ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF AMHERST COLLEGE, ON THE AFTERNOON PRECEDING COMMENCEMENT, 25TH AUGUST, 1835 by EVERETT, Edward - [1835]

n.p., [1835]. Manuscript. Blank wrappers soiled, a few chips; internally Fine. Stitched wraps (8" x 9-3/4") consisting of a title and 65 pages bound together with a ribbon, all edges gilt. A lengthy, closely written MANUSCRIPT by Edward Everett, not signed though initialed after his instructions. An early oration from Edward Everett (1794-1865), Whig politician, U.S. Representative and Senator, sometime President of Harvard University, United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Britain, and Governor of Massachusetts before being appointed United States Secretary of State. On the back of the title-page, Everett has penciled, "[The compositor will please not to cut nor tear this manuscript, but preserve it as clean as he can conveniently].... E.E." The compositor accomplished the required feat. The oration was published in Boston by Russell, Shattuck, & Williams in 1835. In this commencement address Everett discusses the extension of the means of education and the societal benefits of the general diffusion of knowledge to liberty, science, and virtue.

Edward Everett is perhaps best known for his oratory powers. It is he who gave the "other" address at Gettysburg on 19 November 1863. The next day he wrote Lincoln saying, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."