I found the anti slavery alphabet to be extremely interesting. Clearly it was meant to convince children of the time to be against slavery and the fact that it is written as a poem appears to make it easier to memorize and recite to others. If you are looking for an air of whimsy in this alphabet however, you shall find none. It is presented in a somewhat grim manner for children as seen in many instances: the mother in the jail, the whipping post… Though arguably there are a few letters that are less intense than others there is still this strange sense of grimness. This does actually make the alphabet a success. It’s easy to memorize, seems engaging to read, and communicates the abolitionist message in an easy way. I found two other things that were somewhat curious however.
Number one was the depiction of the letters. What I mean is why did the letters have to have those diamonds with those circles in the middle of them. Why couldn’t they have just been printed as colored letters without any symbols in the middle? I guess one can say that they are just meant to be designs to keep children’s interest but personally I actually found the symbols to be very similar to a clock. The diamonds are the two hands and the circle in the middle is the gear. Now as to what that would mean I have no idea but that was just the way I saw it…
Number two was the letter x. One can guess that X is hard to find a word for, however I’m not exactly certain what Xerxes has to do with anything. I had to look up who he was on the internet and I found that he had been the king of Persia in biblical times. This would explain the use of his name if we’re accepting the assumption that all/most children were raised religiously and would recognize Xerxes as the former king of Persia. I also actually found a website that discussed the letter x in 19th century alphabets (although the anti slavery alphabet wasn’t included in the list), It’s pretty cool as well if anyone is interested.