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The closing of the speech, brief though it be, furnishes an opportunity for the most effective oratory. As final impressions remain longest in the mind, the climax should consist of a summary of the main points, an emphasis of the central truth, an appeal to the emotions, a call to action. The following beginning and climax of Wendell Phillips in his popular lecture on Toussaint L’Ouverture is an excellent example for pupils to copy:

“I have been requested to offer you a sketch of one of the most remarkable men of the last generation, the great Toussaint L’Ouverture. My sketch is at once a biography and an argument—a biography of a negro statesman and soldier, and an argument in behalf of the race from which he sprang.

“If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts,—you, who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L’Ouverture,who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle.”

The following summing up, the climax, the closing of the great oration, has seldom been surpassed, and will serve as a splendid model for all speakers:

“I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the State he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.

“You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Touissaint L’Ouverture.”

Senator Thurston’s great oration, a “Plea for Cuba,” was delivered in the United States Senate on March 24, 1898. Mrs. Thurston died in Cuba. As a dying request she urged her husband, who was investigating affairs in the island, to do his utmost to induce the United States to intervene. Hence this oration.

In the following climax and peroration of this eloquent plea the speaker’s voice rang out like a battle-cry, emphasizing the one word “Force” in every possible way:

“Mr. President, there is only one action possible; that is, intervention for the independence of Cuba. But we cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war; war means blood. But it will be God’s force. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force?

“Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox; force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made “niggers” men. The time for God’s force has come again. Let the impassioned lips of American patriots once more take up the song—

‘In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.’

“Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay; but for me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to answer to my conscience, my country, and my God.”

The following is the climax and closing of Watter-son’s great oration on Abraham Lincoln:

“I look into the crystal globe that, slowly turning, reveals the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln, and I see a little heart-broken boy, weeping by the outstretched form of a dead mother, then bravely, nobly trudging a hundred miles to obtain her Christian burial. I see this motherless lad growing to manhood amid scenes that seem to lead to nothing but abasement; no teachers; no books; 110 chart except his own untutored mind; no compass except his own undisciplined will; no light save light from heaven; yet, like the caravel of Columbus, struggling on and on through the trough of the sea, always toward the destined land. I see the full-grown man, stalwart and brave, an athlete in activity of movement and strength of limb, yet vexed by weird dreams and visions of life, of love, of religion, sometimes verging on despair. I see the mind, grown as robust as the body, throw off these phantoms of the imagination and give itself wholly to the practical uses of this work-a-day world; the rearing of children; the earning of bread; the multiplied duties of the husband, the father, and the citizen. I see the party leader, self-confident in conscious rectitude; original, because it was not his nature to follow; potent, because he was fearless, pursuing his convictions with earnest zeal, and urging them upon his fellows with the resources of an oratory which was hardly more impressive than it was manysided.

“And, last scene of all, that ends this strange, eventful history, I see him lying dead there in the capitol of the nation, to which he had rendered ‘the last full measure of his devotion,’ the flag of his country wrapped about him, the world in mourning, and, asking myself, how could any man have hated that man, I ask you, how can any man refuse his homage to his memory? Surely, he was one of God’s elect; not in any sense a creature of circumstance or accident. Recurring to the doctrine of inspiration, I say again and again, he was inspired of God, and I cannot see how any one who believes in that doctrine can regard him as anything else.”

Then tenderly the great orator finished his work of love. While many in the audience were in tears and the rest hushed to silence, his great voice turned to pathos, he portrayed the martyred Lincoln’s translation back to God:

“Born—as—lowly—as—the—son of God, in a hovel,” he said slowly; “of what ancestry we know not and care not; reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light or fair surroundings; without graces, actual or acquired; without name or fame or official training; it was reserved for this strange being, late in life, to be snatched from obscurity, raised to supreme command at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the destiny of a nation.

“Where did Shakespeare get his genius? Where did Mozart get his music? Whose hand smote the lyre of the Scottish plowman and stayed the life of the German priest? God, God, and God alone; and as surely as these were raised up by God, inspired by God was Abraham Lincoln; and a thousand years hence, no drama, no tragedy, no epic poem will be filled with greater wonder, or be followed by mankind with deeper feeling, than that which tells the story of his life and death.”