:

I am a lover of the American Union ... The dissolution of the Union is most abhorrent to my mind. The first thing I have at heart is American liberty; the second thing is American Union; and I hope the people of Virginia will endeavor to preserve that Union.⁵

Henry's strong American sentiment was doubtless still present in many Southerners in the immediate pre-Civil War years. An example would be Robert E. Lee's agonizing decision to leave the Union with his native state and to offer his sword to the Confederacy.

In addition, as James L. Golden demonstrates, there were quite a few Southerners, who, on the very eve of the civil conflict, deplored and fought against secession. Sam Houston, the hero of Texas Independence, remarked in an 1850 Senate speech on the Clay Compromise measures:

If I am of the South, can I not recollect the North? What is our country? It is a nation composed of parts, East and West, South and North. It is an entirety. There are no fractions in it. It is a unit, and I trust it will so remain.⁶

The fact that Houston was Governor of Texas in 1861 attests that there were a number of Texans who shared his Unionist sentiment. In 1860, Benjamin F. Perry of South Carolina delivered a speech at the National Democratic Convention in Charleston in which he said he came to the meeting as "a Democrat and a Union man, "who was" determined to do all that I could to preserve the Democratic party and the Union of the States."⁷

In sum, the spirit of national harmony was present in the South. Many Southerners longed for peace between the sections, as many of the speeches described in this study reflect. The concept of union was dear to many, and the Southern speaker's task with these auditors was to reinforce this attitude. A leading Southern historian, C. Vann Woodward, confirms this deep-seated Americanism when he writes, "The South was American a long time before it was Southern in any self-conscious or distinctive way."⁸

A description of Southern oratory should be productive in illuminating the reconciliation process; therefore, the major purpose of this dissertation will be to characterize Southern ceremonial public speaking as it helped reinforce the reconciliatory attitudes and actions of the post-Civil War Southerner. An additional purpose of the dissertation project is simply to locate ceremonial speech texts for the period 1875 to 1890 in which national harmony was a theme. No student has made such a collection of prime sources and it is believed this gathering together of speeches is a contribution in itself.

This first chapter will establish the purpose and parameters of the study. The second through the fifth chapters will describe what these speakers said to further reconciliation in various ceremonial situations. In other words, these chapters will discuss the nature of ceremonial speaking which aimed at the reestablishing of national harmony. The main body of this inquiry will identify the sub-themes upon which the reconciliation spokesmen focused in their effort to reconcile Southerners to political exigencies of the time. That is, these four chapters will characterize the values which, together, made up the content of the reconciliation message. The main body of the study will also describe the rhetorical strategies employed by the leading reconciliation orators. This feature of the study will give particular attention to the rhetorical means by which the speakers sought to reinforce those values associated with the mood of reconciliation. In sum, it will be the aim of these four chapters to describe both the what and how of reconciliatory address, as revealed in the practice of these Southern speakers. The final chapter will characterize, in an over-all way, the reconciliation message as expressed by these men, and draw any generalizations which may be warranted concerning the nature of reconciliation oratory. It is anticipated that this descriptive study will expand and thereby improve our understanding of how a group of speakers on ceremonial occasions dealt with the task of reinstituting national harmony.⁹

Geographical and Chronological

Limits of the Study

This survey will be limited to speeches made in the geographical area of the eleven Confederate States of America.¹⁰ Due largely to lack of available speech texts from some of the states, the primary focus will be on Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, but will at the same time include a number of speeches from other Southern states which will help illustrate and define the Southern strategy of reconciliation speaking.

A further limitation is that the study will include only those speakers who were either long-time residents or natives of the South, or were identified in an integral way with the short-lived Confederacy. In short, the focus is on those men who had first-hand knowledge of Southern life and values.¹¹ Yet another limiting factor, by necessity, is that the study will embrace only those Southern speakers whose speeches have been recorded and preserved and which are available. The survey is not concerned just with the nationally famous orators of the post-bellum period such as Henry W. Grady. It will describe as well addresses presented by lesser-known men who strove to influence the opinions and values of more limited areas and groups.

The limiting dates for this study are 1875 to 1890. Although these dates may appear to have been chosen arbitrarily, there is a rationale for limiting the dissertation to this particular time span. In the first place, political reconstruction was coming to an end in most states by 1875, although the final settlement was not made in three states (South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana) until the celebrated "Compromise of 1877." While the number of Federal troops stationed in the South from 1865 until 1877 were greatly insufficient for their task,¹² their symbolic presence angered Southerners and made reconciliation efforts more difficult before their total withdrawal. In fact, one historian believes that for some Southerners, "military occupation was worse than defeat on the field of battle."¹³ The process of reconciliation has no clearly defined beginning. Indeed, much reunion had occurred by 1875; but the various centennial celebrations for the War of Independence, which began in 1875, can be seen as one significant milestone in the road to reunion.¹⁴ By the following year, "Northern public opinion was also veering toward sympathy for the white Southerner,"¹⁵ and in 1877, the compromise legislation in the presidential administration of Rutherford B. Hayes touched off a wave of reconciliatory efforts such as the President's goodwill trip to the South and his participation in Memorial Day services in Tennessee.¹⁶ Even some of the Northern "bloody shirt" orators, such as Robert G. Ingersoll, who fanned the flames of sectionalism after the war, began to support reconciliation by 1877; Southerners such as Lamar, Hill, and John B. Gordon responded with similar messages.¹⁷ Patrick believes that by 1876-1877 "the time for vengeance had passed; the day of understanding and appreciation had arrived. Former anti-southern journalists shifted their bias."¹⁸ In other words, prior to the mid-1870's feelings were still so intense between the sections that reconciliatory rhetoric often fell upon rocky soil. With the ending of political reconstruction, the total withdrawal of the token forces of occupation and the essential abandonment of the "Negro question" to Southern solutions, the ground was more fertile and speakers were able to reinforce the latent feelings of intersectional peace and harmony. One can suspect that most Americans longed for a true national reunion after decades of bitterness and bloodshed. Although there had been, of course, efforts to promote national harmony prior to the end of political reconstruction, the process toward intersectional peace gained impetus in the 1875-1877 period; it suggests an appropriate starting point for this study.

Fifteen years later, in 1890, the farmer's revolt against the "Redeemers," the established white conservative order -- reached its peak. The success in 1890 of the Farmers' Alliance candidates¹⁹ reflected marked agrarian discontent with the men who had controlled the Southern states since the mid-seventies. With the election of agrarian Benjamin Ryan Tillman of South Carolina and James S. Hogg of Texas to their states' governorship in 1890, the Redeemers were overthrown and a new order took their place.²⁰ According to Clark and Kirwan, "A political revolution of a sort took place in the South in the early 1890's as veterans of State legislatures and of Congress were replaced by tillers of the soil."²¹ The Ocala, Florida, meeting of the Southern Farmers' Alliance in 1890 formed what was to be the platform of the soon-to-be-created Populist Party, thus helping to identify 1890 as a turning-point year in Southern life. To a large degree, the process of reunion and reconciliation had run its course by 1890; the South, as a region, was again in the mainstream of national life, participating in large-scale public deliberation on popular issues. By the time of the Spanish American War in 1898, the nation was functionally reunited in the face of a common enemy, with the South furnishing many of the nation’s fighting men. Since 1890 marks the beginning of the end for the reconciliation-oriented leadership of the Southern states, it presents a useful date with which to terminate this examination of Southern public address.

The Ceremonial Address

Since it is the position of this study that these speakers who projected the reconciliation message were primarily concerned with reinforcing the sentiment of American nationalism, the ceremonial speech was selected as an appropriate type of speech to examine. As shall be demonstrated, this speech situation is designed to reaffirm values generally held by an audience. This speech type played a large role in the life of the post-war South, as, indeed, it did everywhere in the nation until the advent of nationwide radio, television, and spectator sports. The Memorial Day or Fourth of July oration, for example, was a community-wide celebration, and to be selected as the “orator of the day” was a true honor. In nineteenth century America, the ceremonial occasion served as a focal point for social fellowship and, as such, as a key factor in reinforcing community values. These speeches were often printed, thereby enhancing their potential to reach a wider audience. This wider distribution implied also that a large and influential segment of the listeners felt them to be important.

For over two thousand years of public speaking theory and criticism men have written about the ceremonial address. For Aristotle, the epideictic was one of the three major forms of Athenian public address. The epideictic speech was presented to groups on special memorial and celebration days and was designed for praise or blame of a man or institution.²² It is the position of this study that the epideictic is a species of a larger, more encompassing type of address to be labeled here the ceremonial. In America the Boston Massacre and Fourth of July orations, Memorial Day addresses, funeral sermons, graduation and bacculaureate addresses, building dedications, Thanksgiving and Election Day sermons, after-dinner speeches, convention keynote speeches, and presidential inaugural addresses are examples of a major speaking genre -- the ceremonial -- which became part of our oral tradition.

What is the basic function of the address presented on certain ceremonial days in honor of standardized, conventionalized events? It seems rather obvious that the chief purpose is to confirm, support, reinforce, and affirm shared community values. Or to put it a different way, to reinforce community cohesiveness. Many writers have commented on this form of oratory and its social role. For example, Wil A. Linkugel, R.R. Allen, and Richard L. Johannesen, in their anthology, Contemporary American Speeches, point out that on certain occasions,

speakers address audiences about the values that both share as members of a common group. The speeches given in such moments are thus noncontroversial for a specific audience. They do not urge adoption of new values or rejection of old values. Rather, they seek to reinforce and revitalize the existing audience values. The speaker seeks unity of spirit or a re-energizing of effort or commitment; he tries to inspire, to kindle enthusiasm or to deepen feelings of awe, respect, and devotion.²³

John D. Groppe points out that "social ritual is employed on rather specialized social occasions, such as a group's formal, public occasions, as a means of manifesting and achieving solidarity." On these occasions, the speeches presented "are analogues of the creeds that are recited by congregations in Christian churches ... to manifest the unity of the group."²⁴ In writing about Memorial Day and rites such as Armistice and Veterans Day, Lloyd Warner says they are "rituals of a sacred symbol system which functions periodically to unify the whole community, with its conflicting symbols and its opposing, autonomous churches and associations."²⁵

Samuel R. Johnson, in presenting a critique of the Aristotelian model of epideictic speaking, asserts that "American epideictic speaking is most often confirmational." He argues that the speaker's purpose may not be to praise or blame at all, but may be "to speak for maintenance value."²⁶

William J. Brandt observes, however, that the speech of praise -- central to the Aristotelian concept of epideictic -- performs an "important civic function," for as it praises a person, it reaffirms the "traditional values upon which such praise was based. It was thus an affirmation of community solidarity."²⁷

Thus, an important aspect of the ceremonial address is its emphasis upon community values. The focus is not upon expediency or practicality as in deliberative, political, policy-making oratory. Nor is the forensic speech one which centers upon values -- other than the ultimate goal-value of justice. Here the question is guilt or innocence. But the ceremonial address is value oriented; it functions to reinforce values. It goes to the very bed rock of society and employs as its subject matter values that society holds dear. Indeed, human values must exist before standards of guilt and innocence can be established and before policy can be determined and action urged. Ceremonial oratory is, therefore, basically conservative in the best sense of that word, since it attempts to reaffirm the basic values of a society.

An additional purpose of ceremonial oratory is suggested by Johnson when he discusses ceremonial address as "oratory of display." He observes that sometimes the speaker may be addressing the audience "merely for the satisfaction of the audience and speaker."²⁸ Brandt also recognizes this purpose, pointing out that "the orator who was not particularly awed by the ceremonial occasion could see in an epideictic oration a handsome opportunity for personal display."²⁹ Edward P.J. Corbett, in discussing ceremonial addresses describes it as the "oratory of display," in which the speaker is "not so much concerned with persuading an audience as with pleasing it or inspiring it."³⁰

J. Richard Chase, in his survey of "The Classic Conception of Epideictic,"³¹ shows that Aristotle believed that in epideictic speaking the audience's "interest is centered upon the speaker's performance." Chase says this is the focus for, "in epideictic there is no burning issue that demands a decision. Thus the listener, not caught up in the conflict of ideas, can better appreciate the artistic efforts of the speaker." Brandt also makes this distinction, observing that, "members of the audience were spectators, presumably because they shared the sentiments of the speaker even before he began."³²

It should be clearly pointed out that the distinctions between the three forms of oratory -- deliberative, forensic, and epideictic -- are not rigid nor mutually exclusive. Writes Corbett:

Ceremonial discourse sometimes shades off into deliberative discourse, sometimes into judicial. The ceremonial orator did indeed seem to be more intent on impressing the audience with the eloquence of his laudatory efforts than he did in persuading his audience to adopt a certain course of action. But in praising a great man, he was suggesting, indirectly at least, that his audience go and do likewise; and in thus suggesting a course of action he was moving over into the realm of deliberative discourse. Likewise, when he praised or censured a man, he encroached on the province of judicial discourse, because like the lawyer in the courtroom he seemed to be engaged in exonerating or discrediting someone.³³

As this passage from Corbett demonstrates, there is much overlapping of Aristotle’s three divisions of the rhetorical act -- perhaps so much that they become practically meaningless.³⁴ For instance, there is the function of counseling, normally considered the prime aim of the deliberative, policy-making speech. In the final analysis, the ultimate rationale of all rhetoric is counseling: helping an audience make decisions based on what the speaker sees as truth, the best solution to a problem, the best value to be upheld, or the guilt or innocence, worthiness or unworthiness of a person. Yet in a narrower sense ,than this I there is a counseling dimension of a speech presented at a ceremonial situation. A hypothetical example should help make this point clear.

Suppose that a speaker, addressing an audience on Memorial Day, reinforces the spirit of reunion in an effective manner so that it truly becomes a meaningful part of the life of a United States Congressman who was present in the audience. Suppose further that the speaker did not in any way advocate a policy, state his views on political matters, or do anything else one might usually consider within the province of a deliberative address. But that Congressman, a week or a month later, recalls that reunion message and its meaning to him. Because of that speech he encourages his fellow Congressmen to vote on a certain bill in a way which will aid in destroying intersectional barriers. That ceremonial speaker, then, did contribute to the deliberative process -- but did not give a deliberative address as rhetoricians have traditionally thought of it. It is not within the scope of this study to determine when, or if, this aspect of ceremonial address occurred. It is simply pointed out as an example of how the traditional divisions of rhetoric are not mutually exclusive.

Again, ceremonial address can be deliberative -- that is, advice-giving or counseling -- in yet another situation. The speaker counsels when he deals with attitudes or opinions held by his auditors which may be counter to his own point of view or the thesis of his speech. For instance, when a Southern speaker encouraged his listeners to support the reunion of the nation, he may have been speaking in the face of deeply held anti-Union sentiments. Therefore, he is asking his audience to rethink, to deliberate with themselves, to change this attitude. No vote is taken in a legislative chamber. Rather, the debate goes on within the listener himself as a result of our hypothetical speaker's influence on him. Again, this is an aspect of the ceremonial address with which the present study will not be concerned. It is simply mentioned as an aspect of the speech type which could, and probably did, occur.

At any rate, the ceremonial address is basically concerned with first, reinforcing shared community values and second, with satisfying or entertaining an audience with the speaker's display of rhetorical ability. The first of these functions will be the major focus of this study. It is assumed that these ceremonial speakers did attempt to reinforce the value goal of national reunion by calling upon community values such as patriotism, forgiveness, friendship, and cooperation. This study will attempt to discover whether, indeed, these speakers did fulfill this value-reinforcing function of the ceremonial address.

Carroll Arnold, in his study of one of America’s greatest ceremonial speakers, George William Curtis, sums up the genre in this manner:

In general, those who wait upon ceremonial speakers are drawn from their habitual haunts by a sense of duty, a personal involvement in the occasion, a lively curiosity, or -- perhaps most often -- by a desire to hear a preachment upon the present significance of the occasion. And the ceremonial speaker, freed from the exactions of opposition, from knottily worded propositions, and from the necessity of counseling detailed and immediate action, is usually at liberty to view the celebrated event in its most symmetrical cosmic attitude. Listener and speaker are intent upon contemplating together the relation to the received values honored by all parties. The celebrants may differ with those outside their bethel, but differences among themselves are usually excluded by tacit agreement.

These sanctions of ceremonial address have probably never been more scrupulously observed in America than in the later half of the nineteenth century.³⁵

The body of the study is divided into chapters according to the various types of important ceremonial occasions under which these speeches may be grouped: Chapter Two concerns Decoration Day, Memorial Day, and other eulogy-producing occasions; Chapter Three deals with monument and statue dedications; Chapter Four discusses Confederate veterans’ reunions; and Chapter Five treats educational occasions such as commencements, baccalaureates, and alumni gatherings.

The content of these ceremonial speeches which deals with reconciliation themes, symbols, and values will be described. It is not the intent of this dissertation to consider ceremonial oratory in general, but rather to examine how these speakers, on these ceremonial occasions, handled the theme of national reunion.

Sources and Selection of Speech Texts

It was assumed at the outset of this investigation that public speaking played some discernible role among the road to reunion in the South. An attempt was made, therefore, to discover ceremonial speeches which dealt to some degree with a conciliatory topic: that is, speeches in which the orator made a direct or a symbolic reference to national reunion, the causes of disharmony, and solutions to this problem, or a plea for peace between the North and the South. These speeches were selected because the speakers attempted to promote good will between the sections.

After consulting a number of secondary sources describing the history of the period, the writer compiled a list of speakers who were in some role or another as public figures. This list was arranged by states, and a tour of several major Southern historical collections was conducted in order to locate ceremonial addresses by these men. Speeches were located in which amity, not enmity, was an overriding consideration of the speaker. These speeches are the sources used to describe a portion of the South’s reconciliation speaking.

As pointed out earlier, only those texts of speeches given by Southerners to Southern audiences, which have been preserved and which have been found during the research stage, will be utilized in this study. Most of the speeches examined in this dissertation were printed in pamphlet form by the speaker himself or by a committee who heard the address and thought it worthy of recording for a wider audience.³⁶ The remainder of the speech texts were found in contemporary newspaper reports of the occasions.

Admittedly, the bothersome problem of textual authenticity must be recognized; some of the texts studied probably do not represent a word-for-word record of what the speaker actually said. For one thing the speakers may have had a desire to make their speeches "read as well as possible" when they were published, and second, the possibility for errors in transcription and printing make it difficult to obtain a verbatim record of the speeches which were made before the advent of electronic recorders.³⁷ Doubtless, those speeches which were printed by the speaker or by a public committee in pamphlet form represent an accurate statement of the ideational content of the speech. Those speeches discovered in the public press, however, should be looked upon with some reservation, since they were often the product of a reporter's memory and his dictation skills. Probably, however, the basic macrostructure of the content, the ideas expressed, and the general language used by the speaker is enough similar to what was verbalized on the platform that these speeches will be useful in this descriptive study of Southern public speaking.

Studying speeches presented years ago places another burden on the modern student when one realizes to what a limited extent printed texts include on-the-spot attempts by the speaker to adapt to his individual audience and his possible reactions to feedback. For example, the newspaper account of a speech by John B. Gordon remarks that the orator prefaced his prepared address by "several minutes impromptu speaking."³⁸ Nowhere in the reports of this speech does any hint appear about the content of these impromptu statements, which doubtless affected the rhetorical situation. If the critic cannot discover how the speaker might have made immediate adaptations to the audience and social environment, he must neglect consideration of this potentially important rhetorical tactic.

An additional problem presents itself when one considers the printed speech text. Speeches are transitory acts. Critics have observed that there are "many elements of an evanescent sort" present in the speaking process. These elements are "effective and significant while the speech is being delivered but irretrievably lost once the speaker leaves the platform."³⁹ The student and his reader must accept this fact and realize that not hearing the spoken word and not seeing the gestural language of the orator nor his physical appearance on the platform, places additional limits upon the effectiveness of the study.

Most of the speech texts selected for this study, as well as others which were originally selected but later rejected as either being too repetitious of other speeches or as not covering the reunion theme in more than just passing reference, were uncovered during research in the excellent historical collections at the following University libraries: University of South Carolina, University of North Carolina (at Chapel Hill), Duke University, University of Virginia, Louisiana State University, Emory University and the University of Georgia. Others were selected from the Cossit Library in Memphis, Tennessee, and the Little Rock, Arkansas, Public Library, as well as the Universities of Texas, Houston, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida, and the North Carolina State Library.

Conclusion

Public speaking always grows out of a situational problem in the speaker's social environment; as Lloyd Bitzer put it, "the situation calls the discourse into existence."⁴⁰ The speaker speaks because he sees -- or thinks he sees -- a problem, or an issue, and has something he wishes others to hear about it. His discourse may be either appropriate or inappropriate to that situation. This is for his audience to determine. But the speaker is compelled by circumstances to respond to what Bitzer calls, an "exigence," defined as "an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be.⁴¹ The focus of this study is the exigence of national disharmony and some of the attempts Southerners made to deal with this problem.

Study in the field of Southern public address history focusing on the rhetorical strategy of post-Civil War reconciliation is patently warranted. At a time in America's history when unity and harmony over national purpose are practically non-existent for certain segments of our population, when sectional battles over racial policy echo the debates of the previous century and when a developing gulf is threatening between those who would destroy our environment and those who would conserve it, serious students of communication in American society should focus more specifically upon research pertaining to reconciliation and national harmony. Perhaps this study can contribute to this urgent quest by describing how a group of men, living in the decades following the Civil War, attempted to mend the spirit of a broken nation.

¹ Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 (New York: Random House, 1937), pp. 310, 320.

² I have reached this conclusion after investigating Cleary and Haberman's Rhetoric and Public Address, A Bibliography, 1947-1961; Knower's "Index of Graduate Theses," and Auer's "Dissertations in Progress" both of which appear annually in Speech Monographs. I have also examined the 1971 edition of the Index of The Quarterly Journal of Speech and the various regional speech journals as well as the "Bibliography of Speech and Theatre in the South" which appears each year in The Southern Speech Journal, and Dissertation Abstracts through 1971.

³ V. Littlefield, "An Evaluation of Joseph E. Brown's Invention." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1965; W.J. Lewis, "The Public Speaking of J.L.M. Curry." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Florida, 1955; M. Bauer, "Henry Grady, Spokesman for the New South." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1939; W.C. Eubank, "Benjamin Morgan Palmer, A Southern Divine." Ph.D. Dissertation, Louisiana State University, 1943; Raymond W. Buchanan, Jr., "The Epideictic Speaking of Robert Love Taylor Between 1891 and 1906." Ph.D. Dissertation, Louisiana State University, 1970; F.R. Shirley, "The Rhetoric of Zebulon B. Vance: Tarheel Spokesman." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Florida, 1959; W.N. Pitts, Jr., "A Critical Study of Booker T. Washington as a Speechmaker, With an Analysis of Seven Selected Speeches." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1952.

⁴ Dallas C. Dickey, "Southern Oratory: A Field for Research," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, XXXIII (December, 1947), 461.

⁵ Patrick Henry, "Against the Federal Constitution," Virginia Ratifying Convention, Richmond, June 5, 1788. In Ernest J. Wrage and Barnet Baskerville, eds., American Forum (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), p. 16.

⁶ Quoted in James L. Golden, "The Southern Unionists, 1850-1860." In Waldo W. Braden, ed., Oratory in the Old South, 1828-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), p. 260.

⁷ Ibid., p. 273.

⁸ C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960), p. 25.

⁹ Descriptive studies, according to Auer, are designed to serve one or more of these goals: "ascertaining norms, establishing goals, or developing methods." This study is primarily concerned with determining, through observation of speech texts, the norm, or status, of ceremonial public speaking as it dealt with the problem of national harmony in the post-Civil War South. In addition, description of what these speakers said about reconciliation will help expand and improve our knowledge of public address as a social act. J. Jeffery Auer, An Introduction to Research in Speech (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), p. 35.

¹⁰ The speaking of Southerners in the North has been examined. See Huber Winton Ellingsworth, "Southern Reconciliation. Orators in the North, 1868-1899." Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University, 1955.

¹¹ For a definition and discussion of Southern speakers, see Kevin Kearney, "What’s Southern About Southern Oratory?" The Southern Speech Journal, XXXII (Fall, 1966), 19-30.

¹² Rembert W. Patrick, The Reconstruction of the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 150.

¹³ John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction: After the Civil War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 35.

¹⁴ Buck, Road to Reunion, p. 139.

¹⁵ Patrick, Reconstruction of the Nation, p. 250.

¹⁶ Buck, Road to Reunion, p. 107.

¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 108-109.

¹⁸ Patrick, Reconstruction of the Nation, p. 290.

¹⁹ Seven Southern states elected Alliance legislatures and forty-four Alliancemen were elected to the House of Representatives. Theodore Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South, 1865-1933 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), p. 116.

²⁰ Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), p. 204.

²¹ Thomas D. Clark and Albert D. Kirwan, The South Since Appomattox, A Century of Regional Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 69.

²² J. Richard Chase, "The Classical Conception of Epideictic," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, XLVII (October, 1961), 299. It should be recalled, however, that Charles Sears Baldwin, in referring to the translation of the Greek term for this type of oratory, says:" 'demonstrative' is flatly a mistranslation, 'oratory of display' is quite too narrow a translation, and 'epideictic' is not a translation at all .... The French equivalent is discours de circonstance." Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1959), p. 15.

²³ Wil A. Linkugel, R.R. Allen, and Richard L. Johannesen, Contemporary American Speeches, 2^nd ed. (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1969), p. 278. Italics supplied.

²⁴ John D. Groppe, "Ritualistic Language," The South Atlantic Quarterly, LXIX (Winter, 1970), 63.

²⁵ W. Lloyd Warner, American Life, Dream and Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 3.

²⁶ Samuel R. Johnson, "The Non-Aristotelian Nature of Samoan Ceremonial Oratory," Western Speech,XXXIV (Fall, 1970), 273. It should be pointed out, however, that while this student agrees with some of his conclusions regarding ceremonial speaking, one of Johnson’s contentions, namely that ceremonial address is "relatively unstructured," is not considered accurate. Instead, it would appear that ceremonial address is rather rigidly bound by the situation of the ceremonial event and that audience expectations play a large role. For further demonstration of the situational demands on the ceremonial speaker, see Ronald H. Carpenter and Robert V. Seltzer, "Situational Style and the Rotunda Eulogies," Central States Speech Journal, XXII (Spring, 1971), 11-15.

²⁷ William J. Brandt, The Rhetoric of Argumentation (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970), p. 13.

²⁸ Johnson, "Non-Aristotelian Nature," 273.

²⁹ Brandt, Rhetoric of Argumentation, p. 13.

³⁰ Edward P.J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 29.

³¹ Chase, "Classical Conception," 295, 296.

³² Brandt, Rhetoric of Argumentation, pp. 12-13.

³³ Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, p. 139.

³⁴ For example, Donald C. Bryant, in his essay, "Rhetoric: Its Function and Its Scope," says that "any systematic construction of human phenomena, even Aristotle’s, will either leave out something important and significant or will include a category, however named, which is, in effect, 'miscellaneous.' That I think Aristotle did in discussing the rhetoric of the ceremonial or epideictic speech." Quarterly Journal of Speech, XXXIX (December, 1953), 405.

³⁵ Carroll C. Arnold, "George William Curtis," in History and Criticism of American Public Address, Vol. III, ed. by Marie K. Hochmuth (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1955), p. 153. Italics supplied.

³⁶ Some of the comments regarding the publication of the speeches are interesting. For example, a committee in writing to Governor Thomas J. Jarvis of North Carolina requesting permission to publish his speech to the Society of Alumni at Randolph Macon College felt "assured that happy results will follow its circulation." Thomas J. Jarvis, Address Delivered Before the Society of Alumni of Randolph Macon College, June 15, 1881. (Richmond: Johns and Goolsby, 1881), p. 3.

³⁷ Lester A. Thonssen, A. Craig Baird, and Waldo Braden, Speech Criticism, 2nd ed. (New York: Ronald Press, 1970), pp. 323-346.

³⁸ Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia), April 28, 1887.

³⁹ Thonssen, Baird, and Braden, Speech Criticism, p. 9.

⁴⁰ Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric, I (January, 1968), 2.

⁴¹ Ibid., 6.