Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Speech Communication's Winans-Wichelns Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address. Zarefsky examines the dynamics of the seven 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, placing them in historical context and explaining the complicated issue of slavery in the territories, their focal point. He elucidates the candidates' arguments, analyzes their rhetorical strategies, and shows how public sentiment is transformed.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-304) and index.
Synopsis
'This book is at once an original look at the Lincoln-Douglas debates and a multi-faceted, deeply layered, and nuanced study of how to analyze public rhetorical action historically. It deepens and alters our view of the debates as historical events, it goes beyond existing treatments of the debates as oratorical performances, and it broadens our sense of the ideas contained and argued over in them.' --Donald M. Scott, Eugene Lang College, New School for Social Research
Synopsis
Winner of the Speech Communication's Winans-Wichelns Award for Distinguishe
About the Author
David Zarefsky is dean of the School of Speech and professor of communication studies at Northwestern University.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. The Issues and the Men
2. The Senatorial Campaign
3. The Conspiracy Argument
4. The Legal Argument
5. The Historical Argument
6. The Moral Argument
7. The Aftermath of the Debates
8. The Debates and Public Argument
Notes
Bibliography
Index