It is only on fitting occasions, when great principles are to be vindicated, and solemn truths told, when some moral or political Waterloo or Solferino is to be fought, that he puts on the entire panoply of his gorgeous rhetoric.
Hoar reflects on the occasions when powerful rhetoric is necessary in political discourse.
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More from George F. Hoar
It would have been a worse civil war than that of the Rebellion, because the country would have been divided not by sections, but by parties.
I believe that as time goes on, the great self-restraint of the American people in dealing with the momentous peril of 1877, and the constructive ability which created the simple but perfect mechanism of the Electoral Commission, will…
But I confess I like to leave on record, if I may, some evidence which will contradict the charge so constantly made by critics near home, that I am a man of intense partisan and personal bitterness.
He would undoubtedly have taken a very high place in the public and official life of his generation if he had found himself in accord with either of the great political parties.
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