slavery and american literature essay

Subject List
Take a Tour
For Authors
Subscriber Services
Publications
African American Studies
African Studies
American Literature
Anthropology
Architecture Planning and Preservation
Art History

Atlantic History

Biblical Studies
British and Irish Literature
Childhood Studies
Chinese Studies
Cinema and Media Studies
Communication
Criminology
Environmental Science
Evolutionary Biology
International Law
International Relations
Islamic Studies
Jewish Studies
Latin American Studies
Latino Studies
Linguistics
Literary and Critical Theory
Medieval Studies
Military History
Political Science
Public Health
Renaissance and Reformation
Social Work
Urban Studies
Victorian Literature
Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

Free Trials

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

Other Subject Areas

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)
The Danish Atlantic World
Find more forthcoming articles...
Export Citations
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

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.

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

About Atlantic History »
Meet the Editorial Board »
Abolition of Slavery
Abolitionism and Africa
Africa and the Atlantic World
African American Religions
African Religion and Culture
African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
America, Pre-Contact
American Revolution, The
Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
Army, British
Art and Artists
Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
Atlantic Biographies
Atlantic Creoles
Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
Atlantic Migration
Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
Bacon's Rebellion
Barbados in the Atlantic World
Barbary States
Berbice in the Atlantic World
Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
Bolívar, Simón
Borderlands
Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
Brazil and Africa
Brazilian Independence
Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
British Atlantic Architectures
British Atlantic World
Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
Cannibalism
Captain John Smith
Captivity in Africa
Captivity in North America
Caribbean, The
Cartier, Jacques
Catholicism
Cattle in the Atlantic World
Central American Independence
Central Europe and the Atlantic World
Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
Church and Slavery
Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
Citizenship in the Atlantic World
Class and Social Structure
Coastal/Coastwide Trade
Cod in the Atlantic World
Colonial Governance in Spanish America
Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
Colonialism and Postcolonialism
Colonization, Ideologies of
Colonization of English America
Communications in the Atlantic World
Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
Confraternities
Constitutions
Continental America
Cook, Captain James
Cortes of Cádiz
Cosmopolitanism
Credit and Debt
Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
Creolization
Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
Crowds in the Atlantic World
Death in the Atlantic World
Demography of the Atlantic World
Diaspora, Jewish
Diaspora, The Acadian
Disease in the Atlantic World
Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
Dutch Atlantic World
Dutch Brazil
Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
Early Modern Amazonia
Early Modern France
Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
Economy of British America, The
Edwards, Jonathan
Emancipation
Empire and State Formation
Enlightenment, The
Environment and the Natural World
Europe and Africa
Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
Evangelicalism and Conversion
Female Slave Owners
First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
Fiscal-Military State
Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
Founding Myths of the Americas
France and Empire
France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
Free People of Color
Free Ports in the Atlantic World
French Army and the Atlantic World, The
French Atlantic World
French Emancipation
French Revolution, The
Gender in Iberian America
Gender in North America
Gender in the Atlantic World
Gender in the Caribbean
George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
Georgia in the Atlantic World
German Influences in America
Germans in the Atlantic World
Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
Glorious Revolution
Godparents and Godparenting
Great Awakening
Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
Guianas, The
Haitian Revolution, The
Hanoverian Britain
Havana in the Atlantic World
Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
Hunger and Food Shortages
Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
Iberian Inquisitions
Idea of Atlantic History, The
Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
Indentured Servitude
Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
India, The Atlantic Ocean and
Indigenous Knowledge
Indigo in the Atlantic World
Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
Ireland and the Atlantic World
Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
Islam and the Atlantic World
Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
Jamaica in the Atlantic World
Jefferson, Thomas
Jews and Blacks
Labor Systems
Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
Language, State, and Empire
Languages, Caribbean Creole
Latin American Independence
Law and Slavery
Legal Culture
Leisure in the British Atlantic World
Letters and Letter Writing
Literature, Slavery and Colonization
Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
Louverture, Toussaint
Manumission
Maps in the Atlantic World
Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
Markets in the Atlantic World
Maroons and Marronage
Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
Material Culture in the Atlantic World
Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
Medicine in the Atlantic World
Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
Mercantilism
Merchants in the Atlantic World
Merchants' Networks
Migrations and Diasporas
Minas Gerais
Mining, Gold, and Silver
Missionaries
Missionaries, Native American
Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
Monroe, James
Morris, Gouverneur
Music and Music Making
Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
Native American Histories in North America
Native American Networks
Native American Religions
Native Americans and Africans
Native Americans and the American Revolution
Native Americans and the Atlantic World
Native Americans in Cities
Native Americans in Europe
Native North American Women
Native Peoples of Brazil
Natural History
Networks for Migrations and Mobility
Networks of Science and Scientists
New England in the Atlantic World
New France and Louisiana
New York City
Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
Nineteenth-Century France
Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
North Africa and the Atlantic World
Northern New Spain
Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
Oceanic History
Pacific, The
Paine, Thomas
Papacy and the Atlantic World
People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
Philadelphia
Philanthropy
Plantations in the Atlantic World
Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
Polygamy and Bigamy
Port Cities, British
Port Cities, British American
Port Cities, French
Port Cities, French American
Port Cities, Iberian
Ports, African
Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
Portugal, Early Modern
Portuguese Atlantic World
Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
Pregnancy and Reproduction
Print Culture in the British Atlantic
Proprietary Colonies
Protestantism
Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
Race and Racism
Race, The Idea of
Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
Red Atlantic
Refugees, Saint-Domingue
Religion and Colonization
Religion in the British Civil Wars
Religious Border-Crossing
Religious Networks
Representations of Slavery
Republicanism
Rice in the Atlantic World
Rio de Janeiro
Russia and North America
Saint Domingue
Saint-Louis, Senegal
Salvador da Bahia
Scandinavian Chartered Companies
Science, History of
Scotland and the Atlantic World
Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
Second-Hand Trade
Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
Seven Years' War, The
Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
Ships and Shipping
Slave Codes
Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
Slave Rebellions
Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
Slave Trade, The Atlantic
Slavery and Empire
Slavery and Fear
Slavery and Gender
Slavery and the Family
Slavery, Atlantic
Slavery, Health, and Medicine
Slavery in Africa
Slavery in Brazil
Slavery in British and American Literature
Slavery in Danish America
Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
Slavery in New England
Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
Slavery in the French Atlantic World
Slavery, Native American
Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
Slavery, The Origins of
Slavery, Urban
Sociability in the British Atlantic
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
South Atlantic
South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
South Carolina
Sovereignty and the Law
Spain, Early Modern
Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
Spanish American Port Cities
Spanish Atlantic World
Spanish Colonization to 1650
Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
Sugar in the Atlantic World
Swedish Atlantic World, The
Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
Textiles in the Atlantic World
Texts, Printing, and the Book
The American West
The French Lesser Antilles
The Fur Trade
The Spanish Caribbean
Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
Toleration in the Atlantic World
Transatlantic Political Economy
Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
Universities
USA and Empire in the 19th Century
Venezuela and the Atlantic World
Visual Art and Representation
War and Trade
War of 1812
War of the Spanish Succession
Warfare in Spanish America
Warfare in 17th-Century North America
Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
West Indian Economic Decline
Whitefield, George
Whiteness in the Atlantic World
William Blackstone
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
William Wilberforce
Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
Women and the Law
Women Prophets
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility

[66.249.64.20|193.7.198.129]
193.7.198.129

Slavery Role in the American Literature Essay

Introduction.

In the period between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, a number of European countries led by Portugal and Spain went to Africa to search for slaves. It is said that, during this period, the agrarian revolution had just taken off and as a result, more man power was needed to work in the plantations that were being established in America. In addition, the modern day United States of America was witnessing massive migration of Europeans.

Most of them carried with them this agrarian technology, a situation that made them require a lot of people to work for them. This was because the land was in plenty and very few laborers were available to work there. They therefore turned to African and especially in West Africa where they shipped out millions of young and energetic men to work in the plantations. This is what came to form the modern day Africa American community in the United State of America.

Identify and discuss how Stowe uses biblical images to incite a strong response to oppose slavery

Slavery is not a unique phenomenon amongst Christians. This is because the Bible narrates a story of how Jacob’s children became slaves in Egypt. To begin with, we find that Stowe has noted that between 1780 and1830, the religious groups tried in vain to pressurize the government to abolish slavery in both the north and south of the United States of America. She has observed that in their letters they argued that the Black people are not sub human beings.

They have stated that God created all human beings equal and therefore no one should oppress the other for his or her own gains. Stowe has said that the anti slavery groups argued that it was not possible to have the White Christians oppressing the Black Christians counterparts.

In addition, we find that the issue of morality has also been addressed. 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. The Bible teachings emphasizes on people to be of high morality. However, this was in contrast with what the White Christians in the United States were doing. She has further observed that the anti slavery crusaders found it untrue that the Blacks were being favored by being brought from Africa to the United States of America. She says that many people died on the way in the course of being transported, which would certainly be termed as murder.

One of commandments in the Holy Bible dictates that no one should kill the other. Stowe has observed that those people who advocated for slavery regarded it as a way of saving Africans from the misery in their former lands. However, those who were strongly opposed to this argued that it was only God who could bring salvation to human kind. As a result, the anti slavery campaigners claimed that if slaves were being saved, then they should be let free so that the salvation aspect become meaningful.

The Biblical teachings do not advocate for war or wrangles amongst people in any given society. However, due to non observance of these teachings, Stowe has claimed that there was a lot of conflict and war as the southerners refused to let go of slaves in the United States of America. She argues that the White Americans were of the opinion that war is good. Names such as Augustine St. Claire have been used to represent their godlessness; that is they are known to serve their own pleasures. This is in contrast with what the word saint is used to signify among the Christians. Therefore, the Whites on one hand supported the Christian teachings but on the other hand failed to execute what those teachings talked of.

Discuss how Jacobs’ journals reinforce the attitude of the Whites that slaves were inferior and/or childlike and needed to be “parented.”

The Whites have for a long time regarded the Black community as inferior to them. To them, that was an illustration that the Black people could not do or discover anything on their own without the assistance of the White people. Although these remarks have been proved to be inaccurate over the years, during the slavery period, the Whites regarded the Black people as sub humans. As a result, they would treat them the same they would to other animals which were not equal to a human being.

According to Yellin (2004), Harriet Ann Jacobs was a Black woman and therefore born a slave in 1813. However, as she grew up she managed to run away from slavery. He has noted that despite being a poor woman, she managed to write several articles to different people showing them how slavery had impacted on the lives of the Blacks in the United States of America. He has claimed that at one point, Jacobs managed to travel to United Kingdom where she found out that people were not discriminated on basis of their skin color.

This motivated her to come up with an abolitionist movement that would help free all the enslaved the Blacks in her country. He however notes that most of her writings revolved around how she would get assistance from other people in her society. This, according to the Whites, amounts to dependency which should not be the case if a person is healthy and able to work. Therefore, he argues that this is one way in which the Whites’ superiority over the Black community is manifested.

Furthermore, Garfield (1996) has observed that Jacobs organized and helped in the construction of barracks for the freed men in her society. However, he has noted that only about 500 people could be accommodated in those houses out of the 1500 targeted. This is a clear demonstration of how the Black people were disorganized in their work. It was hoped that if the White man was in charge of such construction, the total number of people envisaged to be housed would be met. This is an indication that the Blacks needed to be taught more on how to conduct their work by the Whites.

How the beliefs of Lincoln about God and the country are reflected in his address to congress. How do you think he perceived of his role as president within this “spiritual” conflict

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. As a result, he marshaled the congress in passing laws that set the slaves free.

In addition, we find that Abraham Lincoln believed that people should be let to decide what they want to do other than be coerced. He observed that God created man and let him do whatever pleased him as long as he stuck to the guidelines that God had given him. This was meant to call upon slave owners to let them free.

As a president of the United States, Lincoln knew that it was not easy to persuade slave owners to emancipate slaves because this was the order of the day in many parts of the country. However, he knew that as a president he had the power to punish those who went against his directives. He however knew that he had to approach this matter cautiously not to be seen as slave’s sympathizer to avoid loosing faith amongst the electorate.

Slavery caused a lot of pain not only to the people directly enslaved but also to their relatives and friends who had to see such people being shipped for slavery. Although this trade is no longer visible in the contemporary world, more still need to be done to protect other people from witnessing what the slaves went through in the past. People should learn to co exist with one another so that racial and other forms of discrimination are eliminated.

It should be the role of the modern day governments to pass strict laws that makes it illegal for a person to discriminate the other on basis of race, religion, political or gender. This is a move that will go a long way in making sure that the world is a peaceful place to live in.

Reference List

Garfield, D. (1996). Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the life of a slave girl: new critical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yellin, J. (2004). Harriet Jacobs: A Life. New York: Basic Civitas Books.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, February 14). Slavery Role in the American Literature. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-role-in-the-american-literature/

"Slavery Role in the American Literature." IvyPanda , 14 Feb. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-role-in-the-american-literature/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Slavery Role in the American Literature'. 14 February.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Slavery Role in the American Literature." February 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-role-in-the-american-literature/.

1. IvyPanda . "Slavery Role in the American Literature." February 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-role-in-the-american-literature/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Slavery Role in the American Literature." February 14, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-role-in-the-american-literature/.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Opinions and Thoughts
"Uncle Tom’s Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Role of Women in "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Was Stowe a Racist in Her Presentation of African Americans in "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"?
Harriet Beecher Stowe in the Abolition Movement
Christian Thought in Stowe’s "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"
Harriet Ann Jacobs’ Narrative
Portraits of Escaping Slaves Portrayed as Heroic Fugitives
Racist Presentation of African Americans in "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"
Critical Analysis of "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"
Consumerism in the 1960s in “A&;P“ by John Updike
“The Day of the Locust” Novel by Nathanael West
“Ask the Dust” Novel by John Fante
Slavery in "Flight to Canada" Novel by Ishmael Reed
"Mumbo Jumbo" Afro-American Novel by Ishmael Reed

school Campus Bookshelves
menu_book Bookshelves
perm_media Learning Objects
login Login
how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
hub Instructor Commons
Download Page (PDF)
Download Full Book (PDF)
Periodic Table
Physics Constants
Scientific Calculator
Reference & Cite
Tools expand_more
Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

1.2: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature

Last updated
Save as PDF
Page ID 134196

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.

Narratives by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era are essential to the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American history and literature, especially as they relate to the eleven states of the Old Confederacy, an area that included approximately one third of the population of the United States at the time when slave narratives were most widely read. As historical sources, slave narratives document slave life primarily in the American South from the invaluable perspective of first-hand experience. Increasingly in the 1840s and 1850s they reveal the struggles of people of color in the North, as fugitives from the South recorded the disparities between America's ideal of freedom and the reality of racism in the so-called "free states." After the Civil War, former slaves continued to record their experiences under slavery, partly to ensure that the newly-united nation did not forget what had threatened its existence, and partly to affirm the dedication of the ex-slave population to social and economic progress.

From a literary standpoint, the autobiographical narratives of former slaves comprise one of the most extensive and influential traditions in African American literature and culture. Until the Depression era slave narratives outnumbered novels written by African Americans. Some of the classic texts of American literature, including the two most influential nineteenth-century American novels, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and Mark Twain 's Huckleberry Finn (1884), and such prize-winning contemporary novels as William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), bear the direct influence of the slave narrative. Some of the most important revisionist scholarship in the historical study of American slavery in the last forty years has marshaled the slave narratives as key testimony. Slave narratives and their fictional descendants have played a major role in national debates about slavery, freedom, and American identity that have challenged the conscience and the historical consciousness of the United States ever since its founding.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, slave narratives were an important means of opening a dialogue between blacks and whites about slavery and freedom. The most influential slave narratives of the antebellum era were designed to enlighten white readers about both the realities of slavery as an institution and the humanity of black people as individuals deserving of full human rights. Although often dismissed as mere antislavery propaganda, the widespread consumption of slave narratives in the nineteenth-century U.S. and Great Britain and their continuing prominence in literature and historical curricula in American universities today testify to the power of these texts, then and now, to provoke reflection and debate among their readers, particularly on questions of race, social justice, and the meaning of freedom.

During the 350-year history of the transatlantic slave trade, Europeans made more than 54,000 voyages to and from Africa to send by force at least ten to twelve million Africans to the Americas. Scholars estimate that close to 400,000 Africans were sold into slavery in North America, the large majority ending up in the American South.

In the antebellum South, slavery provided the economic foundation that supported the dominant planter ruling class. Under slavery the structure of white supremacy was hierarchical and patriarchal, resting on male privilege and masculinist honor, entrenched economic power, and raw force. Black people necessarily developed their sense of identity, family relations, communal values, religion, and to an impressive extent their cultural autonomy by exploiting contradictions and opportunities within a complex fabric of paternalistic give-and-take. The working relationships and sometimes tacit expectations and obligations between slave and slaveholder made possible a functional, and in some cases highly profitable, economic system. Despite the exploitativeness and oppression of this system, slaves emerge in numerous antebellum slave narratives as actively, sometimes aggressively, in search of freedom, whether in the context of everyday speech and action or through covert and overt means of resistance.

Defeat in the Civil War severely destabilized slavery-based social, political, and economic hierarchies, demanding in some cases that white southerners develop new ones. After the Civil War, the southern ruling class was compelled to adapt to new exigencies of race relations and a restructured, as well as reconstructing, economic system. For African Americans, the end of slavery brought hope for unprecedented control of their own lives and economic prospects. After Emancipation, however, most black southerners found themselves steadily drawn into an exploitative sharecropping system that effectively prohibited their becoming property owners with a chance to claim their share of the American Dream. Unlike many poor whites who also found themselves under the thumb of white landowners, the rural black masses in the post-Reconstruction South were gradually subjected to a cradle-to-grave segregation regime designed not simply to separate the races but to create a permanent laboring underclass different in degree but not fundamentally in kind from the slave population of the antebellum era. By the turn of the century segregation had robbed black Southerners of their political rights as well as their economic opportunity and social mobility.

As historical documents, slave narratives chronicle the evolution of white supremacy in the South from eighteenth-century slavery through early twentieth-century segregation and disfranchisement. As autobiography these narratives give voice to generations of black people who, despite being written off by white southern literature, still found a way to bequeath a literary legacy of enormous collective significance to the South and the United States. Expected to concentrate primarily on eye-witness accounts of slavery, many slave narrators become I-witnesses as well, revealing their struggles, sorrows, aspirations, and triumphs in compellingly personal story-telling. Usually the antebellum slave narrator portrays slavery as a condition of extreme physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual deprivation, a kind of hell on earth. Precipitating the narrator's decision to escape is some sort of personal crisis, such as the sale of a loved one or a dark night of the soul in which hope contends with despair for the spirit of the slave. Impelled by faith in God and a commitment to liberty and human dignity comparable (the slave narrative often stresses) to that of America's Founding Fathers, the slave undertakes an arduous quest for freedom that climaxes in his or her arrival in the North. In many antebellum narratives, the attainment of freedom is signaled not simply by reaching the free states, but by renaming oneself and dedicating one's future to antislavery activism.

Advertised in the abolitionist press and sold at antislavery meetings throughout the English-speaking world, a significant number of antebellum slave narratives went through multiple editions and sold in the tens of thousands. This popularity was not solely attributable to the publicity the narratives received from the antislavery movement. Readers could see that, as one reviewer put it in 1849, "the slave who endeavors to recover his freedom is associating with himself no small part of the romance of the time." Selling in the tens of thousands, the most popular antebellum narratives by writers such as Frederick Douglass , William Wells Brown , and Harriet Jacobs , stressed how African Americans survived in slavery, making a way out of no way, oftentimes subtly resisting exploitation, occasionally fighting back and escaping in search of better prospects elsewhere in the North, the Midwest, Canada, or Europe. Not surprisingly, in their own era and in ours, the most memorable of these narratives evoke the national myth of the American individual's quest for freedom and for a society based on "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Slave narrators such as Douglass, Brown, and Jacobs wrote with a keen sense of their regional identity as southern expatriates (the forerunners, quite literally, of more famous literary southerners in the twentieth century who left the South to write in the North). Knowing that the land of their birth had produced the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, southern-born slave narrators were often keen to contrast the lofty human rights ideology of Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence" with his real-world status as a slaveholder. While the autobiographies of the men of power and privilege in the nineteenth-century South are not read widely today, the slave narrative's focus on the conflict between alienated individuals and the oppressive social order of the Old South has spurred the re-evaluation of many hitherto submerged southern autobiographical and narrative forms, including the diaries of white women.

In most post-Emancipation slave narratives slavery is depicted as a kind of crucible in which the resilience, industry, and ingenuity of the slave was tested and ultimately validated. Thus the slave narrative argued the readiness of the freedman and freedwoman for full participation in the post-Civil War social and economic order. The biggest selling of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century slave narratives was Booker T. Washington 's Up from Slavery (1901), a classic American success story. Because Up from Slavery extolled black progress and interracial cooperation since emancipation, it won a much greater hearing from southern whites than was accorded those former slaves whose autobiographies detailed the legacy of injustices burdening blacks in the postwar South. One reason to create a complete collection of post-Civil War ex-slave narratives is to give voice to the many former slaves who shared neither Washington's comparatively benign assessment of slavery and segregation nor his rosy view of the future of African Americans in the South. Another reason to extend the slave narrative collection well into the twentieth century is to give black women's slave narratives, the preponderance of which were published after 1865, full representation as contributions to the tradition.

Slave and ex-slave narratives are important not only for what they tell us about African American history and literature, but also because they reveal to us the complexities of the dialogue between whites and blacks in this country in the last two centuries, particularly for African Americans. This dialogue is implicit in the very structure of the antebellum slave narrative, which generally centers on an African American's narrative but is prefaced by a white-authored text and often is appended by white authenticating documents, such as letters of reference attesting to the character and reliability of the slave narrator himself or herself. Some slave narratives elicited replies from whites that were published in subsequent editions of the narrative (the second, Dublin edition of Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative is a case in point). Other slave narratives, such as The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831), gave rise to novels implicitly or explicitly intended to defend the myth of the South, such as John Pendleton Kennedy 's Swallow Barn (1832), traditionally regarded as the first important plantation novel. Both intra-textually and extra-textually, therefore, the slave narrative from the early nineteenth century onward was a vehicle for dialogue over slavery and racial issues between whites and blacks in the North and the South. When reactionary white southern writers and regional boosters of the 1880s and 1890s decanted myths of slavery and the moonlight-and-magnolias plantation to a nostalgic white northern readership, the narratives of former slaves were one of the few resources that readers of the late nineteenth century could examine to get a reliable, first-hand portrayal of what slavery had actually been like.

Modern black autobiographies such as Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) testify to the influence of the slave narrative on the first-person writing of post-World War II African Americans. Beginning with Margaret Walker's Jubilee (1966) and extending through such contemporary novels as Ernest J. Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), Sherley Ann Williams's Dessa Rose (1986), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage (1990), the "neo-slave narrative" has become one of the most widely read and discussed forms of African American literature. These autobiographical and fictional descendants of the slave narrative confirm the continuing importance and vitality of its legacy: to probe the origins of psychological as well as social oppression and to critique the meaning of freedom for black and white Americans alike from the founding of the United States to the present day.

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).

Search Menu
Browse content in Arts and Humanities
Browse content in Archaeology
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
Archaeology by Region
Archaeology of Religion
Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
Biblical Archaeology
Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Historical Archaeology
History and Theory of Archaeology
Industrial Archaeology
Landscape Archaeology
Mortuary Archaeology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Underwater Archaeology
Urban Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Browse content in Architecture
Architectural Structure and Design
History of Architecture
Residential and Domestic Buildings
Theory of Architecture
Browse content in Art
Art Subjects and Themes
History of Art
Industrial and Commercial Art
Theory of Art
Biographical Studies
Byzantine Studies
Browse content in Classical Studies
Classical History
Classical Philosophy
Classical Mythology
Classical Literature
Classical Reception
Classical Art and Architecture
Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
Greek and Roman Papyrology
Greek and Roman Epigraphy
Greek and Roman Law
Greek and Roman Archaeology
Late Antiquity
Religion in the Ancient World
Digital Humanities
Browse content in History
Colonialism and Imperialism
Diplomatic History
Environmental History
Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Historical Geography
History by Period
History of Emotions
History of Agriculture
History of Education
History of Gender and Sexuality
Industrial History
Intellectual History
International History
Labour History
Legal and Constitutional History
Local and Family History
Maritime History
Military History
National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
Oral History
Political History
Public History
Regional and National History
Revolutions and Rebellions
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social and Cultural History
Theory, Methods, and Historiography
Urban History
World History
Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
Language Learning (Specific Skills)
Language Teaching Theory and Methods
Browse content in Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
History of English
Language Evolution
Language Reference
Language Acquisition
Language Variation
Language Families
Lexicography
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Theories
Linguistic Typology
Phonetics and Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Translation and Interpretation
Writing Systems
Browse content in Literature
Bibliography
Children's Literature Studies
Literary Studies (Romanticism)
Literary Studies (American)
Literary Studies (Asian)
Literary Studies (European)
Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
Literary Studies (Modernism)
Literary Studies - World
Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
Literary Studies (19th Century)
Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
Literary Studies (African American Literature)
Literary Studies (British and Irish)
Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
Literary Studies (History of the Book)
Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
Literary Studies (War Literature)
Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
Mythology and Folklore
Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Browse content in Media Studies
Browse content in Music
Applied Music
Dance and Music
Ethics in Music
Ethnomusicology
Gender and Sexuality in Music
Medicine and Music
Music Cultures
Music and Media
Music and Religion
Music and Culture
Music Education and Pedagogy
Music Theory and Analysis
Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
Musicology and Music History
Performance Practice and Studies
Race and Ethnicity in Music
Sound Studies
Browse content in Performing Arts
Browse content in Philosophy
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
Epistemology
Feminist Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Non-Western Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
Practical Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Browse content in Religion
Biblical Studies
Christianity
East Asian Religions
History of Religion
Judaism and Jewish Studies
Qumran Studies
Religion and Education
Religion and Health
Religion and Politics
Religion and Science
Religion and Law
Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
Religious Studies
Browse content in Society and Culture
Cookery, Food, and Drink
Cultural Studies
Customs and Traditions
Ethical Issues and Debates
Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
Sports and Outdoor Recreation
Technology and Society
Travel and Holiday
Visual Culture
Browse content in Law
Arbitration
Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
Commercial Law
Company Law
Browse content in Comparative Law
Systems of Law
Competition Law
Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Government Powers
Judicial Review
Local Government Law
Military and Defence Law
Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
Construction Law
Contract Law
Browse content in Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Evidence Law
Sentencing and Punishment
Employment and Labour Law
Environment and Energy Law
Browse content in Financial Law
Banking Law
Insolvency Law
History of Law
Human Rights and Immigration
Intellectual Property Law
Browse content in International Law
Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
Public International Law
IT and Communications Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
Law and Politics
Law and Society
Browse content in Legal System and Practice
Courts and Procedure
Legal Skills and Practice
Primary Sources of Law
Regulation of Legal Profession
Medical and Healthcare Law
Browse content in Policing
Criminal Investigation and Detection
Police and Security Services
Police Procedure and Law
Police Regional Planning
Browse content in Property Law
Personal Property Law
Study and Revision
Terrorism and National Security Law
Browse content in Trusts Law
Wills and Probate or Succession
Browse content in Medicine and Health
Browse content in Allied Health Professions
Arts Therapies
Clinical Science
Dietetics and Nutrition
Occupational Therapy
Operating Department Practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and Language Therapy
Browse content in Anaesthetics
General Anaesthesia
Neuroanaesthesia
Clinical Neuroscience
Browse content in Clinical Medicine
Acute Medicine
Cardiovascular Medicine
Clinical Genetics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Dermatology
Endocrinology and Diabetes
Gastroenterology
Genito-urinary Medicine
Geriatric Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Medical Toxicology
Medical Oncology
Pain Medicine
Palliative Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine
Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
Rheumatology
Sleep Medicine
Sports and Exercise Medicine
Community Medical Services
Critical Care
Emergency Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Haematology
History of Medicine
Browse content in Medical Skills
Clinical Skills
Communication Skills
Nursing Skills
Surgical Skills
Browse content in Medical Dentistry
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Paediatric Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
Surgical Dentistry
Medical Ethics
Medical Statistics and Methodology
Browse content in Neurology
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuropathology
Nursing Studies
Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Gynaecology
Occupational Medicine
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology (ENT)
Browse content in Paediatrics
Neonatology
Browse content in Pathology
Chemical Pathology
Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
Histopathology
Medical Microbiology and Virology
Patient Education and Information
Browse content in Pharmacology
Psychopharmacology
Browse content in Popular Health
Caring for Others
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Self-help and Personal Development
Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Reproduction, Growth and Development
Primary Care
Professional Development in Medicine
Browse content in Psychiatry
Addiction Medicine
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Forensic Psychiatry
Learning Disabilities
Old Age Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Public Health
Browse content in Radiology
Clinical Radiology
Interventional Radiology
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Reproductive Medicine
Browse content in Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
General Surgery
Neurosurgery
Paediatric Surgery
Peri-operative Care
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Surgical Oncology
Transplant Surgery
Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Browse content in Science and Mathematics
Browse content in Biological Sciences
Aquatic Biology
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology and Conservation
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Molecular and Cell Biology
Natural History
Plant Sciences and Forestry
Research Methods in Life Sciences
Structural Biology
Systems Biology
Zoology and Animal Sciences
Browse content in Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Computational Chemistry
Crystallography
Environmental Chemistry
Industrial Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry
Mineralogy and Gems
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Chemistry
Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
Theoretical Chemistry
Browse content in Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Architecture and Logic Design
Game Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Mathematical Theory of Computation
Programming Languages
Software Engineering
Systems Analysis and Design
Virtual Reality
Browse content in Computing
Business Applications
Computer Security
Computer Games
Computer Networking and Communications
Digital Lifestyle
Graphical and Digital Media Applications
Operating Systems
Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Geography
Geology and the Lithosphere
Maps and Map-making
Meteorology and Climatology
Oceanography and Hydrology
Palaeontology
Physical Geography and Topography
Regional Geography
Soil Science
Urban Geography
Browse content in Engineering and Technology
Agriculture and Farming
Biological Engineering
Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
Electronics and Communications Engineering
Energy Technology
Engineering (General)
Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
History of Engineering and Technology
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Technology of Industrial Chemistry
Transport Technology and Trades
Browse content in Environmental Science
Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
History of Science and Technology
Browse content in Materials Science
Ceramics and Glasses
Composite Materials
Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
Nanotechnology
Browse content in Mathematics
Applied Mathematics
Biomathematics and Statistics
History of Mathematics
Mathematical Education
Mathematical Finance
Mathematical Analysis
Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Probability and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
Browse content in Neuroscience
Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
Development of the Nervous System
Disorders of the Nervous System
History of Neuroscience
Invertebrate Neurobiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems
Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
Neuroscientific Techniques
Sensory and Motor Systems
Browse content in Physics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Biological and Medical Physics
Classical Mechanics
Computational Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
History of Physics
Mathematical and Statistical Physics
Measurement Science
Nuclear Physics
Particles and Fields
Plasma Physics
Quantum Physics
Relativity and Gravitation
Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
Browse content in Psychology
Affective Sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Educational Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
Health Psychology
History and Systems in Psychology
Music Psychology
Neuropsychology
Organizational Psychology
Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
Psychology Professional Development and Training
Research Methods in Psychology
Social Psychology
Browse content in Social Sciences
Browse content in Anthropology
Anthropology of Religion
Human Evolution
Medical Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
Regional Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Theory and Practice of Anthropology
Browse content in Business and Management
Business Ethics
Business Strategy
Business History
Business and Technology
Business and Government
Business and the Environment
Comparative Management
Corporate Governance
Corporate Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Health Management
Human Resource Management
Industrial and Employment Relations
Industry Studies
Information and Communication Technologies
International Business
Knowledge Management
Management and Management Techniques
Operations Management
Organizational Theory and Behaviour
Pensions and Pension Management
Public and Nonprofit Management
Strategic Management
Supply Chain Management
Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Forms of Crime
International and Comparative Criminology
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Development Studies
Browse content in Economics
Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
Asian Economics
Behavioural Finance
Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
Economic History
Economic Systems
Economic Methodology
Economic Development and Growth
Financial Markets
Financial Institutions and Services
General Economics and Teaching
Health, Education, and Welfare
History of Economic Thought
International Economics
Labour and Demographic Economics
Law and Economics
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
Microeconomics
Public Economics
Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
Welfare Economics
Browse content in Education
Adult Education and Continuous Learning
Care and Counselling of Students
Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Educational Equipment and Technology
Educational Strategies and Policy
Higher and Further Education
Organization and Management of Education
Philosophy and Theory of Education
Schools Studies
Secondary Education
Teaching of a Specific Subject
Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
Teaching Skills and Techniques
Browse content in Environment
Applied Ecology (Social Science)
Climate Change
Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
Natural Disasters (Environment)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
Browse content in Human Geography
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Political Geography
Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
Communication Studies
Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
Browse content in Politics
African Politics
Asian Politics
Chinese Politics
Comparative Politics
Conflict Politics
Elections and Electoral Studies
Environmental Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Gender and Politics
Human Rights and Politics
Indian Politics
International Relations
International Organization (Politics)
International Political Economy
Irish Politics
Latin American Politics
Middle Eastern Politics
Political Behaviour
Political Economy
Political Institutions
Political Methodology
Political Communication
Political Philosophy
Political Sociology
Political Theory
Politics and Law
Public Policy
Public Administration
Quantitative Political Methodology
Regional Political Studies
Russian Politics
Security Studies
State and Local Government
UK Politics
US Politics
Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
African Studies
Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle Eastern Studies
Native American Studies
Scottish Studies
Browse content in Research and Information
Research Methods
Browse content in Social Work
Addictions and Substance Misuse
Adoption and Fostering
Care of the Elderly
Child and Adolescent Social Work
Couple and Family Social Work
Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
Emergency Services
Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
International and Global Issues in Social Work
Mental and Behavioural Health
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social Policy and Advocacy
Social Work and Crime and Justice
Social Work Macro Practice
Social Work Practice Settings
Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
Welfare and Benefit Systems
Browse content in Sociology
Childhood Studies
Community Development
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Economic Sociology
Gender and Sexuality
Gerontology and Ageing
Health, Illness, and Medicine
Marriage and the Family
Migration Studies
Occupations, Professions, and Work
Organizations
Population and Demography
Race and Ethnicity
Social Theory
Social Movements and Social Change
Social Research and Statistics
Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Education
Sport and Leisure
Urban and Rural Studies
Browse content in Warfare and Defence
Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
Land Forces and Warfare
Military Administration
Military Life and Institutions
Naval Forces and Warfare
Other Warfare and Defence Issues
Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
Weapons and Equipment

The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature

< Previous chapter
Next chapter >

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
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

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.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Brooks, Joanna. 2003 . American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures. New York: Oxford University Press.

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.

Reiss, Oscar. 1997 . Blacks in Colonial America. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

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.

Saillant, John. 2003 . Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753–1833. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sekora, John. 1993 . Questions of Race and Ethnicity: Red, White, and Black. In A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America, edited by Frank Shuffelton, 92–104. New York: Oxford University Press.

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.

Zafar, Rafia. 1997 . We Wear the Mask: African Americans Write American Literature, 17601870. New York: Columbia University Press.

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Lesson Plans
Teacher's Guides
Media Resources

Perspective on the Slave Narrative

Narrative of William W. Brown, a fugitive slave.

National Archives

The Narrative of William W. Brown, An American Slave (1847), along with the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), set the pattern for the slave narrative, one of the most widely-read genres of 19th-century American literature and an important influence within the African American literary tradition.. To help students recognize the complex nature of the slave narrative and its combination of varied literary traditions and devices, this lesson explores Brown's work from a variety of perspectives. Students first consider the narrative as a historical record, examining episodes that describe the conditions Brown lived through as a slave. Next, they examine it as a work of literature, investigating the rhetorical techniques Brown uses to shape his experiences into a story. Third, students consider the work's political dimension, weighing the arguments that Brown presents as an abolitionist spokesman and the degree to which his narrative should be treated as political rhetoric. Finally, students approach the narrative as an autobiography, a work of self-actualization in which Brown charts a spiritual as well as a literal journey to freedom. To conclude the lesson, students produce an essay explaining how Brown's narrative challenged the prejudices of readers in his own time and how it challenges prejudices today.

Guiding Questions

What role did the slave narrative have both in historical and in literary traditions?

How did William Brown’s narrative contribute to the abolitionist movement?

Learning Objectives

Describe the slave narrative and its importance in the abolitionist movement

Gain experience in working with the slave narrative as a resource for historical study

Evaluate the slave narrative as a work of literature

Examine the slave narrative and other documents in the context of political controversy as an argument for abolition

Explore themes of self-actualization and spiritual freedom within the slave narrative

Lesson Plan Details

Background on the slave narrative and its place in American literature, is provided in " An Introduction to the Slave Narrative ," by William L. Andrews, which is available through EDSITEment at the Documenting The American South website. Slave narratives were widely-read in the decades before the Civil War and instrumental in building support among white Americans for the abolition of slavery. Although at one time discredited as sensationalistic in their portrayal of slavery, slave narratives have been recognized since the 1970s as an invaluable source of firsthand information about the experience of African Americans in slavery and the community they forged for themselves amid relentless oppression.

In addition, slave narratives have been increasingly studied as a formative part of the African American literary tradition, lending a distinct voice to our national myth of the individual's quest for freedom and self-fulfillment, which echoes in 20th century classics like The Autobiography of Malcolm X and in the work of novelists like Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, and Ernest J. Gaines. For additional background students might consult The Slave's Narrative , edited by Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

The Narrative of the Life of William W. Brown, An American Slave , available through EDSITEment at the Documenting the American South website, was first published in 1847, only two years after the pioneering Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and is perhaps the most accessible example of the slave narrative genre for modern readers. The Documenting the American South website also provides a brief profile of Brown’s career in " About William Wells Brown ." Following the period described in his narrative, Brown became a celebrated lecturer in the anti-slavery movement both in the United States and in Great Britain, where he lived from 1849 to 1854, in part to avoid re-enslavement under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. While in England, Brown wrote Clotel , one of the first novels published by an African American, and following his return to the United States he went on to become a leading black American literary figure of the mid-19th century, acclaimed as a poet, novelist, playwright, and historian of African American culture.

Review the lesson plan and the websites used throughout. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
NOTE: Though considerably more temperate in its picture of slavery than many examples of the genre, the Narrative of William W. Brown contains language that, while inoffensive in his day, can be disturbing to modern readers, and portrays many scenes of shocking brutality. Educators should review this text before introducing it to students and may wish to consider presenting only excerpts in order to avoid these difficult aspects of Brown's story .

Activity 1. Slave Narrative as Historical Record

Introduce students to the background information for the slave narrative and the life of William Brown, as detailed in the “Background” section, above. Ask students to read the Narrative of the Life of William W. Brown , available as an electronic text via the EDSITEment-reviewed Documenting the American South .

If possible, prior to assigning the reading to students, ask them what they know about slave life in the 19th century. Write their thoughts on the board and refer back to these ideas during class discussion after students read through Brown’s narrative. As students read, have them consider it first as an eyewitness report on the historic realities of slavery. Instructors might also considering splitting these questions between groups (according to the categories listed below), bringing these groups back together for reports and class discussion.

Life as a Slave: What incidents does Brown offer as characteristic of the slave's life? How does he describe the slave's duties? What does he tell us about the slave's family and circle of friends?
Master and Slave Relationship: Much of Brown's narrative portrays the harsh treatment of slaves by their masters. Have students find incidents in which the relationship between slave and slaveholder is more complex, revealing an element of understanding on both sides. How do these glimpses of relationships between slave and master reflect on those episodes which exhibit the slaveholder's cruelty?
Resistance to Slavery: Have students focus also on evidence of resistance to slavery in Brown's narrative. Call attention to the story of the slave Randall that closes Brown's first chapter (pages 16-19 in the electronic text), and to episodes in which Brown himself offers resistance, such as his snowball battle with a group of white boys (Chapter 3, page 28) and his repeated attempts to escape (Chapter 2, page 21; Chapter 7, pages 65-68; and Chapter 10, pages 89-93). How do these incidents add to our understanding of slave life?

Have students summarize the information Brown provides about slavery by discussing the facts they found surprising. You might also consider assigning, or having students read in class, the brief article, " What was Life Like Under Slavery? ", available via the EDSITEment-reviewed website Digital History. Have students compare these thoughts to those they shared about their knowledge of slavery prior to reading Brown.. What other sorts of documentary materials besides slave narratives might students seek out to gain a complete picture of slave life?

Activity 2. Slave Narrative and Literary Style

Next, invite students to consider Brown's narrative as a work of literature, a story in which he uses literary devices to shape his material and achieve specific effects. For students, the clearest evidence of Brown's literary intentions may be the passages of verse that he includes in his narrative, most often to mark a moment of intense emotion. Help students analyze how Brown creates the most famous of these moments in his story, the episode in which he is separated forever from his mother (Chapter 9, pages 77-79). Ask students to reread this section (aloud, if appropriate to your class) and ask them to note stylistic changes or enhancements to the passage.

Students might note, for example, how he prepares for the scene, building suspense by shifting from his matter-of-fact style into a more melodramatic manner:

The boat was not quite ready to commence running, and therefore I had to remain with Mr. Willi. But during this time, I had to undergo a trial for which I was entirely unprepared. My mother, who had been in jail since her return until the present time, was now about being carried to New Orleans, to die on a cotton, sugar, or rice plantation!

Students might comment on some other aspects of Brown's artistry in presenting this scene: for example, the conventional phrases that trigger an emotional response ("too deep for tears," "fell upon my knees," "I thought myself to blame"); the religious sentiments that elevate his mother's parting words; the impending approach of the slaveholder Mansfield which heightens the suspense; the desperate urgency of his mother's plea that he seek his own freedom; her final words, which he hears after the slaveholder has driven him away and which he describes as a "shriek," suggesting the voice of a soul being carried to its doom.

Ask students:

How do these literary touches reflect on Brown's claim that his story is true?

Students might explore the idea that, while events may be dramatized, the emotions they express -- and evoke in a reader -- can be authentic.Have students cite other passages in Brown's narrative that reveal his artistry, and have them evaluate his skill in characterization (e.g., his portrayal of the slave trader Walker) and plotting (e.g., his shift from an episodic to a more continuous narrative style as his story approaches its goal). Students may notice that Brown devotes little attention to description: what does his mother look like? what does St. Louis look like? Does this add to or detract from his narrative? Why or why not?

Activity 3. The Narrative of Abolitionism

Remind students that Brown wrote his narrative in connection with his employment by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as a spokesman for abolitionism. For a brief introduction to the abolitionist movement, guide students to Digital History’s brief articles “ Abolition ” and “ Who were the abolitionists? ” (with several more articles on various aspects of the The Origins and Nature of New World Slavery and the Antislavery Movement available, depending on the time available and the historical depth desired.

To contextualize the sometimes vehement rhetorical strategies on both sides, have students visit the Gallery of Abolitionist and Anti-Abolitionist Images at the EDSITEment-reviewed Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture website. Have students use the NARA Teaching with Documents Worksheets to review an image either individually or in groups and examine the image as a historical document. Using evidence from the images, students then should write a brief response (2–3 lines) as to why they think the image is pro- or anti-abolition.

Prepare students that many of these images are in fact racist (since some reflect the popular opinion at the time that African-Americans were not equal to whites). Remind students that sometimes historical and literary investigations force us to encounter difficult facts about our collective history – just as we also encounter images of heroism and courage.

Within the context of this exploration of abolitionism, return to Brown’s text and ask students:

How does Brown’s story, and the way in which he presents it, serve the cause of abolitionism?
Which episodes seem calculated to shock a white reader into an abhorrence of slavery? Look back at Brown's opening chapters. What is the first impression of slavery and slaveholders that he provides here? How does his emphasis on physical abuse support the abolitionist cause?
Look also at Brown's portrayal of slaveholders, in particular his comments on their piety. What does he say about his master's sudden enthusiasm for prayer and church-going (Chapter 4, pages 36–38)? About the family prayers of those who captured him on his first attempt at freedom (Chapter 8, page 71)? About the auctioneer's cry that a slave "has got religion" (Chapter 9, pages 82–83)? How would these moral attacks help persuade a white reader to oppose slavery?

Activity 4. Slave Narrative as Autobiography

Conclude this lesson by asking students to consider Brown's narrative as an autobiography in which he charts a quest not only for freedom but also for self-identity. What follows below are several avenues of inquiry that teachers may want to pursue with students:

How does Brown's character develop through the events of his narrative? Have students compare their impression of him in these episodes: when he is treed by a pack of bloodhounds after his first escape attempt (Chapter 2, pages 21–22); when he dupes a free black man into taking a whipping intended for him (Chapter 5, pages 52–57); when he objects to his master's plan to sell him and takes the opportunity to make a second escape attempt (Chapter 7, pages 62–64); when he parries the efforts of his last master's wife to have him marry and turns her plan to his advantage in plotting his final escape (Chapter 9, pages 84–86, and Chapter 10, pages 89–90). In what respect does Brown evolve from a passive observer into an active protagonist through episodes like these?
A turning-point in this narrative development, and a key element in the evolution of Brown's character, comes in Chapter 11 (pages 96–98) as he travels toward freedom and asks himself, "What should be my name?" Have students explain the significance Brown sees in his choice of a name. How does this choice affect his sense of self-identity? What does his decision to reclaim the name "William" and reject the name "Sanford" indicate about his growing sense of independence?
Soon after this decision, Brown meets the man who finally secures his freedom by helping him along his way and by completing his name. "Since thee has got out of slavery," this old Quaker tells him, "thee has become a man, and men always have two names" (page 103). How does Brown's addition of this man's name to his own complete his sense of self-identity? Is it significant that he names himself after a white man? Is it significant that instead of just two names he takes three?
Brown ends his narrative with the story of an attempt to kidnap a fugitive slave family living in Canada that was foiled by a courageous band of African Americans living in Buffalo, who rode to their rescue (pages 109–124). What does this final episode add to our sense of Brown's character? Does he acquire the stature of hero by taking part in this "fight for human freedom"? And what does this episode add to Brown's argument for the abolition of slavery?
Images of Slavery at the NYPL Digital Schomburg Images of 19th Century African-Americans
African-American Women On-line Archival Collections (specifically the slave letters)
PBS's Africans in America Resource Bank (see the “Historical Documents” section under each segment and use the Document Analysis Worksheet appropriate to the form)

After they examine one of these historical documents, ask students to share their findings and discuss the nature of documenting slavery. What does it mean to be a historical document? How do different kinds of documents shape a receivers viewpoint?

Have students summarize Brown's arguments for the abolition of slavery in an outline. Then discuss whether, as an earlier generation of scholars believed, Brown's political agenda renders his narrative unreliable as a historical document. Why or why not?
Remind students that one purpose of the slave narrative was to dispel the prejudiced belief that African Americans are not equal to whites in intellect or ability, not fully deserving of freedom and human rights. How did Brown's narrative, which combines artistry, argument, authenticity, and the autobiography of a self-created individual, challenge the prejudices of its white readers? Have students explore this question in an essay.
There are many other slave narratives available through EDSITEment at the Documenting the American South website, including narratives written by ex-slaves in the years following the Civil War. Students might read Booker T. Washington's famous Up From Slavery to see how the slave narrative genre changes when the immediate political pressures that helped shape Brown's work are removed. (At the Documenting the American South website homepage, click on "North American Slave Narratives," then click "Collection of Electronic Texts." Scroll down to "Washington, Booker T." and select "Up From Slavery.")
Students might also compare Brown's written narrative to some of the oral narratives of slave times collected by Work Progress Administration archivists during the Great Depression, many of which are accessible through EDSITEment in the "American Life Histories" collection at the American Memory Project website.
Further documentary material on slavery is available through EDSITEment at the following websites: Documents of African-American Women , Freedmen and Southern Society Project , and The Valley of the Shadow .
A comprehensive EDSITEment Curriculum Unit on Frederick Douglass's narrative is available at From Courage to Freedom: Frederick Douglass's 1845 Autobiography .

Selected EDSITEment Websites

African-American Women Online Archival Collections
PBS's Africans in America Resource Bank
American Memory Project
Who were the abolitionists ?
An Introduction to the Slave Narrative
Narrative of the Life of William W. Brown, An American Slave
Up From Slavery
Document Analysis Worksheets
Documents of African-American Women
Freedmen and Southern Society Project
Images of Slavery
The Valley of the Shadow
Gallery of Abolitionist and Anti-Abolitionist Images

Related on EDSITEment

Frances ellen watkins harper’s “learning to read”, slave narratives: constructing u.s. history through analyzing primary sources, harriet jacobs and elizabeth keckly: the material and emotional realities of childhood in slavery.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet A. Jacobs

Literature Notes
The Slave Narrative Tradition in African American Literature
About Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Character List
Summary and Analysis
Chapters 3-4
Chapters 5-6
Chapters 8-9
Chapters 10-11
Chapters 12-13
Chapters 14-16
Chapters 17-20
Chapters 23-25
Chapter 26-29
Character Analysis
Linda Brent
Aunt Martha
Uncle Benjamin
The First Mrs. Bruce
The Second Mrs. Bruce
Character Map
Harriet Ann Jacobs Biography
Critical Essays
The Feminist Perspective
Slave Rebellions and Runaway Slaves
We the People. . . ": Slavery and the U.S. Constitution
Slave Narrative Conventions
Full Glossary for Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Essay Questions
Cite this Literature Note

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' Narrative exemplify these works, numerous contemporary black authors have adapted the slave narrative format.

Contemporary slave narratives (also referred to as neo-slave narratives) include works such as Richard Wright's Black Boy and The Autobiography of Malcolm X , co-authored by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. Both works trace the narrator's journey from poverty and mental slavery or imprisonment to freedom achieved primarily through an awareness of new choices and options, a determination to overcome societal and self-imposed limitations, and a willingness to assume personal responsibility for transforming one's life. Wright's "black boy" — much like the authors of traditional narratives — discovers a sense of freedom by writing, while Malcolm X transcends his role as hustler, pimp, and prison inmate to become a renowned spokesperson, leader, and political activist.

Toni Morrison's Beloved and Ernest Gaines' The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman exemplify the fictional slave narrative, a form that originated with works such as William Wells Brown's Clotel: Or, The President's Daughter, A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first novel by a black American; Harriet Wilson's Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North, (1859), the first novel by a black woman in the United States; and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which used the fictional story of an elderly black man to focus attention on the horrors of slavery. Morrison's novel, Beloved , tells the story of Sethe, a woman who portrays a former slave who killed her daughter to save her from being returned to slavery. Gaines' work, written in the form of an interview with the fictional Miss Pittman, traces Miss Pittman's life from slavery to freedom as a Civil Rights activist.

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Ernest Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying also incorporate elements of the slave narrative, but in these two works, both authors transform conventional elements to achieve new dimensions. For example, Macon "Milkman" Dead, the selfish, apathetic protagonist in Song of Solomon , achieves both mental and spiritual freedom only when he lets go of his materialistic lifestyle and returns to the South to reconnect with his cultural and historical roots. In A Lesson Before Dying , Jefferson, a young man on Death Row for a murder he did not commit, is able to cast off his slave mentality and free his mind and soul only when he learns to transcend society's perceptions of him as less than a man and begins to reconnect with his community and see himself as a human being entitled to respect and dignity.

Many critics applaud contemporary slave narratives because they show individuals rising from the depths of despair to overcome seemingly impossible odds. However, some critics contend that the narratives perpetuate the myth that people can overcome society's racism by sheer willpower and determination. Many critics believe that the narratives are deceptive because they offer a false sense of hope to blacks, while encouraging whites to think that if some blacks can break down barriers and cross over racial boundaries to achieve success, those who do not have only themselves to blame.

Previous Harriet Ann Jacobs Biography

Next The Feminist Perspective

Tools and Resources
Customer Services
African Diaspora
Afrocentrism
Archaeology
Central Africa
Colonial Conquest and Rule
Cultural History
Early States and State Formation in Africa
East Africa and Indian Ocean
Economic History
Historical Linguistics
Historical Preservation and Cultural Heritage
Historiography and Methods
Image of Africa
Intellectual History
Invention of Tradition
Language and History
Legal History
Medical History
Military History
North Africa and the Gulf
Northeastern Africa
Oral Traditions
Political History
Religious History
Slavery and Slave Trade
Social History
Southern Africa
West Africa
Women’s History
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Literary representations of slavery.

Raquel Kennon Raquel Kennon Department of English, University of Wisconsin - Madison
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.926
Published online: 19 July 2023

Literary representations of modern racialized slavery in the Americas date back to the era of slavery itself. Formerly enslaved persons, most often with sponsorship from white abolitionists, wrote and published first-person narratives detailing the horrors of life in bondage and their strenuous path to freedom, though the journeys were far from linear. Within the historical antebellum slave narratives, those written in English, and specifically those produced in the United States, have come to represent the genre, though there are examples in multiple languages and geographies across the African diaspora. These first-person testimonies are always a function of memory, modified through editing, and frequently written to garner support for the antislavery audience. As such, the slave narratives operate with established literary conventions that persist across the genre. Although the editing and narrative silences call into question their authentic voice, the writing, publishing, and circulation of the historical slave narratives, which center, to varying degrees, the subjectivities of their Black writers/narrators, marks a foundational moment in African American literary history, and literature of the African diaspora writ large.

If the slave narratives of the antebellum and the early postbellum period trouble the distinctions between history and literature, then the neo-slave narratives or contemporary narratives of slavery obliterate generic divisions. Diasporic authors writing fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and more gather from the “scraps” and fragments of slavery’s archive and perform visionary acts of imagination to create a vast and varied landscape of literary representations of slavery in the mid- to late-20th century and into the 21st century. These authors and artists have reconfigured and reimagined the first-person slave narratives and shaped them into stunning cultural products that foreground Black subjectivity, African identity in the diaspora, and the possibilities for freedom.

cultural expression
African diaspora
historical first-person narratives of slavery
neo-slave narratives
contemporary narratives of slavery
Black Atlantic fiction and poetry

You do not currently have access to this article

Please login to access the full content.

Access to the full content requires a subscription

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, African History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 22 April 2024

Cookie Policy
Privacy Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility
[66.249.64.20|193.7.198.129]
193.7.198.129

Character limit 500 /500

Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation and Freedom

Explore the Collection
Collections in Context
Teaching the Collection
Advanced Collection Research

Memoirs and Slave Narratives

While the SAEF project includes many materials created by African Americans, a special category among these are memoirs and autobiographies. The publications give us unique insights into the experiences of Black people, enslaved and free, by sharing the details of their lives. "Slave Narrative" is the term given to this literary genre, serving a powerful role in the independence and political identity of many Black people.

Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's Narrative

Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, who also used the English name James Albert, published the first known English-language slave narrative. This eighteenth-century story of an African man's journey from freedom in Bornu (now Nigeria) to enslavement in the Americas and final to freedom again, this time in England, captured the attention of many who had ignored the plight of slavery. Scholar Henry Louis Gates, however, points out that this early narrative is different from later narratives, which generally had a strong abolitionist stance. Gronniosaw's narrative was so popular in England, it was translated into other languages. SAEF contains both English and Welsh language copies.

Popular Literature: Types of Narrative

From the eighteenth century through the end of the nineteenth, slave narratives were perhaps the most widely published form of African American literature. Formerly enslaved people published detailed stories of their sufferings, self-emancipations, fugitivity, and freedom with active spiritual and political goals. Thousands of narratives were recorded in this time, and over a hundred were published in full pamphlet or book form.

Spiritual Focus

Many Black writers used their narratives to promote their own religious conversion or evangelical missions. Examples in the SAEF collection include:

John Jea, The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher , 1811
Daniel H. Peterson, The Looking-Glass: Being a True Report and Narrative of the Life, Travels, and Labors of the Rev. Daniel H. Peterson, a Colored Clergyman; Embracing a Period of Time from the Year 1812 to 1854, and Including His Visit to Western Africa , 1854

Abolitionist Focus

Other Black authors used their narratives to focus primarily on abolitionist political goals. Examples in the SAEF collection include:

Moses Roper, A Narrative of Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery , London, 1837
Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself , Boston, 1849
William Wells Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave , Boston, 1847

Progressive Goals

Especially following the Civil War, though in some cases before, narratives began to have an expanded focus on successful life post-slavery. Examples in the SAEF collection include:

Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House , 1868
Austin Steward, Twenty-two years a slave, and forty years a freeman; embracing a correspondence of several years, while president of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada West , 1857
Samuel Harrison, Rev. Samuel Harrison : his life story as told by himself , 1899

Slave Narrative: Formal Style

Autobiography scholar James Olney provided a primer to the standard format for this literary genre in his 1984 article "I Was Born": Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature ," one that can be traced in many of our examples:

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

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

Journal of American History

Christopher L. Webber

RELATED PAPERS

Revista de Economia Política

Fabio Waltenberg

Biology of Sport

Jonathan Connor

Tuyển tập công trình HNKH toàn quốc lần thứ 3 về điều khiển & Tự động hoá VCCA - 2015

TRẦN VĂN NGHĨA

M HAIKAL ALGISTA FAWWAZ

Kristen McIntyre

José Antonio Rocha Gontijo Gontijo

Climatic Change

Birger Solberg

Rick Beatson

Revista de Gastroenterología de México

Felipe Zamarripa-Dorsey

089629761389 tongkat jalan

sendal burik

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Jaidev sharma

HAKAN ERKUŞ

Orthopedics & Traumatology

Journal of the American Chemical Society

Revista Española de Sanidad Penitenciaria

Sofia Paz Diaz Roman

Journal of Materials Chemistry C

Pilar Amo-Ochoa

Scientific reports

soumyananda dinda

Marco Bernasconi

Journal of Applied Sciences

Dr Fabian Ezema

Journal of information and organizational sciences

Mirko Čubrilo

87527357毕业证成绩单原版学位证假文凭未能正常毕业？办理毕业证成绩单

Journal of Web Semantics

Alessandra Mileo

Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases

Priya Chhikara

ENG 273 - African American Literature: Slavery and Freedom

Slavery and Freedom
Reconstruction
Harlem Renaissance
Realism, Naturalism, & Modernism
Black Arts Era
Contemporary
MLA Citation Help
Research Process

New All-in-One Search

Classic Catalog | Remote Access | Help

A-to-Z List | Remote Access

A-to-Z List | By Subject | By Type

Finding Online or Streaming Films in the RCCC Library

<< Previous: Welcome
Next: Reconstruction >>
Last Updated: Mar 6, 2024 11:06 AM
URL: https://libguides.rccc.edu/aalit

Share full article

Supported by

Guest Essay

The New Movie ‘Civil War’ Matters for Reasons Different Than You Think

A family holding hands, facing a fire engulfing the White House.

By Stephen Marche

Mr. Marche is the author of “The Next Civil War.”

“Not one man in America wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it,” Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared at the beginning of the 20th century. What may seem inevitable to us in hindsight — the horrifying consequences of a country in political turmoil, given to violence and rived by slavery — came as a shock to many of the people living through it. Even those who anticipated it hardly seemed prepared for its violent magnitude. In this respect at least, the current division that afflicts the United States seems different from the Civil War. If there ever is a second civil war, it won’t be for lack of imagining it.

The most prominent example arrives this week in the form of an action blockbuster titled “Civil War.” The film, written and directed by Alex Garland, presents a scenario in which the government is at war with breakaway states and the president has been, in the eyes of part of the country, delegitimized. Some critics have denounced the project, arguing that releasing the film in this particular election year is downright dangerous. They assume that even just talking about a future national conflict could make it a reality, and that the film risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is wrong.

Not only does this criticism vastly overrate the power of the written word or the moving image, but it looks past the real forces sending the United States toward ever-deeper division: inequality; a hyperpartisan duopoly; and an antiquated and increasingly dysfunctional Constitution. Mere stories are not powerful enough to change those realities. But these stories can wake us up to the threats we are facing. The greatest political danger in America isn’t fascism, and it isn’t wokeness. It’s inertia. America needs a warning.

The reason for a surge in anxiety over a civil war is obvious. The Republican National Committee, now under the control of the presumptive nominee, has asked job candidates if they believe the 2020 election was stolen — an obvious litmus test. Extremism has migrated into mainstream politics, and certain fanciful fictions have migrated with it. In 1997, a group of Texas separatists were largely considered terrorist thugs and their movement, if it deserved that title, fizzled out after a weeklong standoff with the police. Just a few months ago, Texas took the federal government to court over control of the border. Armed militias have camped out along the border. That’s not a movie trailer. That’s happening.

But politicians, pundits and many voters seem not to be taking the risk of violence seriously enough. There is an ingrained assumption, resulting from the country’s recent history of global dominance coupled with a kind of organic national optimism, that in the United States everything ultimately works out. While right-wing journalists and fiction writers have been predicting a violent end to the Republic for generations — one of the foundational documents of neo-Nazism and white supremacy is “The Turner Diaries” from 1978, a novel that imagines an American revolution that leads to a race war — their writings seem more like wish fulfillment than like warnings.

When I attended prepper conventions as research for my book, I found their visions of a collapsed American Republic suspiciously attractive: It’s a world where everybody grows his own food, gathers with family by candlelight, defends his property against various unpredictable threats and relies on his wits. Their preferred scenario resembled, more than anything, a sort of postapocalyptic “Little House on the Prairie.”

We’ve seen more recent attempts to grapple with the possibility of domestic conflict in the form of sober-minded political analysis. Now the vision of a civil war has come to movie screens. We’re no longer just contemplating a political collapse, we’re seeing its consequences unfold in IMAX.

“Civil War” doesn’t dwell on the causes of the schism. Its central characters are journalists and the plot dramatizes the reality of the conflict they’re covering: the fear, violence and instability that a civil war would inflict on the lives of everyday Americans.

That’s a good thing. Early on when I was promoting my book, I remember an interviewer asking me whether a civil war wouldn’t be that terrible an option; whether it would help clear the air. The naïveté was shocking and, to me, sickening. America lost roughly 2 percent of its population in the Civil War. Contemplating the horrors of a civil war — whether as a thought experiment or in a theatrical blockbuster — helps counteract a reflexive sense of American exceptionalism. It can happen here. In fact, it already has.

One of the first people to predict the collapse of the Republic was none other than George Washington. “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations,” he warned in his Farewell Address. “This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature.” This founder of the country devoted much of one of his most important addresses, at the apex of his popularity, to warning about the exact situation the United States today finds itself in: a hyper-partisanship that puts party over country and risks political collapse. Washington knew what civil war looked like.

For those Americans of the 1850s who couldn’t imagine a protracted, bloody civil war, the reason is simple enough: They couldn’t bear to. They refused to see the future they were part of building. The future came anyway.

The Americans of 2024 can easily imagine a civil war. The populace faces a different question and a different crisis: Can we forestall the future we have foreseen? No matter the likelihood of that future, the first step in its prevention is imagining how it might come to pass, and agreeing that it would be a catastrophe.

Stephen Marche is the author of “The Next Civil War.”

Source photographs by Yasuhide Fumoto, Richard Nowitz and stilllifephotographer, via Getty Images.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

IMAGES

What is Slavery? Essay Example
Slavery Essay
Slaves Essay
the historical event essay
⇉Slavery in American Literature Essay Example
Essay on Slaves

VIDEO

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
Slavery in the American Colonies
Slavery Was Much Worse Than You Thought
Schools Will Never Teach You About This In The Atlantic Slave Trade
The Untold Stories of Slavery"
The Real history of Slavery and Slave trade ll explained in hindi ll The Analyse

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 ...
Slavery Role in the American Literature
To begin with, we find that Stowe has noted that between 1780 and1830, the religious groups tried in vain to pressurize the government to abolish slavery in both the north and south of the United States of America. She has observed that in their letters they argued that the Black people are not sub human beings.
PDF The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature
SLAVERY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE edited by EZRA TAWIL University of Rochester. 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University's mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit 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.
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 ...
Slave Narratives: An Introduction to the Slave Narrative
Narratives by fugitive slaves before the Civil War and by former slaves in the postbellum era are essential to the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American history and literature, especially as they relate to the eleven states of the Old Confederacy, an area that included approximately one third of the population of the United States at the time when slave narratives were most ...
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;
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 ...
Early American Slave Narratives
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 ...
Perspective on the Slave Narrative
Background on the slave narrative and its place in American literature, is provided in "An Introduction to the Slave Narrative," by William L. Andrews, which is available through EDSITEment at the Documenting The American South website.Slave narratives were widely-read in the decades before the Civil War and instrumental in building support among white Americans for the abolition of slavery.
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 ...
The Slave Trade in British and American Literature
Literature written about the Atlantic trade in African slaves by white British and American authors and by former captives contributed to the debate about slavery and eventual abolition of the ...
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.
Literary Representations of Slavery
Summary. Literary representations of modern racialized slavery in the Americas date back to the era of slavery itself. Formerly enslaved persons, most often with sponsorship from white abolitionists, wrote and published first-person narratives detailing the horrors of life in bondage and their strenuous path to freedom, though the journeys were ...
11
4 Slave Narratives as Literature; 5 Slavery and the Emergence of the African American Novel; 6 Proslavery Fiction; 7 The Poetry of Slavery; 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
Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation and Freedom
From the eighteenth century through the end of the nineteenth, slave narratives were perhaps the most widely published form of African American literature. Formerly enslaved people published detailed stories of their sufferings, self-emancipations, fugitivity, and freedom with active spiritual and political goals.
(PDF) American Antislavery Literature
American Antislavery Literature. 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 ...
PDF Slavery and Abolition in the Founding Era
tradition of African American literature can be said to descend. Almost every text has a surprising story behind it or offers an unusual perspective on American history. Phillis Wheatley's 1775 poem in honor of George Washington, for example, was long thought to have first been published in the April 1776 Pennsylvania Magazine, a logi-
The Importance of the Slave Narrative Collection
Elsewhere I have described the dramatic impact that knowledge of the Slave Narrative Collection has had on the subsequent revitalization of African-American history and, particularly, on the study of American slavery.33 The outpouring of scholarship on slavery represents a dramatic shift in American historiography. Though several major works on the topic appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, since ...
American Antislavery Literature, 1688 to 1865: An Introduction
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 17 th 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 ...
ENG 273
Rethinking the Slave Narrative by Charles J. Heglar The African American slave narrative is popularly viewed as the story of a lone male's flight from slavery to freedom, best exemplified by the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). On the other hand, critics have also given much attention to Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), to ...
1
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 ...
Opinion
By Stephen Marche. Mr. Marche is the author of "The Next Civil War.". "Not one man in America wanted the Civil War, or expected or intended it," Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams ...

Atlantic History

How to Subscribe

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

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

Other Subject Areas

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

Slavery Role in the American Literature Essay

Identify and discuss how Stowe uses biblical images to incite a strong response to oppose slavery

Discuss how Jacobs’ journals reinforce the attitude of the Whites that slaves were inferior and/or childlike and needed to be “parented.”

How the beliefs of Lincoln about God and the country are reflected in his address to congress. How do you think he perceived of his role as president within this “spiritual” conflict

Reference List

1.2: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature

Learning Objectives

Slavery and the Debate over Abolition

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

Anti-Slavery Activists

Plea for the Suppression of the Slave Trade

The Conflict Between Christianity and Slavery

Sojourner Truth

Harriet Tubman--the Moses of Her People

Increasing Tide of Anti-slavery Organizations

William Lloyd Garrison--Abolitionist Strategies

Popularizing Anti-Slavery Sentiment

Abolitionist Songsters

Suffer the Children

Fugitive Slave Law

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

Anthony Burns--Capture of A Fugitive Slave

Growing Sectionalism

Distribution of Slaves

Militant Abolition

Frederick Douglass on John Brown

"The Book That Made This Great War"

Uncle Tom's Cabin--Theatrical Productions

ENGL405: The American Renaissance

18 Early American Slave Narratives

Briton Hammon

Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

John Marrant

Olaudah Equiano

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Perspective on the Slave Narrative

Guiding Questions

Learning Objectives

Lesson Plan Details

Activity 1. Slave Narrative as Historical Record

Activity 2. Slave Narrative and Literary Style

Activity 3. The Narrative of Abolitionism

Activity 4. Slave Narrative as Autobiography

Selected EDSITEment Websites

Related on EDSITEment

Harriet A. Jacobs

Critical Essays The Slave Narrative Tradition in African American Literature

Article contents

Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation and Freedom

Memoirs and Slave Narratives

Ukawsaw Gronniosaw's Narrative

Popular Literature: Types of Narrative

Spiritual Focus

Abolitionist Focus

Progressive Goals

Slave Narrative: Formal Style

American Antislavery Literature

Related Papers

RELATED PAPERS

RELATED TOPICS

ENG 273 - African American Literature: Slavery and Freedom

New All-in-One Search

Finding Online or Streaming Films in the RCCC Library

The New Movie ‘Civil War’ Matters for Reasons Different Than You Think

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS