Peculiar Rhetoric: Slavery, Freedom, and the African
Colonization Movement
by Bjørn F. Stillion Southard
University Press of Mississippi
ISBN 978-1-4968-2369-4
A NEW ENGAGEMENT WITH THE TANGLED, FRAUGHT ANTEBELLUM DEBATE
SURROUNDING BLACK RESETTLEMENT
The African colonization movement occupies a troubling
rhetorical territory in the struggle for racial equality in the United States.
For white colonizationists, the movement seemed positioned as a welcome
compromise between slavery and abolition. For free blacks, colonization offered
the hope of freedom, but not within America's borders. Bjørn
F. Stillion Southard indicates how politics and identity were negotiated amid
the intense public debate on race, slavery, and freedom in America.
Operating from a position of power, white advocates argued
that colonization was worthy of massive support from the federal government. Southard
pores over the speeches of Henry Clay, Elias B. Caldwell, and Abraham Lincoln,
which engaged with colonization during its active deliberation.
Between Clay's and Caldwell's speeches at the founding of
the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1816 and Lincoln's final public
effort to encourage colonization in 1862, Southard analyzes the little-known
speeches and writings of free blacks who wrestled with colonization's
conditional promises of freedom.
He examines an array of discourses to probe the complex
issues of identity confronting free blacks who attempted to meaningfully engage
in colonization efforts. From a peculiarly voiced "Counter Memorial"
against the ACS to the letters of wealthy black merchant Louis Sheridan
negotiating for his passage to Liberia to the civically minded orations of
Hilary Teage in Liberia, Southard brings to light the intricate rhetoric of
blacks who addressed colonization to Africa.
Bjørn F. Stillion Southard is assistant professor of communication studies at University of Georgia. He is coauthor of Presenting at Work: A Guide to Public Speaking in Professional Contexts. His research appears in the volume Thinking Together: Lecturing, Learning, and Difference in the Long Nineteenth Century. He has written articles in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Argumentation and Advocacy, and elsewhere.
