Category Archives: Slavery

Confronting Classism and Racism in Contemporary America: Two Recent Examples

22 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Bethanie Tucker, Classism, Racism, Slavery

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CoatesTwo conversations have taken place in the past 24 hours that reveal two different approaches to class and race in the United States.

The first was Bethanie H. Tucker’s talk at the Wisconsin Technical College System Conference. Granted, I am relying on Sara Goldrick-Rab’s Storified timeline, which captures her tweets about the talk, but the sentiment of Tucker’s talk appeared to be patronizing and condescending toward college students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. My sense, and I hope I’m wrong, is that Tucker sees herself and educators in general as a “white saviour,” to use one commenter’s term. In this case, however, it isn’t about race, but class. It’s an attitude that I’ve witnessed among many educators, both pre-collegiate and in higher education: “Those (literally) poor students are so fortunate to have us help them.” It’s sickening, and it speaks to those educators’ inability or unwillingness to invest in students as individuals because they embody poverty.

Then, Ta-Nehisi Coates came out with his piece on the case for reparations. My reaction after reading it once is completely different from my response to the sentiment of Tucker’s talk. It’s hard to encapsulate Coates’ argument with just one quote, but this one stuck with me:

Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate—the kind that HR 40 proposes—we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion—and that is perhaps what scares us. The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.

I’ve had the internal intellectual debate about reparations on several occasions, usually coming down against the idea. I don’t know if reparations is an answer, or the answer, for American racism, but I think Coates is right–having the national conversation would be a monumental step in helping us take an honest look at our nation’s heritage. Realistically, I don’t think it will happen because Americans have shown a propensity to ignore their true history in favor of a watered-down, sanctimonious heritage.

Collectively, both Tucker and Coates, in different ways, reveal something about our nation: we don’t like to look ourselves in the mirror and admit that there are historical and structural problems that continue to exist that make it difficult to acknowledge anyone outside of our circle as equal or valuable. Instead, we prefer to stereotype and patronize because it helps us avoid taking actions that will make us uncomfortable.

From Life to Film: Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in African American history, Oscars, Slavery, Solomon Northup

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Solomon-Northup-21333433-1-402If you watched the Oscars last night, you are aware that Twelve Years a Slave won Best Picture. I have used Solomon Northup’s narrative in my first-year U.S. survey courses on a couple of occasions, but the availability of the movie will probably force me to retire it as an option.

Still, it’s an engrossing story, and I encourage you to read it. I also suggest reading about how Northup’s narrative was rediscovered and brought into the academic mainstream. You also might be interested in learning more about his descendants here and here.

Interview with Historian Gene Allen Smith

15 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Books, Gene Smith, Slavery, War of 1812

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On Monday, I posted my review of Gene Smith’s new book, The Slaves’ Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812. Today, read an interview with Smith about his book and his future research plans.
What led you to write The Slaves’ Gamble?

This book spawned from work with my major professor in graduate school during the late 1980s–the recently deceased Dr. Frank L. Owsley, Jr., of Auburn University.  He had worked on this topic a little during his career, but he had never jumped in completely.  When I was looking for a new project during the mid 1990s, a student in class asked me why some slaves joined Andrew Jackson during the New Orleans campaign and others had joined the British.  That simple question stumped me and brought me back to a topic that Larry Owsley had suggested to me a few years earlier.

Why do you think this topic has been under-examined by historians?

This topic has been little-examined by historians because there was no single cache of materials from which it derived.  The research for the project took more than a decade in archives across the United States–from California to Florida, to New England–and Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Ireland), as well as in Spanish sources relating to Florida and Louisiana.  I spent about a year-and-a-half working in British archives, including remote locations that American scholars had not visited in two decades.  Even then, finding information about slaves and free blacks is like looking for a needle in a proverbial haystack.  The information comes in drabs rather than in a steady stream. 

What was the most challenging part of your research?

The most challenging feature of this project was to give voice to slaves and free blacks.  As I began this project, I was convinced that the Americans were the good guys and the British were the villains.  Yet as I delved deeper into this project, I came to the realization that this book represented a freedom story.  Slaves were struggling for freedom and made their choices based on what they perceived as in their best interest of their search to escape bondage.  Given what happened during and especially after the war, the Americans emerged as the villains, while the British and the Spanish emerged as heroes because they provided FREEDOM to slaves.  The slaves who fled to British or Spanish colonies did not prosper economically, but they did have freedom.  Slaves who remained in the United States hoping to gain their freedom, did not find it until after the American Civil War.  Even then, they stepped into a world or racial segregation.

What is your next research project?

I am currently working on two projects.  I hope to have a history of the Battle of New Orleans in print by the bicentennial of the battle–January 2015.  While working a the United States Naval Academy, I am interested in a project on the navy during the 1820s and another on the founding fathers and the maritime world.

Finally, and most importantly, who is the better poker player: Jim Broussard or John Belohlavek?

Poker is a game of situations, and it can change based on which cards players receive.  Given the two choices, I would lean toward John Belohlavek because I have not played against him as much.  I have played against Jim Broussard and as such I have pretty good ideas about how he plays his hand.  Ultimately, I think Gene Smith can hold his own against these two players.

Review of Smith, The Slaves’ Gamble

12 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in African American history, Gene Smith, Slavery, War of 1812

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Gene Smith‘s new book on the African-American experience during the War of 1812 is the kind of book that should have been written a long time ago. The Slaves’ Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812 places African Americans front-and-center in discussions about the period between the American Revolution and 1820.

Smith, professor of history at Texas Christian University and currently serving as Class of 1957 Distinguished Lecturer in Naval Heritage at the United States Naval Academy for 2013-14, argues that “[t]he War of 1812 represented a major dividing line in the history of American race relations” (3). The conflict “halted all progress” toward improving the status of free and enslaved African Americans (3). Their decision to join with the British undermined any hopes of diminishing slavery’s hold on the nation. Ultimately, Smith concludes, the war helped shape the future of the Deep South in economic, labor, and racial terms.

Smith begins with an overview of African-American military contributions during the colonial and Revolutionary periods. He then examines their involvement in the northern states, as well as their participation in naval warfare, immediately prior to and during the first year of the War of 1812. Smith next shifts his attention to the Florida Patriot War of 1812, which took place in East Florida and was influenced by the Haitian Revolution. The next three chapters address the war in the Chesapeake, the Atlantic seacoast, and the Gulf coast.

One of the most attractive features of this book is Smith’s use of individual African Americans’ stories to introduce each chapter. For example, the chapter seven highlights Jordan Bankston Noble, known as the “Drummer Boy of Chalmette.” Smith uses his life, which spanned 1800 to 1890, to set up a discussion of the postwar lives of black veterans. This approach humanizes the historical personages being examined and has undoubtedly contributed to the book’s success so far.

The Slaves’ Gamble reinforces the historiographical argument that links the development of the antebellum South to an earlier period. It also brings together a number of foreign perspectives to provide a unified interpretation of the African-American experience. Finally, and most importantly, it reinforces the reality that African Americans were agents of change during a period when they are often overlooked or dismissed.

On Thursday, read an interview with Smith about his book and future research plans.

“Gender and Memory among Andrew Jackson’s Slaves: The Example of ‘Aunt’ Hannah”

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by in Andrew Jackson, SHEAR, Slavery

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SHEAR_002_000As I have in the past, I am posting a link to my upcoming conference presentation at this year’s SHEAR conference in St. Louis. The paper will be part of a Friday afternoon panel entitled, “Hannah, ‘One-Eyed Sarah,’ and Sarah Bass: Biography, Race, and Gender in the Early Republic and Caribbean.”

I plan to blog about this year’s program when I have the chance.

BrANCH 2012: Rethinking Honour and Community

18 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Andrew Jackson, BrANCH, Slavery, Southern honor

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My panel was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. One of my c0-presenters, Ryan Quintana, is from Franklin and is teaching at Wellsley, so we compared notes about our geographic and family similarities.

I’ll be honest–I find it hard to pay attention during panels on which I am a presenter because I’m thinking about my own presentation. Ryan and Diane’s papers were good, if the questions from the audience were any indication. David Brown asked me a question about why Jackson’s slave ownership was important (or something like that). I fumbled around for an answer that in hindsight wasn’t very good.

If I had been thinking straight, I would have connected Ed Baptist’s Parish Memorial Lecture to Jackson’s pursuit of national security during the 1810s and the concomitant growth in his slave acquisitions. Jackson sought to remove southeastern Indian tribes to protect the frontier; he was also concerned about runaway slaves allying with those Indians to threaten white frontier settlers. The opening of the Southeast encouraged the cotton and land booms of the 1810s, which Jackson took advantage of for his and his friends’ personal gain. While Jackson may not have consciously allowed his slave ownership to influence his actions in the 1810s, it clearly played a role in his pursuit of Manifest Destiny and the benefits that accrued to slave holders.

I stayed in the same room to hear Craig Friend’s and Brian Schoen’s presentations. By that time, the room had grown unbearably hot, and I gave up trying to take notes. Friend’s presentation dealt with the concept of Confederate manhood, while Schoen’s addressed the diplomatic maneuverings that took place during the secession winter of 1860-61. Both were good, and my lack of note-taking was solely due to heat and fatigue.

BrANCH 2012: Peter Parish Memorial Lecture: Second Slavery and the First (U.S.) Republic

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Edward Baptist, Old South, Slavery

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Ed Baptist gave the Peter Parish Memorial Lecture on Friday evening. For someone who flew in shortly before his talk, I thought he did a great job.

Baptist opened with a summary of Solomon Northup’s life, ending with the observation that overlapping networks and competing claims saved Northup from murder and that financial networks enslaved him and protected him by giving his body a financial present and future.

That story provided the transition to the focus of Baptist’s lecture: the need for 19th-century historians to reintegrate economic history and slavery. He started by explaining why historians don’t talk about financial history. After providing a historiographical overview, he concluded that beginning in the 1970s, historians took a “nap” that left economic history informed predominantly by literary theory and individual stories that lacked an overarching narrative.

Baptist then turned to describing what a new economic history of slavery might look like, emphasizing that it needed to include behavioral economics couldn’t be reduced to just words and numbers. [My notes on this don’t make sense now, but at the time, I knew what the latter part of the last sentence meant.]

The description of his narrative, as described, went something like this:

1st slavery: 1492-1800 witnessed the introduction of the transatlantic slave trade, with an acceleration of scale and profit between 1700 and 1800 (1450-1700: 3 mil. Africans enslaved; 1700-1800: 6 mil.).

2nd slavery (1800-60): Southern slavery made cotton a key commodities product consumed on an industrial scale; indeed, it was the key commodity of the 1st Industrial Revolution. Slave productivity increased 400% between 1800 and 1860, keeping the price of cotton low. The minimum efficiency of slaves’ cotton productivity continually grew during the period, from 50 lbs./day in 1805 to 200 lbs./day by 1850.

From 1804 to 1819, American entrepreneurs and Anglo-Dutch merchant banks built the financial infrastructure for slavery’s growth. The migration of slaves to the cotton frontier allowed the U.S. to gain 50% of global cotton sales and increase cotton-picking efficiency to 100 lbs./day. The Panic of 1819 bubble, which plunged the U.S. into its worst financial depression to date, proceeded from three factors: disappearing regulation; new credit instruments; and American overconfidence.

From 1819-32 [the end date wasn’t clear to me], the 2nd Bank of the U.S. provided financial regulation. Global investors became linked to the cotton market, allowing the emergence of new slave trading firms, such as Franklin & Armfield. These new slave trading firms were run by professionals who moved a plurality of slaves to New Orleans and set patterns for slave trading economics. These men chafed against the Bank’s regulation and supported Jackson during the Bank War.*

Between 1832 [see above] and the 1840s, the Bank War produced a credit free-for-all that drove the spread of cotton, land sales, and slavery in Deep South. Baptist tied this surge of new economic activity specifically to a new slave mortgage that commodified slave bodies. Slave owners wanted credit, banks wanted bonds, and the new slave mortgage satisfied both desires. The resulting financial bubble drove cotton prices down and resulted in the Panics of 1837 and 1839.

Between the 1840s and 1860, northern factors gave planters credit, who distributed it to neighbors. Cotton grew in importance as annual production reached 4.5 mil. bales annually by 1860 and helped entrench the institution of slavery in the South economically.

Baptist rushed the last section of his lecture, probably because he was already over time by this point. Personally, I was interested enough that I wish he had taken his time, but I’m not sure everyone agreed with me. I’ll have some more comments on his lecture in a later post.

* I think a study of the Bank veto and other BUS-related votes that analyzed the connection between slave ownership and opposition/support for the Bank would make a great project for someone.

BrANCH 2012: Uses and Abuses of African Americans in the 19th Century

12 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in BrANCH, Slavery

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The first BrANCH session I attended was “Exploration, Experiment, and Display: Uses and Abuses of African Americans in the Nineteenth Century.”

(Three caveats: I sat halfway back in a large tiered classroom and had a hard time hearing the two presenters at some points. The Powerpoints were also a bit hard to read due to the color contrast. Finally, reconstructing my notes is sometimes an exercise in futility, so please forgive any mistakes.)

First up was Andrea Livesey’s presentation, “Considering the Evidence for Slave Breeding: Exploitation in the Memory of Ex-Slaves.” Livesey is a Ph.D. candidate at the Univ. of Liverpool. Her dissertation research is an analysis of WPA slave narratives in LA and TX, comparing the original and edited interviews. The WPA narratives were heavily edited to remove controversial subjects, include slave breeding, the focus of her talk today.

Livesey identified several references to slave breeding in the WPA narratives: Forced marriage/sex; slave men used as studs; forced female sex with master or overseer to produce children; temporary relationships of parents; selling/chasing away of bad breeders; rewards for breeding; selective breeding; comparison to livestock; profiting from sale of children; master anger over birth control, incl. abortion (chewing cotton roots was a form of birth control?!?); and a preference for female slaves. 21% of Livesey’s sample (171 interviews) mention breeding.

Livesey assumed pre-study that breeding was more common in rural than urban settings, but her research showed similar rates of mention. One explanation was that urban slave breeding was caused by emphasis on family units with smaller slave holdings.

Two final thoughts: Influence of one interviewer (V. Davis?) in using directed questions to uncover slave breeding, which other interviewers didn’t do; and interviewees’ avg. age at emancipation was 13.

The second presentation was by Emily Trafford, another Liverpool Ph.D. student in the early stages of her research. Her paper was entitled “The Display of African Americans in Traveling Exhibits, World’s Fairs, and Freak Shows.”

She started by providing the context of the exhibition of “freaks” in the 19th-century. She identified two types of characters: the savage African, whose depiction emphasized the uncivilized African vs. the civilized white American; and I missed the second character, but it may have been the minstrel character, which emphasized Africans’ childlike mind and presentation.

Trafford then gave two specific examples. The first was “What Is It?” a P.T. Barnum creation. The man playing the character was William Henry Johnson from NJ, who was developmentally disabled but still exercised some control over his character’s construction and profited from it. The second was Zip the Pinhead, who eventually evolved into a minstrel character. (Note: Zip Coon was a Jacksonian-era minstrel character.) She then discussed other examples, including one from the 1904 St. Louis World Fair, the Old Plantation exhibit. This exhibit depicted African Americans in plantation setting and incorporated minstrelsy. Trafford connected it to the Lost Cause memory of slavery.

The third presenter, Stephen Kenny, did not attend, so the audience asked questions next.

For Trafford: Were there recollections of African American audiences visiting the exhibits? She said it was difficult to gauge. There were “colored” days, so African Americans attended. African Americans also objected to being relegated to Negro buildings or the entertainment district.

For Trafford: Has she looked at newspapers from cities in which the fairs/exhibits met? She hasn’t but plans to.

Catherine Clinton asked a couple of tough historiographical questions. The one I caught was to Livesey and how her research fit with Daina Berry’s and Paul Escott’s. I didn’t hear a clear answer.

For Livesey: Was infanticide part of slave resistance to breeding? She hasn’t found any cases of infanticide.

For Trafford: One audience member noted the relation of “What Is It” to white fairground geeks and suggested that the phenomenon surpassed race; Someone also noted the connection to Zippy the Pinhead comic character in U.S. comics in 1970s-1980s and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics mascot, which was called WhatIzIt (Wow! What a connection!) Trafford responded that “What Is It” originagted in the 1860s in response to Darwinian evolution. P.T. Barnum wanted audiences to determine “What Is It” was instead of giving them information on the nature of his character.

For Trafford: Is the larger argument about bodies’ displays about eugenics? She thinks that the nostalgic view of slavery produced by the Lost Cause was important, as was the evolutionary argument that African Americans could have returned to savage state w/o slavery. (I found this discussion interesting given the sentiments expressed by two Arkansas Republicans.)

For Trafford: Can she determine if organizers intended the deliberate dissemination of racial views via the exhibits? She stated that scientific congresses and fair organization records provided some context for understanding motivation, plus the organizers’ realization that the racist tropes were popular with audiences.

For Trafford: One audience member emphasized paying attention to change over time to provide framework for the exhibit images. This member also observed that there exist positive African American presentations at fairs, indicating their desire to be represented and acknowledged and a larger African American context to fairs than just “freaks.”

Steven Deyle asked Livesey if the WPA narratives indicated where interviewees were living at the time of the interviews, as well as for the slaves referred to in the narratives. He also asked if there are other sources available to complement the narratives. Livesey said that her sample database addresses these questions and that she is looking at book-length slave narratives as well as WPA narratives.

For Livesey: Did slave women use demands to breed to negotiate concessions from their owners? She isn’t looking at that subject b/c of lack of sample references.

For Livesey: Someone asked in what ways African Americans were complicit in their own breeding/exhibitions? I didn’t hear a clear answer.

For Trafford: There were catalogs of circus sideshow canvases, including one called “Hit a Coon,” which was a canvas with the face cut out to be filled by a real African American who would have objects thrown at him/her.

Summer 2012 Research

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Andrew Jackson, Election of 1828, Kinship, Slavery

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My summer research agenda for 2012 was a bit different from the last two years I’ve written about here (2010) and here (2011). I sent off the Jackson manuscript to LSU Press right after the semester ended in May, so there wasn’t anything to do in that regard. (I did start working on a skeleton index to pass the time and ease the manuscript’s absence. *sniff*)

My research tasks this summer both centered on slavery. First, I worked on an article on the 1828 presidential election, tentatively entitled “Slavery, Kinship, and Andrew Jackson’s Presidential Campaign of 1828.” The title is self-explanatory, and you can read a much shorter version of the article here. My research entailed spending a lot of time looking at newspapers from 1827 and 1828.

My second project was starting on a paper that I’m presenting at the BrANCH conference in October. The paper is entitled, “The Evolution of the Enslaved Community at Andrew Jackson’s Plantations, 1790s-1840s.” Here’s the proposal I wrote:

Historians have been remiss in examining the enslaved people who labored for Andrew Jackson. Most of the scholarship on the enslaved community has focused on The Hermitage and has been undertaken by archaeologists, who have provided important but untapped context for understanding their experiences.
This paper will examine the evolution of Jackson’s enslaved community, emphasizing the change that its members experienced as Jackson went from a land-speculating man-on-the-make to a traditional southern planter. Early in Jackson’s Tennessee residency, the people whom he enslaved were subject to severe violence. Later, Jackson displayed a more paternalistic manner, which speaks to his awareness of his public image and need to preserve stability among the enslaved population as he faced significant financial debt.
This paper will clarify the historiographical debate between Robert Remini and Matthew Warshauer over why and when Jackson altered his treatment of his slaves. It will also explain how the defiant actions of one of Jackson’s slaves were instrumental in bringing about this change, speaking to John Blassingame’s argument that slaves were transformative agents and not simply victims of the peculiar institution.

With this presentation, I’ll be setting forth my preliminary thoughts about a bigger project I want to undertake: a study of Jackson’s slave communities from an historical perspective. Most of my time on this project was spent updating and expanding a database I have compiled on Jackson’s slaves.

I also wrote two book proposals, which are still in the discussion stage with publishers. These didn’t require archival research, but I spent time refreshing my memory on Jacksonian political history and historiography.

New Book on Jacksonian Race Riot

30 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by in Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Morley, Slavery

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Jefferson Morley’s new book, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835, recounts the August 1835 race riot that took place in the nation’s capital. As president, Andrew Jackson played a pivotal role in the fate of John Arthur Bowen, a slave found guilty of attacking his owner, Anna Thornton, wife of the late Capitol architect, William Thornton. This episode has received very little scholarly attention, but I hope Morley is able to raise awareness about its importance.

If I don’t get the opportunity to review it for a journal, I’ll review it here.