History's Greatest Speeches - Volume VI

By Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington and John Brown

The most profound and important speeches ever delivered are here collected in this anthology, featuring some of the most influential figures in world history. From ancient times to the American Revolution to as recently as this past century, Fort Raphael Publishing has collected some of the most important and iconic speeches of all time and pres

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ft. Raphael Publishing Company
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781949661477

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was an American politician, naturalist, military man, author, and the youngest president of the United States. Known for his larger-than-life persona, Roosevelt is credited with forming the Rough Riders, trust-busting large American companies including Standard Oil, expanding the system of national parks and forests, and negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. A prolific author, Roosevelt’s topics ranged from foreign policy to the natural world to personal memoirs. Among his most recognized works are The Rough Riders, The Winning of the West, and his Autobiography. In addition to a legacy of written works, Roosevelt is immortalized along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honour by President Bill Clinton for his charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War, and was given the title of Chief Scout Citizen by the Boy Scouts of America. Roosevelt died suddenly at his home, Sagamore Hill, on January 5, 1919. Roosevelt, along with his niece Eleanor and his cousin Franklin D., is the subject of the 2014 Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.

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cover-image, History's Greatest Speeches - Vol. VI - Draft #1

FORT RAPHAEL PUBLISHING CO.

OAK PARK, ILLINOIS

www.AudiobooksChicago.com

Copyright © 2021 by Ft. Raphael Publishing Company

All Rights Reserved.

Edited by Kevin Theis, Ft. Raphael Publishing Company

Front Cover Artwork and Graphics by Paul Stroili,

Touchstone Graphic Design, Chicago

HISTORY’S GREATEST

SPEECHES

VOLUME VI

CONTENTS

ANCIENT TIMES THROUGH 1700

Cato the Elder - In Defense of the Oppian Law - 215BC

19th CENTURY

Ernestine Rose - The Tender Ivy Plant - 1851

John Brown - Final Speech - 1859

Booker T. Washington - The Atlanta Compromise - 1895

20th CENTURY

Mary E. Church Terrell - What It Means to be Colored in the Capitol of the United States - 1906

Theodore Roosevelt - It Takes More Than That to Kill a Bull Moose - 1912

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti - Speeches from the Dock - 1927

CATO THE ELDER

IN DEFENSE OF THE OPPIAN LAW

Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), also known as Cato the Censor, Cato the Elder and Cato the Wise, was a Roman soldier, senator and historian known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization, the spread of Greek culture to foreign lands after the rise of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC.

In 215 BC, at the height of the Second Punic War the Roman government passed the Oppian Law which was intended to restrict the luxury and extravagance of women in order to save money for the public treasury. The law prohibited women from owning more than half an ounce of gold, wearing garments of several colours and other restrictions.

Following Hannibal’s defeat twenty years later - and with Rome flush with riches - the tribunes attempted to overturn the Oppian Law and allow women to once again be able to display signs of wealth, but it was strictly opposed by Cato and others. The following is Cato’s strong defense of the Oppian law, which he delivered in 195BC. Despite Cato’s plea, the law was soon overturned.

* * * * * * * * *

If, Romans, every individual among us had made it a rule to maintain the prerogative and authority of a husband with respect to his own wife, we should have less trouble with the whole sex. But now our privileges, overpowered at home by female contumacy, are, even here in the Forum, spurned and trodden under foot; and because we are unable to withstand each separately we now dread their collective body. I was accustomed to think it a fabulous and fictitious tale that in a certain island the whole race of males was utterly extirpated by a conspiracy of the women.

But the utmost danger may be apprehended equally from either sex if you suffer cabals and secret consultations to be held: scarcely indeed can I determine, in my own mind, whether the act itself, or the precedent that it affords, is of more pernicious tendency. The latter of these more particularly concerns us consuls and the other magistrates; the former, you, my fellow citizens: for, whether the measure proposed to your consideration be profitable to the state or not, is to be determined by you, who are to vote on the occasion.

As to the outrageous behavior of these women, whether it be merely an act of their own, or owing to your instigations, Marcus Fundanius and Lucius Valerius, it unquestionably implies culpable conduct in magistrates.  I know not whether it reflects greater disgrace on you, tribunes, or on the consuls: on you certainly, if you have brought these women hither for the purpose of raising tribunitian seditions; on us, if we suffer laws to be imposed on us by a secession of women, as was done formerly by that of the common people. It was not without painful emotions of shame that I, just now, made my way into the Forum through the midst of a band of women.

Had I not been restrained by respect for the modesty and dignity of some individuals among them, rather than of the whole number, and been unwilling that they should be seen rebuked by a consul, I should not have refrained from saying to them, What sort of practice is this, of running out into public, besetting the streets, and addressing other women's husbands? Could not each have made the same request to her husband at home? Are your blandishments more seducing in public than in private, and with other women's husbands than with your own?  Although if females would let their modesty confine them within the limits of their own rights, it did not become you, even at home, to concern yourselves about any laws that might be passed or repealed here. Our ancestors thought it not proper that women should perform any, even private business, without a director; but that they should be ever under the control of parents, brothers, or husbands. We, it seems, suffer them, now, to interfere in the management of state affairs, and to thrust themselves into the Forum, into general assemblies, and into assemblies of election: for what are they doing at this moment in your streets and lanes? What, but arguing, some in support of the motion of tribunes; others contending for the repeal of the law?

Will you give the reins to their intractable nature, and then expect that themselves should set bounds to their licentiousness, and without your interference? This is the smallest of the injunctions laid on them by usage or the laws, all which women bear with impatience: they long for entire liberty; nay, to speak the truth, not full liberty, but for unbounded freedom in every particular: for what will they not attempt if they now come off victorious? Recollect all the institutions respecting the sex, by which our forefathers restrained their profligacy and subjected them to their husbands; and yet, even with the help of all these restrictions, they can scarcely be kept