1854 CONFEDERATE - SLAVERY. The Southern Series. The Rhetorical Manual. Includes Slave Speeches, &c.

A very rare "Rhetorical Manual" designed to raise the perfect Southern Belle and Gentleman. The work, quite popular in its day, now scarce, provides a crucial snapshot into the kinds of speech and subjects of speech that dictated normal Southern discourse on the run up to the Civil War.

And in it we are unsurprised to find Southern interaction with slaves and slavery heavily represented. There are more than 20 unique references to the subject, including where the speaker is to use a "harsh tone" to imply self-admiration and the degradation of the other; another comparing "purchased slaves" to oxen, asses, and dogs; on the coming war over slavery; etc. 

Ross, Barton. The Southern Series. The Rhetorical Manual, or Southern Fifth Reader: Embracing Copious and Elegant Extracts Both in Prose and Poetry. with a Treatise on Rhetorical Figures, and the Principles of Elocution. By D. Barton Ross, A.M.,N.G., Ex-Superintendent of Public Schools. New Orleans. Published by J. B. Steel. 1854. 549pp.

A fair copy only, bound in leather, boards are detached, but the text is generally solid, with generally bright pages and light foxing.