Antebellum Slave Narratives Studies in American Popular History and Culture JEROME NADELHAFT, General Editor For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com Hollywood and the Rise of Daughters of Eve Physical Culture Pregnant Brides and Unwed Mothers in Heather Addison Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts Else L. Hambleton Homelessness in American Literature Romanticism, Realism, and Testimony Narrative, Political Unconscious, John Allen and Racial Violence in Wilmington, North Carolina No Way of Knowing Leslie H. Hossfeld Crime, Urban Legends, and the Internet Pamela Donovan Validating Bachelorhood Audience, Patriarchy, and The Making of the Primitive Baptists Charles Brockden Brown’s Editorship A Cultural and Intellectual History of of the Monthly Magazine and the Antimission Movement, 1800-1840 American Review James R. 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Hartmann Mechanization and Handloom Weavers, 1780–1840 Language, Gender, and Citizenship Gail Fowler Mohanty in American Literature, 1789–1919 Amy Dunham Strand “The First of Causes to Our Sex” The Female Moral Reform Movement Antebellum Slave Narratives in the Antebellum Northeast, Cultural and Political Expressions 1834–1848 of Africa Daniel S. Wright Jermaine O. Archer Antebellum Slave Narratives Cultural and Political Expressions of Africa Jermaine O. Archer New York London First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf- ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade- marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Archer, Jermaine O. Antebellum slave narratives : cultural and political expressions of Africa / by Jermaine O. Archer. p. cm.—(Studies in American popular history and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Slave narratives—United States—History and criticism. 2. American literature—African American authors—History and criticism. 3. Pan-Africanism in literature. 4. Africa—In literature. 5. Africa—Social life and customs. 6. Africa— Politics and government. I. Title. E444.A73 2009 306.3'62092—dc22 2008036728 ISBN 0-203-88168-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-99027-0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-88168-0 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-99027-1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-88168-2 (ebk) Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii 1 “Speaking Guinea and a Mixture of Everything Else”: The Slave Narratives of Frederick Douglass Revisited 1 2 William Wells Brown: Subtle Whispers of Slave Culture, Pan-Africanism, and Insurgency 21 3 “Moses Is Got De Charm”: Harriet Tubman’s Mosaic Persona 38 4 Harriet Jacobs: A Larger Discussion of the John Kuner Parade and Other Cultural Recollections 54 5 Discourse on the Slave Narrative and a New Interpretation of Black Anti-Slavery Ideology 71 Notes 89 Bibliography 115 Index 123 Preface TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy man of men! Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough Within thy hearing, or thy head be now Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den; O miserable Chieftain! where and when Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow: Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies; There’s not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind. —William Worsdworth, “To Toussaint L’OVERTURE,” 1803.1 When Arna Bontemps wrote Black Thunder (1936), a historical novel based on the 1800 Virginia slave conspiracy led by Gabriel Prosser, he must have had William Wordsworth’s poem in mind when he titled the fourth section of the book “A Breathing of the Common Wind.”2 Wordsworth, a renowned poet of the English Romantic movement, opposed what he believed to be an oppressive French aristocracy and was a staunch sup- porter of the 1789 Revolution that toppled the regime.3 His poem To Tous- saint L’OUVERTURE reveals that he championed the leader of the related Haitian (formerly San Domingo) rebellion of 1791 in which blacks success- fully overthrew the French Army and established the fi rst black republic in the Americas. The Jacobin tradition, the radical faction of the French Revolution, bequeathed its political principals to the Haitian dissenters and it was reported that some of the Jacobin immigrants also had a hand in Gabriel’s scheme. It is this connection of ideological parallels between the movements that Bontemps explores in Black Thunder.4 Bontemps was inspired to write the book after combing through the slave narrative collection held at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee during the 1930s. He became fascinated with the accounts of slave resis- tance and was particularly intrigued with Gabriel Prosser.5 Bontemps’s