Enemies of the Human Family: Domestic Anecdotes in the Antislavery Lecture Circuit

When Black abolitionists and their white allies traveled across the Great Lakes region, they experimented with antislavery rhetorical arguments. This paper examines the domestic anecdotes and imagery that lecturers and activist‑writers deployed in their speeches and writing as they journeyed across the region. William Wells Brown, for example, wove a poignant vignette of a formerly enslaved man holding his infant child at an antislavery meeting in his summary of an evening program. Such domestic language, highlighting the respectability and fragility of enslaved and free Black families, was carefully calibrated to engage new converts in the antislavery struggle. Historians have acknowledged the rhetorical utility of abolitionists’ articulation of the threats of the ‘Slave Power’ and attacks against free speech and American democratic values. Domestic imagery and anecdotes, though typically associated with antebellum sentimental novels and antislavery literature, were crucial rallying appeals for activists on the lecture circuit. In country towns and developing cities, Black abolitionists and their white allies painted slavery as an ‘anti-family’ moral contagion that threatened the entire country, not only enslaved people. This argument invited white audiences to recognize Black humanity by highlighting African Americans’ deep cultural reverence for family ties and the physical domain of the home.