Antebellum slave narratives: cultural and political expressions of Africa

143 Pages·2009·1.43 MB·English

by  Jermaine O. Archer

Antebellum Slave Narratives
Studies in American Popular
History and Culture
JEROME NADELHAFT, General Editor
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in the Antebellum Northeast, Cultural and Political Expressions
1834–1848 of Africa
Daniel S. Wright Jermaine O. Archer

Antebellum Slave Narratives
Cultural and Political Expressions of Africa
Jermaine O. Archer

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First published 2009
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Archer, Jermaine O.
Antebellum slave narratives : cultural and political expressions of Africa / by Jermaine
O. Archer.

p. cm.—(Studies in American popular history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Slave narratives—United States—History and criticism. 2. American
literature—African American authors—History and criticism. 3. Pan-Africanism in
literature. 4. Africa—In literature. 5. Africa—Social life and customs. 6. Africa—
Politics and government. I. Title.
E444.A73 2009
306.3'62092—dc22
2008036728
ISBN 0-203-88168-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-99027-0 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-88168-0 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-99027-1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-88168-2 (ebk)
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
1 “Speaking Guinea and a Mixture of Everything Else”:
The Slave Narratives of Frederick Douglass Revisited 1
2 William Wells Brown: Subtle Whispers of
Slave Culture, Pan-Africanism, and Insurgency 21
3 “Moses Is Got De Charm”:
Harriet Tubman’s Mosaic Persona 38
4 Harriet Jacobs: A Larger Discussion of the
John Kuner Parade and Other Cultural Recollections 54
5 Discourse on the Slave Narrative and a
New Interpretation of Black Anti-Slavery Ideology 71

Notes 89
Bibliography 115
Index 123

Preface
TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;
O miserable Chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.
—William Worsdworth, “To Toussaint L’OVERTURE,” 1803.1
When Arna Bontemps wrote Black Thunder (1936), a historical novel
based on the 1800 Virginia slave conspiracy led by Gabriel Prosser, he must
have had William Wordsworth’s poem in mind when he titled the fourth
section of the book “A Breathing of the Common Wind.”2 Wordsworth,

a renowned poet of the English Romantic movement, opposed what he
believed to be an oppressive French aristocracy and was a staunch sup-
porter of the 1789 Revolution that toppled the regime.3 His poem To Tous-
saint L’OUVERTURE reveals that he championed the leader of the related
Haitian (formerly San Domingo) rebellion of 1791 in which blacks success-
fully overthrew the French Army and established the fi rst black republic
in the Americas. The Jacobin tradition, the radical faction of the French
Revolution, bequeathed its political principals to the Haitian dissenters and
it was reported that some of the Jacobin immigrants also had a hand in
Gabriel’s scheme. It is this connection of ideological parallels between the
movements that Bontemps explores in Black Thunder.4
Bontemps was inspired to write the book after combing through the
slave narrative collection held at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee
during the 1930s. He became fascinated with the accounts of slave resis-
tance and was particularly intrigued with Gabriel Prosser.5 Bontemps’s