Public Debate in the Civil War Era

David Zarefsky is Owen L. Coon Professor Emeritus of Argumentation and Debate, and professor emeritus of communication studies at Northwestern University. He is a former president of both the National Communication Association and the Rhetoric Society of America, and he has received awards for distinguished scholarship and service from both organizations. He is the author of Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate, among other books.

• Contents Introduction | David Zarefsky 1. A Nation “at the Edge of the Precipice”: The Senate Debate over Henry Clay’s 1850 Compromise Measures | Donovan Bisbee and James Jasinski 2. The Proslavery Argument of the 1850s: From Calhoun to Stephens | David F. Ericson 3. Stephen A. Douglas and the Limits of Rhetorical Containment | Robert E. Terrill 4. The Rhetoric of Salmon P. Chase: Antislavery between Principle and Politics | Michael William Pfau 5. Frederick Douglass: A Speaker on the Move | Bjørn F. Stillion Southard 6. “No Neutral Ground”: Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Science | Stephen Howard Browne 7. The “Second Tier” of Abraham Lincoln’s Public Discourse | David Zarefsky 8. Abraham Lincoln’s Public Letters and the “Popular Heart” | Douglas L. Wilson 9. Abraham Lincoln: Second Inaugural Address | Garry Wills 10. Constructing Freedom and Equality: The Congressional Civil Rights Debates of Reconstruction | Kirt H. Wilson 11. “No Longer by Your Leave”: The Impact of the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments on Women’s Rhetoric | Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Angela G. Ray 12. Re-constructing Reconstruction | E. Culpepper Clark Bibliography About the Authors