Gold Spoon Oration

rdf:langString Gold Spoon Oration

rdf:langString The Gold Spoon Oration, also called "The Regal Splendor of the President's Palace," was a political speech given in the US House of Representatives by Charles Ogle (Whig-PA) on April 14–16, 1840. The speech reviled then-President Martin Van Buren for his supposedly luxurious lifestyle in the White House, while idealizing Whig presidential candidate William Henry Harrison as a homespun man of the people; compare the idiom "silver spoon". Shortly after delivering the speech, Ogle had tens of thousands of copies printed and circulated around the nation as campaign literature. Historians, journalists and politicians consider it one of the premier political attacks in American history. Many also rank it as one of the most amusing speeches ever delivered in Congress. The speech is almost coincidentally the most complete inventory of the objects and furnishings of the White House for that time. It was claimed by the Trenton Emporium that what was published was not the speech made by Ogle. The paper claimed that the published speech was edited multiple times and stuffed with fabrications developed by other Whig Party members.