ABOUT THIS BOOK

Casts a revealing light on modern cultural conflicts through the lens of rhetorical education.

Contemporary efforts to revitalize the civic mission of higher education in America have revived an age-old republican tradition of teaching students to be responsible citizens, particularly through the study of rhetoric, composition, and oratory. This book examines the political, cultural, economic, and religious agendas that drove the various—and often conflicting—curricula and contrasting visions of what good citizenship entails. Mark Garrett Longaker argues that higher education more than 200 years ago allowed actors with differing political and economic interests to wrestle over the fate of American citizenship. Then, as today, there was widespread agreement that civic training was essential in higher education, but there were also sharp differences in the various visions of what proper republic citizenship entailed and how to prepare for it.

Longaker studies in detail the specific trends in rhetorical education offered at various early institutions—such as Yale, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and William and Mary—with analyses of student lecture notes, classroom activities, disputation exercises, reading lists, lecture outlines, and literary society records. These documents reveal an extraordinary range of economic and philosophical interests and allegiances—agrarian, commercial, spiritual, communal, and belletristic—specific to each institution. The findings challenge and complicate a widely held belief that early-American civic education occurred in a halcyon era of united democratic republicanism. Recognition that there are multiple ways to practice democratic citizenship and to enact democratic discourse, historically as well as today, best serves the goal of civic education, Longaker argues.

Rhetoric and the Republic illuminates an important historical moment in the history of American education and dramatically highlights rhetorical education as a key site in the construction of democracy.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Mark Garrett Longaker is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. His articles, book reviews, and essays have appeared in Rhetorica, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Kenneth Burke Journal, Written Communication, New England Quarterly, and College English.

REVIEWS

I read this book with unqualified enthusiasm. Longaker’s work is extraordinarily well written, displays solid primary research, and substantially advances both our understanding of antebellum American rhetorical theory/pedagogy and our understanding of civic republicanism

—James Arnt Aune, author of Rhetoric and Marxism

Longaker’s book is clearly an important contribution to our understanding of the rhetorical education of the republican era. Setting aside the notion of a republican rhetorical monolith, he opens up a broad range of issues for future scholars to consider. Rhetoric and the Republic will be a standard text for those scholars to consult.”—Rhetorical Review

“Scholars of rhetoric will find this book engaging and informative, as will cultural and educational historians of the colonial era. It deserves close reading. Explanatory footnotes and a useful bibliography are additional merits of this extensively researched and carefully argued monograph.”—Journal of American History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables vii
Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Now that We’re Civic xi
Introduction / Rhetorical Education: An Articulated Site of Hegemony / Key Sites of Articulation: Rhetorical Publicity and Rhetorical Pedagogy / Conclusion

1. One Republic, Many Republicanisms: Early American Political Discourse and Publicity 1
Introduction / Republican Publicity and Political Discourse: The Rhetorical Perimeters of Republicanism / Republicanism and Laissez-Faire Capitalism: Political Discourse, Publicity, and Economics / Hegemony and Republican Rhetorical Strategy / Conclusion

2. One Republic, Many Paideiai: Political Discourse, Publicity, and Education in Early America 36
Introduction / Politics and Paideia before Republicanism / The King’s College Controversy: Republican Education Contested / A Federal English: Rhetorical Paideia for Federalist Interests / Politics, Pedagogy, and Economics / Benjamin Franklin’s Bourgeois Republican Paideia / John Quincy Adams’s Bourgeois Republican Paideia and the Era of Good Feelings / The Edges of Republican Rhetorical Paideiai / Conclusion

3. Yale 1701–1817 79
Introduction / Connecticut Political Economy, 1700–40 / The Old Order: Rhetoric at Yale before 1740 / Democratic Populism and Authoritarian Backlash: Thomas Clap’s Legacy, 1740–66/ Connecticut Political Economy after1760 / Rhetorical Education at Yale, 1766–77 / Yale during and after the Revolution: Rhetoric under Ezra Stiles / Timothy Dwight Returns to Yale: Belletrism, Puritanism, and Federalism / Conclusion

4. King’s College/Columbia and the College of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania, 1754–1800 135
Introduction / King’s College, 1754–77 / The College of Philadelphia, 1755–79 / Columbia University, 1787–1800 / The University of Pennsylvania, 1795–1813 / Conclusion

5. The College of New Jersey, 1746–1822 177
Introduction / Presbyterianism and the New Jersey Bourgeoisie / John Witherspoon’s Republican Rhetorical Education / Witherspoon’s Bourgeois Liberal Republican Paideia / Witherspoon’s Ascriptive, Liberal, Republican Paideia / Witherspoon’s Republican Rhetorical Legacy / Conclusion

Conclusion: We Are All Republicans 206
Introduction / Liberalism and the Present Hegemony / The Republican Challenge to Liberal Hegemony

Notes 219
Works Cited 239
Index 263