Culture of Eloquence
Oratory and Reform in Antebellum America
James Perrin Warren
272 pages
/ 6" X 9" (1999)
ISBN 0-271-01900-X / Cloth: $40.00s
A study of language theories, oratory, and cultural reform in
antebellum America.
Americans of the early Republic valued the art of eloquence,
upholding the ideal that an
impassioned, intelligent, and moral speaker will provide
essential truths to a democratic audience.
Drawing on nonfiction prose of the
1830s–1850s—especially orations, lectures, and
addresses—James Perrin Warren sketches a cultural history of
the reforming power of language.
Antebellum America truly defined itself as a culture of
eloquence. This disposition could be seen in
the creation of new cultural spaces, such as the lyceum and
popular lecture system, for speakers
who were then measured against the ideals of eloquence held by
their listeners. Defining eloquence
as "powerful, moving speech," Warren engages a host of
writers/orators to develop his argument,
beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of language in
the 1830s and expanding his
discussion to include the theories and practices of Henry David
Thoreau, Margaret Fuller,
Elizabeth Peabody, Frederick Douglass, William Gilmore Simms, and
Walt Whitman. From this
list he outlines practices that crossed the boundaries of gender,
race, and class, ultimately showing
that diverse sectors of society valued the word as a means toward
reform.
Powerful words move people to action, and Warren clearly
delineates the authority accorded
oratory in antebellum America. This book will appeal to a wide
audience, including those interested
in antebellum American culture, American literature and cultural
history, literary criticism, and
rhetoric.
James Perrin Warren is Professor of English and Department Chair
at Washington and Lee
University. His previous book, Walt Whitman's Language
Experiment, was published by Penn
State Press in 1990.
Trade In Strangers
The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America
Marianne S. Wokeck
240 pages / 6" x 9" (1999)
ISBN 0-271-01832-1 / cloth: $60.00s
ISBN 0-271-01833-X / paper: $21.50s
The story of German and Irish migration to America in the
eighteenth century.
American historians have long been fascinated by the
"peopling" of North America in the
seventeenth century. Who were the immigrants, and how and why did
they make their way across
the ocean? Most of the attention, however, has been devoted to
British immigrants who came as free
people or as indentured servants (primarily to New England and
the Chesapeake) and to Africans
who were forced to come as slaves. Trade in Strangers focuses on
the eighteenth century, when new
immigrants began to flood the colonies at an unprecedented rate.
Most of these immigrants were
German and Irish, and they were coming primarily to the middle
colonies via an increasingly
sophisticated form of transport.
Wokeck shows how first the German system of immigration, and then
the Irish system, evolved
from earlier, haphazard forms into modern mass transoceanic
migration. At the center of this
development were merchants on both sides of the Atlantic who
organized a business that enabled
them to make profitable use of underutilized cargo space on ships
bound from Europe to the British
North American colonies. This trade offered German and Irish
immigrants transatlantic passage on
terms that allowed even people of little and modest means to
pursue opportunities that beckoned in
the New World.
Trade in Strangers fills an important gap in our knowledge of
America's immigration history. The
eighteenth-century changes established a model for the
better-known mass migrations of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which drew wave after wave of
Europeans to the New World in
the hope of making a better life than the one they left
behind—a story that is familiar to most
modern Americans.
Marianne S. Wokeck is Associate Professor of History at Indiana
University / Purdue University
at Indianapolis. She was previously Associate Editor of The
Papers of William Penn and director of
the Biographical Dictionary of Pennsylvania Legislators.
"Without question this will be the standard work for years
to come on the numbers of
German and Irish migrants and the business of recruiting
strangers destined for the
Middle Atlantic colonies."
—A. G. Roeber,
Penn State University
In Search of Peace and
Prosperity
New Settlements in Eighteenth-Century Europe and North America
Edited by Hartmut Lehmann, Hermann Wellenreuther, and Renate
Wilson
368 pages / 6" X 9" (1999)
ISBN 0-271-01928-X / Cloth: $60.00s
ISBN 0-271-01929-8 / Paper: $21.50s
A collection of essays on German emigration in the eighteenth
century.
This volume brings together essays by leading German and American
historians on the subject of
the eighteenth century German emigration. Scholars have
traditionally studied the nineteenth
century, when the overwhelming majority of German emigrants came
to the New World. In this
book, contributors focus on an earlier period, when Germans were
moving to a variety of
destinations: Russia, Prussian Lithuania, and various other
German territories as well as North
America.
What drove men and women from different regional and social
backgrounds to leave their homes
during this time? Some migrations were forced, as for the
Mennonites, the Salzburger emigrants,
and the French Huguenots; some were voluntary and determined by
the wish for one's own land
and greater social and economic opportunity. In all groups,
religion was a prominent motivator and
primary element of social identification and cohesion.
Inevitably, migrants carried with them
traditional skills and other indispensable cultural
"baggage." A key strength of this book is that
contributors emphasize the mutual exchanges that occurred among
cultures.
In Search of Peace and Prosperity grew out of a conference at
Penn State University under the
sponsorship of the German Historical Institute in Washington,
D.C. Contributors are Rosalind J.
Beiler, Jon Butler, Andreas Gestrich, Mark Häberlein, Thomas
Klingebiehl, Hartmut Lehmann,
Thomas Müller, A. Gregg Roeber, Mack Walker, Hermann
Wellenreuther, Carola Wessel, Renate
Wilson, and Marianne S. Wokeck.
Hartmut Lehmann is Professor of History and Director of the
Max-Planck Institute for History
in Gîttingen, Germany.
Hermann Wellenreuther is Professor of History at the University
of Gîttingen.
Renate Wilson is a social and medical historian at The Johns
Hopkins University.
October 1, 2000