Their Right to Speak

Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates

Alisse Portnoy

  • 2005 Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award, Sponsored by the National Communication Association

Acknowledgments

A Note on Terminology

Introduction

1. "Causes of Alarm to Our Whole Country": Articulating the Crisis of Indian Removal

2. "A Right to Speak on the Subject": Petitioning the Federal Government against Removal and Slavery

3. "The Difference between Cruelty to the Slave, and Cruelty to the Poor Indian": Imagining Native and African Americans as Objects of Advocacy

4. "Merely Public Opinion in Legal Forms": Imagining Native and African Americans in the Public and Political Spheres

5. "On the Very Eve of Coming Out": Declaring One's Antislavery Affiliations

6. "Coming from One Who Has a Right to Speak": Debating Colonization and Abolition

Notes

Index

  • Cover: Their Right to Speak
  • A photo of the author

Photo by Andrew Jenkins

Alisse Portnoy is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature and Faculty Associate in the Program in American Culture, University of Michigan.