Engaging George Campbell's Sympathy in the Rhetoric of Charlotte Forten and Ann Plato, African-American Women of the Antebellum North

Abstract

This essay examines the rhetorical practices of Charlotte Forten and Ann Plato, freeborn African-American women of the Antebellum North. I argue that their highly literate texts contribute to the history of women's rhetoric on at least two counts. They engage the major theoretical and philosophical influences of nineteenth-century rhetoric in America, in particular George Campbell's Principle of Sympathy. These women's writings also attest to the gulf between rhetoric and reality in a "democratizing" culture that fails to address the issue of race.