The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 3, September 1843Various
General
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 3, September 1843
Various
Periodicals
GILES'S ORATION BEFORE THE NATCHEZ FENCIBLES.--A thin, brief
pamphlet lies before us, containing an oration delivered at Natchez,
(Miss.,) on the fourth of July last, before the corps of the
'Natchez Invincibles' and other citizens, by WILLIAM MASON GILES,
Esq. We regard it with favor and with dislike. Its _spirit_ is truly
_American_, patriotic, in all respects unexceptionable, and most
honorable to the writer. Its _style_, however, is not creditable to
the writer's taste: it is in many parts of the oration stilted and
inflated. There is a lack of care and revision also; but this may
be attributed to the great haste and bodily disability which we are
informed attended its production, and which indeed we cannot doubt;
since in the brief letter which announces the yielding of the orator
to the solicitations of his friends, of a copy for publication,
there are at least two errors which would favor a verdict of damages
in an action for assault and battery upon old Priscian. We allude to
the substitution of 'will' for 'shall,' and _vice versa_. Speaking
of days sacred to Liberty, the Sabbath-days of Freedom, the orator
remarks: 'All nations, where freedom and knowledge have found an
asylum, have had such anniversaries; days when the strife and
bustle of business have ceased; when all cares being laid aside,
and every energy _concentered and tuned in unison to the jubilant
strain_ which should arise from hearts grateful to the past for
its valor and virtue, and, nerved for the future, prepared to
transmit to posterity the precious _casket_ of freedom unsullied
by any _cloud_ of dishonor, and unsoiled by any _losel_ whether
from domestic or foreign hands.' A style like this '_permeates_
the inmost recesses' of the realms of taste, Mr. GILES, 'allow us
to say.' A common error is here forcibly alluded to by the orator:
'We are apt to talk of our release from Great Britain on the fourth
of July, 1776, as a 'liberation from slavery.' We _never_ were in
slavery. As men, as Anglo-Saxons, as subjects of the British empire,
we, in this country, were always freemen, and never yielded our
birth-right; it was the attempt to curtail our rights, to interfere
with our domestic polity, and to check our career of greatness,
that led to the Declaration of Independence; but the eternal and
immutable truths of that sacred instrument were written upon our
hearts, were embodied in the colonial charters and institutions,
were the household words of the nation for generations before they
were penned by a committee of Congress. Every where, for a century
and more previous to the date of our Independence, in the primary
assemblies of the people, in the legislative halls, in judicial
tribunals, from the press, and by word of mouth, the colonists knew
and proclaimed their rights; and thus Great Britain came to believe
that we were determined on severing every tie which bound us to the
land from whence we came. Does this look like slavery?' We commend
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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