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    The Primary Union Speaker was published in 1868 and written by John D. Philbrick who, at the time, was Superintendent of the Public Schools of Boston and author of The American Union Speaker.  The book is a collection of writings from various authors on several topics including many that dealt with patriotism and the Civil War.  The Preface states, “Children from six to twelve years of age ought to be accustomed, both at home and at school, to commit to memory some good pieces, and adapted to their capacity, and to recite or speak them with the proper action and expression. 

     For this  purpose both poetry and prose should be used, but poetry chiefly, poetry that is poetry to childhood, and so gets the entry of the child’s heart, poetry that is full of sensible images, rural pictures, and tender and heroic sentiments, and not what is formal, over-refined, and sublimated, and hence to the little folks not poetry, but mere sounding emptiness.

     Pieces of the right sort children will easily learn so as to repeat them by heart, and not by mere rote; and they will soon speak them well too, if properly encouraged, and not hampered by rules or intimidated by fault-finding.  A little skillful management, by the teacher or parent, in reading talking about pieces, will make the better sort of children feel it to be a privilege “to get pieces and say them.”  And how much good education they may get in this way!

     The object of this little Speaker is to furnish a choice collection of pieces suitable for the purposes above named.  Some of the pieces are wholly new, being now for the first time published; some of them, though not quite new, are not well known; and others are old favorites, well known and much valued.

     It is believed that these pieces, which have been selected and prepared with much willing care, will be found both pleasing and useful; that they will be the means of quickening the moral sense, and of promoting the love of the good, the true and the beautiful.”