The Presidential Speech
Six SessionsA literary course for adult readers and writers · taught by James F. Mulhern
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Important Information & Course Materials▾
An Invitation▾
The great American presidential speech is a literary form. It has ancestors — Cicero, the King James Bible, Shakespeare, the sermons of Jonathan Edwards. It has conventions — the address to “my fellow citizens,” the closing benediction, the memorable sentence engineered to be quoted for a century. And it has a rhetoric all its own, one that has shaped the American conversation from Washington’s Farewell to the addresses of the current century.
This six-session course reads six of the greatest American presidential speeches slowly — the way we read a poem. We do not read them for their politics; we read them for their craft. What are the sentences doing? Which rhetorical devices are in play — anaphora, chiasmus, antithesis, parallelism, tricolon, allusion? Why is the speech shaped the way it is, given the historical moment in which it was delivered? And what makes a speech worth reading two hundred years later?
The course is for adult readers who love American history, who have always meant to read these speeches carefully, and for anyone who wants to hear the national voice with fresh ears.
What This Course Is▾
- A six-session close-reading course on American oratory
- One speech per session, all delivered by American presidents, all in the public domain
- Ninety minutes per session, discussion-based
- Non-graded, non-competitive, open to any adult reader
- In person or on Zoom, adaptable to any partner venue’s calendar
What This Course Is Not▾
- Not a partisan course. We read speeches by presidents from both major parties and from before the party system existed.
- Not a survey of American history (though history is present in every session)
- Not a public-speaking or speechwriting workshop (though the craft lessons are inescapable)
About the Instructor▾
James F. Mulhern is a Kirkus-starred novelist, Oxford Writing Fellow, and Professor Emeritus of English with more than thirty years teaching American literature and rhetoric. His course Literature & American History — a cross-reading of primary historical documents and the literary works that answer them — is a staple of the salon catalog. His novel Give Them Unquiet Dreams received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2019.
Course Details▾
- Instructor: James F. Mulhern
- Location: in person or on Zoom
- Format: Weekly, 90 minutes per session
- Duration: 6 weeks
- Cost: Contact for current terms
- Enrollment: Open to all adults; no application required
- Grading: None
- Required texts: None to purchase. Every speech is free and linked in this document.
- Materials to bring: This document (printed or digital), and something to write with
Rhetorical Terms We Will Learn▾
Every session introduces one or two rhetorical devices in the natural way — by encountering them in a great speech and then naming them. By the end of the course, participants will have working knowledge of:
- Anaphora — repetition at the beginning of successive clauses (“we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields…”)
- Antithesis — the balancing of contrary ideas in parallel structure (“ask not what your country…”)
- Chiasmus — a mirror-image reversal (“a lie can travel around the world before truth puts its boots on”)
- Tricolon — a series of three (“of the people, by the people, for the people”)
- Parallelism — sentences built on the same grammatical shape
- Allusion — a compressed reference to a shared text (usually the Bible, Shakespeare, or a prior American speech)
- Metonymy and synecdoche — the part standing for the whole (“the White House said today…”)
- Prosopopoeia — giving voice to an absent or abstract entity (the Founding Fathers, the country itself, generations to come)
What to Expect Each Week▾
Each session follows the same shape:
- Historical setting — five minutes of context. What was happening? Who was listening?
- First reading — the speech read aloud in full, or its most important passage
- Craft close-reading — sentence-by-sentence attention to structure and rhetoric
- The historical question — why was this speech shaped this way for this moment?
- The literary question — what makes it survive as reading matter two centuries later?
- Takeaway — one rhetorical move to carry forward
Readings▾
All speeches are available free online through the Yale Avalon Project, the JFK Library, the Stanford King Institute, and the presidential libraries. No book purchase is required.
A Companion Volume▾
Coming soon — an annotated reader of the six speeches with James F. Mulhern’s marginal notes on rhetorical devices, allusions, and historical context.
A Few Promises▾
- Every session begins on time and ends on time.
- Every discussion is generous. We read the speeches for their craft first; politics is present, but it is not the subject.
- Nothing said in the room leaves it.
- No one is asked to speak. Silence is a legitimate contribution.
A Few Asks▾
- Read the speech before the session. They are short; read each one twice.
- Bring the printed or digital text. We refer to specific lines constantly.
- Come to as many sessions as you can. Each session builds on the last.
Registration▾
To register or bring this course to a partner venue — libraries, universities, historical societies, museums, civic organizations — please email jamesfmulhern@gmail.com. The course can also be delivered as a two-day intensive (three sessions per day) or as six evening lectures.
About the Use of These Materials▾
These materials — course descriptions, reading lists, syllabi, discussion questions, session pages, and prompts — were written and designed by James F. Mulhern for Silver Current Press. Readers are welcome to read, print, share, and quote them for personal use and study.
Teachers, program directors, and institutions who would like to use any of this material in a classroom, syllabus, publication, or paid program are asked to write first — a short email is enough. The answer will almost always be a warm yes, with a note on attribution. Please contact Professor Mulhern at [email protected].
The Sessions▾
Session 1 — Washington's Farewell Address (1796)
Focus: The first great American speech. Never actually delivered aloud — Washington published it in a Philadelphia newspaper on the eve of retirement — but designed to be read the way a speech is heard. It set the template for every presidential address that followed.
Main Points of the Lesson
- Washington writes as a departing father. The address is a testament — advice for a country he is about to leave to itself.
- The rhetorical structure is periodic. Long balanced sentences with the main clause held to the end. Classical, Ciceronian, deliberate.
- Two central warnings. Against sectional faction, and against “permanent alliances” with foreign powers. Both anticipate crises that would come.
- The prose is written to endure. Hamilton and Madison helped Washington shape it. Every phrase was weighed.
- Note the persona. Washington calls himself repeatedly “your fellow-citizen.” The president as citizen: an American invention.
Reading
- George Washington, “Farewell Address” (1796) — Yale Avalon Project
In-Class Practice
Take one long sentence from the Address. Read it aloud. Now diagram its structure — where is the subject, where is the main verb, how many clauses are stacked before them? What effect does the delay produce? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Washington opens by explaining that he will not seek a third term. Why does he devote so many paragraphs to that decision before he gives his advice?
- Which warning in the address has aged best — the warning against faction, or against foreign entanglement? Which has aged worst?
- Washington’s sentence rhythms are long and complex. Compare them to a modern presidential address (a paragraph of one, aloud). What changed in two centuries?
- The address is written to be read. Would it work as a spoken speech? Which paragraphs would survive, which would not?
- What does the phrase “your fellow-citizen, GEORGE WASHINGTON” do at the closing?
Homework
Read Lincoln’s First Inaugural (1861) before next week. Notice what Lincoln borrows from Washington and what he refuses.
Session 2 — Lincoln's Second Inaugural (1865)
Focus: Seven hundred and one words. Delivered in the closing weeks of the Civil War, forty-one days before Lincoln’s assassination. Frederick Douglass called it “a sacred effort.” No other American speech does so much in so few words.
Main Points of the Lesson
- The speech is written on biblical rhythms. Lincoln steeps himself in the Book of Psalms and the Gospels. Read the closing paragraph aloud and hear the King James Bible in every phrase.
- Antithesis is the central device. “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.” That balanced pair does more moral work than pages of argument could.
- The speech refuses triumphalism. Lincoln is about to win the war and he refuses to gloat. Instead: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”
- He indicts both sides. Slavery, he says, is “somehow the cause” of the war — a phrase that puts the crime on the whole nation, not just the South.
- The closing benediction. The last sentence is the most quoted in American oratory. Read it slowly. It is one sentence.
Reading
- Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address” (1865) — Yale Avalon Project
In-Class Practice
Take the closing sentence — “With malice toward none…” — and mark every clause. How does Lincoln build to “a just, and a lasting peace”? What is each clause doing? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Lincoln has just won the war. Why does he begin the speech so quietly?
- Where does the speech turn from history into theology? Which sentence?
- Read the phrase “if God wills that it continue” until “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.” What is Lincoln proposing about the war?
- The Second Inaugural was widely criticized on delivery for being too gloomy, too religious. What did Lincoln’s contemporaries miss?
- What has Lincoln given up in these 701 words? What has he refused to give up?
Homework
Read FDR’s First Inaugural (1933). Notice the change in voice.
Session 3 — FDR's First Inaugural (1933)
Focus: March 4, 1933. Unemployment at 25%. Banks closing across the country. FDR speaks to a country that has lost its confidence — and gives back a phrase that has never left it.
Main Points of the Lesson
- “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Anaphora and chiasmus at once. Read the full sentence in context.
- The rhetorical mode is diagnosis. FDR names the crisis before he names the response. This structure — problem, cause, action — became the template for modern presidential addresses.
- He borrows biblical language, but sparingly. “Money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.” Old Testament, but pressed into modern service.
- The tricolon of action. “This nation asks for action, and action now.” The rhythm carries the reader forward.
- This is the beginning of the imperial presidency. FDR asks Congress for “broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” That sentence changed the shape of American government.
Reading
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, “First Inaugural Address” (1933) — Yale Avalon Project
In-Class Practice
Take the opening paragraph. Read it aloud in three ways — as if you were FDR at the microphone, as if you were a newspaper reader the next morning, and as if you were reading it now. What changes each time? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- The famous phrase — “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — comes very early. Why not save it for the peroration?
- What does the “money changers” passage do rhetorically? What does it do politically?
- FDR uses military metaphors throughout — “we must move as a trained and loyal army.” Why? What does the choice cost, and what does it gain?
- How does FDR’s rhetoric compare to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural? Both are speeches of national crisis.
- If you had to write a modern equivalent of the First Inaugural for a modern crisis, which sentence would you preserve unchanged?
Homework
Read Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (1961).
Session 4 — Kennedy's Inaugural (1961)
Focus: January 20, 1961. Cold War at its coldest. Kennedy is the youngest man elected president. The speech is short — under fifteen minutes — and every sentence has been engineered.
Main Points of the Lesson
- The speech is a masterclass in antithesis. “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” The single most famous chiasmus in American oratory.
- Ted Sorensen shaped every clause. Kennedy’s ghostwriter had learned Lincoln’s cadences by heart. The Second Inaugural is present in every paragraph.
- The address is written for the ear. Read it aloud and count the parallel structures. They are relentless.
- The historical audience is global. Kennedy addresses “old allies,” “new nations,” “sister republics,” “the United Nations,” “the Soviet Union,” and finally “my fellow citizens.” Each address is calibrated.
- “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” Metaphor as generational politics — and as claim to inherit the earlier speeches we have been reading.
Reading
- John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” (1961) — JFK Presidential Library
In-Class Practice
Mark every antithesis in the speech. There are dozens. Choose your favorite three. Read them aloud. What does the pattern do to a listener over the course of the whole address? (15 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- The famous “ask not” sentence — where in the speech does it come, and why there? Would it work at the opening? At the closing?
- Kennedy addresses six different audiences in successive paragraphs. How does he signal the shift each time? What technique?
- What is the effect of the metaphor “the torch has been passed”?
- Compare Kennedy’s address to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. Both are about 1,300 words. What does each speech treat as the country’s central problem?
- Which sentence of Kennedy’s would you engrave on a stone plaque? Why that one?
Homework
Read King’s “I Have a Dream” (1963) — technically not a presidential speech, but the rhetorical companion to every one we have read.
Session 5 — Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" (1963)
Focus: August 28, 1963. Delivered to 250,000 people on the National Mall, and to a nation watching on television. Not a presidential speech — but the American speech that most fully answers the presidential tradition. King treats the Declaration and the Emancipation Proclamation as texts to be finished, not preserved.
Main Points of the Lesson
- King is preaching, not lecturing. His training is the Black Baptist pulpit, and the speech unfolds as a sermon: text, exposition, application, altar call.
- The speech has two halves. The prepared text (measured, lawyerly, on written cue cards) and the improvised close (from “I have a dream,” which King departed from his notes to deliver at Mahalia Jackson’s urging).
- Anaphora is the engine. “I have a dream” — repeated. “Let freedom ring” — repeated. Each repetition builds.
- The allusions layer. Amos, Isaiah, Shakespeare’s Richard III, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” the Declaration. Each allusion connects to a canon King treats as his birthright.
- The speech ends by quoting a spiritual. “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.” The closing borrows the cadence of a slave hymn and applies it to a promised future.
Reading
- Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream” (1963) — Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
In-Class Practice
King departs from his prepared text at “I have a dream.” Mark where the change of register happens. Read five minutes before that break aloud. Then five minutes after. What is different in tone, rhythm, and vocabulary? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- The first two-thirds of the speech is legal — promissory note, check that came back marked “insufficient funds.” What is King doing with the metaphor?
- Where does the biblical prose take over? Which sentence?
- Trace one anaphora through the speech (“I have a dream…” or “Let freedom ring…”). What does each repetition accomplish that a single statement could not?
- King quotes and adapts the language of Lincoln, Jefferson, Isaiah, and a spiritual, all in one speech. Is that borrowing? Compilation? Or a new form?
- Compare King’s rhetoric to Kennedy’s Inaugural. Both are exhortations. Which asks more of its listeners?
Homework
Read Reagan’s Challenger address (1986). It is very short.
Session 6 — Reagan's Address to the Nation on the Challenger (1986)
Focus: January 28, 1986. Seventy-three seconds after launch, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on national television. Reagan was scheduled to deliver the State of the Union that evening. Instead, from the Oval Office, he delivered a four-minute address that has been called one of the finest presidential speeches in American history. Peggy Noonan wrote it.
Main Points of the Lesson
- The speech is 650 words. In a national crisis, restraint is a rhetorical choice.
- Reagan speaks to specific audiences. The astronauts’ families, “the school children of America,” the American people, and finally the Challenger crew themselves. Each address is calibrated.
- Peggy Noonan’s ending is one of the most famous in American speechmaking. “They slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.” The line is borrowed from a 1941 poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., an American RAF pilot killed in the war. The allusion is not decoration — it is the speech’s whole argument.
- A short speech can bear as much weight as a long one. The Second Inaugural is 701 words. This speech is 650. Neither has a wasted phrase.
- This is a national elegy. Reagan is not proposing policy. He is grieving publicly, on behalf of the country.
Reading
- Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on the Explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger” (1986) — Reagan Presidential Library
- Bonus: John Gillespie Magee, Jr., “High Flight” (1941) — Poetry Foundation — the source of the closing lines.
In-Class Practice
Read the closing paragraph aloud. Now read Magee’s “High Flight” aloud in its entirety. Return to the closing paragraph. What has changed? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- The speech addresses school children directly. Why? What is Reagan doing there rhetorically that no other section could do?
- The Magee allusion at the end has been analyzed for forty years. Why does it work? Would a plainer ending — “we mourn the crew of Challenger” — have worked better?
- How does this speech compare, as a national elegy, to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural?
- This is the shortest speech we have read. Which sentence would you remove if forced? Which would you protect above all others?
- Look back across the six speeches. Which one gains most on close re-reading? Which one loses the least? Which one has the most to teach a writer, regardless of politics?
Homework
None. Instead, this week: watch or listen to a modern presidential speech — any one — with a pencil in hand. Mark its rhetorical devices. Notice what it borrows from the tradition we have been reading. Notice what it invents.