“Let every Southern Educator read this.”

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008

Important mailing entitled “Let every Southern Educator read this.” 4p. quarto, “From the Milledgville Union, August, 1869, Worcester’s Quarto Dictionary.” and reads in part: “...We have before us a copy of the latest edition of Dr. Worcester’s great Quarto Dictionary of the English language. We have also before us a copy of the composite Quarto Dictionary, styled ‘Webster’s Dictionary,’ but which, in fact, has no right to wear the captivating title of that great lexicographer’s name....The appearance of Dr. Worcester’s Octavo Dictionary in 1846 delighted the literary men of America, by setting up the standard of the best English usage which Mr. Webster had torn down to make place for his own peculiar standard; and this was the immediate cause of the changed Goodrich Dictionary (styled Webster’s,) in the following year, 1847, wherein many of Mr. Webster’s eccentricities were abandoned for better English authority....The orthography and pronunciation have been certainly improved, as almost all of Dr. Webster’s peculiarities have been laid aside, and Dr. Worcester’s standard has been approximated. But in many important definitions the most dangerous and unauthorized innovations have been made, implying direct contradiction of indisputable facts of history in the formation of our Government, and favoring the Radical usurpations which are rapidly driving our coutnry into the vortex of a consolidated despotism...The millions of America will get more of their ideas of the nature of our government from the brief definitions in the dictionaries they use, than from more learned and elaborate treatises on the subject. The doctrines necessarily implied in the new miscalled ‘Webster’s’ definitions, are on ground more than half way from that of the old Republic to an Imperial Despotism, which many are now openly advocating...Let our readers, if convenient, refer to the several definitions, and compare them, of the words ‘Congress;’ ‘Compact;’ and ‘Constitution;’ and they will no longer doubt the purpose of the compliers to be as we have intimated. We are tempted to prolong this article so as to present to our readers the changes wrough on one word - ‘State.’ In the old Webster: ‘A political body, or body politic; the whole of a people united under one government, whatever may be the form of government. More usually, the word signifies a political body governed by representatives; a commonwealth: as the States of America.’ Here is evidently room for the original theories of State governments held by the founders of our Republic. It must be ‘revised.’ Thus the ‘Webster’ of 1864 hath it: ‘In the United States, one of the commonwealths or bodies politic, the people of which make up the body of the nation, and which, under the national constitution, stand in certain specified relations with the National Government, and are invested as commonwealth, with full power in their several spheres over all matters not especially inhibited.’ Does the reader see the drift? Surely we need not point it out. We are not - we never were - a ‘nation.’ We are a community of nations, bound together by the compact of the United States Constitution...It is needless to say that Dr. Worcester’s definitions were not made in any partisan or political spirit; are precise, accurate, faultless,; and they are really the standard, as they profess to be.” With transmittal cover to Ale. Donnan of Petersburg, Virginia. Fine.

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