ABSTRACT This study establishes the Holley School as an important site of African-American rhetorical education in the post–Civil War United States. Abolitionist Caroline F. Putnam was a white Northerner who, like countless other freedmen’s teachers, moved south after the war to teach formerly enslaved African Americans. Putnam’s educational work was remarkable, however, in that she taught rhetoric in service of racial justice and continued this work for almost fifty years. I argue that she was able to sustain the Holley School through epistolary relations cultivated to persuade others to join in educating freedmen as well as support the school through donations.

Abstract This study features the contributions of nineteenth-century activist William Whipper to the African American rhetorical tradition. Through analyses of six texts written between 1828 and 1837, I detail Whipper's dedication to open civic discourse; his preference for appeals to reason; his Christian ethos; his appropriation of the rhetoric of white writers, which functions in service of his positive portrayal of black culture; and his mistrust of arguments based on expediency. I also demonstrate how these characteristics shape–and, to a certain extent, evolve in–Whipper's subsequent writings. The conclusion locates Whipper's rhetorical principles in the broader context of nineteenth-century African American rhetoric.