To "corroborate our own claims": Public positioning and the slavery metaphor in revolutionary America

American Quarterly

Volumn 55, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 353-386

  Dorsey, Peter A ^a,b  

^a Mount St Mary's College   (United States)

^b Mount St Mary's College   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949735000     PISSN: 00030678     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/aq.2003.0023     Document Type: Review

References (112)

1. Washington to George William Fairfax, June 10, 1774, The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938), vol. 3, 224
2. The idea that dead or unconsciously used metaphors have much to do with how humans create meaning has been propounded by a prolific group of scholars. George Lakoff, one of the founders of this "conceptual theory," usefully summarizes its approach in "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor" in Andrew Ortony, ed., Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 201-51. I have reservations about conceptual theory and its application, but I concur with its basic premise that dead metaphors help structure thought
3. Christopher Looby attempts to correct what he considers to be an overemphasis on the power of print in Revolutionary culture by demonstrating that "vocal utterance" was a "deeply politically invested phenomenon of the social world." See Looby, Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), 3. Looby himself points out that his findings coincide with Jay Fliegelman's discovery that Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence as a text to be read aloud in a culture that greatly valued oral performance
4. See Fliegelman's Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language and The Culture of Performance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1993)
5. Sandra M. Gustafson also highlights the power of early American oratory in Eloquence Is Power: Oratory and Performance in Early America (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000)
6. Moses Coit Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957), vol. 1, 295
7. Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992), 231-32
8. Benjamin Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical (Schenectady, N.Y.: Union College Press, 1988), 10
9. repr. in A Hugh Henry Brackenridge Reader, 1770-1815, ed. Daniel Marder (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1970), 117
10. See Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975)
11. a succinct statement can be found in Morgan, "Conflict and Consensus" in The Challenge of the American Revolution (New York: Norton, 1976), 175-95
12. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 111-119
13. and Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992)
14. On Laurens as a slaveholder, see Robert Olwell, Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740-1790 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1998), 1, 148-65
15. Council of Safety to William Moultrie, Dec. 7, 1775, Laurens Papers, vol. 10, 546
16. For this narrative I am also indebted to Olwell, Masters, 225-26, 228-29, 236-243
17. and Peter H. Wood, "'Liberty is Sweet': African American Freedom Struggles in the Years before White Independence" in "Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, ed. Alfred F. Young (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1993), 156-59
18. and "'The Facts Speak Loudly Enough': Exploring Early Southern Black History" in The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 7-12
19. See also Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York: Putnam's, 1976), 29, 35-36
20. For a recent biography of this soldier, whose proposals for freeing slaves were confined to those who would join the army, see Gregory D. Massey, John Laurens and the American Revolution (Columbia, S.C.: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2000)
21. Laurens to Laurens, Laurens Papers, vol. 11, 224-25
22. Wood, "Facts Speak," 9
23. A copy of the Treaty of Paris can be found on the web site of the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School under the section "18th Century Documents": http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/britian/paris.htm. As with many aspects of the treaty, Britain did not comply with this provision, and its forces sailed from America with many of the slaves who had joined them. To complete this summary of Laurens's career, I have consulted Wilson, Loyal Blacks, 47-57
24. and David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 242-48, 261, 278-82
25. Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 232-46
26. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), 255-342
27. F. Nwabueze Okoye, "Chattel Slavery as the Nightmare of the American Revolutionaries," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 37 (Jan. 1980): 28, 12
28. Patricia Bradley, "The Boston Gazette and Slavery as Revolutionary Propaganda," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 72 (autumn 1995), 591
29. John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1961), vol. 2, 58
30. For this demographic information I am indebted to Wilson, Loyal Blacks, 1
31. Edgar J. McManus, Black Bondage in the North (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1973), 54
32. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 41-A2
33. and Stephanie Grauman Wolf, As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 8-9, 35-42, 118-19
34. Morgan, "Conflict and Consensus," 179, 182
35. [Saome Jenyns], The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies by the Legislature of Great Britain, Briefly Consider'd (London: J. Wilkie, 1765), 4, 8
36. [Martin Howard, Jr.], A Letter From a Gentleman at Halifax, To His Friend in Rhode Island (NewPort, R.I.: S. Hall, 1765), 8
37. repr. in Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965), 535
38. Daniel Leonard and John Adams, Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or Political Essays Published in the Years 1774-1775 (1819; New York: Russell & Russell, 1968), 204, 216
39. Robert McCluer Calhoon, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 112
40. Johnson, Taxation, 454
41. John Millar, Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society (London: W. and J. Richardson, 1771), 241-42
42. John Wesley, Calm Address to our American Colonies (1775) repr. in Political Writings of John Wesley, ed. Graham Maddox (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1998), 175
43. "A Familiar Epistle From America" in Winthrop Sargent, ed., The Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution (Philadelphia: Collins, 1857), 59
44. Samuel Seabury, Letters of a Westchester Farmer, 1774-1775, ed. Clarence H. Vance (New York: Da Capo, 1970), 109
45. Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution; In Thirteen Discourses, Preached in North America between the Years 1763 and 1775 (1797; New York: Atheneum, 1967), 553
46. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America, ed. Albert E. Stone (New York: Penguin, 1981), 219
47. James Swan, A Disuasion to Great-Britian and the Colonies from the Slave Trade to Africa (Boston, 1772)
48. repr. in Roger Bruns, ed., Am I Not a Man and A Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788 (New York: Chelsea House, 1977), 200-1
49. Benjamin Rush, A Vindication of the Address to the Inhabitants of British Settlements, on the Slavery of the Negroes in America (Philadelphia, 1773)
50. Nathaniel Niles, Two Discourses on Liberty (Newbery-Port, Mass., 1774)
51. Thomas Paine, Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal, Mar. 8, 1775
52. Samuel Hopkins, A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans (1785; New York: Arno, 1969), 56
53. Niles, Two Discourses, 321
54. Qtd. in Davis, Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 281
55. Independent Chronicle (Boston), Nov. 14, 1776
56. qtd. in Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), 122
57. Benjamin Colman, "Declaration and Testimony," Nov. 7, 1780
58. repr. in Bruns, ed., Am I Not a Man, 463
59. Hopkins, Dialogue, 68
60. Jacob Green, A Sermon Delivered at Hanover [New Jersey], Apr. 22, 1778 (Chatham, 1779)
61. repr. in Bruns, ed., Am I Not a Man, 437
62. James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston, 1764), 38
63. repr. in Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets, 439
64. Benjamin Rush, An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave-Keeping (Philadelphia, 1773)
65. Nathaniel Appleton, Considerations on Slavery in a Letter to a Friend (Boston, 1767)
66. John Allen, The Watchman's Alarm to Lord N - H, 1774 (Salem, 1774)
67. Peter Bestes, Sambo Freeman, Felix Holbrook, Chester Joie, Letter to the Representative from the town of Thompson, Apr. 20, 1773, printed as a leaflet (Boston, 1773)
68. repr. in William L. O'Neil, Insights and Parallels: Problems and Issues of American Social History (Minneapolis, Minn.: Burgess, 1973), 44
69. Caesar Sartor, "Essay on Slavery," The Essex Journal and Merrimack Packet, Aug. 17, 1773 (Newburyport, Mass.)
70. repr. in Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison, Wis.: Madison House, 1990), 170
71. Prince Hall, et al, To the Honorable Council & House of [Representatives for the State of Massachusetts-Bay, Jan. 13, 1774
72. John Adams to Jeremy Belknap, Mar. 21, 1795, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 5th ser., 3 (1879): 407-410
73. repr. in The Founders' Constitution, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner (Chicago : Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987), vol. 1, 559
74. Wheatley, "America" in Poems of Phillis Wheatley, 125-26
75. Green, Sermon, 436, 434
76. Arthur Lee, An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America from the Censure of Mr. Adam Smith (London, 1764)
77. "Address on Slavery," Virginia Gazette, Mar. 19, 1767
78. both repr. in Bruns, ed., Am I Not A Man, 107-111
79. Richard Nisbet, Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture (Philadelphia, 1773)
80. The Capacity of Negroes for Religious and Moral Improvement Considered (London, 1789)
81. Otis, Rights of British Colonies, 447, 439
82. Samuel Cooke, A Sermon Preached at Cambridge in the Audience of His Honor Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., May 30, 1770
83. repr. in American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Michael Warner (New York: Penguin, 1999), 470, 486
84. Ebenezer Baldwin, "An Appendix Stating the Heavy Grievances the Colonies Labor Under" in Samuel Sherwood, A Sermon, Containing, Scriptural Instructions to Civil Rulers and all Free Born Subjects (1774)
85. repr. in Colonies to Nation, 1763-1789: A Documentary History of the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Green (New York: Norton, 1975), 213, 217, 218
86. [Wells], Few Political Reflections, 26, 79-80
87. Peyton Randolph, "Articles of Association," in Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, n.d.), vol. 1, 75-80
88. Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 89
89. Allen D. Candler, ed., The Revolutionary Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta, Ga.: Franklin-Turner, 1908), vol. 1, 37-42
90. All the post-independence state constitutions can be found on the web site of the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School under the section "18th Century Documents": http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/18th.htm
91. See Sonja K. Foss, "Metaphoric Criticism" in Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice, Foss, ed. (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland, 1989), 187-96
92. Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775 (Athens, Ga.: Univ. of Georgia Press), 203-4
93. Harvey H. Jackson presents an excellent analysis of McIntosh's role in composing the Darien Resolution and how it squares with his practice of keeping slaves; see Jackson, "'American Slavery, American Freedom' and the Revolution in the Lower South: The Case of Lachlan McIntosh," Southern Studies 19 (spring 1980): 81-93
94. Virginia Gazette, Nov. 25, 1775
95. Jefferson to François D'Ivernois, Feb. 6, 1795, Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Gullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1950-), vol. 28, 262. There are thirty volumes to date
96. For a narrative of these events, see Ellis, American Sphinx, 55-56
97. John Chester Miller tantalizingly suggests that Jefferson replaced Locke's basic right of "property" with "pursuit of happiness" to facilitate emancipation but then concludes he probably made this change to help state governments confiscate loyalists' land. Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 15-17
98. "Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 part 1," in Kurland and Lerner, eds., The Founders' Constitution, vol. 5, 7
99. Commonwealth v. Jennison, Chief Justice William Cushing to the Jury, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 43 (1874): 294
100. [St. George Tucker and Jeremy Belknap], "Queries Respecting the Slavery and Emancipation of Negroes in Massachusetts, Proposed by the Hon. Judge Tucker of Virginia, and Answered by the Rev. Dr. Belknap," Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 1st ser., 4 (1795), 203
101. See also Ellis, Founding Brothers, 89
102. Jefferson, "Notes of Proceedings," 317-318
103. Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), 91-92
104. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 222
105. Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 67, 74, 72, see also 307-319
106. Commonwealth v. Jennison, 475; Rutland, ed., Papers of George Mason, vol. 3, 1086
107. Qtd. in Milton E. Flower, John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary (Charlottesville, Va.: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1983), 258
108. Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999), 66-73; see esp. 72, n. 54
109. Another summary of Britain's support of the slave trade can be found in McManus, Black Bondage, 11-13, 151-52
110. See Peter Onuf, Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville, Va.: Univ. Press of Virginia, 2000), 14, 147-73
111. See Nash, Race and Revolution, 3-55. Nash, who argues that historians have overlooked the strength of the early American antislavery movement, blames the northern states for this tragic, missed opportunity. During the constitutional and early Congressional debates, he argues, representatives from northern states, in order to advance economic interests, made unnecessary concessions to South Carolina and Georgia, states which were not in a position to dictate national action
112. See also Paul Finkleman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (London: Routlege, 1996), 1-96