slavery and american literature essay

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Slavery in British and American Literature

Introduction, general overviews.

Bibliographies
Anthologies
Print Culture
Slavery and English Literature
Slave Narratives
Popular Works
The American Novel
Neo-Slave Narratives
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Frederick Douglass
Harriet Jacobs

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Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

Ecology and Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Atlantic Literature
Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic World)
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Slavery in British and American Literature by Judie Newman LAST REVIEWED: 19 March 2013 LAST MODIFIED: 19 March 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0159

For some literary scholars, all literature that follows the establishment of Atlantic slavery is inflected by the existence of the “peculiar institution.” Toni Morrison has argued that the prevalence of gothic in 19th-century writing, particularly in America (not naturally a land of haunted castles and ruined abbeys), results from the repressed awareness of a dark abiding Africanist presence in American culture. Slavery thus underwrites the broad generic qualities of the national literature. In the view of Pierre Macherey, the silences and omissions in literature are as important as the presences. Slavery is a shrieking absence in many canonical works of American literature; “writing back “against such silences has become a major critical activity. White writers are now regularly examined in the light of the history of slavery: Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff as a black orphan from the slave port of Liverpool (in Wuthering Heights ) or the Caribbean estate in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park , for example. Almost all writers from the American South (and especially William Faulkner) can be viewed in this light. If little space is given in the current bibliography to canonical English writers who engage at some level with slavery, it is because the critical literature on their work is already extensive. More narrowly, in the English-speaking world “slavery in literature” includes the writings of slaves and former slaves, as well as works written about slavery by non-slaves. Though the field is dominated by American works, British, Caribbean, and postcolonial writers are also significant. Temporally the field includes the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with a significant engagement by later writers with the legacy of slavery. Only one later genre, however, the neo-slave narrative, is formally connected to the literary tradition of the 19th-century slave narratives. “Literature” is a capacious category in this field and is not confined to conventional belles lettres (novels, plays, poetry) but includes significant examples of oratory, addresses, letters, folk material, minstrelsy and life-writings. There is also a dynamic relationship between literary criticism and creative writing, and between popular blockbusters and the academy. Controversies over popular works have been a spur to the writing of both novels and scholarly works. Scholarship on slavery may appear in works concerning African American, Caribbean or English literature, and despite the exponential expansion of the field since the 1980s there is no single bibliography to be recommended. Nor is there a single journal devoted to slavery in literature.

The topic of slavery in literature is rarely the subject of a discrete work. More commonly it receives coverage in general overviews of African American literature or in discussions of race in literature. In one argument slavery inflects all American literature in a repressed subtext in canonical white writers ( Morrison 1992 ). Criticism also varies in the degree to which it takes into account Latin American and Caribbean elements ( Rosenthal 2004 ), African traditions ( M’Baye 2009 ) or white writers ( McDowell and Rampersad 1989 ). Recent scholarship such as Bruce 2001 has redressed the neglect of the early period and of the American North and there are now histories and companions that can be unequivocally recommended for their comprehensive coverage, including Andrews, et al. 1997 ; Graham 2004 ; and Graham and Ward 2011 . For the scholar of “slavery in literature” the best friend is often the excellent index to such overviews.

Andrews, William L., Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, eds. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

A thoroughly comprehensive volume with entries on more than four hundred writers, along with literary movements and forms, literary criticism, the novel, and a host of others. A broadly conceived image of African American literary culture allows for the inclusion of entries on iconic figures in African American literature.

Bruce, Dickson D., Jr. The Origins of African American Literature, 1680–1865 . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001.

Significant for its challenge to the idea that African American voices were silenced in the colonial and early national period. And includes an important reevaluation of the fiction of James McCune Smith.

Graham, Maryemma, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521815746

Fifteen essays by leading scholars arranged chronologically, covering the novel of slavery and its legacy, with particular attention to literary movements and periods, and an excellent bibliography.

Graham, Maryemma, and Jerry R. Ward, eds. The Cambridge History of African American Literature . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521872171

At 860 pages, this volume offers a huge amount of material on the literature of slavery, with works discussed on their individual merits and in relation to events in American history. Features excellent essays on early print literature of Africans in America and the neo-slave narrative.

M’Baye, Babacar. The Trickster Comes West: Pan African Influence in Early Black Diasporan Narratives . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.

Explores relationships between African American, African Caribbean, and African British narratives of slavery and African literary influences—particularly the use of the Trickster motif in such figures as Anancy (Spider), Leuk (Rabbit), and Mbe (Tortoise)—in slave writers, including Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince and Phillis Wheatley.

McDowell, Deborah, and Arnold Rampersad, eds. Slavery and the Literary Imagination . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

The best starting point for any consideration of the impact of slavery on American literature, with all the essays by acknowledged authorities. Although the emphasis falls on African Americans, substantial attention is also paid to white writers. Hazel V. Carby provides a valuable essay on the historical novel of slavery.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

In this groundbreaking study, the Nobel Prize–winning novelist argues for a deep abiding Africanist presence in American culture, delineating the effect of a racialized history on Willa Cather, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, and Mark Twain. The discussion of American gothic as a repressed awareness of dark others was highly influential.

Rosenthal, Debra J. Race Mixture in Nineteenth-Century U.S. and Spanish American Fictions: Gender, Culture and Nation Building . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

In a thoroughly transnational comparative study, Rosenthal broadens critical discussion of American literature to include Latin America, examining interracial sexual and cultural mixing, and fictional treatments of skin difference, incest, and inheritance laws, in major writers from the United States, Cuba, Peru, and Ecuador.

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Autobiography: slave narratives.

Lynn Orilla Scott
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.658
Published online: 26 July 2017

Slave narratives are autobiographical accounts of the physical and spiritual journey from slavery to freedom. In researching her groundbreaking 1946 dissertation, Marion Wilson Starling located 6,006 slave narratives written between 1703 and 1944 . This number includes brief testimonies found in judicial records, broadsides, journals, and newsletters as well as separately published books. It also includes approximately 2,500 oral histories of former slaves gathered by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. The number of separately published slave narratives, however, is much smaller. Although exact numbers are not available, nearly one hundred slave narratives were published as books or pamphlets between 1760 and 1865 , and approximately another one hundred following the Civil War. The slave narrative reached the height of its influence and formal development during the antebellum period, from 1836 to 1861 . During this time it became a distinct genre of American literature, and achieved immense popularity and influence among a primarily white, northern readership. A few, in particular The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself ( 1845 ), displayed a high level of rhetorical sophistication. With the end of slavery, however, interest in the narratives declined sharply. Furthermore, one consequence of the social and political repression of the black population following Reconstruction was the “loss” of the slave narratives for sixty years. During the last few decades of the twentieth century , scholars recovered, republished, and analyzed slave narratives. Both historians and literary critics came to value their importance to the historiography of American slavery and to the development of African-American autobiography and fiction.

The Early Narratives

The form and content of the slave narratives evolved over the course of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Several eighteenth-century narrators were African-born freemen of high status who contrasted their lives before captivity with their enslavement. Their narratives assailed slavery, especially the Atlantic slave trade, on moral and religious grounds. The narrator's journey through the trials of slavery to freedom was represented in conjunction with his conversion to Christianity and his westernization. Similar to the questing hero of Pilgrim's Progress ( 1678 ), the subjects of eighteenth- and early- nineteenth-century black autobiography reflected Puritan religious values and the popular modes of writing of the time, which included conversion narratives, spiritual autobiography, Indian captivity narratives, and criminal confessions. Most early black autobiographical accounts were dictated to a white amanuensis or editor who selected and arranged the former slave's oral report, “improved” the style and wording, and provided an interpretive context in the preface and in the choice of metaphors that gave shape and meaning to the former slave's story. Consequently, as William L. Andrews has pointed out, in much early African-American autobiography it is often impossible to separate the voice of the black autobiographical subject from that of the white writer recording and interpreting the story.

An important exception to this literary ventriloquism is The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself , first published in London in 1789 . The most famous and influential of the eighteenth-century slave narratives, Equiano 's Life went through eight British editions and one American edition in his lifetime and numerous editions after his death. Equiano's narrative includes descriptions of his early life among the Igbo people of Africa, his kidnapping and enslavement at eleven years of age, and the terror of the middle passage. Eventually sold to a British Royal Navy captain, Equiano was spared the crueler existence of life on a Caribbean or American plantation, and in 1766 he purchased his freedom. One of the most well-traveled men of the eighteenth century , Equiano served in the Seven Years' War in Canada and in the Mediterranean, accompanied the expedition of Constantine John Phipps to the Arctic in 1772 and 1773 , and spent six months among the Miskito Indians in Central America. A strong indictment of the Atlantic slave trade and the evils of human bondage, Equiano's narrative was presented to members of the British Parliament and played an important part in the eventual abolition of the British slave trade. It also served as a prototype for many of the later fugitive slave narratives.

The Antebellum Slave Narratives

By the 1830s slave narratives had undergone a transformation. The African, freeborn narrator had disappeared and was replaced by the American-born fugitive slave narrator who escapes southern bondage to northern freedom. American slavery had not declined following the abolition of the African slave trade in 1807 , as some had believed it would. On the contrary, the growth and profitability of cotton agriculture resulted in increasingly harsh conditions for many enslaved people. In contrast to the earlier narratives, antebellum narratives explicitly indicted slavery as an institution, emphasizing its dehumanizing and hellish aspects. Sold at antislavery meetings and advertised in the abolitionist press, the fugitive slave narratives were an activist literature that developed in the context of a growing and increasingly militant antislavery movement. As a reviewer of Henry Bibb 's narrative wrote in 1849 :

This fugitive slave literature is destined to be a powerful lever. We have the most profound conviction of its potency. We see in it the easy and infallible means of abolitionizing the free states. Argument provides argument, reason is met by sophistry. But narratives of slaves go right to the heart of men.

A number of antebellum narratives went through multiple editions and sold in the tens of thousands, far exceeding sales of contemporary works by Herman Melville , Henry David Thoreau , or Nathaniel Hawthorne . Among the best-selling were A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery ( 1837 ); Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself ( 1845 ); Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself ( 1847 ); Solomon Northrup 's Twelve Years a Slave ( 1853 ); and Josiah Henson 's second autobiography, Truth Stranger than Fiction: Father Henson's Story of His Own Life ( 1858 ). Frederick Douglass 's narrative sold more than 30,000 copies in the first five years and became an international best-seller. Douglass would go on to write two later versions of his autobiography: My Bondage and My Freedom ( 1855 ) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass ( 1881 ; expanded edition, 1892 ). Josiah Henson, who became identified with Harriet Beecher Stowe 's character Uncle Tom, of Uncle Tom's Cabin ( 1852 ), also published multiple versions of his autobiography.

The authors of the antebellum narratives wrote within an established literary tradition. Often written after the fugitive slave's story had been told at antislavery gatherings, the material was honed by repeated oral performance and influenced by the narratives of other slaves. The result is a highly formulaic body of literature with a number of features in common, beginning with the title page, which asserts that the narrative was written by the slave himself or dictated to a friend. Before the narrative proper, and sometimes after it as well, are authenticating documents written by prominent white citizens and editors who describe their relationship to the fugitive slave and testify to his good character and to the veracity of the story. In addition, the introduction often claims that the narrative understates rather than overstates the brutality of slavery.

Following the prefatory material, the narratives almost always begin with the phrase, “I was born.” Then, in contrast with the conventions of white autobiography, the slave narrator emphasizes how slavery has denied him specific knowledge of his birth and parentage. The slave narrator goes on to describe the precarious and dehumanizing aspects of slavery, including scenes where slaves are brutally beaten, sold at auction, and separated from family members. A critical turning point in most narratives describes the slave's desperate awakening in which he determines to be a slave no longer. Following this determination, he plans and eventually executes his escape. Often the details of the narrator's escape are suppressed so as not to compromise those individuals who helped him or to limit the possibilities for other slaves to use similar means of escape. However some slave narratives focus on an adventurous escape such as the Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery in a Box Three Feet Long, Two Wide, and Two and a Half High ( 1849 ). An example is Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery ( 1860 ). The antebellum slave narrative moves from south to north, from rural to urban, and from slavery to freedom. The typical narrative ends with the narrator's arrival in either the northern states or Canada and with the former slave's adoption of a new name.

Themes and Style

Drawing from techniques used in popular historical novels and sentimental fiction, the antebellum slave narratives are episodic in structure, melodramatic in tone, and didactic in their appeal to commonly held moral values. Slave narrators appealed to the religious and secular values of their white audiences, arguing that slavery dehumanized the masters as well as degraded the slaves. They often noted that the most fervently religious masters were the most brutal. Thus, the narratives sought to expose slaveholding ideology as religious hypocrisy and to distinguish the slave as the true spiritual pilgrim. Similarly, the slave narrative appealed to the national values of liberty and equality as stated in the Declaration of Independence. It is the American romance with freedom, in particular, that the nineteenth-century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker had in mind when he stated that

there is one portion of our permanent literature, if literature it may be called, which is wholly indigenous and original.… I mean the Lives of Fugitive Slaves. But as these are not the work of the men of superior culture they hardly help to pay the scholar's debt. Yet all the original romance of Americans is in them, not in the white man's novel.

In addition to arguing against slavery by appealing to the religious and political values of the white readers, the slave narratives are arguments for literacy as evidence of black humanity. European intellectuals had long equated being human—or at least being mentally and culturally superior humans—to having a written language. The value Europeans gave to writing is reflected in a key metaphor of early African-American autobiography, which Henry Louis Gates Jr. ( 1985 , p. xxvii) has identified as “the figure of the talking book.” Gates has argued that early black autobiography is a self-conscious refutation of the European charge that blacks could not write. The direct link between literacy and freedom is a thematic matrix that occurs in all of the major antebellum narratives as well. By the nineteenth century , it was generally illegal and believed dangerous to teach a slave to read and write. A number of fugitive narrators vividly recount their struggle to gain an education despite the prohibitions and denounce slavery's attempt to limit the slave's awareness of his condition and his capacity to learn. In the classic slave narrative, the acquisition of literacy is the precondition for the slave's decision to revolt against his enslavement, and literacy becomes the first step toward mental as well as physical freedom. This process is expressed most eloquently in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself ( 1845 ). Douglass recounts the moment when he first understands the importance of literacy. He hears his master, Hugh Auld , tell his wife, “if you teach that nigger…to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.” Douglass's response is often cited as evidence of the rhetorical art, which makes his narrative the finest example of the genre.

These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.… I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.… Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instructions, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results that, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.

While the slave narratives provided a voice for black experience, they also circumscribed that voice. The antebellum slave narrator portrayed himself as an objective and representative witness of southern slavery in order to persuade white northern audiences to join the antislavery cause. This narrative stance required that the slave's subjective experience be repressed or in some cases excised from the text. The pressure to speak in representative terms of the slave's experience left little room for the individual voice or for a discussion of the narrator's interior life except as it specifically related to slavery. In her Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives ( 1994 ), Frances Smith Foster has argued that “the desire to recognize oneself and to be recognized as a unique individual had to counter the desire to be a symbol, and it created the tension that is a basic quality of slave narratives.” In addition, slave narrators had to be careful not to offend their white audiences, and thus the narratives did not directly challenge the ideology of white supremacy or sharply criticize the northern racism that negatively affected the lives of the fugitive and newly freed blacks.

Women's Narratives

Male narrators and male experience dominate the slave narrative genre. Nineteenth-century cultural prohibitions against women's involvement in the public sphere carried over to the antislavery movement, in which women's “proper” role was of considerable controversy. Of the known slave narratives, women wrote only 12 percent. The first known woman's slave narrative is The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself , published in London in 1831 . Prince asserts herself as an authentic voice of the slave experience when she says,

All slaves want to be free—to be free is very sweet.… I have been a slave myself—I know what slaves feel—I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery—that they don't want to be free—that man is either ignorant or a lying person.

The finest of the antebellum narratives written by a woman is Linda: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself . Originally published under the pseudonym Linda Brent in 1861 , the narrative was long thought to be a fiction written by Lydia Maria Child . In 1981 , Jean Fagan Yellin demonstrated that it is, in fact, the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs , who did, indeed, write it herself. Employing techniques from sentimental fiction, Jacobs describes her struggle to avoid the predatory sexual advances of her master and to gain freedom for herself and her children. While enslaved women are portrayed as passive victims of sexual exploitation in narratives written by men, women narrators portray themselves as active and heroic agents in the struggle for freedom. Women-authored narratives also tend to place a greater emphasis on the role of family relationships.

Postbellum Narratives and Beyond

Following the Civil War, newly freed blacks wrote autobiographies that clearly borrowed from the conventions of the antebellum narratives; however, the emphasis and purposes of these autobiographies were different. After 1865 slave narratives argued for full participation of black Americans in the new postwar society and therefore downplayed the past horrors of slavery. As William L. Andrews has stated in To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865 ( 1986 ), narratives written during this period depicted slavery “as a kind of crucible in which the resilience, industry, and ingenuity of the slave was tested and ultimately validated.” An early example of a Reconstruction-era slave narrative is Elizabeth Keckley 's Behind the Scenes; Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House ( 1868 ). The most famous slave narrative of this post-Reconstruction period, Booker T. Washington 's Up From Slavery ( 1901 ), is a classic success story that testifies to black economic progress and promotes interracial cooperation.

The influence of slave narratives on American literature should not be underestimated. Harriet Beecher Stowe's enormously popular novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin ( 1852 ), was directly influenced by a number of slave narratives that Stowe had read before writing her novel. White authors were not only influenced by slave narratives; a few composed fraudulent ones and attempted to pass them off as genuine. Richard Hildreth 's The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore ( 1836 ) and Mattie Griffiths 's Autobiography of a Female Slave ( 1857 ) are such imitations. However, scholars have been most interested in the influence of the slave narrative on the African-American literary tradition. Vernon Loggins , Arna Bontemps , Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Robert B. Stepto , Joanne M. Braxton , and several other scholars have long argued that the antebellum slave narrative is the foundation of African-American autobiography and fiction.

A number of twentieth-century classics of African-American literature, including Richard Wright 's Black Boy ( 1945 ), Ralph Ellison 's Invisible Man ( 1952 ), Alex Haley 's The Autobiography of Malcolm X ( 1965 ), Maya Angelou 's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ( 1969 ), and Alice Walker 's The Color Purple ( 1982 ) contain many of the formal patterns and thematic concerns of the slave narrative. These patterns include the movement from south to north, from slavery or neoslavery to freedom, and from perceptual blindness to enlightenment or illiteracy to literacy. Like the slave narratives, these twentieth-century works provide a sharp critique of the effects of racial injustice and challenge America to live up to its stated values of freedom and equality. A number of twentieth-century African-American writers are interested in reimagining slavery in ways that give voice to the kinds of subjective and psychological experience repressed in the slave narrative. Examples of these neo-slave narratives include Ernest Gaines 's novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman ( 1971 ), Ishmael Reed 's parody of the slave narrative Flight to Canada ( 1976 ), Octavia E. Butler 's science-fiction novel Kindred ( 1979 ), Sherley Anne Williams 's novel Dessa Rose ( 1986 ), Toni Morrison 's novel Beloved ( 1987 ), and Charles Johnson 's novel Middle Passage ( 1990 ). As a form that embodies the collective experience of an oppressed people and the individual struggle to control one's own destiny, the slave narrative genre continues to offer a rich vein of exploration for contemporary African-American writers.

See also Autobiography: General Essay ; Haley's Autobiography of Malcolm X ; Douglass, Frederick ; and Stowe, Harriet Beecher .

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1.2: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature

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Learning Objectives

After completing this section, you should be able to:

Summarize the ways that Africans resisted slavery, the impact of that resistance, who was involved in anti-slavery movements, and the arguments they used to advance their cause
Explain how slavery related to ideas of manifest destiny, the Western expansion, and the Mexican-American War
Define the key abolitionist arguments of Garrison, Walker, and Mott, and distinguish their approaches from one another
List the chief features of the slave narrative as a literary genre
Distinguish similarities and differences between Douglass' and Jacobs' slave narratives, analyzing the roles gender and genre play in those distinctions
Identify key turning points in Douglass' account of achieving freedom
Outline the ways that Jacobs appealed specifically to women readers in the North
Describe Stowe's appeal to her readers in Uncle Tom's Cabin and formulate hypotheses to explain its incredible popularity despite stereotypical representations of women and African Americans
Analyze the role of Christianity, motherhood, and racialist representations in the antislavery arguments of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Slavery and the Debate over Abolition

Resistance and abolition.

Consider these questions as you read: In what ways did Africans resist slavery, and what was the impact of this resistance? Who was involved in anti-slavery movements, and how did the sentiment spread? What arguments did anti-slavery movements use to advance their cause?

Resistance to slavery came in many forms, all of which contributed to the abolition of slavery as an institution in the Americas in the second half of the nineteenth century. There were two main arms of resistance: that of slaves themselves and that of abolitionists, whose calls for the end of slavery became louder and more forceful beginning in the last two decades of the eighteenth century.

Africans resisted slavery in several ways. First, they adopted defensive measures in their own villages to elude capture by slavers. Second, they launched attacks on the crews aboard slave ships. Slavers' reports document over 400 such attacks, but scholars believe there were many more. Third, once ashore, Africans ran away, sometimes establishing Maroon communities. Maroon communities, such as those in Suriname and Jamaica, and the Republic of Palmares in Brazil, warred with white settlers throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Fourth, African slaves revolted on the very lands on which they were enslaved. The first slave revolt in the Americas we know of occurred in 1522 on the island of Hispaniola. This revolt, like most that would follow in the next 250 years, was quickly put down. During the late eighteenth century, however, the Americas saw an increase in slave revolts, especially in the French Caribbean. The French and Haitian Revolutions, which began in 1789 and 1791 respectively, largely inspired these revolts. Both revolutions were fought in the name of natural rights and the equality of men, ideas not lost on those who remained enslaved in the French colonial world. The French revolutionary government even abolished slavery in its colonies, although this did not last for very long, as slavery was soon reinstated during the reign of Napoleon. Slave revolts continued into the nineteenth century in British and Spanish Caribbean colonies. A revolt on the British-controlled island of Barbados in 1816 involved 20,000 slaves from over seventy plantations.

In 1831, a slave revolt in Virginia led by Nat Turner, although small in comparison with other slave revolts of the same period, became a symbol for slaveholders in the U.S. of the danger posed by abolition. For others, however, two decades of increased slave unrest supported calls for the end of slavery. These were the individuals involved in anti-slavery movements, which began gaining substantial ground with public opinion beginning in the 1780s. The anti-slavery movement was perhaps strongest in Britain, where member of Parliament William Wilberforce led anti-slavery campaigns from the 1780s onwards. Evangelical Protestant Christians joined him. These campaigns led to thousands of petitions to end slavery between the 1780s and 1830s. The slave trade was anti-slavery's first target and in 1787 the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was established in Britain. Wilberforce and evangelical Protestants saw slavery and slaveholders as evil. So, too, did the Quakers (or the Society of Friends). On both sides of the Atlantic, Quakers attacked slavery as immoral and prohibited their members from owning slaves or being involved in any part of the slave trade.

In addition to these moral attacks on slavery, Enlightenment thinkers attacked slavery on philosophical grounds. French Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu argued that slavery went against the natural rights of man. During the French Revolution, members of the Society of the Friends of Blacks, which originated among Enlightenment thinkers, joined with free blacks from the Caribbean colonies living in France, who organized the Society of Colored Citizens, to advocate for equal rights for free people of color and the end of slavery. The anti-slavery movement scored a victory in 1807 when the United States and then Britain signed bills to end their nations' involvement in the slave trade. Many in the anti-slavery movement believed this was the first step to abolishing slavery as an institution.

The Library of Congress: "Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy"

To better understand abolition, antislavery movements, and the rise of the sectional controversy, read this text, which provides a short overview of abolition with related images from the Library of Congress.

Black and white abolitionists in the first half of the nineteenth century waged a biracial assault against slavery. Their efforts proved to be extremely effective. Abolitionists focused attention on slavery and made it difficult to ignore. They heightened the rift that had threatened to destroy the unity of the nation even as early as the Constitutional Convention.

Although some Quakers were slaveholders, members of that religious group were among the earliest to protest the African slave trade, the perpetual bondage of its captives, and the practice of separating enslaved family members by sale to different masters.

As the nineteenth century progressed, many abolitionists united to form numerous antislavery societies. These groups sent petitions with thousands of signatures to Congress, held abolition meetings and conferences, boycotted products made with slave labor, printed mountains of literature, and gave innumerable speeches for their cause. Individual abolitionists sometimes advocated violent means for bringing slavery to an end.

Although black and white abolitionists often worked together, by the 1840s they differed in philosophy and method. While many white abolitionists focused only on slavery, black Americans tended to couple anti-slavery activities with demands for racial equality and justice.

Anti-Slavery Activists

Christian arguments against slavery.

Benjamin Lay, a Quaker who saw slavery as a "notorious sin", addresses this 1737 volume to those who "pretend to lay claim to the pure and holy Christian religion". Although some Quakers held slaves, no religious group was more outspoken against slavery from the seventeenth century until slavery's demise. Quaker petitions on behalf of the emancipation of African Americans flowed into colonial legislatures and later to the United States Congress.

Plea for the Suppression of the Slave Trade

In this plea for the abolition of the slave trade, Anthony Benezet, a Quaker of French Huguenot descent, pointed out that if buyers did not demand slaves, the supply would end. "Without purchasers", he argued, "there would be no trade; and consequently every purchaser as he encourages the trade, becomes partaker in the guilt of it". He contended that guilt existed on both sides of the Atlantic. There are Africans, he alleged, "who will sell their own children, kindred, or neighbors". Benezet also used the biblical maxim, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", to justify ending slavery. Insisting that emancipation alone would not solve the problems of people of color, Benezet opened schools to prepare them for more productive lives.

The Conflict Between Christianity and Slavery

Connecticut theologian Jonathan Edwards, born 1745, echoes Benezet's use of the Golden Rule as well as the natural rights arguments of the Revolutionary era to justify the abolition of slavery. In this printed version of his 1791 sermon to a local anti-slavery group, he notes the progress toward abolition in the North and predicts that through vigilant efforts slavery would be extinguished in the next fifty years.

Sojourner Truth

Abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth was enslaved in New York until she was an adult. Born Isabella Baumfree around the turn of the nineteenth century, her first language was Dutch. Owned by a series of masters, she was freed in 1827 by the New York Gradual Abolition Act and worked as a domestic. In 1843 she believed that she was called by God to travel around the nation--sojourn--and preach the truth of his word. Thus, she believed God gave her the name, Sojourner Truth. One of the ways that she supported her work was selling these calling cards.

Ye wives and ye mothers, your influence extend-- Ye sisters, ye daughters, the helpless defend-- The strong ties are severed for one crime alone, Possessing a colour less fair than your own.

Abolitionists understood the power of pictorial representations in drawing support for the cause of emancipation. As white and black women became more active in the 1830s as lecturers, petitioners, and meeting organizers, variations of this female supplicant motif, appealing for interracial sisterhood, appeared in newspapers, broadsides, and handicraft goods sold at fund-raising fairs.

Harriet Tubman--the Moses of Her People

The quote below, echoing Patrick Henry, is from this biography of underground railroad conductor Harriet Tubman:

Harriet was now left alone, . . . She turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey. She believed that there were one or two things she had a right to, liberty or death.

After making her own escape, Tubman returned to the South nineteen times to bring over three hundred fugitives to safety, including her own aged parents.

In a handwritten note on the title page of this book, Susan B. Anthony, who was an abolitionist as well as a suffragist, referred to Tubman as a "most wonderful woman".

Increasing Tide of Anti-slavery Organizations

In 1833, sixty abolitionist leaders from ten states met in Philadelphia to create a national organization to bring about immediate emancipation of all slaves. The American Anti-slavery Society elected officers and adopted a constitution and declaration. Drafted by William Lloyd Garrison, the declaration pledged its members to work for emancipation through non-violent actions of "moral suasion", or "the overthrow of prejudice by the power of love". The society encouraged public lectures, publications, civil disobedience, and the boycott of cotton and other slave-manufactured products.

William Lloyd Garrison--Abolitionist Strategies

White abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, born in 1805, had a particular fondness for poetry, which he believed to be "naturally and instinctively on the side of liberty". He used verse as a vehicle for enhancing anti-slavery sentiment. Garrison collected his work in Sonnets and Other Poems (1843).

During the 1840s, abolitionist societies used song to stir up enthusiasm at their meetings. To make songs easier to learn, new words were set to familiar tunes. This song by William Lloyd Garrison has six stanzas set to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne".

Popularizing Anti-Slavery Sentiment

Slave stealer branded.

Massachusetts sea captain Jonathan Walker, born in 1790, was apprehended off the coast of Florida for attempting to carry slaves who were members of his church denomination to freedom in the Bahamas in 1844. He was jailed for more than a year and branded with the letters "S.S." for slave stealer. The abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized Walker's deed in this often reprinted verse: "Then lift that manly right hand, bold ploughman of the wave! Its branded palm shall prophesy, 'Salvation to the Slave!'"

Abolitionist Songsters

George W. Clark's, The Liberty Minstrel, is an exception among songsters in having music as well as words. "Minstrel" in the title has its earlier meaning of "wandering singer". Clark, a white musician, wrote some of the music himself; most of it, however, consists of well-known melodies to which anti-slavery words have been written. The book is open to a page containing lyrics to the tune of "Near the Lake", which appeared earlier in this exhibit (section 1, item 22) as "Long Time Ago". Note that there is an anti-slavery poem on the right-hand page. Like many songsters, The Liberty Minstrel contains an occasional poem.

Music was one of the most powerful weapons of the abolitionists. In 1848, William Wells Brown, abolitionist and former slave, published The Anti-Slavery Harp , "a collection of songs for anti-slavery meetings", which contains songs and occasional poems. The Anti-Slavery Harp is in the format of a "songster"--giving the lyrics and indicating the tunes to which they are to be sung, but with no music. The book is open to the pages containing lyrics to the tune of the "Marseillaise", the French national anthem, which to 19th-century Americans symbolized the determination to bring about freedom, by force if necessary.

Suffer the Children

This abolitionist tract, distributed by the Sunday School Union, uses actual life stories about slave children separated from their parents or mistreated by their masters to excite the sympathy of free children. Vivid illustrations help to reinforce the message that black children should have the same rights as white children, and that holding humans as property is "a sin against God".

Fugitive Slave Law

North to canada.

In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which forced Northern law enforcement officers to aid in the recapture of runaways, more than ten thousand fugitive slaves swelled the flood of those fleeing to Canada. The Colonial Church and School Society established mission schools in western Canada, particularly for children of fugitive slaves but open to all. The school's Mistress Williams notes that their success proves the "feasibility of educating together white and colored children". While primarily focusing on spiritual and secular educational operations, the report reproduces letters of thanks for food, clothing, shoes, and books sent from England. This early photograph accompanied one such letter to the children of St. Matthew's School, Bristol.

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

This controversial law allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from aiding escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. Because it was often presumed that a black person was a slave, the law threatened the safety of all blacks, slave and free, and forced many Northerners to become more defiant in their support of fugitives. S. M. Africanus presents objections in prose and verse to justify noncompliance with this law.

Anthony Burns--Capture of A Fugitive Slave

This is a portrait of fugitive slave Anthony Burns, whose arrest and trial in Boston under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 incited riots and protests by white and black abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. The portrait is surrounded by scenes from his life, including his sale on the auction block, escape from Richmond, Virginia, capture and imprisonment in Boston, and his return to a vessel to transport him to the South. Within a year after his capture, abolitionists were able to raise enough money to purchase Burns's freedom.

Growing Sectionalism

Antebellum map showing the free and slave states.

The growing sectionalism that was dividing the nation during the late antebellum years is documented graphically with this political map of the United States, published in 1856. Designed to portray and compare the areas of free and slave states, it also includes tables of statistics for each of the states from the 1850 census, the results of the 1852 presidential election, congressional representation by state, and the number of slaves held by owners. The map is also embellished with portraits of John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton, the 1856 presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the newly organized Republican Party, which advocated an anti-slavery platform.

Distribution of Slaves

Although the Southern states were known collectively as the "slave states" by the end of the Antebellum Period, this map provides statistical evidence to demonstrate that slaves were not evenly distributed throughout each state or the region as a whole. Using data from the 1860 census, the map shows, by county, the percentage of slave population to the whole population. Tables also list population and area for both Southern and Northern states, while an inset map shows the extent of cotton, rice, and sugar cultivation. Another version of this map was published with Daniel Lord's The Effect of Secession upon the Commercial Relations between the North and South, and upon Each Section (New York, 1861), a series of articles reprinted from The New York Times.

Militant Abolition

John brown's raid.

More than twenty years after the militant abolitionist John Brown had consecrated his life to the destruction of slavery, his crusade ended in October 1859 with his ill-fated attempt to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in western Virginia. He hoped to take the weapons from the arsenal and arm the slaves, who would then overthrow their masters and establish a free state for themselves.

Convicted of treason and sentenced to death, Brown maintained to the end that he intended only to free the slaves, not to incite insurrection. His zeal, courage, and willingness to die for the slaves made him a martyr and a bellwether of the violence soon to consume the country during the Civil War.

Frederick Douglass on John Brown

The friendship of Frederick Douglass and John Brown began in 1848, when Douglass visited Brown's home in Springfield, Massachusetts. Brown confided to Douglass his ambitious scheme to free the slaves. Over the next eleven years, Brown sought Douglass's counsel and support.

In August 1859 Brown made a final plea to Douglass to join the raid on Harpers Ferry. Douglass refused. After Brown's capture, federal marshals issued a warrant for Douglass's arrest as an accomplice. Douglass fled abroad. When he returned five months later to mourn the death of his youngest daughter Annie, he had been exonerated. Douglass wrote this lecture as a tribute to "a hero and martyr in the cause of liberty".

"The Book That Made This Great War"

Harriet beecher stowe's mighty pen.

Harriet Beecher Stowe is best remembered as the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin , her first novel, published as a serial in 1851 and then in book form in 1852. This book infuriated Southerners. It focused on the cruelties of slavery--particularly the separation of family members--and brought instant acclaim to Stowe. After its publication, Stowe traveled throughout the United States and Europe speaking against slavery. She reported that upon meeting President Lincoln, he remarked, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war".

Uncle Tom's Cabin--Theatrical Productions

This poster for a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin features the Garden City Quartette under the direction of Tom Dailey and George W. Goodhart. Many stage productions of Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel have been performed in various parts of the country since Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published as a serial in 1851. Although the major actors were usually white, people of color were sometimes part of the cast. African American performers were often allowed only stereotypical roles--if any--in productions by major companies.

ENGL405: The American Renaissance

Essay on the slave narrative.

The slave narrative can broadly be defined as any first-person account of the experience of being enslaved. Read this introductory essay on the slave narrative as a literary genre.

No experience of enslavement has been as fully recorded as that of African Americans in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite the large numbers of first-person accounts of slavery in the United States – hundreds from the early-nineteenth century (e.g. pamphlet-length documents and numerous book-length texts), significant numbers from the post-Civil War era, and thousands collected through the WPA during the Depression – these resources were commonly dismissed as merely abolitionist propaganda or skewed memories until the late-twentieth century. Over the past half century, however, the slave narrative in its various incarnations has helped reshape our understanding not just of slavery in the U. S. but of American culture and American literature more broadly. At the same time that these narratives are significant for the picture they paint of African-American life and culture (and American life and culture more broadly), they repeatedly emphasize the importance of the individual former slave and his or her struggles against a system that would deny his or her individuality as a human. For the purposes of this class, we will focus on what could be seen as the classic era of the slave narrative, the decades immediately preceding the Civil War when hundreds of such works were produced, including its most popular and most influential individual texts, all part of the larger anti-slavery movement intent on making Americans, especially white Northerners, recognize the true crime of slavery and the essential humanity of those enslaved.

The slave narrative can broadly be defined as any first-person account of the experience of being enslaved. Modern slave narratives, emerging from the transatlantic slave trade of Africans, first appeared in English in the late-eighteenth century with the development of a broad abolitionist movement in Britain. The first slave narratives tended to be short and often focused more on the writer's conversion to Christianity and acceptance of God's grace over the horrors experienced in slavery. The most prominent slave narrative of this period, Olaudah Equiano's The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), mirrors this tendency even as it begins to approximate the more focused abolitionism of later narratives. In his narrative, Equiano narrates being kidnapped from his home in Africa and taken to the new world, producing a picture of Africa as a kind of Edenic region being despoiled by European greed. Over the first half of his narrative, he focuses on his experience as a slave, as he serves during the Seven Years' War on board a British privateer, expecting to earn his freedom only to be sold to a new owner in the Caribbean. He escapes the worst treatment in the Caribbean by becoming a valuable sailor for his owner, eventually accumulating enough money to buy his freedom. Unlike in many later slave narratives, however, Equiano's acquisition of freedom does not become the culminating moment of his narrative, as the second half of the narrative continues, describing his adventures (including his participation in an attempt at exploring the North Pole) and his experiences of racism and dangers of being re-enslaved, foregrounding, in the end, his religious conversion and concluding with him making an economic argument for abolitionism. Equiano's narrative reveals the formal instability of the slave narrative at the time, as it draws on several disparate literary traditions, most notably the Protestant conversion narrative, the related captivity narrative, natural history and travel narratives, and picaresque adventure fictions such as Daniel De Foe's Robinson Crusoe .

Over the course of the first decades of the nineteenth century, numerous former slaves produced published accounts of their lives, often through the help of a white amanuensis, but frequently on their own. As anti-slavery sentiment began to become both more wide-spread and more radical in the 1830s, black and white activists began to seek out more first-hand accounts of slavery's cruelties. Accounts written by the former slaves themselves served an important second purpose, providing evidence of the intellectual capacity of African Americans and thus countering claims of their mental inferiority. These dual purposes came together most forcefully, famously, and influentially in Frederick Douglass's The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). Douglass had already established himself as a well-known abolitionist lecturer, and, in fact, he produced the narrative largely to counter claims that he had never been a slave. Much of the focus of the narrative, then, is on authenticating his life story, as he provides names and locales and, as often as possible, dates to corroborate his account. The work was immediately quite popular, with seven American and nine British editions appearing over the next five years, and more than 30,000 copies being sold. Douglass's Narrative helped to consolidate the slave narrative as a form, bringing together some of the key thematic and structural elements of earlier narratives into a more unified form, and it thus often serves as representative of the form as a whole. Douglass's Narrative begins with introductory letters from William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, two of the most prominent white abolitionists of the time. The letters attest to Douglass's truthfulness and to the fact that he wrote the narrative himself, at the same time providing readers with a template of the narrative's chief points. While many slave narratives, especially those published by the authors themselves, did not have such introductory frames, they were common to many of the more widely disseminated, longer works. This prefatory material authorized the text that followed, thus empowering the former slave to tell his or her story, but the apparent necessity of such authorization reinforced the former slave's dependence on white power structures and readership.

Like many slave narratives, Douglass's begins with a simple statement of the fact that he was born, an announcement of his existence as a human being. This standard opening of many slave narratives – "I was born" – announces the existence of the slave as a human. But in what follows, he emphasizes all the ways that the system of slavery attempted to deny that humanity and treat him like an animal, by keeping him ignorant of his birthdate, by separating him from his mother and his family, by leaving him naked and assessing his worth alongside that of farm animals. Douglass thus reinforces Garrison's overarching argument against slavery: slavery's chief crime lies in the fact that it "reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a level with four-footed beasts". This point introduces the central rhetorical problematic of Douglass's and most other slave narratives, the need to demonstrate how slavery destroys the humanity of the slaves (and of the slave-owners) while contending for the slaves' fundamental humanity. Douglass, in other words, must at once show how the slaves have been dehumanized while simultaneously humanizing them in the eyes of his readers.

The production of the work itself by the former slave played a central role in this operation. Like many other slave narratives, Douglass's title reinforced that it was "written by himself". In a culture and society that prized literacy as one of the markers of intelligence and within an intellectual tradition that ranked non-literate, non-European cultures as fundamentally inferior, African-American literary production could provide strong evidence of black intelligence, thus rebutting pro-slavery arguments that Africans were intellectually incapable of freedom. That focus on literacy and on writing one's self into existence becomes a central theme of Douglass's and many other slave narratives. Douglass repeatedly recurs to the importance of literacy in his developing desire for freedom and in his actual escape from slavery. He recounts how Sophia Auld began to teach him the alphabet only to be warned by her husband that it was dangerous and worthless to do so, a warning that only spurred Douglass's desire. He then tells us how he used poor white boys in his neighborhood in Baltimore to teach him and how he found an old copy of the The Columbian Orator , a common primer of the time, that he used as his textbook. In describing the impact of the Orator on him, Douglass states that it "gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance". As such, he seems to suggest that literacy helps to consolidate an innate desire for freedom that slavery and enforced ignorance darkens but cannot destroy.

Foregrounding the importance of literacy, Douglass characterizes the slaves who remain illiterate as living in a darkened world where they have only an inkling of the fundamental wrongs they suffer. He furthers this depiction of how slaves are kept enslaved – but not happy – through his account of his time with the slave-breaker Covey. In this episode, Douglass emphasizes how a combination of work, discipline, mental and emotional manipulation, and violence breaks down even the most resistant slave: "I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!" Yet he also emphasizes his individual ability to rise above this dehumanization and to violently resist and re-establish his manhood and his humanity when he resists Covey and proclaims his refusal to be a "slave in fact" no matter how long he might remain a "slave in form". Despite all the deprivations of slavery, some innate human desire for freedom remains. It is in convincing his audience of that innate desire and of the importance of defending that desire that Douglass makes his strongest case to his audience.

As much as Douglass's Narrative provided a template later writers would follow, it cannot stand in for the wide-range of experiences former slaves would narrate and their often very different emphases on the slave experience. In particular, part of the success of Douglass's Narrative derived from its ability to reformulate the already standard American narrative of the self-made man. To an extent that many other slave narratives do not, Douglass emphasizes his own agency in overcoming the trials of slavery, his ability through sheer will and some luck to put himself in a position where he can escape to freedom. Such an emphasis is particularly lacking in slave narratives by women, in which the former slave's relationship to her family, especially her children, tends to be emphasized. For example, in what is now the best-known slave narrative by a woman, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), she foregrounds how familial connections both drive her desire for freedom and curtail her ability to achieve freedom. She also stresses her position as a woman, as the victim of sexual assault, directly addressing Northern white women to work on behalf of their black sisters who receive none of the protection they are supposedly guaranteed. In particular, she faces a different but parallel rhetorical position to Douglass. Like Douglass, she must make a case for her own humanity – and by extension the humanity of all slaves – while also emphasizing the dehumanizing nature of slavery. As Douglass describes how slavery emasculates male slaves, yet he is able to prove his own manhood, so Jacobs explains how slavery strips women of the kind of moral (sexual) protections that Victorian American society supposedly provided. For Jacobs, though, she feels compelled both to apologize for her sexual activity and to use it as evidence of slavery's immorality. While the turning point in Douglass's Narrative is his physical resistance to slavery in the form of Covey, Jacobs's describes how she attempts to escape the advances of her master by having a child with another white man, asking white readers not to judge her by the same standards as other women even as she evidences her place as a true woman through her devotion to her children.

In addition to the different position they take in respect to their audience, Jacobs also differs from Douglass in her emphasis on family and community. Jacobs finally attempts to evade her master – and to convince him to sell her children to their father or one of her relatives – by hiding, for seven years, in the attic of the house of her grandmother, a freed black woman. During this period of hiding, she highlights the torture of being disconnected from her children and her reliance on the support of her family and the broader slave community. While Douglass describes his commitment and intense feelings for his fellow slaves in his first attempt at escape and elaborates the significance of slave songs early in his narrative, his more individual-focused text de-emphasizes the slave community and slave culture in a way others do not. Given the incredible importance of those connections to African-American survival in slavery, it is important to recognize Douglass's relative lack of attention to those areas.

Douglass's Narrative may have been the most influential and popular work of its sort, but many others also found wide audiences, including that by William Wells Brown, another influential African-American abolitionist who would go on to publish the first African-American novel, Clotel (1853). Other popular slave narratives often featured sensational tales and escapes, such as Henry "Box" Brown's account of boxing himself up and shipping himself to the North; William and Ellen Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860), in which the married couple narrates how Ellen passed as a white man with William as her slave in their escape (Wells Brown included a fictional version of this tale in Clotel ); and Solomon Northrup's Twelve Years a Slave (1853), which describes how he, a free man in the North, was kidnapped in New York and taken South. Much of the popularity of these texts derived from increasing anti-slavery sentiment in the North, but recent scholars have begun exploring in more depth the ambivalent psychological, sometimes prurient interest readers may have taken in these texts. For example, slave narratives frequently pushed accepted boundaries in discussing sexual matters, straddling a line of accusing slavery of rendering the South a den of sexual iniquity while drawing readers in through hinting at sexual details largely kept out of respectable literature of the time. Similarly, these narratives' compelling stories of psychological and physical torture, emotional turmoil, and life-threatening escapes could potentially, for some readers at least, overwhelm their political thrust. Finally, many slave narratives made quite sentimental appeals to their readers, attempting to inculcate strong identifications with the slaves by accessing readers' own familial connections, emotional ties, and moral sense of right and wrong. At the same time, though, such emotional connections could become the end themselves, offering a kind of vicarious pleasure of identification and rendering slaves nothing but pitiable victims and thus potentially lessening their political effect.

These possibly ambivalent effects of the slave narrative carry over to some of the works influenced by them during the antebellum period, most notably Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52), and can be seen as one reason a number of African-American writers began exploring fictive literary forms in the 1850s. Stowe drew heavily on Josiah Henson's slave narrative in crafting her incredibly popular, groundbreaking work. As we will see, however, Stowe's interlacing of a form of racialism with her anti-slavery appeal and her overall characterization of the slaves as largely passive victims has, from its first appearance, been seen as problematic by black writers. For African-American authors writing in the wake of the Civil War, the slave narrative became a foundation to build on, a template of black life, and a model to escape from. For example, Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery (1901), the most famous post-bellum slave narrative, stresses how far Washington – and the African-American people – has come since the end of slavery, in many ways attempting to erase slavery as an influence on black life. Even as it does so, however, Washington's text, as with many African-American fictional works of the era, continues the slave narrative's emphasis on describing and explaining African-American life and culture from a sociological and political framework. For many African-American writers of the twentieth-century, this emphasis seemed somewhat limiting, and slave experience in itself tended to remain in the background in African-American literature until late in the century, when a number of writers began writing what has been called the neo-slave narrative – fictional accounts of slave narrative that grew out of the reformulation of the history of slavery that emerged alongside the Civil Rights Movement. Among the most important works that fall into this genre are Margaret Walker's groundbreaking Jubilee (1966), award-winning works such as Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Edward P. Jones's The Known World (2004), and revisionary, experimental works such as Octavia Butler's time-travelling science-fiction novel Kindred (1979) and postmodern works such as Ismael Reed's Flight to Canada (1976) and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage (1990).

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The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature

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18 Early American Slave Narratives

April Langley is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri. She specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Africana and American literature. She has published essays in scholarly journals ranging from A/B: Auto/Biography Studies to Western Journal of Black Studies. She is currently completing a book-length work to be called The Black Aesthetic Unbound: Theorizing the Dilemma of an Eighteenth-Century African-American Literature.

Published: 18 September 2012
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A discourse on early American slave narratives is the essence of this article. Early American slave narratives shed light on the successful strategies used by black narrators for telling their stories. Their narrative strategies significantly influenced how such critical issues as religion, politics, commerce, and captivity have been articulated. Once considered as marginally black, slave narratives reflect the distinct voice of black American identity. They appropriate yet subvert a variety of important literary genres, including captivity narratives and spiritual autobiography. Briton Hammon's Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man (1760); Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince (1772) are some examples of this genre. Written by blacks, these narratives assert the identities of their authors even as they question the very meaning of identity and the possibilities of language to convey it.

Recent scholarship has offered important new insights into our understanding of the earliest narratives by American writers of African descent (O'Neale 1993; Zafar 1997 ; Brooks 2003 ; Saillant 2003 ; Carretta 2005 ). These insights emphasize the value of early American slave narratives and shed light on the successful strategies used by black narrators for telling their stories. Their narrative strategies significantly influenced how such critical issues as religion, politics, commerce, and captivity have been articulated (Gould 2003 , 10). Once considered as marginally “black” or “American” or, for that matter, “literature,” early American slave narratives reflect the distinct voice of black American identity. They appropriate yet subvert a variety of important literary genres, including captivity narratives, conversion narratives, and spiritual autobiography. Locating eighteenth-century black American narrative within the development of these other genres can provide significant clues to understanding the themes of identity, spirituality, slavery, and freedom, themes that remain central to modern black literary movements (Stepto 1979 ).

These eighteenth-century American slave narratives represent the earliest attempts to recount black experiences of spiritual, physical, and cultural captivity. They include the following works: Briton Hammon's Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man (1760); Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince (1772), which remained a steady seller for decades after its initial appearance; John Marrant's Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings With John Marrant, a Black (1785); and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written By Himself (1789), the finest African American narrative before Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). All of these merit further discussion.

Briton Hammon

The long title of Briton Hammon's short work provides a good indication of its contents and suggests how it belongs among other forms of narrative discourse in colonial America: Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man,—Servant to General Winslow, of Marshfield, in New-England; Who Returned to Boston, after Having Been Absent almost Thirteen Years. Containing an Account of the Many Hardships He Underwent from the Time He Left His Master's House, in the Year 1747, to the Time of his Return to Boston.—How He Was Cast Away in the Capes of Florida;—the Horrid Cruelty and Inhuman Barbarity of the Indians in Murdering the Whole Ship's Crew;—the Manner of His Being Carry'd by Them into Captivity. Also, An Account of His Being Confined Four Years and Seven Months in a Close Dungeon,—And the Remarkable Manner in which He Met with his Good Old Master in London; Who Returned to New-England, a Passenger, in the Same Ship.

The story of Hammon's departure from New England, arrival in the West Indies, shipwreck off the coast of Florida, capture at sea by Indians, redemption and subsequent imprisonment at the hands of the Spanish in Cuba, encounter with numerous “alien” others (non-Christian, non-Protestant, non-British, non-American), and subsequent freedom and reunion with his master constitutes the earliest published narrative in the English-speaking world by a freed black captive. Beyond questions of race-based bondage in the colonies, Hammon's work opens the door for discussions of cultural, national, and religious self-identification (Zafar 1997 , 41). Regardless of Hammon's identification of himself as “a Negro man” in the title, the account of his journey from freedom (with his British master) to slavery (at the hands of Cubans, Catholics, Indians, and others) to freedom (once again in the safe haven of General Winslow and the British colonies) is neither wholly representative of a conventional narration of Indian captivity nor a tale of typical African colonial bondage. While Hammon's captivity narrative embodies the didactic aims of eighteenth-century Christian conversion narratives, it does much more. Both his “ manner of his being carry'd … into Captivity” and his method of relating the “ matters of fact as they occur” suggest overlapping commercial, political, and religious concerns.

The theme of disobedience, for example, forms an important part of Hammon's Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings, much as it does in other early American slave narratives. Speaking about himself in Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings, John Marrant states, “Disobedience either to God or man, being one of the fruits of sin, grew out from me in early buds” (Carretta 2004 , 112). Similarly, Hammon suggests that disobedience “either to god or man” triggers the providential forces that led to his capture. Early in Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, Hammon reveals that it was the sea captain's failure to obey the pleas of “every person on board, to heave over but only 20 Ton of the Wood ” that resulted in the loss of the “Vessel and Cargo” and the captain's “own Life, as well as the Lives of the Mate and Nine Hands” (Carretta 2004 , 20–21). There is no mistaking the biblical parallels between Hammon's recounting of this act of disobedience within the context of a Jonah-like parable. Olaudah Equiano depicts similarly relevant situations with regard to casting objects overboard. On one occasion, Equiano calls such actions both necessary and practical to prepare for an impending battle. Another time he reports that by “tossing many things overboard to lighten her, we got the ship off without any damage.” In an act of disobedience, the entire ship's crew engages in mutinous behavior as they side with Equiano and thus thwart their captain's efforts to save the ship by barbaric means. The captain had “ordered the hatches to be nailed down on the slaves in the hold, where there were above twenty, all of whom must unavoidably have perished if he had been obeyed” (Equiano 2003 , 76, 149). Making the theme of disobedience prominent, early black narrators such as Hammon, Marrant, and Equiano not only participate in eighteenth-century homiletics on Christian obedience but also extend the development of mainstream discourse on civil disobedience.

Both the manner in which Hammon is captured and the means by which he relates the experience document important aspects of the eighteenth-century slave trade. His narrative offers the opportunity to explore the unique existence of the lives of the people of African descent in early America. As a black narrator, he begins by explaining that he embarks with his master's leave on the seafaring journey that would result in his extraordinary thirteen-year captivity. Since he has identified his racial identity as “a Negro,” however, the idea that he has the permission of his “master” to travel suggests a departure from more conventional captivity narratives. While Hammon's race figures less prominently in this eighteenth-century captivity narrative than it would in nineteenth-century slave narratives, it cannot be overlooked. Though his narrative reflects many conventional concerns—the importance of divine Providence, the authority of the British Crown, the propagation of the American Protestant gospel, and the identification of the spiritual and cultural Indian enemy—it deserves to be read in terms of its primary concern, the slave trade.

The captive “Negro man” in Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings parallels the captured Christians in other early American captivity narratives. The “Negro man” cannot elicit the degree of sympathy that the typical narrator (white, English, Christian, female) can, however. Both the black man's race and his uncertain legal status impair reader sympathy. Though Hammon apparently was a free black, he uses the word “master” to refer to his employer, General Winslow, and thus suggests a master-slave relationship. Sometimes his legal status seems unclear in Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings. In Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings, John Marrant, though also a free man, uses the word “master” on several occasions to refer to his employer. In the absence of clarity, even an eighteenth-century audience that understood the dual meaning of the word “master” might have considered the possibility of Hammon being a slave. Slave owners often hired out their slaves to other masters on land as well as at sea. Olaudah Equiano, for example, makes multiples references to the earnings he acquires working aboard a ship, though still a slave to Robert King (Bolster 1997 ; Reiss 1997 , 231; Martin 2004 ).

Even within eighteenth-century discourse on freedom, slavery, spirituality, and national identification, early black narrators like Hammon enhance narrative complexity. In Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, the language of slavery interrupts the discourse of Indian savagery (Zafar 1997 ; Gould 2003 ). Hammon's account of the Indians' “murdering the whole Ship's Crew” echoes Mary Rowlandson's earlier description of her Indian captors as “those barbarous creatures” who murdered and left a dozen Christians lying in their blood and who “captured and carried off another 24” of whom, Job-like, Rowlandson “escaped alone to tell the News” (Rowlandson 1997 , 70). Similarly, Hammon identifies himself as the sole survivor after witnessing the murder of everyone else who waited aboard the sloop with him. Yet there are striking differences between Rowlandson's language—written nearly a hundred years earlier—and Hammon's. Changes in attitude and experience over the intervening century help explain the differences between Rowlandson's decision to remain alive and go along with the Indians and Hammon's initial attempt to escape capture by suicide. During that time, notions of Indian captivity and purposes of Indian captivity narratives had changed drastically (Derounian-Stodola and Levernier 1993 , 23; Sekora 1993 , 101–103).

Hammon's description of his Indian captors' “prodigious shouting and hallowing like so many Devils” resembles Rowlandson's description of “the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell”—with one key difference. Notably, Hammon does not use the term “black” to describe his captors (Rowlandson 1997 , 71; Carretta 2004 , 21). Given the traditional associations of Indians with “the devil,” Rowlandson's language is unsurprising. Hammon's refusal to use similar language in his captivity narrative suggests a change in the dominant constructions of evil. Omitting the word “black” while otherwise using much the same language as Rowlandson, Hammon and, in general, early American narrators of African descent made selective use of dominant white colonial discourse. Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings verifies Hammon's willingness to participate in the language of captivity, at least to the extent that the Indians who murdered and committed other “barbarous” acts were considered vile devils.

Hammon does use the term “black” elsewhere in the narrative, each time with negative connotations. Generally speaking, the Negro narrator's engagement with such key racial signifiers as “black” (through either omission or repetition) suggests a shift in the language of race in the late eighteenth century. Hammon's refusal to extend his description of the Indian “devils” to include men with black skin suggests his awareness of the consequences for a man who was himself a Negro—a black or dark-skinned man—to be identified with such vileness. Alternatively, a black Christian narrator like Hammon who recounts the cost of his skin color for an enslaved black man links the consequences of black skin with unmerited punishment and suggests the extent to which early narratives of black captivity engage discourses of race, religion, and culture.

By making visible race-based African slavery in the context of Indian captivity, early American narratives like Hammon's suggest the inextricable nature of Indian and white colonial “savagery” and “barbarity” as it relates to slavery and captivity. Black writers, as Rafia Zafar has observed, “changed permanently the meanings of the genres they appropriated” (Zafar 1997 , 10). By extension, they began large-scale changes in cultural and political discourse that continued well past the Civil War. Furthermore, they have influenced our modern understanding of the “transformative” power of the early black narrative.

Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

Henry Louis Gates Jr. has placed great emphasis on the linguistic and literary transformations wrought by early American slave narratives (Gates 1988 ). The authors who followed Briton Hammon—Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (also known as “James Albert”), John Marrant, Olaudah Equiano—provide further evidence of the powerful shift in mainstream discourse made possible by early black American narratives. Black writers were simultaneously engaged in dialogue with each other and with their white masters. They often marked their texts with a critique of the white literacy. Their writings evince a previously unacknowledged level of intellect and political savvy. Overall, these early black narratives were the works of men who represent an important yet often neglected strain of thought in early America.

A key aspect of early black autobiography is symbolized by what Gates terms the “trope of the talking book.” This trope or figure of speech concerns the most important book in early American history, the Bible. In early black narrative, the Bible is frequently depicted as a text that fails to speak to blacks. As a sign of the master's literate world, reading is inaccessible to blacks. Arguing that the “talking book” links the narratives of Gronniosaw, Marrant, and Equiano, Gates has suggested that these texts speak to one to another through their respective, figurative references.

In his Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars, Gronniosaw locates in his master's Bible a written text that will not speak to him:

He used to read prayers in public to the ship's crew every Sabbath day; and when I first saw him read, I was never so surprised in my life, as when I saw the book talk to my master; for I thought it did, as I observed him to look upon it, and move his lips.—I wished it would do so to me. As soon as my master had done reading I follow'd him to the place where he put the book, being mightily delighted with it, and when nobody saw me, I open'd it and put my ear down close upon it, in great hope that it wou'd say something to me; but I was very sorry and greatly disappointed, when I found it would not speak, this thought immediately presented itself to me, that every body and every thing despis'd me because I was black. (Carretta 2004 , 38)

Dictated to an amanuensis when Gronniosaw was around sixty, Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars contemplates this pivotal moment in his life, ironically commenting on his naïveté about the relationship between written and spoken language and about his assumption that his race denied him access to the speaking book. He reveals that blacks first encountered the idea of literacy in the context of religion. His master, who reads prayers on the Sabbath to the ship's crew, confirms the spiritual value of the Bible as a text that must be engaged orally in order to be effective. While Gronniosaw's narrative draws attention to his own illiteracy, it neither affirms nor denies his ability to understand the word as it is “spoken” by his master. Blacks and other illiterate Christians (black and white) learned the Bible by hearing its words read aloud and then repeating them. Gronniosaw's focus in this passage is not on whether he can hear but whether he can make the book speak, to make it address him in the same manner as it does his master. Gronniosaw explains how such a misunderstanding has occurred. The young enslaved African “thought” the book was speaking to his master as he watched him look upon it and move his lips. This type of confusion, especially in the context of Christian conversion, seems reasonable given the pertinent biblical context. The Bible asserts that the attainment of spiritual knowledge occurs through the spoken word. Consider Romans 10:17: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Because the religious aims of a conversion narrative such as Gronniosaw's have chiefly to do with documenting the life of a potential convert to provide evidence of his acceptance into the Christian community, all autobiographical elements that are included should be identified as signs of God's election. John Campbell's Treatise on Conversion (1743) is instructive here because it provides a useful context for understanding the conventional aims that structure a conversion narrative: “In the prosecution of our Doctrine, these following Points fall in naturally to be discoursed upon: viz. First, Conversion. Secondly, Faith. Thirdly, Justification. Fourthly and lastly, the Application of these briefly and plainly in their Order” (Campbell 1743 , 20). Thus narrators first addressed the process by which they were converted.

In Gronniosaw's case his story begins in Bournu (now northeastern Nigeria), as far outside of the reach of the gospel as his Western audiences might imagine. Depicting himself as a Moses-like figure, he establishes his conversion on the basis of one who, in Campbell's words, is “called … justified … and … glorified” (Campbell 1743 , 19). Gronniosaw reflects that his “curious turn of mind was more grave and reserved” than that of his brothers and sisters. His own early disposition corresponds to that of serious men like his master, men whose actions (in particular the reading of scripture on the Sabbath) correspond to Gronniosaw's state of mind. Furthermore, his departure for the New World reflects his desire to learn more about this “Man of Power” who “lived above.” Providentially, a “merchant from the Gold Coast ” arrives and offers to take Gronniosaw abroad and return him safely, to show him “houses with wings to [let] them walk upon the water” and “white folks” (Carretta 2004 , 35). After a series of misadventures, Gronniosaw is condemned to death and brought before an African king. It “pleased God to melt the heart of the King.” In Joseph-like fashion, Gronniosaw is sold into slavery rather than killed. He describes each transaction in the triangular trade from Africa to Europe to the colonies as part of the providential design of an “Almighty” God. Looking back, the elderly Gronniosaw thus relates that he “was glad when my new Master took” those things that symbolized a relinquishing of his royal African birthright, beliefs, and wealth (Carretta 2004 , 37–38).

The context of Christian conversion requires a surrender of material for the spiritual wealth in God's kingdom. Years after his initial conversion, when he is free and married with children to his poor but “blessed partner,” Betty, Gronniosaw's failure to obtain even such basic necessities as food seems a part of God's providential plan. Even when he and his wife are unable to secure employment and are “reduc'd to the greatest distress imaginable,” even when they have nothing to eat but four raw carrots, he retains his Christian faith. Thus, throughout this narrative he reaffirms the moralistic aims of conversion, faith, justification, and application of the tenets of Christian faith—ultimately confirming him and his wife as pilgrims traveling toward their “Heavenly Home” who continue to praise God (Carretta 2004 , 49, 50, 53).

Born of the religious fervor of the first evangelical movement of the Great Awakening, narratives of conversion were in their own rights “subversive” texts that undermined the authority of the established clergy. Such narratives did so primarily because the power to articulate conversion became a matter of successfully demonstrating the steps necessary for initiation into God's kingdom. Conversion depended on a relationship between the convert and the divine, not on religious leadership that might be subject to human frailty and corruption. Once set in motion, the deposing of traditional clerical authority would be difficult to reverse. It was in this historical moment that a political as well as a religious awakening was inaugurated.

Despite Gronniosaw's connections to mainstream conversion discourse, both his repeated inflections of “blackness” and his emphasis on the hypocrisy of slave-holding Christians suggest that his narrative is committed to dual purposes. His initial reaction to the Bible's refusal to speak to him marks him as an outsider in terms of both race and religion. In the face of the Bible's refusal to speak, he assumes “that every body and every thing despis'd me because I was black” (Carretta 2004 , 38). What could possibly have provoked such a “thought”? And why had it “presented itself” to him with such immediacy? The word “despised” suggests the contempt with which black people were regarded. By the end of the episode, however, it remains unclear why his frustration with his illiteracy would have evoked such strong emotions and sudden realization of color prejudice, especially given his relatively benign depiction of his condition as a black man in the story up to this point.

Elsewhere in Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars, the reasons underlying Gronniosaw's emotional outpouring in regard to other personal experiences seem clear. Consider the following passage:

After I had been a little while with my new master I grew more familiar, and ask'd him the meaning of prayer: (I could hardly speak English to be understood) he took great pains with me, and made me understand that he pray'd to God, who liv'd in Heaven; that He was my Father and Best Friend.—I told him that this must be a mistake; that my father lived at Bournou, and I wanted very much to see him, and likewise my dear mother, and sister, and I wish'd he would be so good as to send me home to them; and I added, all that I could think of to induce him to convey me back. I appeared in great trouble, and my good master was so affected, that the tears ran down his face. (Carretta 2004 , 39)

Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, called Mr. Freelandhouse in Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars, Gronniosaw describes as “a very gracious, good Minister.” Though he seems genuinely moved by his slave's predicament, his failure to grant Gronniosaw's request for freedom belies his apparent compassion. (Not until his death did Frelinghuysen free Gronniosaw.) The young African's pleas to return home to his family and friends suggest a desire to be with those who do not despise his blackness. His “immediate” thoughts upon hearing his master's words of religious instruction, as they had been when he first attempted to read the Word of God, turned to those most like him, those he identified with racially and culturally.

Overall, Gronniosaw's Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars shows how integral literacy, oral culture, slavery, and race are to the story of black conversion. The work captured the attention of contemporary readers. It was first published in Bath, England, in 1770 and was reprinted throughout Great Britain for decades. William Williams translated it into Welsh in 1779. The first American edition was published at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1774, and in 1797 it was serialized in the American Moral and Sentimental Magazine. It continued to be republished in both Great Britain and America in the early nineteenth century as the abolitionist movement expanded. Gronniosaw's personal story touched his readers, provoked their compassion, and prompted them to sympathize with his plight and the plight of enslaved Africans everywhere.

John Marrant

John Marrant's Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, a Black stands out among early black narratives in several respects. Marrant tells the story of his experiences as a free black carpenter's apprentice who converts to Christianity, ventures into the wilderness, is captured by the Cherokee and condemned to death, but is saved by his potential executioner's miraculous conversion. The narrative reflects both his open-mindedness and the complexity of his attitude toward Native Americans. The tone and tenor of his remarks differ from those of W. Aldridge, whose words preface Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings. Aldridge uses derogatory language to frame Marrant's experience with the Cherokee people. In contrast to the preface, Marrant's account becomes a counternarrative of Indian and African redemption.

Like Gronniosaw, Marrant graphically depicts the barbaric manner in which white slaveholding Christians subvert the mission of religious conversion. He speaks as an objective, analytical observer who is both insider and outsider, anticipating the perspective Equiano would take. Furthermore, Marrant's narrative offers one of the earliest comparisons between notions of childlike innocence in black and white, which Harriet Beecher Stowe would capitalize on with the character of Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin. As a free, American-born, eighteenth-century black narrator who recounts his experiences with Christian conversion and Indian captivity, Marrant is twice rejected but ultimately triumphant. He becomes an itinerant minister to Indian kings and princesses, children, slaves, and masters; chaplain to the first lodge of African masons, which was founded by Prince Hall in Boston; and the first black American to be ordained minister—called to preach to his “kinsmen, according to the flesh” (Carretta 2004 , 126).

Marrant's contemplation of his ministerial mission in Nova Scotia may best express the complexity of black life in colonial America. His dynamic role challenges the static views of free and enslaved blacks and changes widely held assumptions about the marginalized people who shaped the American landscape. On the occasion of his departure from his beloved friends in England, Marrant offered the following entreaty for the “earnest prayers” of his “Christian friends”:

that I may be carried safe there; kept humble, made faithful, and successful; that strangers may hear of and run to Christ; that Indian tribes may stretch out their hands to God; that the black nations may be made white in the blood of the Lamb; that vast multitudes, of hard tongues, and of a strange speech, may learn the language of Canaan, and sing the song of Moses, and of the Lamb; and, anticipating the glorious prospect, may we all with fervent hearts, and willing tongues, sing Hallelujah; the kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our God, and of his Christ. Amen and Amen. (Carretta 2004 , 127)

Marrant's Christian odyssey began long before his mission to Nova Scotia, however. Wandering the American wilderness after his religious conversion during his teenage years, he established important ties with several Indian nations. After being captured, imprisoned, and set free by Cherokees, he was “received with kindness” by the Creeks, “visited” with the Catawar, and safely “passed among” the Housaw. While divine Providence is presented as an agent in his safe travel, Marrant also demonstrates firsthand knowledge about the importance of nations “at peace with each other.” The fact that he is recommended from one Indian nation to another affects his ability to travel beyond Cherokee territory. Far more ominous—couched in the language of conversion but invoking the rhetoric of the Revolution—is Marrant's caution to his white American readers: “When they [the Indian nations] recollect, that the white people drove them from the American shores, they are full of resentment. These nations have often united, and murdered all the white people in the back settlements which they could lay hold of, men, women, and children.” In the context of such conflict between Christian whites and those Indian nations not “savingly wrought upon,” it becomes difficult to imagine that “Indian tribes may stretch out their hands to God” (Carretta 2004 , 119–121).

Marrant's skillful appropriation of the rhetoric of conversion and captivity links the political goals of the “vast multitudes, of hard tongues, and of a strange speech” with the spiritual aim of Christian conversion, that is, to teach the “language of Canaan.” This important engagement with and extension of egalitarian Great Awakening theology demands moral accountability from an imperialist slave-holding society on religious grounds. Marrant broadens the Christian community of “fervent hearts, and willing tongues” to include Indian nations among the “the kingdoms of our God.” He also insists that such nations be treated similarly with respect to “kingdoms of the world.” He demonstrates careful attention to cultural and spiritual conversion and, in so doing, encourages readers to accept Indians as part of the Christian community.

Furthermore, he emphasizes the iconic value of the Bible yet also indicates the importance of literacy for understanding it. Like Gronniosaw, he, too, uses the trope of the talking book. “At this instant the king's eldest daughter came into the chamber, a person about nineteen years of age, and stood at my right hand. I had a Bible in my hand, which she took out of it, and having opened it, she kissed it, and seemed much delighted with it,” Marrant observes. “His daughter took the book out of my hand a second time; she opened it, and kissed it again; her father bid her give it to me, which she did; but said, with much sorrow, the book would not speak to her” (Carretta 2004 , 119).

Unlike, Gronniosaw's intense reaction to a text that refuses to speak, Marrant staggers the trope of the talking book into two steps, demonstrating the iconic power of the Bible before revealing its inability to speak to those who cannot read. In stark contrast to Gronniosaw's description of himself as a despised being, the king's teenage daughter possesses tender and endearing human emotions. The delight she expresses and the kiss she bestows upon the sacred text once she opens the volume suggest reverent affection born of a virtuous nature. Her second encounter with the book seems similarly delightful, as she once again expresses affection through a deferential kiss. After Marrant tells her that the name of God is recorded in the book and after hearing him read the scriptures, she regrets that she is unable to extract a similar meaning from it.

In the revision of the trope from Gronniosaw to Marrant, what differs most are the emotions expressed upon realizing that the book cannot speak. Whereas Gronniosaw had expressed anger, anger stemming from recognizing his “despised” condition as a black man, the Indian princess expresses sorrow. Both of them experience physical illness after their frustrating encounters with the Bible. Gronniosaw becomes “exceedingly sea-sick,” and the princess, “under deep conviction of sin” following intensive prayer, seems beyond “the skill of all their doctors.” Following the princess's recovery, a “great change took place among the people” (Carretta 2004 , 120). With her recovery, blacks like Marrant are now treated on equal status within this newly converted community of Christian Cherokee brothers and sisters. In this community, the “language of Canaan” Marrant had been looking forward to now prevails. A similar acceptance into the community of newly converted saints is not extended to the displaced African prince Gronniosaw, whose experience in God's “earthly” kingdom continues to be affected by the reality of his blackness and the despised condition to which one of his race has been consigned.

Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful Dealings is both a conversion narrative and a captivity narrative. Marrant's depiction of the spiritual, political, and cultural conversion of Native Americans and blacks implies that his white readers, too, could, in Phillis Wheatley's words, “join th' angelic train” (Wheatley 1989 , 53). While Wheatley's words may have originally been meant to include “Christians, Negros, black as Cain” into a presumably “white” heaven, Marrant's experiences in captivity suggest that the spiritual conversion of whites would depend upon the extent to which they were able to adapt to political and cultural ideals of antislavery. On this point, the black narrator's words echo white abolitionist discourse attempting to expose the corruption that the slave trade has wrought on early colonial American society.

Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, a work James Walvin has called “the classic account of the experience that was the fate of millions of Africans in the era of Atlantic slavery,” is not without controversy. In the narrative, Equiano claims to be an Igbo-African who was born in what is now Nigeria; other documentary evidence suggests that he was born in Carolina. Instead of being a true account of his own personal enslavement, Equiano may have composed his narrative from recollections of other slaves he met in America or at sea (Walvin 2004 ). Rather than impugn Equiano's reputation, the controversy over his narrative has only served to enhance its complexity. In its essence, Interesting Narrative questions the meaning of identity. To what extent does the life of an individual represent the life of the group to which he or she belongs? To what extent can black narrators justifiably co-opt the experience of other blacks and claim it as their own? And to what extent can black narrators justifiably make use of fiction in spiritual and secular autobiography?

Life on board ship enabled eighteenth-century black men like Hammon and Equiano to make contact with other African cultures and thus engage in a kind of cultural identification with communities of black people to which they might not otherwise have had access. The experiences of these early narrators both at sea and on land provided models of cross-class, cross-cultural, and interracial relationships that were especially significant in a post-Revolutionary, pre-emancipation world, a world that was weighing the consequences of such diversity in a new country. Jeffrey Bolster maintains, “Voyaging between the West Indies, Europe, and the American mainland enabled seamen to observe the Atlantic political economy from a variety of vantage points, to subvert their masters' discipline, and to open plantation society to outside influences” (Bolster 1997 , 26). Equiano offers a model of organizing and understanding African identity within several cultural contexts. Interesting Narrative demonstrates how personal awareness framed eighteenth-century black aesthetics of identity.

The matter of using the Lord's name in vain, for example, offers Equiano an opportunity to discuss cultural differences between Africans and Europeans. He asserts that the Igbo people “never polluted the name of the object of our adoration; on the contrary, it was always mentioned with the greatest reverence.” Even as the Christian-Afro-American-British Equiano cites “swearing” as an example of the moral inferiority of “more civilized people,” he wonders about his own position as someone who is favored by a Christian God and who must acknowledge the reverence “more civilized people” have for God. Furthermore, he questions both the Christian application of charity and the European's capacity for imaginative and rational reasoning. Unwilling to recognize the equality with which God treats all men, whites limited the goodness of God in their conception of him (Equiano 2003, 41, 45). Equiano uses similar examples to draw attention to what had by this time become a powerful tool in antislavery rhetoric, the assertion of an antislavery argument within the context of Great Awakening egalitarianism: heavenly equality could and should be extended to earthly equality.

Equiano's voyage of self-edification and ethnic retrieval began long before he wrote and published Interesting Narrative in 1789. His literal and literary journey is fashioned from events that occurred during his passage from and through freedom and enslavement. In the narrative, he passes from physical and geographic freedom in remote Essaka—“unexplored by any traveler”—to similarly remote emotional states of enslavement as manifested by his utter grief at familial and kin separation (Equiano 2003 , 32). He recounts with compelling precision the repercussions of his African experience. In one revealing section of his Interesting Narrative, he shows how his African identity has been shattered:

But, alas! ere long it was my fate to be thus attacked, and to be carried off, when none of the grown people were nigh. One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both; and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, tied our hands, and ran off with us into the nearest wood. … The next day … my sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other's arms. (Equiano 2003 , 47–48)

In stark contrast to Equiano's detailed description of the careful manner in which children in his village are reared and protected, this kidnapping scene occurs very quickly. The rapidity with which Africans are stolen away from their nations, their families, and their identities is amplified in Equiano's language, tone, and rhythm. With two ostensibly simple yet powerful words—“But, alas!”—Equiano voices his personal grief at the instant of his capture, the impending danger that awaits him and his sister, and the ghastly fate that looms over entire African nations.

Apart from the trauma caused by his forced removal from village, kingdom, nation, family, and kin, Equiano's depiction of the horrific scene of capture and initial enslavement suggests a more devastating loss, the loss of his identity and the apparent destruction of any means of recovery. Despite such mental and physical self-alienation, dispossession, and displacement, Equiano refuses to surrender, even as he necessarily assimilates his new worldview. Abiola Irele deduces that this sense of loss in Equiano's narrative can be read “as a rhetorical gesture against the state of dispossession” that “attests to an abiding sense of origins and marks a gesture of self-affirmation as African subject” (Irele 2001 , 48). In describing the physical upheaval of being bound, immobilized, and silenced, the narrator inconspicuously reminds his audience of what can neither be silenced nor bound—his memory and his intellect.

The idea of time constitutes an important motif in Equiano's Interesting Narrative. His separation from his sister and his enslavement represent time lost; his mental re-creation of his community represents his recovery of historical time, which restores his Igbo worldview and history. This way of viewing time suggests that doom is not the inevitable consequence of the enslavement of Africans in the New World. Equiano insists that “time could not erase” the memory of his African identity. Not only had his culture, as he explains, been “implanted in me with great care,” but it had “made an impression on my mind” that subsequent experience “served only to rivet and record ” (Equiano 2003 , 46). Equiano's quest for meaningful dialogue reflects an Igbo consciousness and identity. His integration of balance, continuity, and complementarity into a narrative of rupture and disjunction reflects the Igbo concept of duality, a dominant factor in the shifting narrative tone.

Aware of both African and Western ways of knowing, Equiano exploited both whenever possible. In a way, he resembles other contemporary authors who found it necessary to keep their writing in line with such established conventions of this historical period, conventions such as the concept of the noble African savage. But for Equiano there is far more at stake than demonstrating his humanity via his literary skill. Over the course of his narrative, he provocatively analyzes the progressive stages of dispossession, indoctrination, education, and assimilation in the continually changing systems of classification in the transatlantic slave trade. He explains:

From the time I left my own nation, I always found somebody that understood me till I came to the sea coast. The languages of different nations did not totally differ, nor were they so copious as those of the Europeans, particularly the English. They were therefore easily learned; and, while I was journeying thus through Africa, I acquired two or three different tongues. In this manner I had been travelling for a considerable time, when one evening, to my great surprise, whom should I see brought to the house where I was but my dear sister. (Equiano 2003 , 51)

In the early stages of displacement he emphasizes that he remained in contact with and connected to others who “understood” him. Clearly, he is referring to linguistic understanding, but he also calls attention to the importance of shared systems of cultural knowledge by his use of the term “understood.” His physical movement prior to reaching the coast, though quite a distance from Benin and the even more remote Essaka, permitted him to communicate effectively with those of other nations. Communicating with those of different African languages let him reflect upon the nature of community, culture, and kinship, and consider their relationship to language.

Interesting Narrative captured the attention of contemporary readers. After its initial publication in London in 1789, it went through numerous editions. It was reprinted in Dublin, Edinburgh, Halifax, Leeds, and New York. Within a few years of its initial appearance, it was translated into Dutch and German. Written after Equiano was a fully assimilated Afro-American-Briton, Interesting Narrative conveys the complex nature of his personal and national identity, especially in light of his experiences as an enslaved and free person both inside and outside of Africa. Much the same could be said about the authors of other early black conversion, captivity, and slave narratives. Written by blacks suspended on land and sea between contradicting views of culture, class, race, politics, and commerce, these narratives assert the identities of their authors even as they question the very meaning of identity and the possibilities of language to convey it.

Bolster, W. Jeffrey. 1997 . Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Campbell, John. 1743 . A Treatise of Conversion, Faith and Justification, &c.: Being an Extract of Sundry Discourses on Rom. V. 5. Delivered at Oxford in the Latter End of the Year 1741, and Beginning of 1742. Boston: Rogers and Fowle.

Carretta, Vincent, ed. 2004 . Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2005 . Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, and James Levernier. 1993 . The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900. New York: Twayne.

Equiano, Olaudah. 2003 . The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, edited by Vincent Carretta. New York: Penguin.

Gates, Henry Louis. 1988 . The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gould, Phillip. 2003 . Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century-Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gronniosaw, Ukasaw. 1797 . “ A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Occurances, and Strange Vicissitudes in the Life of James Albert Ukasaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself. ” American Moral and Sentimental Magazine 1: 17–23, 32–37, 65–69, 97–102, 148–153, 162–165, 193–199.

Irele, Abiola. 2001 . The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press.

Martin, Jonathan. 2004 . Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

O'Neale, Sondra. 1993 . Jupiter Hammon and the Biblical Beginnings of African-American Literature. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow.

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Rowlandson, Mary. 1997 . The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed, edited by Neal Salisbury. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's.

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Stepto, Robert B. 1979 . From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Walvin, James. 2004 . Equiano, Olaudah. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, vol. 18, pp. 481–482. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wheatley, Phillis. 1989 . The Poems of Phillis Wheatley: Revised and Enlarged Edition with an Additional Poem, edited by Julian D. Mason Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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Literary Matters

The Literary Magazine of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

On William L. Andrews’ Slavery and Class in the American South

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William L. Andrews Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840-1865 (Oxford University Press, 2019, 389 pp., $26.95)

With Slavery and Class in the American South , William L. Andrews continues to plumb the nuances of the slave narrative genre for revelatory insights into African American literature and history, a project to which he has devoted his scholarly career. This latest title investigates the “intraracial as well as interracial social dynamics of slavery” as represented in sixty-one slave narratives authored by fifty-two individuals and produced in the quarter century between 1840 and 1865 (22). This period, recognized as the international heyday of the genre, features authors who had experienced a considerable period of enslavement in the American South before escaping to publish their accounts as fugitives or freed men and women in the North. Andrews’ study hinges on an inquiry into class concerning both “horizontal, intraracial social relationships” between enslaved African Americans of varying social standing in the hierarchy of slave labor and “vertical interracial power relationships” between slaves and their white counterparts – including both slaveholders and poor whites – in the antebellum South (9).

Spanning four chapters and an epilogue, Slavery and Class reveals the ubiquity of social distinctions and class awareness within and throughout the selected slave narratives. Andrews illustrates the extent to which notions of privilege, social status, and class mediated the experiences recounted in the narratives. These moments range from practical aspirations for respite from the horrific realities of slavery – better food, clothing, duties, safety, etc. – to more ambitious desires for economic agency and class advancement via liberation. Indeed, Andrews underscores the importance of social and class awareness to the enslaved worker’s determination to become free, a distinguishing feature of many of the narratives he examines. By close reading a broad range of slave testimonials, and consulting narratives produced by formerly enslaved workers who ranged in hierarchical rank and type of work, Andrews establishes how the various narrators’ self-perception and identity evolved through the prism of upward social and class mobility. From these fertile individual accounts, Andrews develops the critical discourse surrounding the slave narrative genre’s crucial contribution to African American identity construction in mid-nineteenth-century America.

The book commences with a discussion of how the language of class awareness permeates the narratives. To that end, the study highlights the narrators’ usage of “value -laden class terminology,” zeroing-in on words such as ‘aristocrat’, ‘gentleman’, ‘lady’, ‘workingmen’, ‘ordinary labourers’, ‘free labor’, ‘low whites’, and ‘mean whites’ to determine the hierarchical stratifications that determined both interracial and intraracial relationships (43). This social hierarchy, as represented by the narrators, was based predominantly on access to material means, autonomy, and social influence. Though the narrators do not conclusively define antebellum class stratifications in explicit, determined detail, they frequently acknowledge “degrees of socioeconomic difference as well as social rankings among the enslaved” (30). The echelons that structured slave labor were governed by an essential dichotomy between manual and mental labor. Generally speaking, Andrews finds that slaves were compelled into one of two overarching classes: “domestic workers” (house servants) and “agricultural workers” (field hands) (17). Many of these intraracial relationships that Andrews presents were mediated by an awareness of class informed both by the ranked divisions of slave labor and observed white society. The ranks of the enslaved formed a grim mirror to antebellum Southern white society, with the slaves who labored indoors being generally more advantaged than those whose agricultural duties took place outdoors on plantations. Furthermore, Andrews deduces that a slave’s social standing among their fellow slaves often paralleled the social standing of their respective enslavers, with the large plantations or affluent city residences of white masters conferring a degree of elitism to the slaves that labored for their upkeep. Many of the narrators employ class-inflected language when articulating their ambitions to pursue opportunity while enslaved and, ultimately, to attain liberty. These narrators, refusing to allow enslavement to determine their lives, instead depict their individual trajectory as a mobile, societal ascendence out of slavery and into freedom. As Frederick Douglass writes, “[m]y tendency was upward” (39).

The study then delves into a thorough examination of the kinds of work performed by slave narrators during their enslavement. As enslaved laborers, their lives were very much governed by their work, and thus the narratives often reveal that it was through an inescapable awareness of slave work’s classifications that the narrators often understood themselves and their relationships to their fellow slaves and white overseers. Of the fifty-two narrators studied, Andrews finds that the majority of these (predominantly male) authors advanced themselves socioeconomically through their work, usually in skilled labor positions. The increased agency and potential for mobility granted to them through skill-based jobs changed their perception of both their own identities as slaves and their potential as independent, free workers. Though these skilled labor positions increased their autonomy within the confines of slavery, few narrators report being satisfied with simply improving their material or social circumstances while still enslaved. In repeated testimonials, the formerly enslaved narrators’ resistance to control and exploitation grew with their incrementally increased agency, with each successful moment of social advancement “whetting their appetite for ever-greater personal fulfillment culminating in an ultimate bid for freedom” (40). As their work often provided the means by which the narrators improved their circumstances while enslaved – with many accounts citing skilled work as a source of pride and a means of resistance to the dehumanizing labor of slavery – it was through work that these men and women often came to imagine themselves as free members of society in the North.

Of course, the majority of the narratives that Andrews selects – especially those penned by the more famous mid-nineteenth-century narrators such as Douglass, Wells Brown, Pennington, Henson, ‘Box’ Brown, Northup, Craft, and Jacobs – were produced by formerly enslaved narrators whose experience of slavery was atypical of slavery writ large. By ambition, opportunism, ingenuity, or luck, these narrators had the opportunity to develop skills that often gave them access to more abundant and higher quality material resources. Furthermore, skilled positions often enabled them to increase their independence by hiring out their labor, which allowed them to accrue personal money and gain relative freedom of movement. These possibilities would have been unattainable for the vast majority of slaves, most of whom were agricultural laborers. Only twelve of the sixty-one narratives Andrews examines were written by narrators who had been agricultural laborers for all or most of their enslavement, and while these narrators share with the more famous narratives an evident pride and self-determination, the ambitions of these agricultural workers were “comparatively modest, focused on practical, real-world improvements in the narrator’s employment, educational, or familial situation rather than large-scale reforms of the social order” (138). Hence, the preponderance of slave narratives were penned by members of the skilled class of enslaved laborers. They worked in upper echelon positions such as ministers, tradesmen, or even slave-drivers, recounting their lives as a triumphant ascent from laborious physical toil to intellectual or vocational professions in liberty. Here Andrews notes that, “[i]n this respect, the large majority of the narratives of the enslaved artisans, tradesmen, and small business creators read like classic American success stories” (81). Andrews devotes significant ink in this chapter to the phenomenon of self-hiring, an occurrence which many narrators recount as crucial to their ultimate freedom from bondage. For instance, Lunsford Lane manufactured pipes and tobacco with such entrepreneurial aptitude that he was ultimately able to purchase his own freedom using the profits of his self-hired labor. While being able to earn money for themselves improved their material means in the short term, their ability to participate in a cash economy sparked their desire to further their agency by working for their own ends in freedom – “a milestone in their quest for economic independence” (142). Of course, despite the measure of trust extended by the white enslaver to the enterprising narrator, the enslaved individual’s increased autonomy through self-hiring often bore social repercussions among envious fellow slaves. The ambitious narrator often reports feelings of isolation, trusted yet enslaved by white masters and skilled yet distrusted by their fellow slaves in a poignant illustration of the class-mediated interracial and intraracial relationships that structured slavery in the antebellum South. Indeed, Andrews finds that it was often the qualities of skill, ingenuity, and ambition that the narrators evinced while enslaved that not only earned them membership in slavery’s grim upper echelon, but which also fueled their ultimate bids for freedom and success in liberation.

The third chapter discusses how the language of class deployed in mid-nineteenth-century slave narratives provided a means of probing the caste dichotomy that enslaved one race while privileging and making masters of another. The individual successes relayed in the narratives functioned as both a “resistance to caste restriction and promotion of class advancement” (53). The examined narrators prove to be unified in their denunciation of the claims to racial superiority espoused by their white enslavers, consistently emphasizing the inhumanity of slavery and the violent, savage tendencies of slaveholders as the principal means by which the cruel practice was maintained. By crafting damning portraits of various slaveholders in their narratives, the narrators illustrate the “stark inconsistencies between the high-caste superiority slaveholders presumed and the low-class attitudes, values, and behaviors they actually exhibited” (169). However, these narrators also reference instances in which they or their fellow slaves attached their own self-estimate to the socioeconomic status of their masters, creating a parallel hierarchy among the enslaved that tracked with the hierarchy of white Southern society – and which sometimes occasioned class tensions among the enslaved themselves. And while some ‘gentleman’ slaveholders are recounted in the narratives with less invective than the slaveholding class write large, no slaveholder proved kind enough to stymie the narrators’ desire for freedom from the slavery instituted and practiced even by the gentlest of masters.

The fourth and final chapter investigates the fugitive slave narrator as a class unto themselves. The narrators often represent themselves as triumphal, heroic figures who have succeeded by personal qualities and aptitudes that set them apart from their fellow slaves and whose resistance to enslavement enabled them to overcome their enslavers. Additionally, in this chapter Andrews emphasizes the significance of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 to the development of the slave narrative, a law that drew such national controversy and opposition among anti-slavery activists that intrigue in the accounts of former slaves exploded in popularity. Consider Douglass’ Narrative , which had undergone seven editions, sold over 30,000 copies, and been translated into Dutch and French, all within the first five years of its publication. However, Andrews is careful to point out that the fervent interest in slave narratives did not immediately surmount the white supremacist notions maintained by even the most outraged abolitionist pockets of the North. The narrators had to battle Romantic portraits of African Americans of the kind portrayed in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the one hand and pervasive, racist assumptions about Blacks on the other. Fugitive slaves were under particular scrutiny during this period, with many narrators expressing concern for their lives and liberty were they to disclose their fugitive status. Adding to the difficulty of the trapeze act performed by formerly enslaved narrators was the pervasive suspicion of “anything that smacked of black self-promotion,” hence the “apologetic preface” that often accompanied the slave narrative (253-4). However, the narrators often claim credit for the pivotal moment in their accounts when they seized the opportunity to emancipate themselves. The narrators had the difficult task of proving both the inhumanity and injustice of slavery and their personal right to freedom, “based not on law but on ethical, emotional, and spiritual appeals to their readers” (254). The narrators were aware that their personal testimonial was a contribution to the defining issue of their time – the argument for the total emancipation of their race.

While the breadth and depth of research that Andrews has conducted – not just for this project but throughout his career – forms the unimpeachable foundation for this book’s thoroughly convincing and articulate claims, it is the moments of close reading performed by the author that give the book its compulsion. On this score, the discussion concerning Nelly Kellem that ends the third chapter is exemplary. Indeed, Slavery and Class will be of immediate interest to advanced students and scholars of both American history and literature. While at times the sheer preponderance of textual examples might overwhelm the reader, this capaciousness is perhaps a necessary ingredient for a project as ambitious, expansive, foundational, and prescient as this book so clearly is.

Slavery and the Literary Imagination

Deborah e. mcdowell.

Seven noted scholars examine slave narratives and the topic of slavery in American literature, from Frederick Douglass's Narrative (1845)—treated in chapted by Jamkes Olney and William L. Andrews—to Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose (1984). Among the contributors, Arnold Rampersad reads W.E.B. DuBois's classic work The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as a response to Booker T. Washington's Up from Salvery (1901). Hazel V. Carby examines novels of slavery and novels of sharecropping and questions the critical tendency to comflate the two, thereby also conflating the nineteenth century wiith the...

Although works by Afro-American writers are the primary focus, the authors also examine antislavery novels by white women. Hortense J. Spillers gives extensive attention to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin , in juxtaposition with Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada ; Carolyn L. Karcher readers Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic as an abolitionist vision of America's racial destiny.

In a concluding chapter, Deborah E. McDowell's reading of Dessa Rose reveals how slavery and freedom—dominant themes in nineteenth-century black literature—continue to command the attention of contemporary authors.

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This volume of essays represents the widest spectrum of criticism to date on the intersection of American slavery and literary artistry.

Book Details

Introduction Chapter 1. The Founding Fathers—Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington Chapter 2. Changing the Letter: The Yokes, the Jokes of Discourse, or Mrs. Stowe, Mr Reed Chapter 3. The

Introduction Chapter 1. The Founding Fathers—Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington Chapter 2. Changing the Letter: The Yokes, the Jokes of Discourse, or Mrs. Stowe, Mr Reed Chapter 3. The Representation of Slavery and the Rise of Afro-American Literary Realism, 1865-1920 Chapter 4. Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic: An Abolitionist Vision of America's Racial Destiny Chapter 5. Slavery and Literary Imagination/l Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk Chapter 6. Ideologies of Black Folk: The Historical Novel of Slavery Chapter 7. Negotiating between Tenses: Witnessing Slavery after Freedom— Dessa Rose

Arnold Rampersad

with Hopkins Press Books

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American Antislavery Literature

2017, Études Anglaises

This essay examines the evolution of American antislavery literature. It shows that arguments against slavery had been circulating in the colonies since the end of the 17th century. Between 1688 and 1865, there were thousands of separately published titles, including works in every genre, from poems and novels, to slave narratives and children's books. The essay argues as well that for all their historical importance, many antislavery writings also have interest in their own as works of literature. Looking at the history and the evolution of these writings the essay shows how a first, primarily religious type of writing was replaced, after 1775, by a more secular, more literary and more nationalistic mode of writing, followed by a great surge in antislavery writing after 1820, with poetry or slave narratives assuming increasing importance during the years 1820 to 1850. And it is antislavery writing in all its forms and media which conditioned many Americans to view slavery as the essential issue at stake in the war that ensued. The essay concludes on the fact that the continued need for antislavery writing speaks to a painful truth: it was not slavery that was extraordinary, but rather the idea of freedom as the natural condition and universal right of mankind that marked a revolutionary turn.

Related Papers

The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature

Teresa A Goddu

What the Abolitionists Were Up Against, Revisited

Daniel Kilbride

Antislavery activists in the 19th century United States faced a set of formidable obstacles in moving the needle of northern popular opinion from apathy (at best) to engagement. This essay explores the hostile landscape of American social, political, and cultural life within which antislavery writers operated. They could not ignore these conditions if they were going to appeal to their largely northern, middle class audience: they had to assuage their concerns, prompt them to question assumptions, and force them to question conventional wisdom. But northern middle-class culture also provided antislavery activists with opportunities. Pushing the right buttons had the potential to transform hostility and apathy into interest and, maybe, enthusiasm in the fight against slavery. This essay does not show how antislavery women and wen pushed those buttons, but it does identify them and explores their potential to turn a culture of indifference into a culture of antislavery.

Russ Castronovo

Early American Abolitionists, a Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings 1760-1820, eds. James G. Basker, et. al. (Gilder Lehrman Institute,)

James Basker

This volume reprints some fifteen anti-slavery texts that, with one or two exceptions, have been out of print for almost two centuries. They have been edited by an unusual editorial team, con sisting of scholars at every rank from undergraduate to full professor. Our overarching purpose has been to restore to view some of the extensive anti-slavery literature—pamphlets, poems, sermons, printed speeches, and more—that flourished in early America. As the twenty-first century begins, it is easy to forget that slavery was not universally accepted during the Founding Era. Despite the failure of the founders to eradicate slavery at the national level, there were—as this literature attests—energetic and articulate opponents of slavery who attacked it relentlessly and achieved significant gains in many parts of the country over the period 1760 to I820.

BRILL eBooks

Seymour Drescher

OAH Magazine of History

One of the challenges faced by history teachers seeking to use literary texts in their classes is the apparent dearth of literature about slavery before the nine teenth century. The focus on such works as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and Frederick Douglass's Narrative (1845), even on the less familiar writings of William Lloyd Garri son in the 1830s and the antislavery poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 1892), has left many people (including textbook publishers) with the impression that there was little attention to slavery in literature before about 1820 or so. This was one of the motives behind my effort to compile a collection of literature about slavery from earlier centuries which, after ten years of research, has resulted in a new book, AMAZING GRACE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS ABOUT SLAVERY 1660-1810.

American Literature

Adam Gordon

This essay takes the critical reception of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Frederick Douglass' Paper as an occasion to rethink modern constructions of critical authority while arguing for a print culture approach to literary criticism. Although scholars of antebellum culture typically focus on critical responses that are most readable by twenty-first-century standards (lengthy, signed reviews by readily identifiable critics in prestigious journals), paradoxically the less authoritative liminal critical forms (unsigned, unoriginal criticism circulated as reprinted reviews) displayed the centrality of criticism to nineteenth-century social and political life in the United States. Drawing on an expanded archive of eclectic critical forms, this essay denatural-izes and expands our sense of antebellum critical culture, examining the ways Frederick Dou-glass exploited the material diversity of contemporary print culture as part of his antislavery strategy, reprinting responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel in an array of nontraditional critical forms to achieve pragmatic political goals. In so doing, Douglass transformed literary criticism from evaluation and entertainment into a powerful weapon in the war against slavery and the promotion of the interests of African Americans, applications that reaffirm the essay's claim for the importance of a material approach to critical culture. InJul y 1852 editor, orator, abolitionist, and former slave Frederick Douglass included within the pages of Frederick Dou-glass' Paper an account of a recent three-day trip to Ithaca, New York. In recounting the details of his tour, Douglass paused to express his astonishment at the "pleasing change in the public opinion of the place" in its stance toward slaver y since his last visit ten years earlier. He observed that while the Fugitive Slave Act and the cumulative effect of antislavery lecturers and papers must be held partly

Lenka Králiková

Abstract KRÁLIKOVÁ, Lenka: Slavery in American Literature: Twelve Years a Slave [Master´s Thesis] University of SS. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava. Faculty of Arts. Department of British and American Studies – Supervisor: Mgr. Diana Židová, PhD. Degree of Professional Qualification: Master. - Trnava: FF UCM, 2016. 79 p. The main aim of my thesis is the answer to the following questions: How was slavery represented in literature, what was the purpose of the slave narrative in “Twelve years a slave” by Solomon Northup. The thesis has four parts. First part describes slavery in America from its beginning through the gradual development of the system until the abolition. The second part of the paper is description of the slave narrative and other slave narrators with their works. Biography of the author is the main topic of the third part. Last part of the thesis is the analysis of the novel from the point of view of the representation of slavery in the literature and its translations in the Middle European literature. Key words: Religion. Slavery. Slave Narrative. Rescue. Interpretation. American history.

The American Journal of Jurisprudence

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271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples

✨ tips for an essay, research paper or speech about slavery, 🏆 best slavery titles for essay, 🥇 most interesting slave trade essay topics, ⭐ good titles for slavery essays, 💡 slavery writing prompts, 🔎 simple & easy slavery titles, ✍️ slavery essay topics for college, ❓ research questions about slavery.

Writing an essay on slavery may be challenging as the topic brings up negative emotions to many people.

This issue is related to differences between social positions and their negative effects. In addition, slavery reveals racial disparities in society and damages race relations in many cultures.

Good slavery essays discuss the aspects and problems that are important and relevant today. Choose slavery essay topics that raise significant problems that remain acute in modern society. Slavery essay titles and topics may include:

The problem of human trafficking in today’s world
Why is it hard to stop child trafficking in today’s world?
The aspects of plantation life for slaves
The development of American slavery
Was slavery inevitable?
Differences and similarities between slavery in the US and serfdom in Russia
The ineffectiveness of peaceful means against slavery
Destructive aspects of slavery
The link between slavery and racism
The differences between the impact of slavery on women and men of color

Once you select the issue you want to discuss, you can start working on your paper. Here are some tips and secrets for creating a powerful essay:

Remember that appropriate essay titles are important to get the readers’ interest. Do not make the title too long but state the main point of your essay.
Start with developing a structure for your essay. Remember that your paper should be organized clearly. You may want to make separate paragraphs or sections for the most important topics.
Include an introductory paragraph, in which you can briefly discuss the problem and outline what information the paper will present.
Remember to include a concluding paragraph too, in which you will state the main points of your work. Add recommendations, if necessary.
Do preliminary research even if you feel that you know much about the topic already. You can find useful information in historical books, peer-reviewed journals, and trusted online sources. Note: Ask your professor about the types of sources you are allowed to use.
Do not rely on outside sources solely. Your essay should incorporate your knowledge and reflections on slavery and existing evidence. Try to add comments to the citations you use.
Remember that a truly powerful essay should be engaging and easy-to-understand. You can tell your readers about different examples of slavery to make sure that they understand what the issue is about. Keep the readers interested by asking them questions and allowing them to reflect on the problem.
Your slavery essay prompts should be clearly stated in the paper. Do not make the audience guess what the main point of the essay is.
Although the content is important, you should also make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures. Grammatical mistakes may make your paper look unprofessional or unreliable.
If you are writing an argumentative essay, do not forget to include refutation and discuss opposing views on the issue.
Check out slavery essay examples online to see how you can structure your paper and organize the information. In addition, this step can help you to avoid possible mistakes and analyze the relevance of the issue you want to discuss.

Do not forget to check our free samples and get the best ideas for your essay!

Slavery in To Kill a Mockingbird Novel The introduction of Tom by the author is a plot device to represent the plight of the slaves in the state.
Sethe’s Slavery in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison In spite of the fact that the events depicted in Beloved take place after the end of the American Civil War, Sethe, as the main character of the novel and a former slave, continues to […]
Analysis of Themes of Slavery in Literature The paper will be concentrated on the analysis of the works ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’ by Olaudah Equiano, ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass’ by Frederick Douglass, and ‘Incidents […]
Slavery in the Roman Empire The elite were the rich people, and majority of the population that comprised of the common farmers, artisans, and merchants known as the plebeians occupied the low status.
Metaphoric Theme of Slavery in “Indiana” by George Sand In her novel about love and marriage, Sand raises a variety of central themes of that time society, including the line of slavery both from the protagonist’s perspective and the French colonial slavery.
Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Slavery It is said that “the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery; and it is so, necessarily, for this reason, – that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purposes […]
Chapters 4-6 of ”From Slavery to Freedom” by Franklin & Higginbotham At the same time, the portion of American-born slaves was on the increase and contributed to the multiracial nature of the population.
How “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” Addresses Slavery The insensitivity in this mistreatment and dehumanization of Black people is pervasive to the extent that Jim considers himself “property” and was proud to be worth a fortune if anyone was to sell him. To […]
John Brown and His Beliefs About Slavery John Brown was a martyr, his last effort to end slavery when he raided Harper’s Ferry helped to shape the nation and change the history of slavery in America.
Did Morality or Economics Dominate the Debates Over Slavery in the 1850s? Labour and economy remained intertwined in that; the former was a factor that determined the state of the latter. Scholars single out economical differences between the two states as the cause of the slavery in […]
Slavery Experience by Abdul Rahman ibn Ibrahim Sori Abdul Rahman continued talking about his family and status, but his royal priorities were not enough to confirm his identity and return to his family.
Impact of Revolution on Slavery and Women Freed slaves and other opponents of the slave trade in the north agitated for release and freedom of slaves in the south.
“American Slavery, 1619-1817” by Peter Kolchin The concluding chapter details of the demise of slavery on the onset of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The period of American Revolution was a “watershed “in transforming the vision that portrayed slavery was justifiable […]
“Slavery Isn’t the Issue” by Juan Williams Review The author claims that the reparation argument is flawed as affirmative action has ensured that a record number of black Americans move up the economic and social ladder.
Protest Against Slavery in ”Pudd’nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson is the ironic tale of a man who is born a slave but brought up as the heir to wealthy estate, thanks to a switch made while the babies were still in the […]
Social Psychology of Modern Slavery The social psychology of modern slavery holds the opinion that slavery still exists today, contrary to the belief of many people that slavery does not exist in the modern world.
Economic Impact of Slavery Growth in Southern Colonies 1 The need to occupy southern colonies came as a result of the successes that were recorded in the north, especially after the establishment of cash crop farming. The setting up of the plantations in […]
Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Jefferson believed that the landless laborers posed a threat to the nation because they were not independent. He believed that if Englishmen ruled over the world, they would be able to extend the effects of […]
The Evolution of American Slavery Overall, it is possible for us to advance a thesis that the origins of black slavery should be sought in the economic development of American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and especially the […]
Masters and Slaves: ”Up From Slavery” by Washington Booker Instead of criticizing the opposition between the black and the white, Booker emphasizes the interpersonal relationships between the masters and their slaves, emphasizing the devotion of the latter to the white population.
Concept of Slavery Rousseau’s Analysis Rights and slavery are presented by the thinker as two contrary notions; Rousseau strived to provide the analysis of rights in their moral, spiritual sense; the involvement into dependence from the rulers means the involvement […]
“Slavery and the Making of America” Documentary According to the film Slavery and the Making of America, slavery had a profound effect on the historical development of American colonies into one country.
Slavery and Identity: “The Known World” by Edward Jones Moses is used to this kind of life and described by one of the other characters as “world-stupid,” meaning he does not know how to live in the outside world. He has a strong connection […]
The “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary The documentary highlights how the laws and policies of that time enabled the exploitation of Black people and how the legacy of slavery continued to shape the racial dynamics of the country.
Human Trafficking: Slavery Issues These are the words to describe the experiences of victims of human trafficking. One of the best places to intercept human trafficking into the US is at the border.
The Slavery Experience: Erra Adams Erra Adams indicates that he was the oldest of the children and his task was to plow the land. The formerly enslaved person noted that the death of the master was a real grief for […]
Abraham Lincoln: The End of Slavery Lincoln actively challenged the expansion of slavery because he believed the United States would stay true to the Declaration of Independence. It is worth considering the fact that Lincoln was not the only advocate for […]
Recreation of Slavery in “Sweat” Book by Hurston Perhaps the best-portrayed theme and the most controversial one is the recreation of slavery on the part of Afro-Americans who have just been freed of it.
California’s Issues With Slavery However, the report and the book indicate this point and emphasize that the concept of free land was made in favor of white people but not in the interests of African Americans.
Sexual Slavery and Human Smuggling They were the only people in the house, and it appeared that her parents were not home. The social worker’s job in Tiffani’s life is to look into her past, from her childhood through her […]
Were the Black Codes Another Form of Slavery? Slavery in the United States has been a part of the nation’s history for hundreds of years, and yet it did not end abruptly.
How Slavery Makes Sense From Various Perspectives Given that there is a historical precedent for the “peculiar institution,” it would be erroneous to dismiss slavery as something that is new. Thus, the institution of slavery is found even in the Bible, and […]
Slavery in The Fires of Jubilee by Stephen Oates Apart from the story being arranged in chapters, the layout and approach suggest that the author has described the area of events narrated and then given the narration.
Modern Slavery in Global Value Chains: Case Study The main reason for accusations of forced labor is that most of the factories Nike owns are in Vietnam, and they provide the lowest possible wages.
Differences of Slavery: Oklahoma Writers’ Project vs. The Textbook Today, many sources discuss the characteristics of slavery, its causes, and the outcomes and describe the conditions under which the Civil War began. In the accounts and the textbook, different opportunities for slaves are given […]
Autobiography & Slavery Life of Frederick Douglass This essay discusses the slavery life of Frederick Douglass as written in his autobiography, and it highlights how he resisted slavery, the nature of his rebellion, and the view he together with Brinkley had about […]
The American Civil War: Pro- & Anti-Slavery Forces The pro-slavery forces argued that slavery was the right thing to do, promoting abolitionists and the anti-slavery forces as terrible villains because they wanted to abolish slavery.
Slavery: Historical Background and Modern Perspective Despite the seemingly short period of contract slavery, people did not have the right to marry without the owner’s permission while the contract term was in effect.
Irish Immigrants and Abolition of Slavery in the US The selected historical events are Irish immigration to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s and the movement for slavery abolition, which existed in the country at the same time.
Irish Immigration to America and the Slavery Despite the fact that the Irish encountered a great number of obstacles, the immigration of Irish people to the United States was advantageous not only to the immigrants but also to the United States.
Irish Immigrants and the Abolition of Slavery Irish people, though not as deprived of rights as the enslaved Africans, also endured much suffering and fought slavery to the best of their ability.
North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 – 1860 The book North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 1860 by Leon Litwack is an illustration of how African Americans were treated in the northern states just before the start of The […]
Modern Slavery and Its Emergence The author turns to the examples of three European countries and, through the analysis, reveals the piece of the effects of the slave trade and the modernization of its forms.
Moral Aspect of Slavery from a Northern and Southern Perspective Pro-slavery, non-expansionist, and abolitionist perspectives on the moral foundations of slavery identify both differences between the North and south of the US and the gradual evolution of the nation’s view of African people.
Thomas Jefferson on Slavery and Declaration of Independence Additionally, with the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson set the foundation for the abolition of slavery in the future. Thus, the claim that Jefferson’s participation in slavery invalidates his writing of the Declaration of Independence is […]
Slavery and Indentured Servitude Slavery practices were perceived to extend in Boston, which is believed to be the first place where someone tried to force enslaved people to have children to earn money. To summarize, the practice of slavery […]
Indentured Servitude and Slavery The slave population in the North progressively fell throughout the 1760s and 1770s with slaves in Philadelphia reducing to approximately 700 in 1775.
Critical Response: The Origin of Negro Slavery Considering that individuals of all races were involved in slavery in the New World, racism emerged as a consequence of forced labor and was not originally connected to the targeted discrimination of African Americans.
Analysis of Slavery in United States The main points highlighted in the lecture are focused on the socio-economic differences between the two systems, the actual life of slaves, and methods of blacks’ rebellion.
Review of Slavery Topic in “Never Caught” Thus, the former’s relationship to this institution was guided by humanity towards the slaves and the development of legal methods of improving their lives that did not exist in the latter case.
Prohibiting Slavery in the United States In other words, the original ideas incorporated the considerations of sexual immorality due to the abuse of the affected persons and the practice of breeding people for sale. The contributions to the discussion were also […]
Discussion of Slavery in Focus For this reason, the audience that reads about cases of slavery in some of the third-world countries has the feeling of encountering the past something that, in readers’ understanding, is already a history.
New Slavery in “Disposable People” by Kevin Bales The immense increase of the population after World War II and the influence of development and globalization of the world’s economy on traditional families in developing countries have led to the increment in the gap […]
Analysis of Documents on Greek Slavery The passages will be examined and evaluated better understand the social and cultural history of the period and learn more about the social order in Ancient Greece. It can be asserted that the issue of […]
Discussion of Justification of Slavery As a result, such perceptions gave rise to the argument that the latter people are inferior to Europeans and, thus, should be in a position of servitude.
The Industrial Revolution, Slavery, and Free Labor The purpose of this paper is to describe the Industrial Revolution and the new forms of economic activity it created, including mass production and mass consumption, as well as discuss its connection to slavery.
Expansion of Freedom and Slavery in British America The settlement in the city of New Plymouth was founded by the second, and it laid the foundation for the colonies of New England.
Should the U.S. Government Pay Reparations for Slavery Coates tries to get the attention of his audience by explaining to them the importance of understanding the benefits of the impact the slaves faced during the regime of white supremacy.
Antebellum Slavery’s Role in Shaping the History and Legacy of American Society The novel tells the story of two different times, the 1970s and 1815s, and shows other conditions of the heroes’ existence due to gender and racial characteristics.
Alexander Stephens on Slavery and Confederate Constitution The speaker remarks that the persistent lack of consensus over the subordination and slavery of the “Negro” between the South and North was the immediate reason why the Confederates decided to secede and establish their […]
Origins of Modern Racism and Ancient Slavery The diversity of African kingdoms and the empires were engaged in the slave trade for hundreds of years prior to the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. The working and living condition of slaves were […]
Isaac Burt: Modern-Day Slavery in the US Therefore, the author begins with the critical review of data on the notion of human trafficking, including sex and labor trafficking forms, which often use immigrants and women as vulnerable populations.
How Violent Was the Slavery? Ask African American Women The book significantly impacted American literature due to the writer’s roots and the problems of slavery addressed in a detailed manner.
The Role of Slavery for the American Society: Lesson Plan Understand how the development of slavery could influence the social and economic life of the Southern states and the role of the plantation system in the process.
Colonialism and the End of Internal Slavery The Atlantic slave trade was considered among the main pillars of the economy in the western region between the 16th and 19th centuries.
The History of American Revolution and Slavery At the same time, the elites became wary of indentured servants’ claim to the land. The American colonies were dissatisfied with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 it limited their ability to invade new territories and […]
The Expansion of Slavery: Review Their purpose was to track and catch runaway slaves and return them to their masters. The work of slaves was primarily agricultural.
Abolitionist Movement: Attitudes to Slavery Reflected in the Media One of the reasons confirming the inadmissibility of slavery and the unfairness of the attitude towards this phenomenon is the unjustification of torture and violence.
Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson As a result, relatively same practices of social death were applied to indigenous American people, which proves Patterson’s point of view that this attitude was characteristic not only for the African slave trade.
Antebellum Culture and Slavery: A Period of History in the South of the United States The antebellum era, also known as the antebellum south, is a period of history in the south of the United States before the American Civil War in the late 18th century.
Slavery and Society Destruction Seduced by the possibility of quick enrichment, the users of slave labor of both the past and the present, betrayed their humanity due to power and money.
Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery and the Rise of the Modern Capitalist World System The reading provides an extensive background of the historical rise and fall of the African nations. The reading gives a detailed account of the Civil War and the color line within its context.
Modern Slavery: Definition and Types Modern slavery is a predatory practice that is being utilized by businesses and organizations, some seemingly legitimate, worldwide through the exploitative and forced labour of victims and needs to be addressed at the policy and […]
Slavery in “Disposable People” Book by Kevin Bales The key point of his book is that the phenomenon of slavery is impossible to be eradicated. He has studied the current economic and political situations of the countries presented in his book that help […]
Late Slavery and Emancipation in the Greater Caribbean The epoch of slavery defined the darkest history in the evolution of the civilization of humanity; the results of slavery continue permeating the psychology of very “far” descendants of the slaves themselves.
Transatlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Chesapeake Slavery Most of the West African slaves worked across the Chesapeake plantation. This paper will explore the various conditions and adaptations that the African slaves acquired while working in the Chesapeake plantation.
Slavery and Secession in Georgia The representatives of the State of Georgia were worried because of the constant assaults concerning the institution of slavery, which have created the risk of danger to the State.
Slavery of African in America: Reasons and Purposes Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the African slaves were shipped to Europe and Eastern Atlantics, but later the colonies started demanding workers and the trade shifted to the Americas.
Slavery in Charleston, South Carolina Prior to the Year 1865 Charleston is a city in South Carolina and one of the largest cities in the United States. It speaks about the life and origin of the slaves and also highlights some of their experiences; their […]
Verisimilitude of Equiano’s Narrative and Understanding of Slavery The main argument in the answer to Lovejoy was that the records could clarify the author’s true age, which is the key to the dismissal of the idea that Equiano is a native African.
The Case for Reparations: Slavery and Segregation Consequences in the US Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his essay The Case for Reparations, examines the consequences of slavery and segregation in the United States and argues the importance of reparations for black Americans, both in a financial and moral […]
Critique of Colin Thies’ “Commercial Slavery” The goal of the article was to evaluate the economic and political situation of the African slave trade and avoid other aspects according to which people were considered as oppressed and enslaved.
Fredrick Douglas Characters. Impact of Slavery The institution of slavery drove and shaped the enslaved people to respond and behave in different ways in that Fredrick Bailey was forced to flee away from slavery and later changed his name to Fredrick […]
Litwack’s Arguments on the Aftermath of Slavery This paper seeks to delve into a technical theme addressed by Leon on what kind of freedom was adopted by the ex-slaves prior to the passage of the 13th U.S.constitutional amendment of 1865 that saw […]
Slavery, Civil War, and Abolitionist Movement in 1850-1865 They knew they were free only they had to show the colonists that they were aware of that.[1] The slaves were determined and in the unfreed state they still were in rebellion and protested all […]
Slavery History in North America in the Middle 1830s I was born in a small village in Georgia, in the middle 1830s, a time when the United States was going through a lot of slave trade activities, and to many, the trade was accommodated […]
The Major Developments in Slavery During 1800-1877 Several states in the South, in 1877 beginning with Georgia, took gain of this by issuing a succession of laws and a tax was put on voting.
Slavery in America: Causes and Effects Slavery in America was a period in which people were caught and taken to do manual work in America from various parts of the world as a result of colonization.
Slavery as an Institution in America This paper will look at the factors that enhanced the expansion of slavery as an institution in America during this period and further highlight the views held by the southern on slavery about its social […]
The Literature From Slavery to Freedom Its main theme is slavery but it also exhibits other themes like the fight by Afro-Americans for freedom, the search for the identity of black Americans and the appreciation of the uniqueness of African American […]
Slavery in New Orleans and Charleston This paper is going to establish this claim by making a comparison of the lives of the slaves who lived in the urban areas such as the New Orleans and Charleston with those slaves that […]
How Slavery Has Affected the Lives and Families of the African Americans? This paper will focus on how slavery in the earlier years has affected the lives and families of the African Americans in the year 2009.
Du Bois’ “The Soul of Black Folk” and T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” Du Bois in the work “The Soul of Black Folk” asks the question, why black people are considered to be different, why they are treated differently as they are the same members of the society, […]
Slavery as One of the Biggest Mistakes And the last important thing which caused forming the institution of slavery for such a long period in the judgment of Winthrop D.
Colonial Economy of America: Poverty, Slavery and Rich Plantations This topic deals with life in the colonial economy of America and the approach of white people towards black people. Mainly through natural production, the people became wealthy and they led a typical way of […]
African Slavery and European Plantation Systems: 1525-1700 However, with the discovery of sugar production at the end of the 15th Century to the Atlantic Islands and the opening up of the New World in the European conquests, the Portuguese discovered new ways […]
The Theme of Slavery in Aristotle’s “Politics” He notes that the fundamental part of an association is the household that is comprised of three different kinds of relationships: master to slave, husband to wife, and parents to their children.
“Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades” by Patrick Manning The author’s approach of examining the slavery issue from the lens of economic history and the involvement of normal Africans living in Africa is then examined.
Slavery and Democracy in 19th Century America In the 19th century when white folks are busy building a nation and taking part in the more significant aspects of creating a new future for their children, Negro slaves were still doing a backbreaking […]
Abraham Lincoln`s Role in the Abolishment of Slavery in America In this speech, Lincoln emphasized the need for the law governing slavery to prevail and pointed out the importance of the independence of individual states in administering laws that governed slavery without the interference of […]
Cotton, Slavery, and Old South The early nineteenth century was a time that was as significant for the south as it was for the north. If the south was to be divided into the upper south and the lower south, […]
Slavery in Latin America and North America In the French and British Caribbean colonies, slaves were also imported in great numbers and majority of the inhabitants were slaves.
Betty Wood: The Origins of American Slavery Economic analyses and participation of the slave labor force in economic development are used to analyze the impact and role of slave labor in the development of the American economy.
“American Slavery an American Freedom” by Edmund S. Morgan The book witnesses the close alliance between the establishment of freedom rights in Virginia and the rise of slavery movement which is considered to be the greatest contradiction in American history.
Lincoln and African Americans’ Role in the Abolition of Slavery This paper seeks to compare and contrast the role of Abraham Lincoln and the African Americans in bringing slavery to an end in the US.
Western Expansion and Its Influence on Social Reforms and Slavery The western expansion refers to the process whereby the Americans moved away from their original 13 colonies in the 1800s, towards the west which was encouraged by explorers like Lewis and Clarke.
How Important Was Slave Resistance as a Cause of Abolition of Slavery? This was particularly evident throughout the history of slaves in the Americas, and across the historical geography of slavery, from the time the slaves were seized from Africa through to the life they were subjected […]
“Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington Each morning it was the duty of the overseer to assign the daily work for the slaves and, when the task was completed, to inspect the fields to see that the work had been done […]
U.S. in the Fight Against a Modern Form of Slavery Since the United States of America is the most powerful nation in the world it must spearhead the drive to eradicate this new form of slavery within the U.S.and even outside its borders.
The Profitability of Slavery for the Slave Master What is missing from this story is the fact that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, North American colonies had to buy African slaves on a world market at prices which reflected the high profitability […]
Slavery in the United States There was a sharp increase in the number of slaves during the 18th century, and by the mid of the century, 200,000 of them were working in the American colonies.
Sociology, Race & Law. Cuban Form of Slavery Today Castro was benefiting alone from the sweat of many Cubans who worked abroad and in Cuba thinking that they could better their livelihood.
African American Women’s Gender Relations and Experience Under Slavery When the New England Confederation was formed in 1643 to promote matters of common concern for the New England Colonies, one provision of the compact was for the rendition of bondservants.
How African Men and Women Experienced Slavery? The book Ar’ not I a Woman, the author portrays that life of a woman in plantation was more difficult that life of a man because of different duties and responsibilities assigned to a woman-slave.
Abraham Lincoln and Free Slavery Moreover, he made reference to the fact that the union was older than the constitution and referred to the spirit of the Articles of the Constitution 1774 and Articles of Confederation of 1788.
Origins, Operations, and Effects of Black Slavery in US However, the impact that the enslavement of the vast numbers of Africans brought to America was phenomenal. This was a major effect of the slave trade.
Gender Politics: Military Sexual Slavery In this essay, it will be shown that military power and sexual slavery are interconnected, how the human rights of women are violated by the military, and how gender is related to a war crime.
African Americans Struggle Against Slavery The following paragraphs will explain in detail the two articles on slavery and the African American’s struggle to break away from the heavy and long bonds of slavery. The website tells me that Dredd Scott […]
Slavery in the World The first independent state in the western hemisphere, the United States of America, was formed as a result of the revolutionary war of North American colonies of England for Independence in 1775-1783.
Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Rome The revolt of slaves under the direction of Spartacus 73-71 BC is considered the most significant event of the period of crisis of the Roman republican regime in the first century DC and is estimated […]
Issue of Slavery in “The Known World” by E. P. Jones The slaves were remained in the custody of the white masters received the same treatment as that of bondage slaves. The book is a beautiful representation of pre-war life in Virginia and how the widespread […]
Olaudah Equiano as a Fighter Against Slavery Equiano’s Narrative demonstrates a conscious effort to ascribe spiritual enlightenment to the political arena and hence ascertain the importance of the relationship between spiritual intervention, the amysterious ways of Providence’ and parliamentary decisions concerning the […]
Lincoln as a Fighter Against Slavery It is while a leader of the party he made her first moves to fight slavery in the Illinois house where he argued that slavery was a social evil and ought to be dealt away […]
Slavery in Early America Review However, the local population was dwindling with the influx of disease and abuse and this, combined with Spain abolishing the enslavement of natives in the Americas in the mid-1500s, necessitated a need to acquire Africans […]
Slavery Without the Civil War: Hypothesis The demand for slaves and the positive effect of this in the slaveholders’ profitability as well as the fact that both slaveholders and the slaves need one another to survive saw to it that the […]
Slavery: Central Paradox of American History Since the rise of United States as a nation, historians have long thought of the emergence of slavery and freedom in our society as a great contradiction. As the central paradox, slavery needed to emerge […]
Brief History of Slavery in the United States In his article regarding the true sentiments of the slaves, Genovese suggests the reasons why the slaves were perceived as lazy was as the result of their more natural, rural lifestyle.”The setting remained rural, and […]
Virginia After the Boom: Slavery and “The Losers” New labor force that came to Virginia “threatened the independence of the small freeman and worsened the lot of the servant”.
Antebellum Slavery in Mark Twain’s World Twain’s depiction of Jim and his relationship with Huck was somewhat flawed in order to obey the needs of the story, and also by Twains’ interest in slave autobiographies and also in blackface minstrelsy.
Slavery in New York City: Impact and Significance Blacks’ significance in the development of the city’s most critical systems, such as labor, race, and class divisions, makes it possible to conclude that the influence of slavery in New York was substantial. The effect […]
Slavery In The United Stated Society In the above discussion, there is a short story of slavery in the USA. By abolishing slavery in the USA is the sign of democracy and human dignity.
Black American Authors on Slavery Analysis The work is centered on the same theme that the Narrative the author tells the reader of her experiences as a slave and the way she managed to escape from it.
Slavery Still Exists in American Prisons An examination of the history of the penal system as it existed in the State of Texas proves to be the best illustration of the comparisons between the penal system and the system of slavery.
Ghana: The Consequences of Colonial Rule and Slavery One of the reasons for this dependency is that the country had been the foothold for the slave trade for about four centuries.
Harriet Jacobs’s Account of Slavery Atrocities She wrote that she wanted the women living in the North to understand the conditions in which slaves lived in the Souths, and the sufferings that enslaved women had to undergo.
Anti Slavery and Abolitionism Both gradual emancipation and conditional emancipation were not allowed, but free blacks from the North and evangelicals revealed their opposition in the form of the movement that required the development of social reform.
Sexual Slavery in “The Apology” Film by Hsiung The documentary being discussed focuses on the experiences of three women, the survivors of military sexual slavery in China, South Korea, and the Republic of the Philippines.
Slavery Resistance from Historical Perspective The lack of rights and power to struggle resulted in the emergence of particular forms of resistance that preconditioned the radical shifts in peoples mentalities and the creation of the tolerant society we can observe […]
Slavery Abolition and Newfound Freedom in the US One of the biggest achievements of Reconstruction was the acquisition of the right to vote by Black People. Still, Black Americans were no longer forced to tolerate inhumane living conditions, the lack of self-autonomy, and […]
Slavery Elements in Mississippi Black Code These are the limitation of the freedom of marriage, the limitation of the freedom of work, and the limitation of the freedom of weapon.
History: Slavery in Southern States The strategy of pacification was especially prevalent during that time because wealthy slaveowners wanted to keep possible protests under control and prevent the rest of the white population from supporting the abolition of slavery in […]
Slavery in “Abolition Speech” by William Wilberforce The following article is devoted to the description of the problem of slavery and the slave trade in Africa. The author also underlines the incompetency of the committee, which is in charge of the question […]
Slavery History: Letters Analysis The letters analyzed in this paper give a piece of the picture that was observed during the 1600s and the 1700s when slaves from different parts of the world had to serve their masters under […]
Slavery: History and Influence The slaves were meant to provide labor for the masters and generate wealth. During the day, they would sneak to breastfeed the newborns.
Reformer and Slavery: William Lloyd Garrison The newspaper was published until the end of the civil war and the abolition of slavery by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Slavery Role in the American Literature Stowe has claimed that the anti slavery groups questioned the morality of the white Christians who were at the fore front in the oppression of the Black people.
Slavery as a Cause of the American Civil War On the other hand, one is to keep in mind that many historians are of the opinion that the reasons for the war are not so easy to explain.
Thomas Jefferson on Civil Rights, Slavery, Racism When I authored the declaration of independence of the United States of America, I was having a democratic perspective of the American people on my mind.
Slavery, American Civil War, and Reconstruction Indian removal from the Southeast in the late 19th century was as a result of the rapid expansion of the United States into the south.
Slavery in the Ancient World and the US Appearance age and attitude of the slaves acted as the determinants to the wage that they were to be paid for their services.
Slavery in “Flight to Canada” Novel by Ishmael Reed In his novel Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed blurs the boundaries between the prose and poetry as well as the past and the present to express his satirical criticism of the legacy of slavery even […]
Slavery and the Southern Society’s Development The fact that quite a huge number of white people moved to the “Deep South” where cotton planting was among the most lucrative forms of income-generating activities, just goes to show that the whites relied […]
Paternalistic Ethos During American Slavery Era The slave owner gains directly from the welfare of the slaves and the slaves gained directly from offering their services to the slave owner.
The Book About Slavery by Hinton Rowan Helper He claimed further that those who supported abolitionism and freedom were the friends of the south while slaveholders and slave-breeders were the real enemies of the south.
Slavery in the USA and Its Impact on Americans The following paper will present a discussion of slavery in the USA and an explanation of the tremendous impact it made on the lives of all Americans.
Voices From the Epoch of Slavery In this regard, one may claim that the era of enslavement was also represented by such activities as singing, dancing, and churchgoing, all of which were organized by masters for their Negroes and show a […]
“Slavery by Another Name” Documentary To assure the existence of the social and historical support, the movie is presented in the form of the documentary and can be viewed by an extended audience to spread awareness about the drawbacks of […]
Cultural Consequences of the US Slavery: 1620-1870 3 In the same way that the African had adopted the new language and devised their own language, the Whites began to be influenced by their style of talking and their speech began to be […]
The American Anti-Slavery Society The goal of the society has not changed since then, and we strive for the complete abolition of slavery in this country of blessed.
Modern Slavery in Thailand and Mauritania
Frederick Douglass as an Anti-Slavery Activist
George Whitfield’s Views on Slavery in the US
Internal Colonization and Slavery in British Empire
Globalization and Slavery: Multidisciplinary View
Slavery in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
Slavery in “A Brief History of the Caribbean”
Slavery in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Slavery Phenomenon and Its Causes in the USA
Women Trafficking and Slavery: Trends and Solutions
Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery
Slavery Arguments and American Civil War
Ethical Problems With Non-Human Slavery and Abuse
Racism in USA: Virginia Laws on Slavery
Sojourner Truth: Slavery Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage
Slavery in Islamic Civilisation
Religious Studies of the Slavery Problem
Slavery and the Abolition of Slave Trade
Slavery and the Civil War Relationship
Abraham Lincoln Against Slavery
Blacks Role in Abolishing Slavery
The Poetry on the Topic of Slavery
John Brown and Thomas Cobb Role in Ending Slavery
Impacts of Slavery and Slave Trade in Africa
Slavery in the Southern Colonies
Christianity, Slavery and Colonialism Paradox
Slavery and the Civil War
Literary Works’ Views on Slavery in the United States
Analysis of Slavery in American History in “Beloved“ by Tony Morrison
History of Abolishing Slavery
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
Sex Slavery in India
The Period of Slavery in the “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs
Slavery in America: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
Abolition of Slavery in Brazil
Slavery Effects on Enslaved People and Slave Owners
The Problem of Slavery in Africa
Racial Slavery in America
“Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery”: Campaign Critique
Colonial Portuguese Brazil: Sugar and Slavery
Aristotle on Human Nature, State, and Slavery
Reform-Women’s Rights and Slavery
Human Trafficking in the United States: A Modern Day Slavery
Oronooko by Aphra Behn and the Why there is no Justification for Slavery
Rise and Fall of Slavery
History of Slavery Constitution in US
Propaganda in Pro-slavery Arguments and Douglass’s Narrative
Testament Against Slavery: ”Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
Comparing and Contrasting three Versions of Slavery
How Did the French Revolution Impacted the Issue of Slavery and the History of Santo Domingo?
Why slavery is wrong
Slavery and Racism: Black Brazilians v. Black Americans
History of the African-Americans Religion During the Time of Slavery
The Emergence of a Law of Slavery in Mississippi
The Effects of Slavery on the American Society
The Ideas of Freedom and Slavery in Relation to the American Revolution
Up from Slavery, Down to the Ground: Sailing Amistad. A
Slavery in the British Colonies: Chesapeake and New England
Slavery and the Old South
African American Culture: A History of Slavery
Slavery and the Underground Railroad
Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay
The Southern Argument for Slavery
No Reparations for Blacks for the Injustice of Slavery
Slavery: The Stronghold of the Brazil Economy
Slavery, Racism, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Slavery, the Civil War & Reconstruction
Slavery in American History
The Slavery in America
Beloved by Toni Morrison: History of Slavery and Racial Segregation in America
“Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America” by Morgan Kenneth
African Americans: The Legacy of Slavery in the U.S.
Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During WWII and US Occupation in Japan
A New Dawn: The Abolishment of Slavery in the USA
How Slavery Applies to Africans Within the Islamic World?
Where Did Slavery Start First in the World?
How Did Slaves Respond to Slavery?
How the Germans Influenced Modern Day Slavery?
How Did Slavery Change From the Arrival of the First Enslaved People in the 1600s to the Abolition of Slavery in the 1860s?
How Did Slavery Encourage Both Economic Backwardness and Westward Expansion?
Why Did Colonial Virginians Replace Servitude With Slavery?
Did Slavery Create More Benefits or Problems for the Nation?
What Was Slavery Like and How Is It Today?
When and How Did Slavery Begin?
What Were the Positive and Negative Effects of Slavery on the Americas?
Is There a Difference Between Human Trafficking and Slavery?
How Did Slavery Shape Modern Society and the Colonial Nations?
How Did Economic, Geographic, and Social Factors Encourage the Growth of Slavery?
How Did Colonization Along the Atlantic Contribute to Slavery?
What Degree Did Slavery Play in the Civil War?
Modern Day Slavery: What Drives Human Trafficking?
How Did Slavery Start in Africa?
How Did Slavery Affect the Spirit of the Enslaved and the Enslavers?
What Did the Haitian Revolution Do to End Racial Slavery?
How Were African Americans Treated During the Slavery Period?
What Created Slavery?
How Important Was Slavery Before 1850? Was It a Marginal Institution, Peripheral to the Development of American Society?
How Did African American Slavery Help Shape America?
When Did Slavery Start in America?
How Can the World Allow Slavery to Continue Today?
What Were the Differences Between Indentured Servitude and Slavery?
In What Industries Is Slavery Most Prevalent?
How Was Slavery Abolished?
Did the Atlantic Plantation Complex Create Slavery?
African American History Essay Ideas
Frederick Douglass Essay Ideas
Colonialism Essay Ideas
Fascism Questions
Human Rights Essay Ideas
Freedom Topics
Global Issues Essay Topics
US History Topics
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

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Bennington College Curriculum Spring 2025

Spring 2025, native (north) american literature (lit2567.01).

Native storytelling has thrived in recited, sung, painted, etched, sculpted, and danced forms since centuries before European colonists arrived on the North American continent. Against the backdrop of this long, linguistically complex, and multi-national artistic tradition, we will closely read the works of Indigenous North American authors, studying how their formal and thematic decisions draw from and add to their respective traditions, even as they address contemporary intertribal concerns such as language revitalization; land reclamation and sovereignty; decolonizing gender; and the continued struggle against settler-colonial legacies of genocide, land seizure, forced re-“education,” and environmental terrorism. Assigned writers may include Tommy Orange, Louise Erdrich, Morgan Talty, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, Tommy Pico, Natalie Diaz, Joan Kane, dg nanouk okpik, Joy Harjo, Jake Skeets, No’u Revilla, and Layli Long Soldier.

COMMENTS

Slavery in British and American Literature
DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521872171. At 860 pages, this volume offers a huge amount of material on the literature of slavery, with works discussed on their individual merits and in relation to events in American history. Features excellent essays on early print literature of Africans in America and the neo-slave narrative.
Slave narrative
slave narrative, an account of the life, or a major portion of the life, of a fugitive or former slave, either written or orally related by the slave personally.Slave narratives comprise one of the most influential traditions in American literature, shaping the form and themes of some of the most celebrated and controversial writing, both in fiction and in autobiography, in the history of the ...
A Reflection on the Slave Narrative and American Literature
From the standpoint of American literature, the paradigmatic slavery-to-freedom narrative is the story of the exceptional individual defying the odds to gain freedom despite the historical fact that the numbers of blacks who gained freedom by choosing, collectively, to leave plantations and follow Union armies dwarfs the number of those who ...
Slave Narratives from Slavery to the Great Depression
Slave Narratives During Slavery and After The Slave Narrative Collection represents the culmination of a literary tradition that extends back to the eighteenth century, when the earliest American slave narratives began to appear. The greatest vogue of this genre occurred during the three decades of sectional controversy that preceded the Civil War. The avowed intention of the antebellum ...
PDF the cambridge companion to the african american slave narrative
CONTRIBUTORS dickson d. bruce, jr.,is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Black American Writing from the Nadir: The Evolution of a Literary Tradition, 1877-1915 (1989) and The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865 (2001). His most recent book, The Kentucky Tragedy: A Story of Conﬂict and Change in Antebellum America, was published ...
Autobiography: Slave Narratives
The influence of slave narratives on American literature should not be underestimated. Harriet Beecher Stowe's enormously popular novel, ... Modern essays on the slave narrative include historical analysis and literary criticism and focus on a range of specific texts. The volume includes an excellent introduction and a selected bibliography of ...
1.2: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature
The first slave revolt in the Americas we know of occurred in 1522 on the island of Hispaniola. This revolt, like most that would follow in the next 250 years, was quickly put down. During the late eighteenth century, however, the Americas saw an increase in slave revolts, especially in the French Caribbean.
ENGL405: Essay on the Slave Narrative
Read this introductory essay on the slave narrative as a literary genre. ... and slave experience in itself tended to remain in the background in African-American literature until late in the century, when a number of writers began writing what has been called the neo-slave narrative - fictional accounts of slave narrative that grew out of ...
18 Early American Slave Narratives
A discourse on early American slave narratives is the essence of this article. Early American slave narratives shed light on the successful strat ... She specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Africana and American literature. She has published essays in scholarly journals ranging from A/B: Auto/Biography Studies to Western Journal ...
On William L. Andrews' Slavery and Class in the American South
With Slavery and Class in the American South, William L. Andrews continues to plumb the nuances of the slave narrative genre for revelatory insights into African American literature and history, a project to which he has devoted his scholarly career. This latest title investigates the "intraracial as well as interracial social dynamics of ...
The Slave Narrative Tradition in African American Literature
Critical Essays The Slave Narrative Tradition in African American Literature. The slave narrative is a form of autobiography with a unique structure and distinctive themes that traces the narrator's path from slavery to freedom. Although traditional slave narratives such as Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass ...
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8 Reading Slavery and "Classic" American Literature; 9 Slavery's Performance-Texts; 10 The Music and the Musical Inheritance of Slavery; 11 U.S. Slave Revolutions in Atlantic World Literature; 12 Slavery and American Literature 1900-1945; 13 Moving Pictures: Spectacles of Enslavement in American Cinema; 14 Slavery and Historical Memory ...
Slavery Role in the American Literature
Lincoln has remained a key figure in the United States politics because of the role he played in ensuring that slaves were set free. According to Abraham Lincoln, God created all human beings to be equal and therefore no one should have the right to oppress the other because of their racial or political affiliations.
Slavery and Freedom
After students have viewed the video, read the headnotes and literary selections in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, read this unit, and explored related archival materials on the American Passages Web site, they should be able to understand how the antebellum debate about slavery transformed and expanded foundational ideas about American identity and citizenship;
Slavery and the Literary Imagination
Seven noted scholars examine slave narratives and the topic of slavery in American literature, from Frederick Douglass's Narrative (1845)—treated in chapted by Jamkes Olney and William L. Andrews—to Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose (1984). Among the contributors, Arnold Rampersad reads W.E.B. DuBois's classic work The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as a response to Booker T. Washington's Up ...
Slavery in Literature Summary
Morrison's novel Beloved (1987), arguably the most significant novel about slavery by an African American writer of the twentieth century, tells the story of an escaped slave, Sethe, who murders ...
The Slave Trade in British and American Literature
The notorious "Middle Passage" was that leg of the slave trade triangle that brought slaves from West Africa to North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Accounts of the Atlantic trade ...
(PDF) American Antislavery Literature
American Antislavery Literature. James Basker. 2017, Études Anglaises. This essay examines the evolution of American antislavery literature. It shows that arguments against slavery had been circulating in the colonies since the end of the 17th century. Between 1688 and 1865, there were thousands of separately published titles, including works ...
The Slave Trade in British and American Literature
Cite this page as follows: "The Slave Trade in British and American Literature - Bernard W. Bell (essay date 1977)." Literary Criticism (1400-1800), edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, Vol. 59.
The Literature from Slavery to Freedom
An example of such works is, Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl, the story by Harriet Jacob in 1861that described the challenges women faced in slavery. The story has an honest bias in slavery rape which was common in those days (Jacob 1). Another example is Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various subjects, Religious and Moral which is based ...
The African American Literature
Slavery. The major outstanding and pivotal event that greatly influenced the African American literature in the 1764-1865 was slavery and its anti-movements. This fact is buttressed by Krise (3) in succinctly stating that "Early representations of opposition to slavery tend to be overlooked or disregarded in sweeping accounts of the rise and ...
Slavery and American Literature
How well do you know the literature of slavery and its impact on American culture? Test your knowledge with this Quizlet flashcard set, covering topics such as slave narratives, abolitionist writers, and key terms. Learn from the examples of other users and challenge yourself with interactive quizzes.
271 Ideas, Essay Examples, and Topics on Slavery
The book significantly impacted American literature due to the writer's roots and the problems of slavery addressed in a detailed manner. The Role of Slavery for the American Society: Lesson Plan Understand how the development of slavery could influence the social and economic life of the Southern states and the role of the plantation system ...
Native (North) American Literature
1) Closely read contemporary Native North American poetry and fiction. 2) Locate the given texts within their respective historical, sociopolitical, cultural, aesthetic, and linguistic frameworks. 3) Gain a better understanding of Native American literary history and its oral and narrative dance traditions. 4) Craft critical essays that engage ...