Abstract

Nineteenth-century orator Elizabeth Cady Stanton frequently spoke to groups of male legislators. In examining the ways in which she met this challenge, scholars have tended to focus on how she “argued like a man” via logical appeals. In this article, I discuss Stanton's equally strong reliance on an emotional appeal: namely, that of sympathy. The practices and theories of Stanton's peer, the well-known preacher Henry Ward Beecher, as well as the moral and rhetorical thought of eighteenth-century Scotsman Adam Smith illuminate Stanton's own practices of sympathy. This study yields both a fresh interpretation of Stanton's oratory and an expanded understanding of sympathy's role in the rhetoric of the marginalized.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2007-06-29
DOI
10.1080/02773940601039371
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

References (30)

  1. Yale Lectures on Preaching
  2. Lectures and Orations by Henry Ward Beecher
  3. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
  4. Regendering Delivery: The Fifth Canon and Antebellum Women Rhetors
  5. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition
Show all 30 →
  1. Man Cannot Speak for Her
  2. 10.1080/00335638009383528
  3. 10.1080/00335633209379855
  4. Lectures on Revivals of Religion
  5. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the School of Anti…
  6. In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  7. The Principles of Rhetoric
  8. Lectures and Orations by Henry Ward Beecher
  9. History of Woman Suffrage, 1848–1861
  10. The Princeton Textbook in Rhetoric
  11. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition
  12. Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866–1901
  13. Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences
  14. 10.1080/07491409.1999.10162419
  15. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation
  16. American Rhetorical Discourse.
  17. Henry Ward Beecher: Peripatetic Preacher
  18. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
  19. The Theory of Moral Sentiments
  20. “Speech of Elizabeth Cady Stanton a [sic] Philadelphia.”New York Times3 October 1872. ProQuest Historical New…
  21. Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815–1897
  22. Ambassadors for Christ
  23. The Search for Self-Sovereignty: The Oratory of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  24. The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830
  25. Elements of Rhetoric: Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentat…