Rhetorical Analysis Of The Speech Of William Wells Brown

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William Wells Brown was greeted with warm applause as he entered the Croydon Lecture Hall, in Croydon, England. He was to deliver what at the time was among the first speeches delivered to a British abolitionist audience, so he did not know what to expect. Brown was a famous ex- slave turned author, publisher, and anti-slavery activist. There are plenty of stories describing his adventures and heroics in the United States, but not many people know of his journey to Europe, when in 1849, the American Peace Society chose him as their representative to the Peace Congress in Paris. While in Europe, he decided to stay there for 3 years in order to educate Europeans of slavery in America and his stance on the issue, for English people had a general …show more content…

For that speech, Brown brought along Ellen and William Craft, two ex slaves who successfully escaped to the North by pretending to be slave and slave owner. Brown brought up many stories about people that have escaped, mentioning that above all, slaveholders were terrified of their slaves getting an education above anything else, because, as Brown puts it “negroes must be kept in degradation in order to be retained in slavery” . He also addressed the topic of the American justice system, and how it was extremely unfair towards black men and women. . He brings up a specific example near the end of his speech, where if a black man shows up to Washington without papers, he or she will be jailed until they can come up with 500 dollars, which is near impossible to any ex slave at the time, so they were stuck in jail in perpetuity or sold right back to slavery. To stay appealing to his audience, he repeatedly recognized that the abolitionists in the United States appreciated the work of English abolitionists and that English abolitionists had a great influence in the cause of emancipation in the United States. According to Brown’s good friend, John L. Lord, the speech was very well received, for at the time there was a higher appreciation for the advocacy of English abolitionists. Brown’s trip to Europe created for new kind of "fugitive tourism", that adopts key conventions of white American travel: historical sightseeing, museum-going, storybook journeys, and converts them into influential counter-narratives that expose the instability of race, and

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