Give Me Liberty

by Christopher L Webber

Overview

"Give me liberty," demanded Patrick Henry, "or give me death!" Henry's words continue to echo in American history and that quote, and the speech it comes from, remains one of the two or three known to almost every American. The other speeches that have become part of our American collective consciousness all have one theme in common: liberty. These feats of oration seem to trace the evolution of America's definition of liberty, and to whom it applies. But what exactly is liberty?Give Me Liberty looks at these great speeches and provides the historical context, focusing attention on particular individuals who summed up the issues of their own day in words that have never been forgotten. Webber gleans lessons from the past centuries that will allow us to continue to strive for the ideals of liberty in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605987125
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	10/15/2014
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Christopher Webber is the author of more than two dozen books, including Reinventing Marriage and Beyond Beowulf. A graduate of Princeton University and a priest of the Episcopal Church, Webber has served parishes in New York and Connecticut and has also written several hymns. His interest in James W. C. Pennington developed while compiling A Yearbook of American Saints. Webber lives with his wife on an old farm in northwestern Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Defining Freedom ix

1 Patrick Henry 1736-1799 1

Give me liberty or give me death

2 Daniel Webster 1782-1852 28

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable

3 The Abolitionists: James W. C. Pennington c. 1807-1870 57

God of Liberty, save us from this clause

Wendell Phillips 1811-1884 66

I am a fanatic

Frederick Douglass 1818-1895 78

Freedom… is the right to choose

4 The Suffragists

Angelina Grimké 1805-1879 91

Deliver me from the oppression of men

Abby Kelley Foster 1811-1887 102

Bloody feet, sisters, have worn smooth the path by which you have come hither

Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-1902 114

No just government can be formed without the consent of the governed

5 Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865 126

A new nation, conceived in liberty

6 William Jennings Bryan 1860-1925 168

You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold

7 Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882-1945 205

The only thing we have to fear it fear itself

8 Adlai E. Stevenson 1900-1965 250

A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular

9 Ronald Reagan 1911-2004 294

Man is not free unless government is limited

10 Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 340

I have a dream

Epilogue 385

Bibliography 391

Endnotes 397

Index 413

Acknowledgments 420

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2014
“There are only a few speeches Americans remember,” declares Episcopal priest Webber (American to the Backbone), “and all of them have to do with liberty.” Webber provides extensive commentary on 14 liberty-heavy speeches by notable Americans, beginning with Patrick Henry’s famed 1774 “Give me liberty or give me death.” The book is organized chronologically,and includes many well-known orations: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 Cross of Gold speech, “the most famous speech in the history of American political conventions”; and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear” 1933 inaugural address as well as his Infamy Speech following the attack on Pearl Harbor; and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream.” Webber includes lesser-known speakers, such as the abolitionists James W.C. Pennington and Wendell Phillips, and the suffragists Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelley Foster. In the connective material, Webber provides instructive biographical information and to-the-point historical context. His spirited book never strays far from the theme of the nation’s “constant struggle to preserve and expand the freedom of its citizens while maintaining the delicate balance between too much government and too little.” (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

A luminous portrait. Mr. Webber’s vivid account resurrects this astonishing figure, conveying all that he endured and achieved during America’s longest, most harrowing trial.

Praise for American to the Backbone - The Wall Street Journal

A thought-provoking foreword and intelligent epilogue bookend this examination of the stirring power of the spoken word.

American Way

A perceptive analysis of speeches by noted men and women.

The Oklahoman

Pennington’s story is a remarkable one, illuminated by Webber’s meticulous research.

Booklist

A terrific book. Christopher Webber's book is a wonderfully clear series of profiles of American women and men, who changed what we mean by liberty. I've read some history, but the book told me all sorts of things I didn't know I didn't know. Full of stimulation, it makes the reader wonder at the marvelous and uncertain coincidence of people, words, and the moment, that it takes to make things happen. What if Henry, and Lincoln, and Stanton, and Webster, and Pennington, had been absent, when their presence changed the course of things? Good history, good reading.

Sam Waterston

Praise for American to the BackboneA luminous portrait. Mr. Webber's vivid account resurrects this astonishing figure, conveying all that he endured and achieved during America's longest, most harrowing trial.
”

The Wall Street Journal

Pennington’s story is a remarkable one, illuminated by Webber’s meticulous research.

Booklist

2014-09-11
Episcopal priest Webber (American to the Backbone: The Life of James W.C. Pennington, the Fugitive Slave Who Became One of the First Black Abolitionists, 2011) traces America's search for personal freedom through the men and women whose voices still demand our attention. The author follows some of our best orators, from Patrick Henry and Daniel Webster to Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan, and he successfully shows how differently and yet how alike this struggle has been over the years. While Henry sought freedom from central government, Webster was committed to the same; they both sought personal freedom and feared too much power in any one place. The book gets a bit dry as the author moves into the abolitionists and suffragists. They fought to end slavery and create a free life for African-Americans and rallied against the death penalty and child labor along the way. The women who worked with them saw their own lack of freedom and fought for the vote and the right to own property, giving birth to the suffragist cause. The most interesting part of the book is the way Webber traces the seeds of ideas, the sources and connections as they are repeated through the years. Abraham Lincoln asked the same questions as Webster about preserving the Union, and he paraphrased Webster's words in the ending of the Gettysburg Address: "of the people, by the people…." Adlai Stevenson used Lincoln's "house divided" in a Cold War-era speech. Ronald Reagan's trickle-down theory came straight from William Jennings Bryan. All these men and women spoke of freedom as a goal for all, and each dealt with the economic factors that controlled freedom: poverty, taxes and inequality. Mostly engaging, and Webber saves the best for last: Martin Luther King Jr.'s words and cadences moved an entire nation, and he, like the other orators, used his voice for the millions who had none.

Kirkus Reviews