DEAF HISTORY UNVEILED ALEXANDER MANUAL
DEAF HISTORY UNVEILED ALEXANDER FULL

6 Edward Gallaudet, son of manualist educator Thomas Gallaudet accused oralists of working 'to engender serious if not permanent antagonism.' 7 Thus, from the 1840s onward, mounting tensions over Deaf separatism gestured insistently toward a larger cultural issue: what is/was/would be the relationship of the Deaf community to the American one? 5 Late in the century, rising tensions split the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf over the issue of oral instruction. Later proponents of oralism grew harsher, arguing that deaf Americans could not judge their own interests.

DEAF HISTORY UNVEILED ALEXANDER MANUAL

Mann found it 'a great blessing of a deaf-mute to be able to converse in the language of signs' but believed 'he power of uttering articulate sounds - of speaking as others speak - alone restores him to society.' 4 Mann anticipated in the 1840s what would occupy politicians and deaf educators for over a hundred years: manual versus oral instruction.

DEAF HISTORY UNVEILED ALEXANDER FULL

While Flournoy envisioned separation as necessary for full citizenship, Mann considered the problem one of language. Innovative educator Horace Mann saw the problem differently. 3 But the campaign for statehood did articulate very real, significant strains surfacing between the newly emergent Deaf community and the nation deaf Americans, even those educated through sign language, were functionally restricted from participation in the nation's orally-dominated life. 1 'Gallaudet,' he claimed, was the 'manifest destiny of our people,' a space where deaf people could 'have a small republic of our own, under our sovereignty, and independent of all hearing interference.' 2 Flournoy's efforts reflected desire more than feasibility. Joining a chorus of 1850s separatist cries threatening to dissolve the republic, including William Lloyd Garrison's 'no union with slavery!' Flournoy argued deaf people were not full citizens. government to create a state exclusively for deaf citizens. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear.

Finally, I suggest that many significant contributions Deaf studies has to offer American history and historiography have yet to be explored. The last section focuses on the actual battleground - language - arguing that oralism/manualism conflicts grew impassioned because they both located issues that deaf people raised with regard to oral transmission and became a lightning rod for less articulable threats to national unity. The second part probes the hearing-based rhetoric and practice of evangelical preachers and the problems that deaf people the posed to emerging Protestant-American identity.

The first part is a prehistory that explores the relationship between early nineteenth-century evangelism and construction of the first American Deaf community. This essay explores the American Deaf community as a revealing limit-case for constructions of nineteenth-century national identity - specifically, how the religious boom during the Second Great Awakening rhetorically, structurally, and conceptually clashed with the Deaf community it spawned.

Deaf history unveiled alexander