toward a more perfect Union. The books in this series chronicle and explain the
accomplishments of representative American leaders as orators.

A series of book-length studies on American persuaders honors the role men
and women have played in U. S. history. Previously, if one desired to assess the
impact of a speaker or a speech upon history, the path was, at best, not well
marked and, at worst, littered with obstacles. To be sure, one might turn to bi-
ographies and general histories to learn about an orator, but for the public ad-
dress scholar these sources often prove unhelpful. Rhetorical topics, such as
speech invention, style, delivery, organizational strategies, and persuasive effect,
are often treated in passing, if mentioned at all. Authoritative speech texts are
often difficult to locate, and the problem of textual accuracy is frequently en-
countered. This is especially true for those figures who spoke one or two hun-
dred years ago or for those whose persuasive role, though significant, was sec-
ondary to other leading lights of the age.

Each book in this series is organized to meet the needs of scholars and stu-
dents of the history and criticism of American public address. Part I is a critical
analysis of the orator and his or her speeches. Within the format of a case study,
one may expect considerable latitude. For instance, in a given chapter an author
might explicate a single speech or a group of related speeches, or examine ora-
tions that comprise a genre of rhetoric such as forensic speaking. But the critic's
focus remains on the rhetorical considerations of speaker, speech, occasion, and
effect. Part II contains the texts of important addresses that are discussed in the
critical analysis that precedes it. To the extent possible, each author has endeav-
ored to collect authoritative speech texts, which have often been found through
original research in collections of primary source material. In a few instances,
because of the extreme length of a speech, texts have been edited, but the authors
have been careful to delete material that is least important to the speech, and
these deletions have been held to a minimum.

In each book there is a chronology of major speeches that serves more pur-
poses than may be apparent at first. Pragmatically, it typically lists all of the
orator's known speeches and addresses. Places and dates of the speeches are also
listed, although this is information that is sometimes difficult to determine pre-
cisely. But in a wider sense, the chronology attests to the scope of rhetoric in the
United States. Certainly in quantity if not always in quality, Americans are his-
torically talkers and listener.

Because of the disparate nature of the speakers examined in the series, there
is some latitude in the nature of the bibliographical materials that have been
included in each book. But in every instance, authors have carefully described
original historical materials and collections and gathered critical studies, biogra-
phies and autobiographies, and a variety of secondary sources that bear on the
speaker and the oratory. By combining in each book bibliographical materials,
speech texts, and critical chapters, this series notes that text and research sources
are interwoven in the act of rhetorical criticism.

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