Status Updates From The Columbian Orator

Great to be reading a book that inspired Frederick Douglas.

Really enjoying the wide variety of essays provided in this book. This morning I read France’s celebration of the life of Dr. Benjamin Franklin as read by an Abbé in 1799. I was proud to think of a citizen so well-known the world over that all of France celebrated during this oration —was actually from the United States.

Originally published in 1811, I have already read three orations that pleaded for a case by humbling themselves as lacking wit or oratory skills, while carefully making their case:
PRESIDENT WASHINGTON’s 1st SPEECH 2 CONGRESS
My country’s citizens should have a distrustful scrutiny in my qualifications. Inheriting inferior endowments from nature I will be peculiarly conscious of my own deficiencies 1789