Give Me Liberty

September 1, 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.”