1. Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature

2. Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Literature
Phillis Wheatley "On Being Brought from Africa to America” Thomas Jefferson: From Notes on the State of Virginia David Walker: From David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles William Lloyd Garrison: To the Public Angelina E. Grimke: From Appeal to the Christian Women of the South Sojourner Truth: Speech to the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, Martin R. Delany: From Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent Henry David Thoreau: Slavery in Massachusetts

3. William Lloyd Garrison:
Thomas Jefferson:
He regarded himself as a man of science, and along with his achievements as a statements had an avid interest in the natural world. The opening paragraph in Notes of the State of Virginia is extraordinarily long, almost relentless – he does not pause or break up his prose …
His Notes on the State of Virginia are often seen as an embarrassment to his legacy – many 20th century History book left it out
NAAL says: Jefferson's Notes on the Notes on the State of Virginia celebrated the democratic ideals of the Declaration of Independence while making it clear that he regarded those ideals as best realized by whites (787)…he presents black people as inferior to white people…he leaves the question of race open to further empirical analysis
Additionally, he is rather condescending toward the success of Phillis Wheatley - He dismisses the work of Phillis Wheatley - commenting that Wheatley was a powerfully religious writer but not a true poet.
David Walker:
In his Appeal – he directly addressed Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia
William Lloyd Garrison:
Sought to abolish slavery and challenge the hierarchical claims of racial ethnologists by invoking the principles of the Declaration
It can be important to link Garrison's commitment to abolitionism with his commitments to women's rights, temperance, and pacifism…
What role did religion play? How was the Almighty evoked?
Garrison – was a militant – believe in the warrior Jesus
Jefferson alludes to a “Creator”
Walker invokes “Jehovah” and “ the Lord God of heaven”
Citing Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence, Garrison quotes the famous phrase “endowed by their Creator” but closes with a capitalized, furious vow, “SO HELP ME GOD!”
The Role of African-American women writers:
Phillis Wheatley
A fascinating poet – the first African-American, slave, woman poet
She reflects Puritan influence
Her poetry imitates the greats of European poetry – like Alexander Pope
She writes about liberty being an abstract or spiritual condition rather than freedom from slavery
What she sees as an enslavement is her former ignorance of Christianity and redemption
She was active with abolitionist groups and she views spiritual salvation as “the way to true felicity…”
Sojourner Truth

4. On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley
Autobiographical…
Expresses her pride in her adopted religion…
Shows her compassion for Africa’s pagan religions..
Published when she 19 (London 1773)…
Was brought to American from Africa years old…
A remarkable woman was educated in both English and Latin, advises whites that blacks (given the opportunity of Christianity) are equal to whites in the sights of God…
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd and join th'angelic train.

5. Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson published only one full-length book, his Notes on the State of Virginia, but the Declaration of Independence and his letters are also significant literary achievements.
The Declaration matters because of its significance for our national culture, the letters because of their frequent power to express Jefferson's public ideals and commitments, the importance of the many ideas and issues that fall under his consideration, and the clarity of his consideration.
Jefferson's sense of the historical moment conditioned practically everything he wrote.
Jefferson does not write in traditionally conceived literary genres, i.e., fiction, poetry, etc., but his best writing is in the form of public addresses, letters, and a political and scientific account of his home state.
This reflects the Enlightenment writing of the day (Scottish and Protestant)
the cultural significance of these forms
the artful construction of image and idea to move readers and to recognize that the texts work (perform) as literature.
Notes on the State of Virginia - can be seen as defining the American landscape, as well as the place of America.

6. David Walker A freed black man in Boston -
Maintained that the nation failed to live up to its hype -
Claimed the author of the Declaration of Independence a racist -
Attacks Thomas Jefferson -
The tone: militance -
The rhetorical questions, the multiple exclamation points, the quoting of biblical passages, the heated terminology are features of the period –
This is a central issue: The Appeal is clearly directed to black people, Walker's "brethren.”
Walker acts like he is NOT writing to whites….but is he?
Does he seem to be speaking to two differing audiences, even while seeming to address one?
He attacks all whites…and even blacks on non-action -
The rhetoric of the Appeal uses techniques drawn from sermons -biblical references - and from the political platforms of the day -
from Appeal in Four Articles….Men include:
The Indians of North and South Americans
The Jews
The Greeks
The Irish
But not the Africans….they are only good for slavery

7. Angelina E. Grimke
An Appeal to the 0++ Women of the South:
Filled with biblical quotations and allusions
Written as an evangelical appeal - as the appeal of a Christian woman to other Christian women to act to end chattel slavery.
Not only is the language that of evangelical abolitionism, but the logic is as tightly constructed as a Christian sermon.
Her language is formal and stiff - is Latinate, stiff, and formal – used as a religious argument
She says that slavery is sin, and that immediate abolition of slavery means immediate abolition of sin, perhaps immediate salvation.
Grimké's tactic is to legitimize--using biblical references--the unprecedented involvement of American women in the public controversy over chattel slavery.
She is arguing that slavery is sin and must be ended immediately; and she is arguing that women not only can end it, but that they are duty-bound as Christians to do so.
Born and raised on a slaveholding farm in S.C.
Became an abolitionist and Women’s Rights advocate
Followed Garrisonian Abolishism
Shocking – as she lectured to and at both men and women
In a letter she had impulsively written to the abolitionist Garrison, Angelina Grimké had aligned herself with the abolitionists.
Garrison published the letter without her consent, and she was condemned by her meeting (she had become a Quaker [Orthodox]) and even by her sister, her main emotional support. She stuck by her guns.
However, although she refused to recant, she was for a time unable to decide what action she should next take.
Writing the Appeal to the Christian Women of the South was the first public abolitionist document that Angelina Grimké wrote as a public document, to be printed with her name on it.
Here she commits herself, as a southern woman of the slave-holding class, to abolitionism--and to an investigation of women's activism in the anti-slavery cause.

8. William Lloyd Garrison
Through his newspaper, The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison spoke out against slavery and for the rights of black Americans for 35 years.
The tone of the paper was established in the first issue of the paper with Garrison's editorial entitled, "To the Public," in which he made the bold statement that he would "strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population."
In other words, not only would he crusade for the emancipation of slaves, he would also work to give freed slaves citizenship with the right to vote. And he would do so with determination. . .
On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD
The Liberator: "To the Public“
William Lloyd Garrison
The Liberator
Garrison is arguing against a set of unstated positions--those who claim to be "moderates," the apathetic.
Throughout the editorial, he addresses a whole range of people, most of whom--when one looks closely--he assumes disagree with him.
In a way, the editorial can be used to construct the variety of opposed viewpoints; he is challenging his opponents…

9. SOJOURNER TRUTH
Born a slave – New York…and Emerges as one of the nations' greatest advocates of African-American and Women’s Rights…
Experiences a Conversion experience and believes God has led her to the path
She is a Leading advocate at the Women’s Rights Conventions and Abolitionist movements…
She escaped slavery with her infant daughter in 1826…She would then go to court to recover her son…
She became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.
Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in OHIO.
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On June 1, 1843, Truth changed her name to Sojourner Truth and told her friends: "The Spirit calls me, and I must go.“
Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist – renamed herself Sojourner Truth…
She became a Methodist, and left to make her way traveling and preaching about the abolition of slavery.
In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Northampton, Massachusetts. Founded by abolitionists, the organization supported
While there, Truth met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass

10. Martin Robinson Delany
A social activist and reformer, black nationalist, abolitionist, physician, reporter and editor, explorer, jurist, realtor, politician, publisher, educator, army officer, ethnographer, novelist, and political and legal theorist.
Born free in what is now West Virginia - the son of a free seamstress and a plantation slave, Delany in the early 1820s was taken by his mother to western Pennsylvania after Virginia authorities threatened to imprison her for teaching her children to read and write.
His mother Pati Delany, was the daughter of a Mandinka prince, and his father, Samuel Delany, descended from the Golah tribe in Africa. As a young boy he learned of his noble African heritage from his grandmother, which he contrasted with the oppression faced by blacks, including his own family, in America.
In 1831 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he studied with Lewis Woodson and other black leaders, and began his lifelong commitment to projects of black elevation.
He organized and attended black conventions during the 1830s and 1840s and during this same period apprenticed as a doctor and began his own medical practice. In 1843 he founded one of the earliest African American newspapers, the Mystery, which he edited until 1847.
In late 1847 he left the Mystery and teamed up with Frederick Douglass to co-edit the North Star, the most influential African American newspaper of the period.
After an approximately eighteen-month stint with Douglass, Delany attended Harvard Medical School for several months but was dismissed because of his color.
Outraged by Harvard's racism and the Compromise of 1850, in 1852 he published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, a book-length critique of the failure of the nation to extend the rights of citizenship to African Americans, and a book that concludes by arguing for black emigration to Central and South America or the Caribbean.
Delany's emigrationism conflicted sharply with Douglass's integrationist vision of black elevation in the United States.
In response to Douglass's national black convention of 1853, Delany in 1854 organized and chaired a national black emigrationist convention, where he delivered "The Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent," the most important statement on black emigration published before the Civil War.

11. Martin Delany A Black Nationalist Manifesto, 1854
Delany is most remembered for his advocacy of black separatism and emigration in the nineteenth‐century.
Departing intellectual company with most abolitionists of his time, Delany espoused black nationalism and Pan‐Africanism in an effort to elevate the status of blacks in the United States.
His views, which emphasized the need for the separation of the races and self‐government for blacks, often alienated him from his colleagues, who still embraced an accommodation philosophy focused on the integration of blacks into white society.

12. The Compromise of 1850
Sen. Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850 admitted California as 31st state Sept. 9, slavery forbidden; made Utah and New Mexico territories without decision on slavery; made Fugitive Slave Law more harsh; ended District of Columbia slave trade.
The Compromise of 1850 was worked out by Henry Clay to settle the dispute between North and South. On January 29, 1850, it was introduced to the Senate as follows:
California should be admitted immediately as a free state;
Utah should be separated from New Mexico, and the two territories should be allowed to decide for them selves whether they wanted slavery or not;
The land disputed between Texas and New Mexico should be assigned to New Mexico;
In return, the United States should pay the debts which Texas had contracted before annexation;
Slavery should not be abolished in the District of Columbia without the consent of its residents and the surrounding state of Maryland, and then only if the owners were paid for their slaves.
Slave-trading (but not slavery) should be banned in the District of Columbia;
A stricter fugitive slave law should be adopted.

13. The Compromise of 1850
Compromise of 1850 attempts to settle slavery issue.
As part of the Compromise, a new Fugitive Slave Act is added to enforce the 1793 law and allows slaveholders to retrieve slaves in northern states and free territories…
The Fugitive Slave Law passed in September 1850 allowed escaped slaves to be captured and brought back to their masters.
The law also prosecuted anyone who helped hide slaves or who aided fugitive slaves in any way.
The law was very expensive to the United States of America as it cost thousands of dollars to return all slaves to the places from where they had escaped.
A boom also began in the slave catching business.
It was easy to take any black person, free or not and say they escaped. Slave catchers roamed the whole continent looking for black people.
Because of this law many blacks escaped to Canada in the 1850's and 60's.
The Fugitive Slave Law was responsible for the escalation of blacks in Chatham and Buxton (Canadian towns), as they were final stations of the Underground Railroad.

14. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U. S
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854.
It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders.
The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated many in the North who considered the Missouri Compromise to be a long-standing binding agreement.
In the pro-slavery South it was strongly supported.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters rushed in to settle Kansas to affect the outcome of the first election held there after the law went into effect.
Pro-slavery settlers carried the election but were charged with fraud by anti-slavery settlers, and the results were not accepted by them.

15. Henry David Thoreau: 1854 Slavery in Massachusetts
Henry David Thoreau ( )
was a philosopher and writer best known for his attacks on American social institutions and his respect for nature and simple living.
He was heavily influenced by the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who introduced Thoreau to the ideas of transcendentalism
In addition to Civil Disobedience (1849), Thoreau is best known for his book Walden (1854), which documents his experiences living alone on Walden Pond in Massachusetts from
Throughout his life, Thoreau emphasized the importance of individuality and self-reliance.
He practiced civil disobedience in his own life and spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay taxes in protest of the Mexican War.
(Thoreau was opposed to the practice of slavery in some of the territories involved.)
In addition to this domestic conflict, the Mexican-American War ( ) proved a point of much contention: Precipitated by boundary disputes between the United States and Mexico, the war was ultimately fought in order to expand American territory--many Americans felt it was our "Manifest Destiny" to seize all the land we could--and as a result the United States gained much of the present American Southwest, including California, Nevada and Utah.
Thoreau and other opponents of the war argued that the campaign constituted an unnecessary act of aggression and that it was pursued on the basis of arrogance rather than any philosophically justifiable reasons.
It is thought that this night in jail prompted Thoreau to write Civil Disobedience.
Thoreau delivered the first draft of the treatise as an oration to the Concord Lyceum in 1848, and the text was published in 1849 under the title Resistance to Civil Government.
On the 4th of July in 1854 – Thoreau gained radical and militant abolitionists and gave his Slavery in Massachusetts speech

16. This speech is made directly in relation to:
The 4th of July in Framingham, Massachusetts, he spoke along with the most militant abolitionists of the day…and vigorously protested the rendition (return to his owner by federal authorities) of fugitive slave Anthony Burns, and seconded the call for an end to the Union that continued to condone slavery.
Thoreau’s July Fourth speech would be published as “Slavery in Massachusetts,” and it exposed Thoreau to a potentially new audience for Walden – this event will give Walden the success his earlier works did not receive….This public appearance clearly associated him with radical abolitionism, and those who would not normally have read his works now took a second at Transcendentalist…
This speech is made directly in relation to:
FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT…and Fugitive slave Thomas Sims…a condemnation at northern complicity with pro-slavery forces…
Thoreau equates the suffering of slaves with Christ’s, and he unequivocally advocates violence in the fight to end slavery.
Historians surmise that Boston’s shame over its inaction in 1851 when Thomas Sims was returned to slavery at least partially motivated abolitionist zeal with regard to Burns, so that Thoreau’s engagement this summer with the issue of slavery mirrored the growing antislavery sentiment of many New Englanders.
On May 22, 1854, Congress had passed the Kansas Nebraska Act,:
legislation that effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Western territories could now determine by popular sovereignty whether to admit new states as free or slaveholding, and enraged Bostonians and antislavery voices throughout the nation protested what they regarded as a blatant victory for the pro-slavery Congress.