Voices in the Storm: Confederate Rhetoric, 1861-1865 (War and the Southwest Series) - Hardcover

Fritz, Karen E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1574410776 ISBN 13: 9781574410778

Publisher: University of North Texas Press,U.S., 2000

Synopsis

Voices in the Storm examines the significance of oratory in the Confederacy and also explores the nuances and subtle messages within Confederate speeches. Examining metaphor, argument, and figures of speech, Fritz finds some surprising shifts within the Civil War South. Her research indicates that four years of bloody conflict caused southerners to reconsider beliefs about their natural environment, their honor, their slaves, and their northern opponents. Between 1861 and 1865 southerners experienced shattering calamities as they waged their unsuccessful struggle for independence. Confederate orators began the war by outlining a detailed and idealized portrait of their nation and its people. During the conflict, they gradually altered the depiction, increasingly adding references to the grotesque and discordant, as all around them southerners were losing homes and family members in the maelstrom that consumed their cities and fields, polluted their rivers, and destroyed their social order. Oratory played a fundamental role in the southern nation, whose citizens encountered it almost daily at military functions, before battle, in church, and even while lying in hospital beds or strolling on city streets. Because Confederate citizens frequently commented on oratory or spoke out during speeches, Fritz also considers audience behavior and response. By the end of the war, speakers described their nation in savage terms, applying to it expressions and characteristics once reserved only for the North. This analysis thus indicated that southerners listened as orators gradually shaped them and their nation into rhetorical facsimiles of their enemy, suggesting that separation at some level effected reunion.

About this title

Synopsis:

Examining metaphor, argument, and figures of speech in the oratory of the Confederacy, Fritz (history, The Victoria College, TX) suggests that the Civil War did cause southerners to reconsider some of their long-held beliefs about their natural environment, their honor, their slaves, and their northern opponents. In making this determination Fritz

About the Author:

Karen Fritz teaches history at Victoria College. Her degrees are from Skidmore College, the University of Virginia and Louisiana State University.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of North Texas Press,U.S.
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1574410776
• ISBN 13: 9781574410778
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256