LITR 5535: American
Romanticism
Sample Student Research Project 2005
Marcia Toalson
28 April 2005
Research Journal
Study of Race in Black, White, and Gray
Introduction
Prior to this class, I just assumed that slavery was an issue in congruence with the Civil War. I never contemplated that racial tension and slavery had much of an impact on early America many years prior to the Civil War. Actually the Civil War is not where the issue of slavery began; it is where it reached its tumultuous climax and began the beginning of the ending of slavery as we know it.
I have always been one to seek answers and question until there doesn’t seem to be any answers. My mother always said I had too vivid an imagination and asked too many questions. So actually, it is not the issue of slavery I am exploring. Everyone knows it existed and most people know at least some of the gory details just by watching the mini series “Roots” if nothing else. The slavery issue and the tension is not what I am interested in. I am interested in the how, the why, the when and all the gray areas that embody the very evident black/white issues. I am totally unprepared for all the facts that I am finding that are literally opening Pandora’s box.
I always believed that history was just that—history—fact. To find the holes in philosophies and experiences I have put my faith in over the years, those same philosophies which our country is built on, has been a very sobering yet interesting part of my voyage in search of the black and white tension, yes but more importantly, the gray.
The earliest mention of race and color began with the Bible, Old Testament, of course. The Genesis Account of racial tension began with Genesis 9 verses 20-25. Incidentally, this story is used in support of slavery many years later. In Genesis, Noah put a curse on his grandson Canaan after his son Ham saw him in a naked drunken state which Noah had perceived to be a sexual situation. The curse somehow made Ham’s skin black. As early as the first centuries AD Noah’s three sons were connected with the three continents then known—Shem with Asia, Japheth with Europe, and then Ham with Africa. Having begotten the dark-skinned branch of mankind, three of Ham’s children and their generations were dark-skinned people: Kush (west central Africa, south of Egypt), Mizraim (Egypt) and Put (Libya). Two gray areas intrude on this first black/white issue. First, Canaan was not even present at the time of the curse. Second, interestingly enough, only Canaan—the one who was actually cursed in the Bible, was not dark-skinned. Ham’s descendants, with dark skin, came perceived to be scorched by the sun, and a mark of Noah’s curse. This incident occurred about 1000 BC.
Black skin, even in Bible times, was associated with society in a very questionable fashion. The allusion to the curse on Ham was still being reported in the writings of Augustine, Origen, and Ambrose of Milan, as well as references to Ham and his descendants in Islamic literature in 650 AD. According to these reports, Ham was more than connected with slavery. He was also a symbol of sexual transgression because his offense against Noah was said to be sexual in nature. So not only were blacks destined to be enslaved, they were also connected with sexual depravity. At that time, not all slaves were black, but all blacks were slaves.
In 1575 Dominican Fray Francisco de la Cruz, based on the Ham theory, said, “The blacks are justly captives by just sentence of God for the sins of their fathers, and that in sign, thereof, God gave them that color” (“What’s Up”). Interestingly enough,
belief in the curse of Ham didn’t stop with the abolition of slavery. Throughout the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the notion that the lowly status of black people was divinely ordained was repeated in sermons and speeches. Noah’s curse re-emerged virulently in the 1950’s and 1960’s when Southern white Christians used it to justify racial segregation in the face of the Civil Rights movement. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia read the text of the Noah story and curse into the Congressional Record as part of a filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 saying, “Noah saw fit to discriminate against Ham’s descendants.” (“What’s Up”)
Further, a 1969 study of Lutherans’ Sunday school lessons and other educational materials found an implied justification of black slavery and segregation. James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time (1964) wrote, “I knew according to many Christians, I was a descendant of Ham who had been cursed, and I was therefore pre-destined to be a slave” (“What’s Up”).
After writing this, based on my research, I am overwhelmed by where the institution of slavery had its early beginnings. Actually, the curse was based on a lie or at best a misunderstanding. The one receiving the curse, Canaan, was never cursed; only his relatives received the curse, his father and possibly other brothers, etc. I didn’t realize the gray areas would begin so early. As I research, I am realizing it is impossible for anyone to chronicle the numbers of black and white situations governing early mankind and all the gray areas, all the mistakes, and misunderstandings. I don’t think it is melodramatic to say the things I am uncovering have influenced definitely the way our nation has evolved and maybe the world.
Christopher Columbus, credited with the discovery of America in 1492, had racial violence associated with his exploration of various islands. According to our text, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, “apparently friendly relations with the Taino Indians on the island of Hispaniola in 1492 turned sour as the settlers Columbus left behind demanded gold and sexual partners from their hosts; on his return there in 1494, none of the Europeans were alive” (25). Workers from islands on his ships were pressed into work, thus creating slavery aboard. What started out as an exciting largely financial objective ended up badly, at least in one instance, because of racial demands. If a nation begins with a racially checkered past, it would be impossible to expect any different from the years to come.
In an act, I feel, of mistaken communication, a Dutch ship sailing into Jamestown in August of 1619, Jamestown then a British settlement, carried unordered cargo. At first, seeing a ship come into the waters of Chesapeake Bay caused a disturbance among the colonists thinking it was a Spanish warship because Spain had shown some interest in Jamestown. So the townspeople prepared their cannons until, as the ship came into view, they were able to see both that it wasn’t a Spanish ship approaching and that it was a cargo ship not a war ship at all. The Dutch were at that time the leading traders of the world.
Her cannons were not manned and it became clear to the settlers that she came for trade, not for war so the settlers of Jamestown laid aside their muskets. The captain announced that he had brought merchandise in exchange for products on the settlement. Few more interesting ships than this are known to the history of America […] (Spears 3)
“Among the articles of merchandise that the Dutch captain had to offer the colonists were twenty human beings, Negroes brought from the coast of Africa, and his ship was probably the first slave trader to visit what is now the coast of the United States” (Spears 3).
There is an old record containing the names of some of the slaves aboard. But the ship’s name and the name of the commander have been lost. John Rolfe was in Jamestown then. He was the man who married the Indian maiden Pocahontas. He is responsible for the date and some information. The ship was a cargo carrier, commercially licensed to trade but how the ship acquired the Negroes is not known. The gray area exists in who ordered the ship. The colonists in Jamestown knew nothing about its coming and were as surprised as anyone could be. The name Captain Samuel Argall lends some answers to this question.
“In 1619 the rapacious and unscrupulous Captain Samuel Argall was ruler of the colony of Virginia. Argall was able, energetic, adroit, and conscienceless” (Spears 4). Argall owned a share of a ship called The Treasurer along with the Earl of Warrick.
During the year 1619 The Treasurer came to Virginia, armed as a privateer, and bearing a commission from the Duke of Savoy permitting her to cruise against the Spaniards. Presumably, intending such a cruise, she cleared out for the West Indies, where, as her log book shows, she fell in with a Dutch letter of Marque and told him that slaves were wanted in Virginia. (Spears 5)
I would imagine some money was exchanged used to “feather his pocket.” “It is a matter of record that The Treasurer also brought slaves to Virginia and a woman called Angela was sold to a Mr. Bennett” (Spears 5). She may be on the census record of Virginia made in 1625. All other names were not listed so she could have been possibly a legitimate business deal. The other Negroes were not. The Dutch ship was in need of food so it is safe to say that the Dutch ship came first according to records by John Rolfe. While this is the first report of a slave ship coming to our coastline, they may not have been the first slaves.
As early as 1565 when Peter Menendez landed in St. Augustine, Florida, having held a commission for the king of Spain, he “probably” was carrying Negro slaves with him. Even the Norse discoverers on the New England coast and the landing of Eric the Red probably brought slaves with them. It is a probability that a woman slave came ashore with him. But slaves did not begin to come in such great magnitude until 1619 into Jamestown, perhaps by a single shake of the hand, a business deal with one man and the Dutch ship.
In 1609 a declaration from the Virginia colony stated, in so many words that it was their Christian moral duty to educate and civilize and baptize those who were in ignorance, namely the Negroes in Africa. But,
to sum up the facts, slaves were introduced into the United States territory in answer to a demand for labor. They were purchased by men who were accustomed to the sale and purchase of laborers and no one’s conscience was in any way hurt by the transaction. It was a good business proposition for that day and for two centuries at least thereafter. (Spears 13)
Did it pay? Let the facts answer.
Another slave ship in 1630, the Fortune under the command of Captain Grey of London, ran across a ship from Angola off of the coast of Africa, captured her and her cargo, loaded with slaves. The slaves were then carried to Virginia and traded for eighty-five hogsheads and five butts of tobacco, which were then sold in London.
The planters in the tobacco, rice, cotton and sugar regions not only increased in number from year to year, but they built finer homes, bought finer clothes and books and lived in more expensive fashion from generation to generation […] In Georgia, the one colony where no slaves were allowed in early days, the planters became so eager for them that their regular toast when drinking together was “Here’s for the one thing needful.” (Spears 13)
From this point on, slave trade flourished, never to be considered to be unconscionable, but to be considered a good business deal. Handcuffs, shackles, iron collars, etc. were advertised in shipping goods stores. The newspapers were full of advertisements of slaves. “The young bloods of the town deemed it fine amusement to circulate handbills in which Negro girls were offered for sale” (Spears 18). The gray area here is all the while ministers and churches began to flourish among the slave traders. To be God-fearing in the midst of all the human misery had to mean that if you were a Christian then, you had to do a “psychological number” on yourself and reduce humans to property, like a plow or like a horse and carriage. In the age of Puritans and Quakers, New England colonies led in slave trade.
“In Rhode Island Governor Cranston as early as 1708 reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hundred and three vessels were built in that state, all of which were trading to the West Indies and brought back molasses in the direct trade, but in most cases made a slave voyage in between” (Spears 19). According to Samuel Hopkins, “In 1770 Rhode Island was more deeply interested in slave trade and has enslaved more Africans than any other colony in New England” (Spears 19). “The transatlantic slave trade produced one of the largest forced migrations in history. From the early 16th to the mid-19th centuries between ten and eleven million Africans were taken from their homes, herded onto ships where they were sometimes so tightly packed that they could barely move and sent to a strange new land” (McGranahan). This from a nation begun in the name of Christianity. Notice the word “herded” in the quote. I did. It brought the black African Negro down to animal status and below. Who are these slaves really?
Some slaves came over as indentured servants who worked as slaves until their voyage from Europe was paid for or until the debts they had incurred were paid. Some black slaves from Africa were actually sold as weaker members of the tribe by stronger members of the tribe to slave traders for rum. If a chief’s wife had an affair, the chief would sell her lover to a slaver along with her. As time went on, it grew abundantly clear that when the slaves began their new life in America, their new owners soon found out that the profit to be made was more in breeding of the slaves and selling the children, or the woman slave who was the one used for breeding or the breeder, a black man only used for “stud service”—rather than using the slaves to cultivate the fields, making this, in my viewpoint, even more inhumane. Has it become slavery or personal obsession? There is a difference between slavery here and slavery in other parts of the world. Here, basically slavery is blacks owned by whites. In other parts of the world, many are enslaved by the same color, often political or tribal in nature or racial purging. There are, however, exceptions.
There are, of course, the white large landowners who own plantations who are into slavery for the sake of making an agricultural profit. Slaveholding among native Americans was so widespread that finally when the Civil War began Southern tribes nearly wholeheartedly supported the Confederacy in defense of their way of life. Black slaveholders largely were slaveholders who had purchased family members or purchased slaves benevolently with the idea of freeing them. There were a few who sold off their relatives, especially those they didn’t like. In terms of sheer numbers, small slave owners overwhelmingly dominate. There were those who owned slaves but who never entered the planter class. Of those small slave-owners it seemed most of them agreed with Eugene Genone’s definition of paternalism.
Paternalism suggests a social order which is stable, hierarchal, consciously elitist […] assumes an inherent inequality of men: some are born to rule, others to obey […] In 1701 John Saffin, a Boston merchant and slaveholder, lifted his pen in anger and produced of the first sustained defenses of slavery ever published in the American colonies […] (Oakes 3)
Saffin recited the traditional litany of social relationships. “Some were bound to be high and honorable, some to be low and despicable, some to be Monarchs, Kings, Princes, and Governors, Masters and Commanders, others to be Subjects and to be commanded. Yea some to be born slaves and so to remain during their lives” (Oakes 3). Many of his fellow colonists would have agreed. “There was the belief that a highly structured social order was natural—in fact divinely inspired—had arrived in the New World with the earliest Englishmen and eventually became the basis of a paternalistic defense of bondage” (Oakes 4). It was believed that man ruled his family as God ruled him and thus it was master and slave. The master was to provide for material needs of his slaves, never resorting to harsh punishment and slaves were to believe that slavery was good for them and it was a way whereby they might find Christianity. “Blacks were by virtue of being black, slaves for life and that their status was that of laborers held as property” (Johnson 27). As I am researching this, I am still appalled by the arrogance and the God-like lies that enable men to excuse themselves.
In class, a quote stands out in my mind but I am unsure about who said it. The quote is “Man is born free but lives out his life in chains.” Slavery, often called a “peculiar institution” from 1619 through 1865, is “tempered by not only the volatile factor of race but also, in 1776 by the ideals of freedom that fueled the revolt of the colonists against King George. Thomas Jefferson wrote, then struck from an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, a paragraph condemning slavery” (Johnson xi).
The founders, all men, all white men, and all of a certain class of white men, were slaveowners who time and again framed their outrage at England by comparing themselves to slaves. In a word, from the beginning of the Republic to the Civil War, the American soul was schizophrenically divided between desiring the profits that came from this ancient social arrangement and its own belief in “we hold these truths to be self-evident […]” (Johnson xii)
The very thing our founding fathers were trying to defend, they were making a mockery of.
In class notes, Thomas Jefferson so against the transportation of slaves, yet maintained a close sexual relationship with one of his house slaves, Sally Hemings. The offspring of that union are still trying to hold reunions with the legal relatives of Thomas Jefferson, and still trying to establish themselves as part of his family as well. Slavery confuses all principles of morality.
Out of the first twelve United States Presidents, eight of them were slave owners. “The popular notions of the 16th President of the United States were often crafted to glorify the man and his office rather than explain the reality of Abe Lincoln” (“Dark Side”). In David Donald’s biography called Lincoln, the man who emerges is an indecisive leader with few firm convictions.
Americans often regard racism in 18th century America as a given, but the truth is that there have always been people in America who were not racist. Abraham Lincoln, however, was not one of them. And neither was Mary Todd Lincoln whose Southern family had owned slaves. As an Illinois legislator and later as a Congressman and politician, Lincoln opposed the Abolitionists rigorously, supported the enforcement of the brutal and mean-spirited Fugitive Slave Law. Lincoln explicitly endorsed the state of Illinois laws barring African Americans from voting, serving on juries, holding office, or intermarrying with “white” Americans. According to his confidants he regularly used the word “nigger” in private conversations and sometimes in speeches […] In 1858 Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Chicago affirming the equality of man and gave another address the same year in southern Illinois in which he stated he opposed “in any way bringing about the social and political equality of the black and white races.” (“Dark Side”)
Lincoln was not alone in his idea that America was a white republic. There were others like Thomas Jefferson, as reported, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, John Marshall and even George Washington. It was Lincoln’s wish to send the liberated slaves back to their native land, Liberia.
The fact that Lincoln did not want to free slaves does not mean that the liberation of people is not a significant issue; but if America was truly founded for the purpose of liberating human beings, the slaves would have been emancipated in 1776. In fact, the English did liberate their slaves in 1772 and slaves from all over the colonies deserted their masters for port cities because if they could make landfall in England, they would be emancipated for the Royal government. (“Dark Side”)
Now, that is a very sobering thought. The gray area is that American citizens have always regarded Lincoln as a kind humanitarian President responsible for freeing the slaves.
When reading Ashley Salter’s paper on “The Tragic Mulatto,” I thought I had really heard it all but female mulattoes, the Francis Parkinson Keyes romantic kind, is really the most tragic character in this national tragedy in that, according to Ashley, “Mulattoes experience alienation from both black and white communities creating a psychological dilemma. They are forced to choose a side of the color line, and attempt to fit in by ‘passing’ for white or embracing only their black heritage.” With their beauty fading as they get older, their position in society as mistresses, etc. disappears. This is only one of many gray areas in the black/white question.
As my journey into the past grows toward the end, there is one last issue I would like to address. I was born in the state of Illinois and have only lived in Texas for five years. I always was wholeheartedly proud that Illinois had been a free state during the Civil War. I was shocked to have that balloon burst as well, upon reading cover-to-cover The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois 1719-1864. Not only was there slavery in Illinois, originally brought by French along the banks of the Mississippi, but eventually there was a list of sixteen regulations in regards to master/slave relationships. In addition, to the pain of being led astray all those years, I did some additional research into southern Illinois. It seems many wealthy industrialists offered freed blacks or those that escaped promises of help and jobs. They were placed in rather a processing center which turned into rather a prison accompanied by torture and imprisonment. Many ex slaves were said to have been subjected to grisly horrors under conditions much worse from which they had escaped. In the Old Slave Mansion in southern Illinois, one of those facilities just mentioned, screams of torture still reverberate from the walls and though made into a museum post Civil War is now closed to tourists.
Conclusion
At the onset of my voyage, I wanted to expose as many questions of racial ambiguity as I could. It has become a non-relenting search without end. I’ve opened myself up to more questions, been upset with some answers I’ve received, educated myself and entertained myself. I suppose this has been a journey of self-satisfaction in my quest for answers the mystery of race and the many gray areas still existing between the very evident black and white.
If the United States was conceived in liberty as Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would have it, it was no less conceived in slavery, which had stained the New World from the moment of its discovery.
“No matter how many years may pass the stigma of slavery will remain imprinted on our country. It was an established fact long before our birth as a nation; it caused our greatest war; it has shadowed every struggle, defeat, and victory of our land. Whites still apologize for it; blacks still resent it and we are all oppressed by its legacy” (Johnson xv).
Works Cited
Baym, Nina, ed. Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2003.
“The Dark Side of Abe Lincoln.” World Free Internet. 6 Apr. 2005. <http://www. worldfreeinternet.net/news/nws198.htm>.
Harris, Norman Dwight. The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois 1719-1864. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969.
Johnson, Charles. Foreword. I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives. By Yuval Taylor, ed. Vol. 2. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999. 2 vols.
Link, William A. Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
McGranahan, Ronald W. “The American Civil War: Slavery in America …” Slavery in the South. 2004. 6 Apr. 2005. <http://americanrevwar.homestead.com/files/civwar/ slavery.html>.
Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
“Race Relations in the U.S.” Cyber Essays. 6 Apr. 2005 <http://cyberessays.com/Politics/ 30.htm>.
Spears, John R. The American Slave-Trade. Port Washington, NY: Kennibat Press, 1967.
Tenzer, Lawrence R. “Racial Theory & The Pre-Civil War Census.” The Multiracial Activist. Oct./Nov. 2000. 6 Apr. 2005. <http://www.multiracial.com/readers/tenser.html>.
“What’s Up with the Biblical Story of Drunken Noah? (Part 2).” Straight Dope Staff Report. Ed. Ed Zotti. 27 Jan. 2005. 6 Apr. 2005 <http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/ mdrunknoah2.html>.