Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino tackles slavery in the upcoming movie “Django Unchained”

Is anybody ready for Pulp Fiction creator Quentin Tarantino’s take on slavery in the Old South? It’s coming.

Tarantino, a director and screenwriter whose films are known for earthy and witty dialogue, eccentric story lines, and violence (and eccentric violence) is currently making a movie titled Django Unchained about a freed slave who seeks revenge against his former slavemaster. Django Unchained follows on the heels of Tarantino’s World War II movie Inglourious Basterds, about a group of Jewish American military operatives who seek to assassinate members of the Nazi leadership. That movie garnered positive reviews and was Tarantino’s highest grossing film.

Wikipedia says this about the Django Unchained:

The film stemmed from Tarantino’s desire to produce a spaghetti western set in America’s Deep South; Tarantino has called the proposed style “a southern,” stating that he wanted “to do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they’re genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and other countries don’t really deal with because they don’t feel they have the right to”.

…Jamie Foxx has since been confirmed to play Django. Tarantino regular Samuel L. Jackson will play Stephen, a wise, proud house slave. Leonardo DiCaprio has also been officially cast in the role of Calvin Candie, the primary antagonist in the film. Kurt Russell had been cast as Ace Woody, a “vile and sadistic trainer of slaves who are forced to fight in death matches for a plantation owner.” Kerry Washington has been cast as Broomhilda, the “long-suffering slave wife of Django.”

Other cast members include Dennis Christopher as Candie family lawyer Leonide ‘Leo’ Moguy, Laura Cayouette as Candie’s sister, Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly, M.C. Gainey and Tom Savini as Big John and Ellis Brittle, two of the slave owners who separate Django and Broomhilda, Anthony LaPaglia and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Australian brothers, Jano and an unnamed character, respectively, who encounter Django while escorting slaves to a fight. However, Gordon-Levitt has not fully committed to the film, due to possible scheduling issues, and Gerald McRaney and Michael K. Williams in unknown roles. Tarantino-collaborator RZA was cast as a slave named Thadeus. According to ReservoirWatchDogs.com, Sacha Baron Cohen was cast in the role as gambler Scotty Harmony who wishes to purchase Django’s wife from Calvin Candie.

The film is scheduled for release on Christmas day, 2012, but don’t let the release date fool you: this will not be a film for the whole family to enjoy. If it’s a Tarantino movie, there will be blood. In fact, I can see the puns already: “What’s black, white, and red all over? It’s Quentin Tarantino’s new film about the Old South!” (Well, that seemed punny to me.)

PS: Black filmmaker Spike Lee has criticized Tarantino for the frequent use of the N-word in his movies. It will be interesting to see what the N-word count will be in this new film.

PPS: In an earlier interview, Tarantino said that among historical figures, he was most facsinated by the violent white abolitionist John Brown. Brown is most famous for trying to incite a slave rebellion in western Virginia.

Now, a Tarantino movie featuring John Brown… I’d pay to see that, no questions asked. I can only dream it will happen.

Note: See the follow-up to this story: Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” Hits the Big Screen

Henry Highland Garnet’s Call to Rebellion: “…rather die freemen, than live to be slaves… let your motto be resistance!”

The African American abolitionist and activist Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882) was a religious man. And on this day, he was raising Hell.

Garnet was all of 27 years old when, in August of 1843, he addressed the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York. The meeting was part of the decades long National Negro Convention Movement, in which northern free blacks met to discuss strategies for achieving racial equality and civil rights for freemen in the North, and emancipation and liberty for enslaved blacks in the South. These discussions often centered on the benefits of using “moral suasion versus political action” – that is, whether or not blacks and whites should use moral persuasion to convince American society to end racial prejudice, or, engage in direct political action to gain liberty and equality for people of African descent. (The influential white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was among those who eschewed political activism.)

Garnet had a much more radical approach to the problems of those in bondage. The son of a fugitive slave (one source indicates his grandfather was a Mandingo warrior prince), the youthful Garnet and his family were always fearful of being taken by slave catchers; his father once made a narrow escape from slave hunters, and his sister was taken into slavery for a time. His life experiences may have made him more open to solutions that went beyond suasion and politics, because in August of 1843, Garnet was openly calling for a slave rebellion.

Garnet’s speech was not just some angry rant. He grew up in New York City, with acquaintances such as Alexander Crummell, Samuel Ringgold Ward, James McCune Smith, Ira Aldridge, and Charles Reason, men who are among a who’s who of early 19th century northern black leaders. He attended a free school in New York, and sailed on ships to Cuba as a cabin boy. He had theological training and served as a Presbyterian pastor. Garnet was educated and worldly, and his speech reflected that, with references to pride in African heritage, slavery policy in the colonial and Revolutionary War eras, and the global context of abolitionism. This was in addition to his speech’s major themes that slavery was anti-Christian, and resistance to slavery pro-Christian; and that manhood and honor dictated that (male) slaves use “every means” necessary to liberate themselves.

It’s probably too much to say that in tone, Garnet sounded to his contemporaries like Malcolm X did to his. But Garnet’s righteous and religious anger, and his open call for manhood-based armed resistance, was surely uncomfortable to the more pacifist natures of current day black and white abolitionists. Fellow convention attendee Frederick Douglass, who was associated with William Lloyd Garrison, made a rebuttal to Garnet’s speech; unfortunately, Douglass’ speech did not survive for us to read it today.

An abridged version of Garnet’s speech is below. More about Garnet can be found here, here, and here. More about Garnet’s speech is here, here, and here (full text).

(Notes: The phrase “Rather Die Freemen, Than Live to be Slaves” is used on the flag of the 3rd Regiment, United States Colored Infantry. The phrase “let your motto be resistance” is the title of a book and an exhibit of African American portraits.)
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This is an abridged version of Garnet’s speech to the 1843 National Negro Convention, which is often referred to as his “Address to the Slaves”:

BRETHREN AND FELLOW CITIZENS: Your Brethren of the North, East, and West have been accustomed to meet together in National Conventions, to sympathize with each Other, and to weep over your unhappy condition. In these meetings we have addressed all classes of the free, but we have never until this time, sent a word of consolation and advice to you. We have been contented in sitting still and mourning over your sorrows, earnestly hoping that before this day your sacred liberty would have been restored. But, we have hoped in vain. Years have rolled on, and tens of thousands have been borne on streams of blood and tears, to the shores of eternity. While you have been oppressed, we have also been partakers with you; nor can we be free while you are enslaved. We, therefore, write to you as being bound with you.

Trivia: Sumter’s Law and the “Black Currency”

Most of us know from American history class that the shooting war between the United States and the Confederate States started at Ft. Sumter outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Here’s some trivia about the man who gave Ft. Sumter its name.

Thomas Sumter (1734–1832), nicknamed the “Carolina Gamecock,” was a Revolutionary War hero and a member of the US Congress. As noted in wikipedia:

Thomas Sumter by Rembrandt Peale, via Wikipedia

In February 1776, Sumter was elected Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Regiment of the South Carolina Line of which he was later appointed Colonel. He subsequently was appointed Brigadier General of the South Carolina militia, a post he held until the end of the war. He participated in several battles in the early months of the war, including the campaign to prevent an invasion of Georgia. Perhaps his greatest military achievement was his partisan campaigning that contributed to the decision by Lord Cornwallis to leave the Carolinas for Virginia, where Cornwallis met his fate at Yorktown in October 1781.

He acquired the nickname “The Carolina Gamecock” for his fierce fighting tactics, regardless of his size. A British General commented that Sumter “fought like a gamecock,” and Cornwallis paid him the finest tribute when he described the Gamecock as his greatest plague.

After the Revolution, Sumter served South Carolina as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives… (and) was elected a U. S. Senator…

“Gamecock” is one of the several traditional nicknames for a native of South Carolina. The University of South Carolina’s official nickname is the “Fighting Gamecocks,” though since 1903 the teams have been simply known as the “Gamecocks.”

Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor was named for Sumter after the War of 1812.

What I’ve found interesting is the enlistment bonus policy that Sumter used to attract men in South Carolina to fight for the Patriot cause. As Michael Lee Lanning notes in his book African Americans in the Revolutionary War,

Although neither South Carolina nor Georgia permitted black enlistment, both states did allow slaves to be used as bounties to induce white volunteers. In April 1781, Gen Thomas Sumter of South Carolina offered slaves to any white man volunteering for ten months of service. New recruits were to receive one grown, healthy slave, while those with prior service could receive up to four blacks for reenlisting.

In February 1782 the South Carolina legislature formalized “Sumter’s Law.” In addition to promising a healthy slave between the ages of ten and forty to any white who enlisted, the legislature ruled that recruiters were to receive a bonus of one slave for every twenty-five whites enlisted during a two-month period.Since neither Sumter nor the South Carolina legislature had any slaves of their own to barter for enlistments, they honored the bounty with slaves captured or confiscated from Loyalists (to the British).

Georgia broadened the scale of the use of slaves as enlistment bonuses. The state rewarded white soldiers with slaves for their part in successful battles, paid public officials with slaves, and used slaves as tender in exchange for military provisions and supplies. Again, the source of this “black currency” was the plantations of the Loyalists.

How ironic that the “black currency” used to wage the Revolutionary War would be the spark that led to the Civil War.

FYI, Virginia also used slaves as an enlistment bonus – see here.

Soldiers’ Memorial at Lincoln University, Missouri

Main statue for the Soldiers’ Memorial at Lincoln University, Missouri
Source: Lincoln University, Missouri

Deprived of freedom and citizenship rights, thousands of black men from Missouri joined the Union army, determined to fight for emancipation and equality. Deprived of an education, the Missouri men of the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantry took another determined, but unprecedented action: in 1866, they pooled their money to fund the first and only school established by soldiers of African descent.

Liberty and learning were indeed precious commodities for Missouri African Americans at the start of the Civil War. In 1860, 118,500 blacks lived in the state, with 115,000 in slavery, and just 3,500 free. In 1847 the Missouri General Assembly passed a law forbidding blacks, slave or free, to be taught to read or write. As noted in the book Missouri’s Black Heritage, “this was a reflection of a slaveholder’s fear that literacy might lead to (a slave) rebellion.” This “Black Code” prohibition taught Missouri blacks a lesson they would not forget: education was a force for their liberation and uplift.

The legacy left by the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantry (USCI) – which is now called Lincoln University – commemorates those men in a monument that sits on the University’s campus. What follows is a brief summary of how this came to be.

Missouri African Americans and the Civil War

When the Civil War began, Missouri was a slave state that remained loyal to the Union. (Although it’s more correct to say that the state had large pro-Union and pro-seccession/Confederate factions, with the Union faction and military able to maintain control of the state government.) In order to keep the support of Missouri and other Border slave states (Delaware, Kentucky, and Maryland), the United States government initially declared that it would not disturb slavery where it stood. Of note: in August 1861, the abolitionist Union General John C. Frémont, as part of his martial law policy to defend the state, declared that bondsmen of disloyal slave-owners in Missouri were free. In September 1861, President Abraham Lincoln told Frémont to rescind the order, saying it lacked congressional and executive authorization.

But as the war wore on, military necessity determined that the Union would accept, and even seek, the support of African Americans, even in states with loyal slaveholders like Missouri. By 1864, Union enlistment and recruitment was expanded to include slaves in the Border states; army enlistment automatically freed the former slaves. As noted by Aaron Astor in his essay Black Soldiers and White Violence in Kentucky and Missouri (from the book The Great Task Remaining Before Us: Reconstruction as America’s Continuing Civil War),

By January 15, 1864, dozens of slaves enlisted in central Missouri’s slave-rich Howard County alone. By the end of February, more than 3,700 African Americans enlisted in Missouri, with central Missouri’s Little Dixie producing a significant portion… in Missouri, 39 percent (of military-age African Americans) joined the Union army… these numbers downplay the total of black recruits in the western border states, as many joined in neighboring free states. It is very likely that a significant percentage of the 2,080 African Americans credited to Kansas actually came from Missouri. (Editor’s note: Kansas had less than 700 African American residents in 1860, according to the US Census.)

In the rolls of the United States Colored Troops, Missouri is credited with providing 8,344 soldiers. As mentioned earlier, it’s very likely that many Missouri blacks enlisted in nearby Kansas, and some were probably members of the famous First Kansas Colored Infantry.

According to the site Missouri Digital Heritage, “the first black regiment from Missouri was recruited in June 1863 at Schofield Barracks in St. Louis. More than 300 men enlisted. The regiment was called the First Regiment of Missouri Colored Infantry. It later became the 62nd U.S. Regiment of Colored Infantry.” Sometime after, the 2nd Missouri Colored Infantry was formed; it was renamed the 65th Regiment, United States Colored Infantry. Other black Missouri regiments are noted in this post at The USCT Chronicle.

The History of Lincoln University, née Lincoln Institute

After the war, soldiers from the 62nd and 65th USCI raised over $5000 to found a school for Missouri’s freedmen. Established in 1866, the school was called Lincoln Institute. A key figure in the creation of the school was Richard Baxter Foster, an abolitionist white officer who became the Institute’s first principal, and whose image is featured in the Soldiers’ Memorial Monument. The history of the school, and the efforts to create a monument to the soldiers who founded it, is told in this video:

 

John Trowbridge’s Visit to the Desolate South (Post-War Atlanta)

This illustration shows a group of freedmen in Atlanta, Georgia, circa 1865, holding a “street convention” to discuss their political status in the wake of the Civil War and emancipation.
Source: The South: A tour of its battlefields and ruined cities, a journey through the desolated states, and talks with the people, by John Trowbridge.
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In the summer of 1865, and in the following winter, I made two visits to the South, spending four months in eight of the principal States which had lately been in rebellion. I saw the most noted battle-fields of the war. I made acquaintance with officers and soldiers of both sides. I followed in the track of the destroying armies. I travelled by railroad, by steamboat, by stage-coach, and by private conveyance; meeting and conversing with all sorts of people, from high State officials to “low-down” whites and negroes; endeavoring, at all times and in all places, to receive correct impressions of the country, of its inhabitants, of the great contest of arms just closed, and of the still greater contest of principles not yet terminated.

So began John Townsend Trowbridge (1827-1916) in his book The South: A tour of its battlefields and ruined cities, a journey through the desolated states, and talks with the people. (The full, ridiculously long title of the book is The South: a tour of its battlefields and ruined cities, a journey through the desolated states, and talks with the people; being a description of the present state of the country, its agriculture, railroad, business and finances; giving an account of Confederate misrule, and of the sufferings, necessities and mistakes, political views, social condition and prospects, of the aristocracy, middle class, poor whites and Negroes; including visits to patriot graves and rebel prisons, and embracing special notes on the free labor system, education and moral elevation of the freemen, also, on plans of reconstruction and inducements to emigration; from personal observations and experience during months of Southern travel.)

Trowbridge wrote The South under commission of L. Stebbins, a Hartford, Connecticut, publisher. Trowbridge’s “tour” of the post-war South was one of several such first hand accounts of the region that were produced by the press. His book won praise for its impartial, fair-minded approach to the subject, and the detail and breadth of his study.

I purchased a copy of The South during a recent visit to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and found it an interesting and compelling read. The original version is in the public domain; it can be viewed by going here: 
http://www.archive.org/details/southtourofitsba7228trow

Below, I have provided an interesting excerpt from the book about post-war Atlanta. Large swaths of that city were devastated during Sherman’s march to the sea in late 1864, and the ruin was still evident when Trowbridge visited the area the following year. This excerpt touches on several subjects, including:
• the harshness of post-war life in the South, especially for freed blacks
• Union support among poor southern whites
• relations between blacks and poor whites in the South
• views on who was responsible for some of the ruin in Atlanta (this differs from the view that Sherman’s Union forces were to blame for all of the burning in the city)
• African American dialogue concerning their political future in the post-war South.
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From John Trowbridge’s The South:

IN AND ABOUT ATLANTA (Chapter LXIII)

A sun-bright morning did not transmute the town into a place of very great attractiveness. Everywhere were ruins and rubbish, mud and mortar and misery. The burnt streets were rapidly rebuilding; but in the mean while hundreds of the inhabitants, white and black, rendered homeless by the destruction of the city, were living in wretched hovels, which made the suburbs look like a fantastic encampment of gypsies or Indians.

Some of the negro huts were covered entirely with ragged fragments of tin-roofing from the burnt government and railroad buildings. Others were constructed partly of these irregular blackened patches, and partly of old boards, with roofs of huge, warped, slouching shreds of tin, kept from blowing away by stones placed on the top. Notwithstanding the ingenuity displayed in piecing these rags together, they formed but a miserable shelter at the best. “In dry weather, it’s good as anybody’s houses. But they leaks right bad when it rains; then we have to pile our things up to keep ‘em dry.” So said a colored mother of six children, whose husband was killed “fighting for de Yankees,” and who supported her family of little ones by washing. “Sometimes I gits along tolerable; sometimes right slim; but dat’s de way wid everybody; — times is powerful hard right now.”

Ground Breaking for US Colored Troop Memorial Monument, March 4, 2012, in Lexington Park, Maryland

The Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions is inviting one and all to the Ground Breaking Ceremony for the United States Colored Troops (USCT) Memorial Monument to be installed in Lexington Park, Maryland. Lexington Park is in St Mary’s County, MD, and is 90 miles south of Baltimore, MD, and 65 miles south of Washington, DC.

The event will be held on Sunday, March 4, 2012, at 2:00 pm at John G. Lancaster Park, 21550 Willows Road, Lexington Park, Maryland. For information contact:
• Idolia Shubrooks – 301.863.2150
• Nathaniel Scroggins, President (UCAC) – 301.862.9635
• Shell Jackson – 240.431.8880

The USCT Memorial Monument will be dedicated and unveiled at 10:00 am on June 16, 2012 at the 2012 Juneteenth Celebration. Some prospective images of the monument are here and here.

The website for the Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions has more details about the Monument. This is an excerpt:

The Unified Committee for Afro-American Contributions (UCAC) Monument Committee has initiated an historical project to educate the citizenry and preserve local, state and national history by erecting a memorial monument to honor United States Colored Troops. It will recognize Congressional Medal of Honor recipients and all Union soldiers and sailors from St. Mary’s County who served during the Civil War. UCAC is working in partnership with the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW). Together we will bring the lives of these American heroes to the attention of the public, so that their sacrifices will never be forgotten.

The United States Colored Troops were regiments of the United States Army and Navy during the Civil War that were composed of African American soldiers and sailors.  Recruiting stations were set up at various places by the Union.  This action was taken despite the complaints of plantation owners who depended on slave labor for local agricultural needs.  In St. Mary’s County during the 1800s there were more than 6,500 slaves and over 600 were recruited as USCT to fight with the Union to end slavery in the United States. This history is a vital part of our local heritage, and this project will create a legacy which will serve to educate the community and preserve our history for future generations.

We are proud that St. Mary’s County produced two USCT recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Pvt. William H. Barnes and Sgt. James H. Harris. These sons of St. Mary’s County were awarded the Medal of Honor for their gallantry in the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm also known as the Battle of New Market Heights (Sept. 1864) in Varina, Henrico County, Virginia.

Nationally recognized sculptor Gary Casteel will build the monument.  Mr. Casteel’s work is highly regarded and may be seen in collections of the National Park Service, state and local governments, corporations and private enterprises.  Visit Mr. Casteel’s website for more information regarding this talented artist:www.garycasteel.com.  The site for the monument has been donated by St. Mary’s County in John G. Lancaster Park in Lexington Park, Maryland.

Hat tip to Yulanda Burgess at usctbrigade@yahoogroups.com for the info.

Dr. John Rock, 1858: “The black man is not a coward… Of course they will fight.”

Dr. John Rock
Source: Harper’s Weekly, February 25, 1865; from Wikipedia

Dr. John Rock knew a war was coming. And he had no doubt: his people were ready to strike a blow.

John Rock was an American renaissance man. Born in 1825 to free black parents in New Jersey, he would move to Philadelphia and then Boston, becoming a teacher, dentist, doctor, lawyer, abolitionist, and orator along the way. Among his many accomplishments: he was the first black attorney allowed to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. To both blacks and whites, he was surely seen as a man of high standing.

On March 5, 1858, Dr. Rock delivered a speech in Boston as part of the annual Crispus Attucks Day observance organized by Boston’s black abolitionists in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. That decision infamously stated that the black race was “so far inferior they… had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” But John Rock felt inferior to no man.

Rock shared the platform that day with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker, leading figures of the American abolitionist movement. Many abolitionists eschewed violence as a means of challenging slavery, and avoided references to violence in their writing and speeches. But the language of the Dred Scott decision amounted to fighting words, and Rock would have his say.

Rock’s speech is notable for its prediction of a civil war, and the prominent role that blacks would play in it; its expression of black pride; its call for black self-improvement; and its subtle or overt wit and humor. But mainly, it rails against the idea that the negro lacked the courage and will to seek his own freedom; this was a degradation that Rock could not tolerate. His talk appears below, with a minor abridgment. The whole speech is here.
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Ladies and Gentlemen: You will not expect a lengthened speech from me tonight. My health is too poor to allow me to indulge much in speechmaking. But I have not been able to resist the temptation to unite with you in this demonstration of respect for some of my noble but misguided ancestors.

White Americans have taken great pains to try to prove that we are cowards. We are often insulted with the assertion, that if we had had the courage of the Indians or the white man, we would never have submitted to be slaves. I ask if Indians and white men have never been slaves? The white man tested the Indian’s courage here when he had his organized armies, his battlegrounds, his places of retreat, with everything to hope for and everything to lose.

The position of the African slave has been very different. Seized a prisoner of war, unarmed, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to a distant country among what to him were worse than cannibals; brutally beaten, halfstarved, closely watched by armed men, with no means of knowing their own strength or the strength of their enemies, with no weapons, and without a probability of success. But if the white man will take the trouble to fight the black man in Africa or in Hayti, and fight him as fair as the black man will fight him there—if the black man does not come off victor, I am deceived in his prowess. But, take a man, armed or unarmed, from his home, his country, or his friends, and place him among savages, and who is he that would not make good his retreat? “Discretion is the better part of valor”… but for a man to resist where he knows it will destroy him, shows more fool-hardiness than courage.

There have been many Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Americans enslaved in Africa, but I have never heard that they successfully resisted any government. They always resort to running indispensables. The courage of the Anglo-Saxon is best illustrated in his treatment of the negro. A score or two of them can pounce upon a poor negro, tie and beat him, and then call him a coward because he submits. Many of their most brilliant victories have been achieved in the same manner.

Our true and tried friend, Rev. Theodore Parker said, in his speech at the State House, a few weeks since, that “the stroke of the axe would have settled the question long ago, but the black man would not strike.” Mr. Parker makes a very low estimate of the courage of his race, if he means that one, two or three millions of those ignorant and cowardly black slaves could, without means, have brought to their knees five, ten, or twenty millions of intelligent brave white men, backed up by a rich oligarchy. But I know of no one who is more familiar with the true character of the Anglo-Saxon race than Mr. Parker. I will not dispute this point with him, but I will thank him or any one else to tell us how it could have been done. His remark calls to my mind the day which is to come, when one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight.

But when he says that “the black man would not strike,” I am prepared to say that he does us great injustice. The black man is not a coward. The history of the bloody struggles for freedom in Hayti, in which the blacks whipped the French and the English, and gained their independence, in spite of the perfidy of that villainous First Consul, will be a lasting refutation of the malicious aspersions of our enemies.

The Anti-Slavery Alphabet: a pamphlet from 1846

Source: Image from The Anti-Slavery Alphabet pamphlet at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History

The Anti-Slavery Alphabet was a poem-based pamphlet that was produced for an 1846 Anti-slavery Fair in Philadelphia. As noted by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History,

In the January 1847 Pennsylvania Freeman, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society reported profitable sales at its December 1846 fair of “an Anti-Slavery alphabet, written and presented to the Fair by Hannah and Mary Townsend, of this city.” The slim volume targeted young readers, with the hope of inspiring a new generation of abolitionists.

The Alphabet consists of sixteen leaves, printed on one side, with the printed pages facing each other and hand-sewn into a paper cover. Each of the letter illustrations is hand-colored.

Despite its simplicity – the poem was clearly made to be memorized by children – the Anti-Slavery Alphabet is a compelling and comprehensive condemnation of slavery. It discusses all the critiques of the institution: the separation of family members; its use of physical cruelty; and the overall unfair treatment of slaves, who are “Brothers with a skin of… darker hue” but nonetheless “dear” in the eyes of God.

Notably, the poem takes Northerners to task, saying, “M is the Merchant of the north, Who buys what slaves produce— So they are stolen, whipped and worked, For his, and for our use.”

The pamphlet begins with another poem titled To Our Little Readers which tells the young, “there’s much that you can do… plead with men that they buy not slaves again.” It also suggests that young people boycott slave produced goods.

A variant of the poem is presented in this YouTube video, titled “The Alphabet of Slavery”:
 

 
The text of the pamphlet is shown below, and taken from the EBook version from Project Gutenberg; see the note at the bottom of this blog entry. The pamphlet is also available for browsing at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History as a slideshow of images of each page.
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TO OUR LITTLE READERS.

Listen, little children, all,

Listen to our earnest call:

You are very young, ’tis true,

But there’s much that you can do.

Even you can plead with men

That they buy not slaves again,

And that those they have may be

Quickly set at liberty.

They may hearken what you say,

Though from us they turn away.

Sometimes, when from school you walk,

You can with your playmates talk,

Tell them of the slave child’s fate,

Motherless and desolate.

And you can refuse to take

Candy, sweetmeat, pie or cake,

Saying “no”—unless ’tis free—

“The slave shall not work for me.”

Thus, dear little children, each

May some useful lesson teach;

Thus each one may help to free

This fair land from slavery.

 

A is an Abolitionist—

A man who wants to free

The wretched slave—and give to all

An equal liberty.

B is a Brother with a skin

Of somewhat darker hue,

But in our Heavenly Father’s sight,

He is as dear as you.

C is the Cotton-field, to which

This injured brother’s driven,

When, as the white-man’s slave, he toils,

From early morn till even.

Betrayed by a Fortune-Teller, He Dresses Like a Woman: An Odd Tale from the Underground Railroad

Generic crystal ball/fortune teller like image
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Lewis Williams… dude, what were you thinking?

Lewis Williams was a slave to one Marshall, in the State of Kentucky. He escaped when he was quite a boy, and stopped in the city of Cincinnati for several years. It was thought by some of his friends not necessary to send him to Canada, because, having escaped at an early age, he would soon grow out of his master’s knowledge. So he was permitted to remain with a friend, a short distance outside the city limits. When he came to manhood, he became acquainted with a girl, to whom he became much attached. He paid every attention to her, and thus evinced his own love; but not being very certain as to whether he was loved in return, he thought he would ascertain this piece of information from a Dutch woman, who was known in that city as a “fortune-teller.”

He proceeded to this woman’s place of business, and said to her he wanted his fortune told. She said she must first have the sum of 4s. 2d., or one dollar, before she could tell anything; and it must be paid in silver, or the cup would not turn well. Lewis at once advanced the sum required.

She then commenced by asking him to tell his origin. He began as follows:–”I was born in the State of Kentucky, and was held as a slave until a few years ago. I escaped, and came to this city.” To this the fortune-teller listened with profound attention. She asked Lewis to tell his master’s name, which he did. After further details, she was made acquainted with the post-office address of the master. She then informed Lewis that he would be successful, and that the girl was deeply in love with him. Besides, she told him in three months’ time he would be married to her. This was encouraging news to Lewis. He felt that his money had been spent for useful information.

As soon as Lewis left the house, however, she told her husband of Lewis’s revelations, and they immediately addressed a letter to Mr. Marshall, Lewis’s master, saying if he would pay them the sum of 200 dollars they would tell him where he might find his slave. Lewis’s master was glad to accept the proposal, and came immediately to Cincinnati, and paid the fortune-teller the sum required. Lewis was soon arrested by one of the marshals of the United States, and brought before Commissioner Carpenter, of the said city.

But Lewis had help in the name of Rev. William Troy, a local abolitionist. Troy notes that fortunately for Lewis, they all look alike:

The news of the arrest was soon noised abroad; and, as I went out to see what was the matter, I met the marshals having the boy in custody. I went immediately to a lawyer, John Jolliffe, Esq., who is always ready to plead in such cases, without any charge whatever. He, without delay, repaired to the court house, in order to appear as the boy’s counsel.

I went to spread the news among the coloured people of the city, in order that some plan might be devised to get the boy out of the court house, if possible. We became a sort of committee of ways and means. At last, we concluded that our best plan would be to crowd the court room, and get the prisoner free by some stratagem. There was a man in our company who was very like the prisoner in complexion, and it was arranged that he should occupy the prisoner’s place temporarily, while he should put his own hat upon the prisoner’s head, and thus allow him to make his way to freedom. The wink given Lewis was understood; the hat was placed upon Lewis’s head, and he immediately moved slowly out of the chair, and this other person took his place in the chair.

The attention of the marshal at this time was attracted by certain points in dispute between the counsel, and the prisoner by this time had made his way through the great crowd, on his hands and knees, to the door, and out he slipped and made to the forest. He went as though he was on the most urgent errand. When the point in dispute was partially settled, the marshal missed the prisoner. He exclaimed, “Where is the boy?” Some person standing at the door out of which the boy had passed, said, “The child left some time ago; no use to look, for the creature is going to the Queen; he don’t like this country,” &c. This was quite tantalising to the marshal; but the fact was, the boy was gone: and great excitement consequently prevailed throughout the city.

But Lewis was not yet gone. How would he escape? There’s always the old cross-dressing trick:

Wow!: Memorial to the Denmark Vesey ‘Slave Revolt’ Conspiracy To Be Built in South Carolina

I was very surprised when I read this story at the Charleston Post and Courier.com, dated February 2010, about a monument that is planned for Charleston, SC:

In an event sure to rekindle the racially polarized debate over Denmark Vesey’s place in history, a site in Hampton Park was dedicated Monday for a monument to the man hanged for plotting a slave rebellion in Charleston. (Note: The article includes a model of the memorial.)

To the local politicians, religious leaders and historians at the event, Vesey was a civil rights leader acting on a universal desire for justice that unites all people. Monument designer Ed Dwight favorably compared Vesey to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But this is Charleston, where the hanging of a portrait of Vesey in the municipal auditorium in 1976 — more than 150 years after Vesey was himself publicly hanged — prompted much criticism, and the theft of the painting. “It was very controversial,” College of Charleston history professor Bernard Powers Jr. said. “People were writing to The (Charleston, SC) News and Courier expressing outrage that the portrait of a criminal could be hung in a public place.”

[Charleston mayor Joseph] Riley described Vesey as an important civil rights figure, part of the “substantially untold story of African-American history and life in this community and this country, and their role in building America… We tell these untold stories so the truth will set us free.”

There is no doubt that the story of Denmark Vesey is compelling. Wikipedia provides a summary:

In 1781, Vesey was purchased by Captain Joseph Vesey from the then-Danish Caribbean island of St. Thomas. He labored briefly in French Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), and then was settled in Charleston, South Carolina as a youth, where Joseph Vesey kept him as a domestic slave. On November 9, 1799, Denmark Vesey won $1500 in a city lottery. He bought his own freedom and began working as a carpenter. Although briefly a Presbyterian, Vesey co-founded a branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816. The church was temporarily shut down by white authorities in 1818 and again in 1820.

Inspired by the revolutionary spirit and actions of slaves during the 1791 Haitian Revolution, and furious at the closing of the African Church, Vesey began to plan a slave rebellion. His insurrection, which was to take place on Bastille Day, July 14, 1822, became known to thousands of blacks throughout Charleston and along the Carolina coast. The plot called for Vesey and his group of slaves and free blacks to slay their owners and temporarily seize the city of Charleston. Vesey and his followers planned to sail to Haiti to escape retaliation.

Two slaves opposed to Vesey’s scheme leaked the plot. Charleston authorities charged 131 men with conspiracy. In total, 67 men were convicted and 35 hanged, including Denmark Vesey.

It’s important to note that no actual slave revolt took place. Vesey and his people were basically tried on conspiracy charges.

I admit to being surprised that something as contentious as this – a memorial to a person who was accused of planning a slave revolt – is being built in South Carolina, of all places. The state has been embroiled in controversies over the presentation of history, such as the display of the Confederate flag on the state capital grounds, and the Secession Ball held last December in Charleston to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the date that South Carolina seceded from the Union. (Let me take this opportunity to make the obligatory disclaimer that the Vesey memorial is about commemoration, not celebration.)

But perhaps I’m overreacting. It could just be that things have progressed to the point that it’s now possible to place unpleasant events like the Vesey Conspiracy into the public memory, even in South Carolina. That is something to celebrate.

EDIT: Upon reflection, it strikes me that the fact that the Vesey incident was a conspiracy, and not an actual revolt, made it more palatable as a public memorial. If this had been a revolt where people had been killed, it might have been too controversial for a public space.

The “house negro” and the “field negro”; and the case of the Harrison Berry, the Property of S. W. Price / Part 2

Continued from Part 1


Pages from the pamphlet Slavery and Abolitionism, as Viewed by a Georgia Slave. By Harrison Berry, the Property of S. W. Price, Covington, Georgia; 1861
Source: Documenting the American South (DocSouth) online collection at the University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. See details at the end of this blog entry.

These are the words of a Georgia slave, in 1861:

We see the Apostles teaching peace all through the New Testament. We see, in the Epistles, they exhort Servants to be obedient to their masters; and not only in words do we find this, but in all their practice. For, on one occasion, when a Slave had run away from his master, and went to Paul, he does not hesitate a moment, but sends him back to his lawful owner. This shows that Christ and the Apostles had quite a different view of Slavery to that of our modern factionists of the United States…

We will now examine some of the leading principles of the Abolition party. It is not that I am opposed to freedom, that actuates me to address them in the manner which I do, for I believe it to be one of the greatest blessings earthly, when not contaminated with fanatical dispositions.

But rather would I die, were I a citizen of the United States, than to disturb the peace, or act in any way that would be detrimental to the onward progress and prosperity of my country. For, of all the Governments that now exist, or have ever existed, this perhaps is the least contaminated with injustice–the Constitution granting to every native born, or adopted citizen, the freedom of speech, and the power, at the ballot-box, of making their own laws to be governed by. What a lesson it ought to be to the American citizen, to view four-fifths of Europe and Asia having no more power to make the laws by which they are governed than the Slaves of this country who are not citizens!

…

Now, as the master waits all night for the return of the Slave that has run away from him, seeing, in the morning, he is absent, he goes over to his neighbor’s house, and asks him to look out for him. Says he, “I went to town yesterday after my paper, and when I had gotten it, I saw a statement of the organization of an Abolition Convention, resolving that Slavery was a sin, and a reproach upon any free people, and that they would never desist from its agitation, until they had eradicated the last string that bound it to the country.

“I, of course, became somewhat grum when I saw it; and, on going to the field, after getting home, in that grum state, I, perhaps, might have been too much vexed to have judged correctly the amount of work that should have been done. I, at any rate, thought they had not done enough, and scolded Tom for not having done more; he commenced muttering, which only added fuel to the fire already kindled within me; so I was in a bad fix to take his insolence, and made at him, when he ran away. I would like to get hold of him, for if any of those Abolitionists should happen to get hold of him, they would carry him off.”

Now, let us hear the consolation of his neighbor. He says: “Yes; and let me tell you what happened at my house last Sunday. As I was going to the lot, I saw my Bob have a newspaper, reading very attentively; and, on going to him, and asking him to let me see it, I found that he was reading the paper that had the very same proceedings of that Convention of the Abolitionists you were speaking of. So I lurked around my negroes’ houses that night, to see if I could hear Bob say anything about the Convention to the other negroes; and, sure enough I did, for I heard him tell them that they would not be Slaves much longer, for the Abolition party intended to set them all free, at the risk of their lives. He was going on at a terrible rate; and, on peeping through a crack, I saw two of Mr. Jones’ boys there too. So I slipped back to the house, and thought I would watch their manoeuvres the next morning; and when morning came, I found them to be dull, careless, and very slothful.

“So I took them up, and whipped every one of them, and gave Bob two hundred lashes; then I got on my horse and rode over to Mr. Jones’, and told him what I had heard Bob say in the presence of his two boys, and what I had done to mine. He called up his two boys and whipped them too. So you see how the thing is shaping. We must have our property protected against this diabolical set of Abolitionists, and our Legislatures must give us more power over our Slaves. And any man that will not agree to make the laws more binding on Slaves, can’t get my vote, nor any one else that I can in the least influence.”

- Harrison Berry, the Property of S. W. Price, Covington, Georgia, in his 1861 pamphlet Slavery and Abolitionism, as Viewed by a Georgia Slave.
****

Message to slaves, from one slave to another: listening to abolitionists will get your butt whipped. In case you didn’t know.

Sigh. As an African American living in the 21st century, it’s too easy to take derisive potshots at a 19th century slave who:

- tells his “brethren in bondage” that slavery is sanctioned by the Bible;

- says that if he was a citizen, he’d rather die than “disturb the peace” (as abolitionists were doing) because he lives in a place which offers its citizens all kinds of freedoms and rights; even as he acknowledges that he, as a slave and non-citizen, didn’t enjoy those freedoms and rights himself;

- warns that slaves who listen to abolitionists will get their butts whipped… as if they didn’t know.

But Harrison Berry – a slave and author of Slavery and Abolitionism, as Viewed by a Georgia Slave. By Harrison Berry, the Property of S. W. Price, Covington, Georgia, which was published in 1861 – lived in much different times. Slavery was nothing to joke about, and he clearly took his positions – a passioned defense of slavery and slave masters, and a biting critique of abolitionists and the Republican Party – very, very seriously.

More of his pamphlet is in part one of this two part blog entry; the entire document is here.

The pamphlet raises all kinds of questions: Just who was Harrison Berry? Did he actually write the pamphlet? If so, how was it that he was so literate and knowledgeable, in a state where teaching slaves to read was a minor offense punishable by a fine and/or whipping? Who was the intended audience? And what did he get out of it – financially or otherwise?

The “house negro” and the “field negro”; and the case of the Harrison Berry, the Property of S. W. Price / Part 1

 
Malcolm X had a way with words. Née Malcolm Little, and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he gained both fame and infamy as the spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Later in his short life, he left the Nation, renounced its racist views, and sought to form his own organizations that would uplift African Americans. An assassin’s bullet ended his life in 1965 at the age of 39.

Malcolm’s charisma, brutal honesty, humor, heart-felt sense of righteousness, directness, and fearlessness – many blacks understood it was dangerous to talk the way he did – made for many memorable speeches during the late 1950s and early 1960s. One of those was an address to a group of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) workers in Selma, Alabama in February 1865. The above video clip is an excerpt from the speech, which focuses on the tension and conflict between the “house negro” and the “field negro” during the slave era. His scathing comments pretty much speak for themselves.

Malcolm’s speech immediately came to mind when I recently learned of an 1861 pamphlet with the title Slavery and Abolitionism, as Viewed by a Georgia Slave. By Harrison Berry, the Property of S. W. Price, Covington, Georgia. This document is said to be written by a slave, Harrison Berry, who dutifully identifies himself as the property of his owner.

And what exactly was Berry’s view? It seems he had a way with words too, and here are some of them:

…You must recollect, fanatical sirs (Republicans and abolitionists), that the Slave children and their young masters and mistresses, are all raised up together. They suck together, play together, go a hunting together, go a fishing together, go in washing together, and, in a great many instances, eat together in the cotton-patch, sing, jump, wrestle, box, fight boy fights, and dance together; and every other kind of amusement that is calculated to bolt their hearts together when grown up.

You had better mind how you come here and jump aboard of our masters; for I tell you, though we sometimes fight among ourselves, if another man jumps on either, we both pitch into him. You must recollect that we are not oppressed here like your nominally free there. We can go into our masters’ houses and get plenty of good things to eat; and we can shake hands with the big-bugs of the country, and walk side-by-side with Congress members on the side-walks, and stand and converse with gentlemen of the highest rank, for hours at a time. So, in short, we can do anything, with the exceptions of those privileges wrested from us in consequence of your diabolical, infernal, Black Republican, Abolition, fanatical agitation…

TO MASTERS AND THEIR SLAVES.–Masters, I most beseechingly wish you to read the following to your Slaves, and tell them it is the request of one that is their brother in bondage. For I believe, if the Slaves were undeceived respecting their chance of enjoying freedom, any where within the incorporate limits of the United States, or, in fact, any where on the continent of North America, they would not change places with the poor white man North. But while they are deceived in believing that they are worse off, and worse treated, than any one else, it is natural that they should be dissatisfied. But if you remove this gloom from over their eyes, and enable them to see, not only their true position, but, also, that of the millions of the poor and oppressed, not only in Europe, Asia and Africa, but in the Northern States of America; and if hundreds of them, on plantations, even knew how hard run some are in the Southern cities to live comfortable, they could see, clearly, that their enslavement, under all circumstances by which it is surrounded, is not such a curse as they thought it was.

After they become convinced that their position is better than four-fifths of mankind, they will cast aside all foolish hopes of bettering their condition, and be enabled to view the four-fifths of the laboring population of the country as being in a far worse condition than they are themselves. This would create within them a satisfaction with their lots sufficient to make them trustworthy in the most difficult times.

TO MY BROTHER SLAVES.–Brethren, let us reason together. I expect to prove to you, in a very few words, that Slavery existed thousands of years ago, and that it was a lawful institution long before the enslavement of the Israelites. We read in the 14th chapter and 14th verse of Genesis, that Abraham numbered 318 servants, born in his own house. And we read again, in the same book, 50th chapter, 19th and 20th verses, where Joseph was speaking of his being sold into Egypt, that it was done to save much people alive. And, coming down to the Christian era, we find, all over the New Testament, admonitions to servants commanding them to obey their masters.

Desperate

“…but I did not want to go and I jumped out the window…”
Source: “A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States,” by Jesse Torrey, 1817 (Page 43)

When most people think of the “horrors” of slavery, the first thing that comes to mind is physical abuse, and perhaps second, the sexual exploitation of slave women by their male masters. But for the slaves, nothing was more devastating than the loss of family.

Slaves had no marriage or family rights. Slave owners could, and did, split up families as necessary to meet their needs or interests. It didn’t happen “all the time”; but if it happened once in a slave’s lifetime – that would be horrible enough, and something a slave would not forget or forgive.

So devastating was the loss of family that some slaves… just lost it. Or at least, that is the story told by New Yorker Jesse Torrey, Jr (or Jesse Torrey “Jun” in some places) in his book “A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States,” which was published in 1817. {The full title of the book is “A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States: with reflections on the practicability of restoring the moral rights of the Slave, without impairing the legal privileges of the possessor; and a Project of a Colonial Asylum for Free Persons of Colour: including Memoirs of Facts on the interior Traffic in Slaves, and on Kidnapping. Illustrated with Engravings.” Folks in the 19th century were sometimes given to long-winded oratory and long-winded book or pamphlet titles.}

As noted here (page xv),

Torrey did not seek or anticipate immediate abolition of slavery. For the present he desired humane treatment of the bondmen, and urged their owners to be “guardians, patrons, benefactors and neighbours” to them; in the future he advocated gradual redemption by governmental purchase. He was especially moved by the wrongs suffered by slaves who had been freed and afterwards kidnapped into slavery again, brought legal suits himself to secure the restitution of their liberty and aided in raising subscriptions to defray the legal expenses of the trials. In recognition of his efforts, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage, voted him a formal letter of thanks in August, 1816.

In his book, Torrey recounts the story of a slave woman who, so distraught over losing her husband when she and her children were sold, throws herself out a window, shattering her back in the process. Torrey captures the event in the engraving at the top of this blog entry. In that image, the slave woman seems to float in the air, almost frozen in time; the viewer is struck by the surreal sight of this black woman in white, surrounded by dark and suspended over the street below. In Torrey’s book, the caption beneath the picture foretells the woman’s fate, once time unfreezes: “…but I did not want to go and I jumped out the window…”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the Big Stage

We commonly think of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a literary phenomenon. But it was on the big stage that this story had some of its greatest impact.

Uncle Tom at the whipping post
Scene from the stage production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
All photos in this post are by Joseph Byron, N.Y., c1901
Source: Library of Congress (click on the link for identification and other information)

In 1860, at the eve of the Civil War, there were 18 free states, where slavery was prohibited. Those states had roughly 18.5 million whites, and 225,000 free blacks. So, only 1% of the free state population was African American. 168,000 of those free blacks lived in just four states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio. Millions of northern whites saw ‘real live’ black people only a handful of times in their entire lives, if at all. And as unlikely as it was for them to see a black person, it was even less likely that they would ever see a slave.

There was, of course, no radio, television, telephones or Internet. The kind of immediate, in your face journalism that’s enabled by today’s technology did not exist. Slavery was certainly not an uncommon subject for the press, or other forms of paper communication. But for many northerners, the horrors of slavery were out of sight, and would have been out of mind – if not for people like Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The isolation of northern whites from slavery helps to explain the interest in Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly. The book was published in 1852, following a serialized version in an antislavery newspaper. It opened a window to a world, hidden by distance, that many northern whites never saw or knew.

The book’s negative portrayal of slavery was filled with melodrama and overt religious symbolism and appeals. It was not just a story about the grace and love of little Eva; the abuse of the devout Uncle Tom; the salvation by love of the slave girl Topsy; and the preservation of Eliza’s family. It was, as historian David Goldfield put, “a book about family, God, and redemption-surefire topics to attract a broad audience in mid-nineteenth century America.”

The Auction Scene
Source: Library of Congress (click on the link for identification and other information)

For several years, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a huge best-seller, second in popularity only to the Bible. It would become an international best-seller as well. Historian James McPherson noted that “within a decade [of its 1852 release] it sold more than two million copies in the United States, making it the best seller of all time in relation to population.”

But Uncle Tom’s Cabin was more than just a literary phenomenon. As mentioned in Wiki,

“Given the lax copyright laws of the time, stage plays based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin—”Tom shows”—began to appear while the story itself was still being serialized… Even though Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, far more Americans of that time saw the story as a stage play or musical than read the book. Eric Lott, in his book Uncle Tomitudes: Racial Melodrama and Modes of Production, estimates that at least three million people saw these plays, ten times the book’s first-year sales… The many stage variants of Uncle Tom’s Cabin “dominated northern popular culture… for several years” during the 19th century and the plays were still being performed in the early 20th century.”

These stage productions allowed the book to be visualized and dramatized, and touched theater patrons in a way that the written word could not. Now the horrors of slavery had a human face that northern people could see. The resulting ire led Abraham Lincoln to tell Stowe in 1863 – apocryphally, it turns out – “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”

Little Eva’s death scene
Source: Library of Congress (click on the link for identification and other information)

The ‘Lost Cause’ Version of Slavery: It’s a Wonderful Life

The Master’s House: Wish you were here.
Source for this and other images: Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War, from the University of North Carolina’s Documenting the American South website
****

The Lost Cause is the name commonly given to a literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the Southern United States to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War of 1861–1865. Those who contributed to the movement tended to portray the Confederacy’s cause as noble and most of the Confederacy’s leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, defeated by the Union armies not through superior military skill, but by overwhelming force. They also tended to condemn Reconstruction.

Some of the main tenets of the Lost Cause movement were that… Slavery was a benign institution, and the slaves were loyal and faithful to their benevolent masters…
- Lost Cause of the Confederacy, Wikipedia
****

What is this ‘Lost Cause’ stuff, anyway? Those who are not into the history or historiography of the Civil War might wonder what all of the fuss is about.

The Lost Cause ‘viewpoint’ or ‘interpretation,’ simply put, is a way of looking at things – a pro-Confederate way of looking at history, which glorifies the Confederacy; tends to demonize the Union in general and certain people in the Union in particular; and marginalizes the role of slaves and slavery before and during the Civil War. This view was created after the Civil War, and aspects of it have persisted ever since.

The ways that slaves and slavery have been represented by Lost Causers in art and literature have drawn the interest of historians. In his book The Planter’s Prospect: Privilege & Slavery in Plantation Painting, John Michael Vlach’s comments that prior to the Civil War,

“When planters commissioned paintings… they opted for pictures that confirmed their own centrality and the slaves marginality, works of art that by and large managed to conceal the presence of the black majority [on plantations]. Artists who were aiming to capture the scenic beauties of an agricultural setting found they could simply ignore the armies of enslaved laborers that lived and worked on plantations. Slaves were basically painted out of the picture. What, the artists might have argued, could such a lowly, even barbaric, element contribute? Out in the fields, blacks were controlled with the lash; inside the picture frame, they could be controlled with a paintbrush.

Before the war, slaves were seen as “debased” and “detestable,” “brutish animals” that were “unworthy subject(s) for a work of art,” says Vlach. But after the war, “southern writers concentrated on rehabilitating the reputation of their region. They focused once again on the key elements of the plantation legend: fine houses, courtly white gentlemen, exquisitely gowned white ladies, bountiful harvests, and contented slaves.”

A poster child for this idyllic view of slavery is the 1897 book Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War, written by Thomas Nelson Page, with illustrations by Genevieve Cowles and Maude Cowles. As described by Mary Alice Kirkpatrick in her summary of the book,

Page devotes equal attention to the admirable inhabitants of the mansion, who reflect the moral perfection and godliness that permeate Page’s characterizations of southern aristocratic life. Having already provided a brief account of the external social structure governing the “servants” who, he indicates, are referred to as “slaves” only in legal reports, Page presents the authoritative and devoted “Mammy,” whose importance in running the house cannot be overestimated. Other honored family members include the butler and the carriage driver. These contented servants enjoy happiness and a “singular sweetness” throughout their lives.

The depictions of the “servants” are dignified, admirable and even touching. In the following image, a “mammy” lovingly gazes at the face of her young charge; as the grandfather of a one year old, it kind of got to me. But then I wondered who was raising this woman’s children or grandchildren…

In the next image, the butler is young, stout, and manly in stature, in contrast to the typical Uncle Tom-ish portrayal of butlers as older, submissive, and unintimidating. This butler, we are told, was often “severe” and “to be feared.” But how many slave masters would want their children to be afraid of a slave? Certainly this wasn’t a fear that was based on the threat of physical violence. I wonder how long it would be before the child in the picture would go from looking up at his servant, to looking down on him?

In his book, Page describes how wonderful slave life was: