A Peculiar Humanism: The Judicial Advocacy of Slavery in High Courts of the Old South, 1820-1850.

• Author: Morrow, Terence S.

William Wiethoff (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 247 pp. $37.00

In A Peculiar Humanism: The Judicial Advocacy of Slavery in High Courts of the Old South, 1820-1850, William Wiethoff invokes a fresh perspective from which to investigate the interplay of judicial oratorical practice and antebellum Southern defense of slavery. The work reflects an exhaustive study of judicial opinions and extra-judicial writings and speeches of appellate-level judges in states that later formed the Confederacy. Three purposes, Wiethoff states in his introduction, guide his work: to analyze the "intersection of law and letters" in the proslavery discourse of these judges, to "trace the humanist authority" these judges utilized, and to examine "the judicial struggle to obey humanist ideals by enhancing the factual settings of the cases, by equating humanity and interest, and by issuing apologetics for the frequently unsuccessful struggle itself." (1)

The central thesis of A Peculiar Humanism is that one can discern how judges' reliance upon "classical models of eloquence," grounded in classical and neoclassical civic humanism, operates to maintain the institution of slavery. Thus, Wiethoff's work nicely augments the expanding body of scholarly works - including Robert Hariman's chapter on Ciceronian republicanism in Political Style: The Artistry of Power - which delineates the impact of classical, and Ciceronian in, particular, rhetorical and argumentative theory upon America of the early republic and the antebellum periods. A Peculiar Humanism also brings an intellectually sensitive appreciation of the argumentative features of slavery to the existing legal and historical corpus; in this way, Wiethoff's work might be nicely read against Southern Slavery and the Law by Thomas Morris.

The work begins with a review of the influence of classical oratorical theory and exemplars upon the early American republic, a discussion which picks up on the excellent work of Carl Richard (The Founders and the Classics), Meyer Reinhold (The Classick Pages), and others. The discussion of Ciceronian humanism and its interaction with rhetorical practice does not pursue a detailed presentation of these concepts, thus rendering this chapter entitled "Humanists and Advocates" somewhat cursory for the reader familiar with the primary works. Nonetheless, the chapter does afford readers a grounding sufficient for engaging Wiethoff's reading of the Southern judges'...