Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat Jr. (October 2, 1922February 23, 1996) was an American judge, law professor, and state representative in

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

, notable for his 1952 speech on the floor of the Mississippi state legislature concerning

whiskey Whisky or whiskey is a type of liquor made from Fermentation in food processing, fermented grain mashing, mash. Various grains (which may be Malting, malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, Maize, corn, rye, and wheat. Whisky ...

. Reportedly the speech took Sweat two and a half months to write.Clarion Ledger
, "On June 3, Soggy's speech will come to life" May 25, 2003 The speech is renowned for the grand rhetorical terms in which it seems to come down firmly and decisively on both sides of the question. The speech gave rise to the phrase "if-by-whiskey", used to illustrate such equivocation in argument.

Career

Sweat was elected to the Mississippi House in 1947, at the age of 24. He served only one five-year term, at the end of which he delivered his speech.''The Clarion Ledger'', Saturday, February 24, 1996, Jackson, MS, p. 3 col B He subsequently pursued his career in law. Sweat was the founder of the Mississippi Judicial College of the University of Mississippi Law Center.Mississippi Judicial College
Web Page The writer

John Grisham John Ray Grisham Jr. (; born February 8, 1955) is an American novelist, lawyer, and former politician, known for his best-selling legal thrillers. According to the Academy of Achievement, American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 37 ...

worked as his assistant as a law student in 1980. According to William Safire, Sweat's nickname was derived from the phrase "sorghum top", a reference to the way in which his hair resembled a sugar cane tassel. He died in 1996 in Alcorn County, Mississippi after a long battle with

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a neurodegenerative disease primarily of the central nervous system, affecting both motor system, motor and non-motor systems. Symptoms typically develop gradually and non-motor issues become ...

The "whiskey speech"

The "whiskey speech", delivered on Friday, April 4, 1952, concerned the question of the

prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...

of alcoholic liquor, a law that was still in force in Mississippi at the time the speech was delivered. Sweat later recalled, "When I finished the first half of the speech, there was a tremendous burst of applause. The second half of the speech, after the close of which, the wets all applauded. The drys were as unhappy with the second part of the speech as the wets were with the first half". The speech is a common example of the

informal fallacy Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallac ...

of equivocation; further, the phrase "if-by-whiskey" is often used as shorthand for an argument that prevaricates to avoid committing fully to a single position of a controversial issue.

References

External links

*Safire, William (1997) Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. . Page 876. Members of the Mississippi House of Representatives 1922 births 1996 deaths 20th-century members of the Mississippi Legislature {{Mississippi-politician-stub