Mastering Communication

Politics & Social Sciences

Gouran, Dennis S.

Wiethoff, William E.

Doelger, J Oel A.

Social Sciences

Allyn&Bacon

A Peculiar Humanism: The Judicial Advocacy of Slavery in High Courts of the Old South, 1820-1850 (Studies in the Legal History of the South)

Reference

Univ of Georgia Pr

In early-nineteenth-century America, and especially in the Old South, the use of oratory appealed to legal professionals―judges as well as advocates. Consistent with the humanism proclaimed in classical and neoclassical works, appellate judges perceived their civic duties to demand oratorical skill as well as legal expertise. In A Peculiar Humanism, William E. Wiethoff assesses the judicial use of oratory in reviewing slave cases and the struggle to fashion a humanist jurisprudence on slavery despite the customary restraints placed on judicial advocacy.Drawing attention to a neglected intersection of law and letters, Wiethoff analyzes the proslavery discourse embedded in antebellum judicial opinions by examining the public addresses, judicial narratives, and private papers of sixty-nine appellate judges. By contrasting the judges’ proslavery appeals in a variety of cases in the upper and deep South, Wiethoff shows how context shaped the judges’ perceptions, priorities, and arguments. An outstanding contribution to the literature on law and slavery, A Peculiar Humanism testifies to the character of the legal profession in the Old South and serves as an index of the beliefs and attitudes that coexisted with legal decision making.

A Peculiar Humanism: The Judicial Advocacy of Slavery in High Courts of the Old South 1820-1850 (Studies in the Legal History of the South)

History

Americas

University of Georgia Press

Writing the speech

Alistair Press

<p>While a lot has been written about slave insurgency in the form of rebellion, this study considers a different form - insolence. The author demonstrates that slaves learned quickly when to move towards the insolent and also that slave-owners attached various meanings to this discourse.</p>

The Insolent Slave

Literature & Fiction

University of South Carolina Press

Though Overseers played crucial roles in managing and perpetuating the plantation culture of the American South, they remain shadowy figures on an otherwise widely studied landscape. Wiethoff illumines the rhetoric surrounding a class of workers whom historians often have relegated to the periphery. In this wide-ranging analysis, Wiethoff canvasses the period from 1650 through 1865 and across a southern expanse that stretches to include the Upper and Deep South as well as jurisdictions west of the Mississippi. Overseers left scant written evidence about their lives and times, but Wiethoff unearths characterizations constructed by friends and enemies, neighbors and strangers. He also mines the legal record to gauge the impact of legislative and case law rhetoric on public memory.

Crafting the Overseer's Image (Studies in Rhetoric/Communication)

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Books by Wiethoff, William E.