Historic Speeches

Below you will find some famous speeches by key participants in our Time Force Missions. For more background on what was really happening during the team’s Time Force Missions, subscribe to our Mission Updates.

Book 1: Save the Dream: March on Washington

Speech: I Have a Dream

by Martin Luther King, Jr

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. 

Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. 

http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/mlk.htm

Book 4: A Dangerous Thing: The Struggle to Equality

Speech: What to a Slave is the 4th of July

by Frederick Douglas

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/_files/resources/texts/c/1852%20Douglass%20July%204.pdf

Book 5: How Gloomy the Prospect: The 13 Colonies

Speech: Federalist Paper #1: Introduction

by Alexander Hamilton

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493264

Book 7: TBD

Speech: On Women’s Right to Vote

by Susan B. Anthony

Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

https://www.historyplace.com/speeches/anthony.htm

Book 7: TBD

Speech: Declaration of Sentiments, July 1848

by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/history-education-pss-gov-declarationsentiments-transcription.pdf

Book 7: TBD

Speech: Seneca Falls Keynote Speech 1848

by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

… But we are assembled to protest against a form of government existing without the consent of the governed -to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support…

Book 9: TBD

Speech: Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat, May 13 1940

by Winston Churchill

https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/blood-toil-tears-and-sweat-2/

Book 9: TBD

Speech: We Shall Fight on the Beaches, June 4 1940

by Winston Churchill

Book 9: TBD

Speech: This was their Finest Hour, June 18 1940

by Winston Churchill

Book 11: TBD

Speech: Gettysburg Address

by Abraham Lincoln