British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility

Carey argues that participants in the late eighteenth-century slavery debate developed a distinct sentimental rhetoric, using the language of the heart to powerful effect. Examining poetry, novels, journalism, and political writing, Carey shows that slave-owners and abolitionists alike made strategic use of the rhetoric of sensibility in the hope of influencing a reading public thoroughly immersed in the "cult of feeling."