Abstract/Summary

This article focuses on the weaponization of canines by enslavers in the antebellum American South and the manner in which abolitionists used reports of canine attacks in their fight against slavery. Using descriptions and images of canine attacks to demonstrate the brutality of the slave system, abolitionists mobilized and swayed public opinion by appealing to audiences' familial empathy, religious ethos, and shared sense of physical pain. Following the slave-hunting canine trope as it evolved to reflect the changing socio-political and cultural developments of the mid-nineteenth century, this article views the Compromise of 1850 as an inflection point, after which enslaved persons were no longer depicted as victims being attacked by dogs, but rather, as empowered survivors defending themselves and their families against the canines.