Page ix →Acknowledgments

This scholarly edition is indebted, first, to the members of the Clionian Debating Society, who valued language and committed themselves to fostering learning, a project that extends to us today. It is to honor them that all royalties from the sales of the printed book are directed to the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston.

Thanks are also due to the Charleston Library Society and Duke University Library, which preserve the original proceedings and are supporting this publication. Portions of the introduction first appeared in “A Green Oasis in the History of My Life: Race and the Culture of Debating in Antebellum Charleston, South Carolina,” delivered as the B. Aubrey Fisher Memorial Lecture at the University of Utah’s Department of Communication in 2014. The lecture was subsequently issued as a pamphlet, and Utah’s Department of Communication graciously permitted the material to be reprinted here. The Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, my employer, has supported my research and subsidized the open-access publication.

In this work I have also benefited from the intellectual generosity of others, particularly Nicholas Alena, Bill Balthrop, Megan Bernard, Carole Blair, Stephanie Brehm, Rebekah Bryer, Jasmine Cobb, Marissa Croft, Lauren DeLaCruz, Ruth Martin Curry, Carolyn Eastman, Ashley Ferrell, Matthew Fulle, Emma Gleave, Harold Gulley, Joshua Gunn, Cate Herscher, Robin Jensen, E. Patrick Johnson, Frances Jones, Elisabeth Kinsley, Sarah Lingo, Eric Long, J. Jefferson Looney, Robert E. Mills, Zachary Mills, Miriam Petty, Bernard Powers Jr., Allison Prasch, Isabella Procassini, Janice Radway, Angela Ripp, Elena Rodina, Ashlie Sandoval, Kimberly Singletary, Bjørn Stillion Southard, Paul Stob, Catalina Uribe Rincón, Sara VanderHaagen, Damon L. Williams Jr., Kirt Wilson, Carly Woods, Tom Wright, David Zarefsky, Mary Saracino Zboray, Ronald J. Zboray, and Zhiqiu Zhou. The oases in the history of my life sustain me.