The first and fifth Boylston professors: A view of two worlds

Abstract

John Quincy Adams's Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, published in 1810, and Adams Sherman Hill's The Principles of Rhetoric, published in 1878, were as different as early morning and high noon, revealing significant differences in what they perceived to be the most salient environmental conditions facing their students. Adams saw a vacuum that needed filling; Hill saw a “loaded” society to which adjustment must be made. Adams felt that modifying a barren environment requires creative people able to build a broader public community; Hill believed adapting to bustling surroundings demands critical understanding and evaluation. They proceeded on these different premises to develop rhetorics for the orator‐statesman and for the reporter‐critic respectively. Each turned to appropriate sources: Adams to the classics, especially Cicero, and Hill to contemporaries, especially Campbell.