The rhetoric of equality and the expatriation of African‐Americans, 1776‐1826

Abstract

This essay is a case study of the social movement of the ideograph “equality” in American public discourse from 1776 to 1826. It argues that contrary to the conventional wisdom, which holds that the commitment to equality set the nation on the virtually inevitable road to emancipation, the discursive structure of the commitment to equality that developed between 1776 and 1817 actually set the stage for the African colonization movement. The essay thus serves as an example of the senses in which rhetoric operates simultaneously as the figure and ground of social movement in time.