Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture

Chapter 16: Rhetorical Tradition(s) and the Reform Writing of Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Chapter 16 Rhetorical Tradition(s) and the Reform Writing of Mary Ann Shadd Cary Ann Marie Mann Simpkins The passage of the odious Fugitive Slave Law has made a residence in the United States . . . dangerous in the extreme—this consideration , and the absence of condensed information accessible to all, is my excuse for offering this tract to the notice of the public. The people are in a strait—on the one hand, a pro-slavery administration , with its entire controllable force, is bearing upon them with fatal effect: [sic] on the other, the Colonization Society, in the garb of Christianity and Philanthropy, is seconding the efforts of the first named power, by bringing into the lists [sic] a vast social and immoral influence, thus making more effective the agencies employed. Information is needed. —Mary A. Shadd, Notes of Canada West In recent discussions of the history of rhetoric and composition, Shirley Wilson Logan’s We Are Coming (1999) and Jacqueline Jones Royster’s Traces of a Stream (1999) have theorized the writing practices of black women who were previously omitted from the rhetorical canon. Logan’s compelling argument regarding the significance of traditions of oratory practiced by nineteenth-century black women orators such as Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Victoria Earle Matthews 229 230 Ann Marie Mann Simpkins illustrates how the women blended practices employing classical Western topoi with distinctly Afrocentric rhetorical strategies. In addition to Stewart, Matthews, and Harper, Logan also considers the rhetorical strategies of Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Logan, however, focuses primarily on Shadd’s work as an abolitionist orator. Jane Rhodes in Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century (1998) and Jim Bearden and Linda Jean Butler in The Life and Times of Mary Shadd Cary (1977) focus primarily on writing biographies of Shadd’s life and work, and each positions her primarily as an abolitionist journalist. Royster notes that Shadd was both a contributing writer to the AngloAfrican Magazine and editor and publisher of an abolitionist newspaper, the Provincial Freeman. To this ongoing conversation about black women’s persuasive discourse and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, in particular, I would like to focus attention on the rhetorical practices of black women publishers specifically, and on Shadd’s discourse in particular, as I discuss her texts as evidence of previously undocumented reformist rhetorical practices. In this chapter, I will discuss Shadd’s knowledge of varied abolitionist audiences and her use of intertextuality as rhetorical strategies . Shadd employed her knowledge of complicated abolitionist audiences and intertextuality to address dissent specific to abolitionist émigré settlements in Ontario, Canada. The existence of Shadd’s protest pamphlet and her own description of Canadian contexts in letters she wrote to the American Missionary Association make it possible for me to draw from her testimony in order to construct an implied theory of rhetoric for this aspect of Shadd’s reformist writing. Her writing in Notes presents a dual narrative consisting of a subtext that juxtaposes the subtle presentation of counterhegemonic strands of argument with apolitical, almanac information including discussions of the Canadian climate, livestock, and clearing land. Shadd’s juxtaposition of her own rational appeals with arguments taken from official documents, such as Canadian school law, constitutes her rhetorical strategy of creating an intertext. This intertext provided one line of argument to abolitionist émigrés in Ontario and another to abolitionist audiences in the United States who did not share concerns such as the lack of housing or jobs in Ontario. In Notes, Shadd makes no attempt to disguise her textual identity, and rhetorical markers recognizing dissent are in plain view for émigré audiences in Windsor and Sandwich who are familiar with the struggles over schools and land to see. Intertextuality and a developing concept of audience that came to distinguish significant differences in emigrationist ideology characterize Shadd’s rhetorical practice. Shadd depended heavily upon the use of intertext alternating the descriptive 231 Rhetorical Tradition(s) almanac information with an intertext of dissenting argument to enter the public forum of abolitionist reform writing in which few émigré black women offered written response advocating reform to either school policy or émigré settlement policy governing the émigrés’ acquisition of land in Ontario. Mary Ann Shadd Cary addressed audiences consisting of abolitionist reformers in the United States as well as freeborn and fugitive ex-slave émigré abolitionists in...