Editing Glittering generality (section)

==Origins==
The term dates from the mid-19th century in the American context.<ref>{{cite web|title=Google Ngram Viewer|url=https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=glittering+generalities&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=|access-date=5 July 2013}}</ref>   Advocates for [[Abolition of slavery in the USA|abolition of slavery]] argued that the institution was contradictory to the [[United States Declaration of Independence|United States Declaration of Independence's]] statements that "all men are created equal" and possessed [[natural rights]] to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." [[Proslavery]] opponents countered that the Declaration was a collection of inspirational statements intended for revolution, rather than a concrete set of principles for civil society. [[Rufus Choate]], a [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig]] senator from Massachusetts, likely brought the term into general discourse.  In a widely-distributed 1851 address at Boston's Fanueil Hall, Choate praised fellow New Englander Daniel Webster's moderate stance on slavery, claiming that Webster showed prudence in not "taking a single idea and...exaggerating it out of its nature by ascending a stage and there throwing up for huzzas of the crowd a glittering generality into the air; by taking the Declaration of Independence or the Lord’s Prayer and presenting it to a self-complacent audience, by deducing from them, fraudulently, the necessity of instant and universal emancipation."<ref>{{Cite news |date=December 15, 1851 |title=Rufus Choate's Speech |url=https://newscomwc.newspapers.com/article/the-recorder-rufus-choates-speech/167258664/ |work=The Recorder |location=Greenfield, Mass. |pages=1}}</ref> In an August 1856 public letter to the Maine Whig Committee (again, widely reprinted in the newspapers of the period), Choate expressed fear that antislavery Whigs, inspired by the Declaration's "glittering and sound generalities," would destroy the Union.<ref>{{cite book|last=Brown|first=Samuel|title=The Works of Rufus Choate: With a Memoir of His Life|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ssnAQAAMAAJ&pg=SL17-PA15|page=215}}</ref> The letter – and especially Choate's phrase – became the topic of much public debate in the northern press. However, it is unclear whether the phrase was originated by Choate or Franklin J. Dickman, a judge and legal scholar of that era.<ref>[http://www.bartleby.com/100/403.html Bartlett's Familiar Quotations] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305004302/https://www.bartleby.com/100/403.html |date=2021-03-05 }}, 10th ed. 1919</ref> [[Abraham Lincoln]], in an April 6, 1859 letter to Henry L. Pierce, criticized political opponents of the day who slighted the foundational principles of [[Thomas Jefferson]] as "glittering generalities".  Lincoln asserted that Jefferson's abstract ideals were not mere rhetoric, but the "definitions and axioms of free society."<ref>[http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/pierce.htm Letter to Henry L. Pierce and others] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220205183509/https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/pierce.htm |date=2022-02-05 }}, 6 April 1859</ref>

The term then came to be used for any set of ideas or principles that are appealing but nonspecific.  In the 1930s, the [[Institute for Propaganda Analysis]] popularized the term as one of its "seven propaganda devices."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Propaganda - Institute for Propaganda Analysis |url=https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/ipatypes.html |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=www.physics.smu.edu}}</ref>