Everett, as a speaker, consistently spoke from the classical oratorical belief system, calling on the nation’s sense of communication as he attempted to keep the Union together. This involved epideictic speeches in which he highlighted Revolutionary heroes and past American events. While campaign speaking and a push to emphasize one’s personality (over making persuasive arguments) during the campaign were becoming more popular, Everett avoided these for the most part. Reid states Everett “was essentially a classicist but that he was also aware of – and usually (although not always) depressed by – the nation’s changing oratorical culture” (47). Part of this, Reid explains, is due to the fact that Everett’s’ “education prepared him to follow Cicero in speaking about public affairs, but his belletristic education encouraged him to do so in a polite and moderate way” (41). “He was psychologically an eighteenth-century gentleman who could not quite come to terms with the changing oratorical culture of the nineteenth century in which he lived. He could, it is true, come to terms with the lecture movement; but this was because he believed strongly that America’s representative government required an educated citizenry and that, as a member of the natural aristocracy, he was duty-bound to promote popular education” (55).
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