The narration of essence: Salmon P. Chase's senate oration against the Kansas‐Nebraska act

This essay examines Salmon P. Chase's Senate oration against the Kansas‐Nebraska Act of 1854, which was influential in convincing many Northerners that opposition to the extension of slavery was sanctioned by the Founding Fathers. The argument herein is that this shift in Northern opinion, which was critical to the legitimation of the free soil doctrine which underlay the antebellum Republican Party, was advanced by Chase's skillful deployment of historical narrative as a vehicle for ideological transformation. The force of Chase's narrative, it is argued, came from the pervasive assumption that the origins of a community inscribe its essential character. This essay examines a situated instance of this narration of essence in order to account for an important moment in rhetorical history and to shed light upon the workings of an important rhetorical form.