Excerpt from Orations and Arguments<br><br>The purpose of this book is to furnish a collection of oratorical and argumentative masterpieces, suitable for stu dents in the schools and for general readers. In making the selection the following considerations have had deter mining weight: 1. That every speech included should be in itself memorable a great utterance upon a great sub jcet, attaining its distinction through the essential qualities of nobility and force of ideas, rather than through accidents of occasion, of feeling, or of rhetorical display; 2. That each should be in topic so related to the great thoughts, memories, or problems of our own time, as to have for us still an inherent and vital interest; 3. That the collection as a whole should include material enough to permit of a varied selection for the use of successive classes in the schools.<br><br>The speeches thus chosen have been printed from the best available texts, without change, save that the spelling has been made uniform throughout, and that three of the speeches those of Webster, Calhoun, and Seward have been shortened somewhat by the omission of matters of merely temporary or local interest. Yet even the omitted portions have been summarized for the reader, whenever they have seemed to bear upon the main argument.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.