Crusade Against the Wrong: Abolitionist Rhetoric in Anti-Slavery Speeches
Keywords:
Anti-slavery, abolitionism, Slave, Rhetoric, PathosAbstract
The abolitionist movement sought abolition of slavery in America. The movement made use of various means and strategies to circulate its anti-slavery views and enforce an immediate abolition of the inhuman system. Ranging from famous abolitionists and former slaves like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to great political leaders like Abraham Lincoln, these people have brought their views to the large audience through their highly eloquent speeches. The abolitionists made frequent use of their oratory skills through their speeches. The present paper is an attempt towards an analysis of various facets of some of the famous speeches by well known abolitionists like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and William Lloyd Garrison. The paper will examine speeches like “Ain’t I a Woman”, “No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery” “What to the Slave is Fourth of July” and others. The anti-slavery rhetoric used by these orators to further the abolitionist cause will also be analyzed in the paper.
References
“African American Abolitionists Tactics.” The Abolition Seminar, www.abolitionseminar. org/african-americans-and-abolitionism/>. Accessed 14 Apr. 2019.
Aristotle. The Art of Rhetoric, Translated by H.C Lawson-Tancred, Penguin, 1991. Books, Benjamin Lamb. "Angry Abolitionists & The Rhetoric of Slavery: Minding the Moral Emotions in Social Movements.” Sociology Graduate Theses & Dissertations, 2015, p. 38.
Debs, Eugene V. “William Lloyd Garrison.” Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, vol. 16, no. 6, 1892, pp. 493-491.
Douglass, Frederick. “What To A Slave Is the Fourth of July.” The Will of People : A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches, edited by Richard
W. Leeman, and Bernard K. Duffy, Southern Illinois UP, 2012, pp. 82-57. Garrison, William Lloyd. "No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery, Speech, 1854."
Lit2GoEdition, www.etc.usf.edu/lit2go/185/civil-rights-and-conflict-in-the- united-states-selected-speeches/5061/no-compromise-with-the-evil-of-slavery- speech1854-/>. Accessed 21 July 2019.
Herrick, J.A. The History and Theory of Rhetoric –An Introduction. 5th ed., Routledge, 2016.
Kent, Michael Oval, "Theory and criticism of the rhetoric of social movements." Theses Digitization Project, 1987, p. 370, www.scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/370. Accessed 23 Apr. 2019.
Lincoln, Abraham. “Lincoln, Abraham (1865-1809) Speech fragment on slavery and American government.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, www. gilderlehrman.org/collection/glc03251>. Accessed 20 Aug. 2019.
Matthews, Donald G. “The Abolitionists on Slavery: The Critique Behind the Social Movement.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 33, no. 1967 ,2, pp.182-163.
Patton, Neil A. “The Nineteenth Century Black Woman As Social Reformer: The "New" Speeches of Sojourner Truth.” Negro History Bulletin, vol. 49, no. 1986 ,1, pp. 5-2.
Smith, George H. “William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass on Disunionism.” Libertarianism.org, 2018, www.libertarianism.org/columns/william-lloyd-garrison-frederick-douglass-disunionism>. Accessed 20 Aug. 2019.
Truth, Sojourner. “Ain’t I a Woman.” The Will of People : A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches, edited by Richard W. Leeman and Bernard K. Duffy, Southern Illinois UP, 2012, pp. 48-47.
“Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. United Nations. Accessed 15 July 2019.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Articles are the intellectual property of the authors. The Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literature does not take ownership of the copyright of any published article. Authors retain the copyright to their articles and may republish these articles as part of a book or other materials. However, while republishing an article published in JTREL, the author must ensure that the following conditions have been met:
- The source of the publication (the title, volume, number and URL of the Journal) should be acknowledged.
- The article will remain published on the JTREL website (except on the occasion of a retraction of the article) and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- We do not allow the distribution and transmission of plagiaristic works based on the articles that appear in our journal.
- Readers may not use the articles for commercial purposes unless they get the written permission of the author and publisher. To disseminate copies for commercial purposes, write to editor.JTREL@gmail.com