To James Madison from Ebenezer Bancroft Williston, 30 December 1825
From Ebenezer Bancroft Williston
Middletown (Con) Dec 30th 1825
Sir,
I am preparing for publication a collection of the most celebrated speeches of American Orators.1 I find the greatest difficulty in procuring copies of the early Congressional debates. There never were more animating subjects of debate than those which the Revolution afforded & those which afterward grew out of the relations of this country with France, & during both these periods many wise and eloquent statesmen were in Congress; still the only speech which I can obtain delivered before 1800 is that of Mr Ames on the British Treaty.2 I shall be under very great obligations to You if You will have the goodness to designate some of the most distinguished Congressional speeches delivered before 1800 & inform me from what source I may obtain copies of them.
I hope, Sir, You will consider the anxiety I feel to make my collection as perfect as possible a sufficient excuse for the liberty I take in thus addressing You. With sentiments of the highest esteem I am, Sir, your most obt Servt.
E. B. Williston3
PS. Will you be so Kind as to send me copies of your Inaugural Addresses if convenient.
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. Ebenezer Bancroft Williston, comp., Eloquence of the United States (5 vols.; Middletown, Conn., 1827; 31773).
2. For Fisher Ames’s 28 Apr. 1796 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives in support of the Jay Treaty, see Works of Fisher Ames. Compiled by a Number of His Friends. To Which Are Prefixed Notices of His Life and Character (Boston, 1809), 58–93.
3. Ebenezer Bancroft Williston (1801–1837) attended Dartmouth College and graduated from the University of Vermont in 1823. From 1820 to 1828 he was a professor of Latin and Greek at the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy (now Norwich University), located first in Norwich, Vermont, and after its move in 1825, in Middletown, Connecticut. Williston was president of Jefferson College in Washington, Mississippi, 1829–32, until his resignation owing to ill health. He returned to Norwich, where he died of pulmonary consumption (William Arba Ellis, ed., Norwich University, 1819–1911: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor [3 vols.; Montpelier, Vt., 1911], 2:257–58; Lewis Cass Aldrich and Frank R. Holmes, eds., History of Windsor County, Vermont [Syracuse, N.Y., 1891], 488–89; David G. Sansing, Making Haste Slowly: The Troubled History of Higher Education in Mississippi [Jackson, Miss., 1990], 13–15; New London Gazette, 24 Jan. 1838).