Authentication Materials:
- Speech title as it is to be printed: “Crisis of Confidence.”
- Exact date and place of speech delivery: 15 July 1979. Washington, D.C.
- Full name of speaker, with year of birth and year of death: James (Jimmy) Earl Carter Jr. (1924-).
- Full name of editor of electronic text: Christopher Bondi.
- Date of electronic edition: December 2022.
- Languages: English (100%).
- Indication of editorial functions performed: Christopher Bondi transcribed and proofread the text featured on the website of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Bibliographic List of Sources:
Carter, Jimmy. “Energy and National Goals: Address to the Nation.” July 15, 1979. Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/assets/documents/speeches/energy-crisis.phtml. [=A]
Carter, Jimmy. “Energy and the Crisis of Confidence.” In Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999, edited by Stephen E. Lucas and Martin J. Medhurst, 536-542. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. [=B]
Carter, Jimmy. “President Carter Address on Crisis of Confidence.” July 15, 1979. C-Span. https://www.c-span.org/video/?153917-1/president-carter-address-crisis-confidence. [=C]
Statement of Editorial Procedures:
This unit relies on the transcript from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum as copy-text A. This speech text was compared with the copy published in Stephen E. Lucas and Martin J. Medhurst’s Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999, published by Oxford University Press. This transcript from the presidential library was selected as copy-text A because the library serves as the authoritative depository of President Carter’s speeches. A video of the speech found on C-Span was used as copy-text C, in order to check the accuracy of the issue noted below in paragraph 46.
Copy-text B (Lucas and Medhurst’s version) is followed for the paragraph structure in this unit, including paragraphs 19 and 20 where the quotation is split across two paragraphs.
Paragraph numbers have been added in square brackets.
The text of this edition has been thoroughly checked and proofread.
This copy text is not subject to end-of-line hyphenation.
Special characters and characters with diachronic marks: none.
Departures from the copy-text are as follows (reference numbers specify paragraph in which the departure occurs):
Copy-text A uses double hyphens (–) instead of em dashes. Em dashes have been inserted for grammatical accuracy, in line with copy-text B.
46 The corporation I will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds A: The corporation will issue up to five billion dollars in energy bonds B. (After checking with copy-text C, copy-text B’s version was used because Carter does not say “I” here).
There are no other departures from the copy-text.