The insolent slave

by William E. Wiethoff

"While scholars of American history have written extensively about slave insurgency in the form of rebellion, William E. Wiethoff considers a more subtle form of resistance that caused considerable consternation among the slaveholders - that of insolence.". "In this original contribution to the study of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century rhetoric, Wiethoff assesses the southern gentry's attempts to manage what they interpreted as insolence, sheds light on the power of slave speech, and illumines long-term implications for African American code-switching and other forms of rhetoric.". "Through surveys and case studies that include Fanny Kemble's firsthand narrative and entries from William Byrd's diary, Wiethoff evaluates the steps taken by slaveowners to suppress presumed slave insolence. Employing rhetorical, historical, and legal analyses, he examines expressions of unreflective judgment, self-persuasion, and sectional propaganda developed by the gentry to explain the