An article at New England Historical Society is titled The book that taught Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln how to speak. I saw it mentioned on page 154 of David Gergen’s excellent 2022 book Hearts Touched with Fire – How great leaders are made. It opens his Chapter 9, titled The Art of Public Persuasion.
That 1797 book by Caleb Bingham is titled The Columbian Orator. You can find a .pdf version of the 1817 edition here at the Internet Archive. The Preface opens by stating:
“Notwithstanding the multiplicity of Schoolbooks now in use, it has been often suggested, that a Selection, calculated particularly for Dialogue and Declamation, would be of extensive utility in our seminaries.
The art of Oratory needs no encomium. To cultivate its rudiments, and diffuse its spirit among the Youth of America is the design of this Book.”
Its Introduction, on pages 7 to 28, is titled General directions for speaking; extracted from various authors. The rest of that 300-page book has 83 speeches, eight by David Everett, six by William Pitt, four by James Hervey, three by George Washington, and two by Napoleon Buonaparte. That Introduction is well worth reading.
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Pages 17 and 18 have the following advice about use of pauses:
“Now the common rule given in pausing is, that we stop our voice at a comma till we can tell one, at a semicolon two, at a colon three, and at a full period four. And as these points are either accommodated to the several parts of the same sentence, as the first three; or different sentences, as the last: this occasions a different length of the pause, by which either the dependence of what precedes upon us that which follows, or its distinction from it is represented.”
Back on November 6, 2019 I had blogged about Please just don’t tell us about ‘the pause’ – because there are several different types and lengths. I had not realized how old that advice was.
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