This issue of VIRTUE is devoted to rhetoric, the art of persuasion. In the following pages, we will reconsider the purposes and power of rhetoric, relating them to the education of the young and the health of society.
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“The art of Oratory needs no encomium.” So begins the preface to Caleb Bingham’s 1810 volume entitled, The Columbian Orator. Like the later McGuffey Readers, “school-books” like Bingham’s were quite popular throughout the nineteenth century, as Americans sought to train their children with exemplary words from the most virtuous lives of history.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and an important part of persuasion is earning people’s trust. There’s a great quotation attributed to Dale Carnegie, the great life and persuasion coach of the first half of the twentieth century. He said, “You can’t make people agree with you, but you can make people want to agree with you.” If you are a person of virtue and strong character, people will be more likely to trust and believe you. Character is crucial in rhetoric.
An excerpt from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, with an introduction by Anika Prather, Ph.D.
Abraham Lincoln wrote and delivered great speeches, yet he often downplayed words. He knew that mere words could not bring forth the “new birth of freedom”—only battlefield victories followed by constitutional amendments could do that.
An Interview with Zackary Withers: Zackary Withers is the headmaster at Anthem Preparatory Academy, and has been with Great Hearts for eleven years. He collaborated with a group of educators to create the Great Hearts American Rhetoric senior course.
Betsy K. Brown teaches and chairs the humanities program at Cicero Preparatory Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona. A graduate of Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, with a focus on creative nonfiction, Betsy loves to share the goodness of words and stories with young people amid the beauty of the American Southwest.
With so much information and so many different news sources, and with the politicization of almost every issue, it can be hard to know who to trust, or where to find good faith debates.