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Rapid Review

THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION
1 (2001): 159-164
© 2001 National Communication Association

From Slavery to Enlightenment:

Southern Rhetoric Revisited

William D. Harpine

W. Stuart Towns.  Oratory and Rhetoric in the Nineteenth-Century South: A Rhetoric of Defense.  Westport, CT:  Praeger Publishers, 1998.  211 pages.  Notes, bibliography, index, and photographs.  $24.95 (paper).

W. Stuart Towns.  Public Address in the Twentieth-Century South:  The Evolution of a Region.  Westport, CT:  Praeger Publishers, 1999.  231 pages.  Notes, bibliography, index, and photographs.  $24.95 (paper).

In these two volumes, which tell a continuous story and are best read as a series, W. Stuart Towns has brought to bear a richness of insight into public address in the southern United States.  Southern rhetoric has long seemed to many persons to be something of a genre of its own.  One pictures the stereotype of a portly male orator wearing a white, rumpled suit, gesturing expansively with one hand while holding a mint julep in the other.  Town’s anthologies do much to show that southern public address has been far more diverse than that stereotype.  Towns notes, quite correctly, that it has been a long time since anyone has published an anthology of speeches by Southern orators, and that there is a need for an anthology to work from a more up-to-date point of view on Southern rhetoric (Oratory 19).  The two volumes of studies that Braden, and Braden, Auer, Bradley, edited in the 1970s, reflect significant interest in Southern speech; Warren’s recent study of antebellum rhetoric furthers the examination of Southern rhetoric.  An anthology of Southern speeches is a welcome contribution.

After a thoughtful introduction, Oratory and Rhetoric opens with a speech by Pinkney about the Missouri Compromise; it ends with two speeches by post-Reconstruction progressives.  Public Address continues the saga with a few more speeches by progressives, starting with Rebecca Felton, and includes speeches by various Southern demagogues as well as several speeches by Civil Rights leaders.  It ends with speeches by progressive leaders of the post-Civil Rights era. 

Most of the speeches in Towns’s anthologies focus on the issues that, in the modern public mind, identify something of what it means to be Southern.  The majority of these speeches develop positions on the issues of race relations, from the era of slavery to the present day.  A few of the speeches examine other issues, particularly the tariff, that contributed to the divisions between South and North.  The speeches are in rough chronological order, but also are grouped according to topic; for example, chapter 5 of Oratory collects three speeches by pro-secession speakers, and chapter 3 of Public Address features speeches of twentieth-century Southern demagogues. 

Towns introduces each chapter with a well-informed discussion of the issues raised by the speeches in that chapter, and similarly introduces each speech with a biographical note about the speaker. Towns uses this introductory material to spin out something of a story.  This story starts with the South as a paranoid, backward region founded on agriculture and slavery, continues to the traumas of war, then to the unrepentant era of Reconstruction, and on to the increasingly bitter conflicts between the segregationists and the advocates of civil rights, and ends with the South as a unified, progressive region that has overcome its strife and now focuses its energies on economic and social progress.  The speeches are artfully arranged to further the flow of this implied narrative. 

The subtitles of the books clarify Towns’s standpoint, with the speeches in the first volume largely devoted to the defense of the South and its traditions, while the speeches in the second volume demonstrate an evolution from fanatic racism towards enlightenment and social progress.  Common themes of Southern oratory, such as the veneration of the United States Constitution, and its citation by Southern speakers to support every imaginable social evil, indeed repeatedly emerge in striking fashion.  Thus, the reader does not get the impression, usual in speech anthologies, of reading a set of disconnected speeches.  Along the way, a reader such as this reviewer, who grew up in the South, gains a richer and broader understanding of the attitudes and culture of the region.

Towns states that he did not choose speeches “on the basis of ‘greatness’ or notoriety, but because from my point of view they were representative of the hundreds I have read on the major issues that have shaped the South” (Oratory 19).  Thus, one finds him including speeches that were certainly not models of oratorical excellence, such as Rebecca Felton’s rambling pro-education address to the Georgia Legislature (Public Address 9-19).  Nonetheless, such speeches were often influential in their time, while today they illustrate important points in the development of Southern culture.  Similarly, Towns has not hesitated to include significant speeches that are likely to offend many persons, such as the chillingly eloquent pro-segregation speech that George Wallace presented at his 1963 inauguration as governor of Alabama.  There are some real gems here, especially some little-known speeches that Towns has uncovered and brought to public attention.  John Brown Gordon’s speech glorifying the Old South, which Towns recovered from an old pamphlet edition, gives interesting insight into the mind of a defeated Civil War soldier.  Wyatt Lee Walker’s speech in favor of civil rights, “If Not Now When” (Public Address 106-109), justly deserved to be dug out of an archive and republished.  A speech by Fannie Lee Hamer, whom Towns describes as “one of the most-overlooked, but critically important, participants in the Civil Rights Movement,” conveys the cruelty of racist oppression in a matter-of-fact but gripping fashion as she narrates being beaten under the supervision of State Troopers for the offense of registering to vote (Public Address 110-113).

Towns’s books show a higher level of scholarship than many speech anthologies.  Footnotes and bibliographical references at the end of each chapter clearly cite his sources for speech texts as well as for the historical and biographical background information that he provides.  More importantly, Towns repeatedly draws on an obviously rich understanding of Southern public address to provide a unifying thread of argument through the entire two-volume series.  These books display the kind of insight that can only result from years of patient study. 

Many speech anthologists have been careless about obtaining the best possible texts of speeches.  No printed text, however carefully prepared, gives the same impression as the speech as delivered.  A good argument could be made for the primacy of the oral discourse, leading to the view that speech texts should be as close as possible to the oration as delivered.  This would suggest that texts should be transcribed from sound or video recordings, if available, or from the notes of shorthand reporters.  A prepared text, or a text delivered to the audience or news media prior to the speech’s delivery, may or may not closely reflect what the speaker says from the platform.  Furthermore, a text that the speaker publishes after the fact may embody quite substantial changes from the speech as delivered.  On the other hand, an equally good argument is that the published versions of the speeches may reach a larger audience than the speech as delivered orally.  This is surely often true, yet this argument obscures the distinction between speeches and essays.  At different points in the two books, Towns employs texts from of all of these kinds of sources.  Some of the speech texts are drawn from impressive archival research.  Robert Tombs’s 1856 lecture defending slavery (Oratory 57-65) is reprinted from an obscure pamphlet, and although the speaker may have edited it, it may well be the best surviving text of a very interesting speech.  Yet, Towns drew his text of Grady’s 1886 speech “The New South” (Oratory 129-136) from a 1954 speech anthology.  The text has the tone of being taken from a shorthand record, but nonetheless it might be better scholarly practice to track down a text from closer to the time at which the speech was given.  This would, if nothing else, reduce the dangers that inevitably result from repeated copying or editing of an original text.  Towns has judiciously condensed some of the speeches, particularly those from the nineteenth century, clearly marking the deletions with ellipsis points.

In any anthology, the omission of some speeches may raise as many questions as the decision to include others. 

For the most part Towns has done an admirable job of selecting speeches that are interesting and worthwhile.  Contrasting points of view are represented.  Governor Orville Faubus’s speech during the Little Rock, Arkansas integration crisis (Public Address 134-140) contrasts in a remarkable and interesting way with the contemporaneous speech of Civil Rights organizer Daisy Bates (Public Address 84-88).      

One might, however, wonder why African-American orators of the Nineteenth Century were so neglected.  Other than Booker T. Washington’s obligatory “Atlanta Exposition Address,” the only speech by an African American in Oratory is a rather peculiar anti-lynching oration by Ida Wells-Barnett (Oratory 193-203).  One particularly wonders why Towns did not include any speeches by African American politicians of the Reconstruction era.  Similarly, Towns omits Southern anti-slavery rhetoric of the pre-Civil War period, although he acknowledges that such rhetoric existed (Oratory 54).  Public Address in the Twentieth-Century South does much to compensate, as it includes several outstanding and important examples of public address by African American speakers.

On the other hand, Towns’s failure to include any speeches by southern United States Presidents makes sense because such speakers were less likely to address a particularly Southern perspective.  (Towns does include Jimmy Carter’s inaugural speech as governor of Georgia.)  Thus, although these prominent Southerners gave many speeches, Towns may have quite reasonably judged that they did not fit the criteria that he had set for these anthologies.

Both of these books are very well organized and laid out.  Combined with Towns’s introductions to each chapter, the content of the speeches furnishes a clear view of the attitudes that many Southern orators expressed on the fundamental issues of their various times.  A quibble:  one would appreciate an analytical table of contents that lists every speech and speaker.  As it is, the reader looking for a particular speech has to browse through the index.

Much vital work in the history of American public address remains unfinished.  A surprising number of prominent speakers have never received scholarly study.  In addition, the perspective that scholars have gained from the passage of time makes it possible to examine rhetorical events from a new vantage point.  Although Towns’s books contribute in both areas, it is the latter that stands out.  Towns has obviously drawn on an extensive knowledge of Southern oratory and presents in the two volumes a number of extraordinarily interesting speeches, some of which had been little known.  Thus, the anthologies expand the recognition of Southern public address beyond the usual speeches that have been published and republished in one anthology after another.  These books make a significant contribution to our understanding of public address and are worthy of careful study.

William D. Harpine is Professor of Communication at the University of Akron.

Works Cited

Braden, Waldo W., J. Jeffery Auer, and Bert E. Bradley, eds.  Oratory in the Old South: 1828-1860.  Baton Rouge:  Louisiana State University Press, 1970.

Braden, Waldo W., ed.  Oratory in the New South.  Baton Rouge:  Louisiana State University Press, 1979.