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Noah Webster Commemorates the Revolution and Teaches a Common Orthography
Noah Webster Commemorates the Revolution and Teaches a Common Orthography
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Noah Webster Commemorates the Revolution and Teaches a Common Orthography

This pair of important publications by Noah Webster illustrates his deep sense of nationalism and his commitment to education. His oration on July 4, 1798, in New Haven, advocated the positions of the Federalist Party over the Jeffersonian Republicans. His grammar book, The Little Franklin, drew on the wisdom assembled by Benjamin Franklin to teach American children a revised American orthography, free of the "errors and deformities" of British English.

NOAH WEBSTER, An Oration Pronounced Before the Citizens of New-Haven on the Anniversary of the Independence of the United States, July 4th 1798. New Haven, Connecticut: T. and S. Green, 1798. 16 pp., 5" x 7.875". Evans 34984, Sabin 102373. General toning; very good.
With: NOAH WEBSTER, The Little Franklin: Teaching Children to Read What They Daily Speak, and to Learn What They Ought to Know. New Haven, Connecticut: S. Babcock, 1836. 72 pp., 3.75" x 6.25". Some foxing; very good.

Excerpts
[Oration:]
"Twenty and two years are completed, since the fathers of our empire, appealing to God and the impartial world, for the purity of their motives, rent asunder the bands that connected the English colonies with their mother country, and declared them an INDEPENDENT NATION." (p3)

"From these considerations, let us learn to estimate the value of the position we hold on the globe, and of our civil and religious institutions. Let us consider them as sacred deposits entrusted to our care by the God of nations, to be guarded with vigilance, and to be handed down unimpared to posterity.
"At no period since we become a nation, have our political affairs been so critical, as at this moment. Ambition, under the specious cover of republicanism, and infidelity, under the deceptive title of reason, have assumed the scepter and the sword, and are stalking over the earth, with giant-steps, levelling the mounds which wisdom and policy had raised, to restrain the vicious propensities of men; turning the physical against the moral force of a nation; dragging, from seats of justice, the wise and the venerable, and replacing them with bullies and coxcombs; encouraging violence and robbery, under pretence of introducing a factitious equality; plundering states, under the name of taking pay for protecting them; dethroning God and trampling on man." (p12)

"How glorious was it for America, that her revolution, was guided by wise and able men, and that scarcely was its progress disgraced by a popular tumult! If there is a species of despotism, more ferocious, more merciless, and inexorable, than another, it is the dominion of bullies and ruffians. May the illustrious example of the conductors of the American revolution, be sacred to imitation, in every period of our history!" (p14)

"Let us then rally round the Independence and Constitution of our country; resolved, to a man, that we will never lose by folly, disunion or cowardice, what has been planned by wisdom, and purchased with blood." (p16)

[Little Franklin:]
"The following lessons begin with words, for the most part, of one and two syllables, and with subjects familiar to children. The design is to amuse and please the pupils, while they are learning to read; and to make them familiar with words of daily use, and with their true spelling.
"These lessons are also intended to impress upon young minds, some truths which may be useful in the common affairs of life.
"Dr. Franklin was an eminent teacher of common sense, the best sense in the world, and a zealous advocate for reforming the errors and deformities of English orthography. This was a proof of his own common sense." (p5)

"Language is the means or instrument by which we converse, and impart ideas one to another.
"Language consists of words, which are the signs of ideas; and these words may be written or spoken.
"Grammar teaches to distinguish the several sorts of words, and the manner of using them in sentences, when we speak or write." (p60-61).

Noah Webster (1758-1843) was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale College in 1778. He was admitted to the bar in 1781 but could find no work as a lawyer. He received a master’s degree from Yale and began teaching at schools in western Connecticut and then Goshen, New York. He wrote and published a speller (1783), a grammar book (1784), and a reader (1785) for elementary schools. In 1789, he married Rebecca Greenleaf (1766-1847) in New Haven, and they had eight children. In 1793, with a loan from Alexander Hamilton, Webster moved to New York City, where he founded the Federalist newspaper American Minerva and edited it for four years. He also published the semi-weekly publication The Herald, A Gazette for the Country. He defended the administrations of George Washington and John Adams, earning the ire of the Jeffersonian Republicans. After returning to New Haven in 1798, he served in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1800 and 1802-1807. In 1812, he moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he lived for a decade and helped to found Amherst College. Webster published his first dictionary in 1806 but began the following year to compile an expanded and comprehensive dictionary. The proceeds from the sale of his popular blue-backed speller allowed him to spend many years working on the dictionary. His famed An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) provided an intellectual foundation for American nationalism, seeing the new nation as superior to the old empires of antiquity and contemporary Europe. He published an expanded second edition in two volumes in 1840.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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