Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T01:55:08.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“To Plead Our Own Cause”: The St. Domingue Legacy and the Rise of the Black Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Philip Edmondson
Get access

Extract

From the 1820s to the 1850s, the black press, with early support from white abolitionists, published historical essays on the St. Domingue slave rebellion for new generations of readers. The purpose was to exhort free black readers to emulate the vigor of the St. Dominguan rebels in taking control of their communities and personal lives. In this essay, I address how antebellum black activist writers formulated a St. Domingue legacy to unite free black communities, to promote literacy education, and to build firm moral character.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 29 , October 2005 , pp. 121 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Lundy, Benjamin, “The Negro Character,” GUE, 03 1822, 133Google Scholar.

2. “Republic of Hayti,” GUE, 03 1822, 143Google Scholar.

3. “Republic,” GUE, 03 1822, 144Google Scholar.

4. Jean Pierre Boyer, letter to Loring D. Dewey, April 31, 1824, in Correspondence Relative to the Emigration to Hayti, of the Free People of Color, in the United States. Together with the Instructions of the Agent Sent Out by President Boyer, ed. Dewey, Loring (New York: Mahlon Day, 1824), 7Google Scholar.

5. Boyer, letter, 11.

6. Correspondence, 31.

7. Bethel, Elizabeth Raum, The Roots of African American Identity: Memory and History in Free Antebellum Communities (New York: St. Martin's, 1997), 152Google Scholar.

8. Oliver, James and Horton, Lois E., In Hope of Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 191–95Google Scholar.

9. Dixon, Chris, African Americans and Haiti: Emigration and Black Natinalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000), 34Google Scholar.

10. “The Government of Hayti and the Emigrants,” GUE, 04 1825, 100Google Scholar.

11. “Haytian Independence,” GUE, 08 1825, 147Google Scholar; and September 1825, 13–14.

12. “ Haytian Independence,” GUE, 09 1825, 13–14Google Scholar.

13. Nordin, Kenneth D., “In Search of Black Unity: An Interpretation of the Content and Function of Freedom's Journal,” Journalism History 4 (1977–1978): 123–26Google Scholar.

14. Freedom's Journal, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

15. Bethel, 157.

16. Verbatim incorporations of text from Russwurm's commencement address at Bowdoin College (1826) appear in Africanus's essays of April 6, 1827, April 27, 1827, and June 21, 1827. Regarding the quoted text, see Russwurm, John Browne, “The Conditions and Prospects of Haiti,” in Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, ed. Foner, Philip S. and Branham, Robert James (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 101–4Google Scholar. For a discussion of the African American literary strategies of objectification, legitimization, and mythification that Russwurm draws on, see Smith, Arthur L., Rhetoric of Black Revolution (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1969), 40–50Google Scholar.

17. For an argument that black activists looked more to ancient Egypt and Ethiopia than to Haiti in raising historical consciousness, see Dain, Bruce, “Haiti and Egypt in Early Black Racial Discourse in the United States,” Slavery and Abolition 14 (1975): 321–28Google Scholar.

18. “Past and Present State of Hayti,” Quarterly Review 21, no. 42 (01 1819): 431–60Google Scholar.

19. Barskett, James, History of the Island of St. Domingo: From Its Discovery by Columbus to the Present Period (London, 1818)Google Scholar; and de Vastey, Baron, Reflexions sur les Noirs et les Blancs, la Civilization de l'Afrique, le Royaume d'Hayti, &c. Relation de la Fete de S. M. la Reine d'Hayti, &c (Cap Henri, Haiti: P. Roux, imprimateur du roi, 1816)Google Scholar. Baron de Vastey, royal secretary of King Henri Christophe, was a former slave and the only black Haitian historian of the period (see Lieutenant Generalde Lacroix, Baron Pamphile, Mémoires pour servir a l'Histoire de la Révolution de Saint Domingue [Paris, 1819])Google Scholar. Lacroix was a French general who fought the slaves, but he admired Toussaint's leadership and generally described him in favorable terms.

20. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1983), 192–93Google Scholar.

21. Bercovitch, Sacvan, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 14, 40–44Google Scholar; and Bercovitch, , Rites of Assent (New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, 1993)Google Scholar (see chapter 5, “The Typology of Mission, from Edwards to Independence,” 147–68).

22. Bercovitch, Rites (see chapter 6, “Continuing Revolution: George Bancroft and the Myth of Progress,” 168–93); and Ernest, John, “Liberation Historiography: African American Historians Before the Civil War,” American Literary History 14, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 413–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Africanus, “Haytien Revolution,” Freedom's Journal, 04 6, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

24. Africanus, “From the Scrapbook of Africanus, No. II,” April 27, 1827, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

25. Horton, James Oliver, Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 146–64Google Scholar.

26. Gates, Henry Louis and West, Cornel, The Future of the Race (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 81Google Scholar; and Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 198Google Scholar.

27. Cugoano, Quobna Ottobah, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, ed. Carretta, Vincent (New York: Penguin, 1999)Google Scholar; and Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative, ed. Carretta, Vincent (New York: Penguin, 1995)Google Scholar.

28. Bercovitch, , Jeremiad, 4Google Scholar.

29. Howard-Pitney, David, The Afro-American Jeremiads: Appeals for Justice in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

30. Africanus, “Haytien Revolution,” Freedom's Journal, 04 6, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

31. Africanus, “From the Scrapbook of Africanus, No. II,” Freedom's Journal 04 27, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Africanus, “Toussaint l'Ouverture,” Freedom's Journal, 05 4, 11, and 18, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

35. Africanus, “Toussaint l'Ouverture,” Freedom's Journal, 05 4, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Africanus, “From the Scrapbook of Africanus, No. IV,” Freedom's Journal, 06 15, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

39. Africanus, “From the Scrapbook of Africanus, No. VI,” Freedom's Journal, 10 27, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

40. “African Free Schools in the United States,” Freedom's Journal, 06 1, 1827Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, December 29, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

41. “African Education,” Freedom's Journal, 02 15, 1828Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, December 29, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

42. Walker, David, “Address Delivered Before the General Colored Association at Boston,” Freedom's Journal, 12 19, 1828, 293Google Scholar.

43. Ibid.

44. Walker, David, Appeal to the Coloured People of the World, ed. Hinks, Peter (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. Subsequent parenthetical references concur with this edition.

45. For more on David Walker and the black press, see Levine, Robert S., “Circulating the Nation: David Walker, the Missouri Compromise and the Rise of the Black Press,” in The Black Press, ed. Vogel, Todd (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 17–36Google Scholar.

46. Reed, Harry, Platform for Change: The Foundations of the Northern Free Black Community, 1775–1865 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994), 172–73Google Scholar.

47. “Theresa, a Haytian Tale,” Freedom's Journal, 01 18–25 and 02 8–15, 1828Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

48. Bruce, Dickson D. Jr, The Origins of African American Literature 1680–1865 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 172–73Google Scholar.

49. “Theresa,” January 25, 1828.

50. Ibid.

51. Stewart, Maria W., “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build,” in Maria W. Stewart: America's First Black Woman Political Writer, ed. Richardson, Marilyn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 39Google Scholar.

52. Stewart, Maria W., “An Address Delivered Before the African American Female Intelligence Society of America,” in Richardson, , Maria W. Stewart, 54Google Scholar.

53. Stewart, , “Religion,” 39Google Scholar.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid.

56. Stewart, , “An Address Delivered Before the African American Female Intelligence Society of America,” in Richardson, , Maria W. Stewart, 55Google Scholar.

57. Douglass, Frederick, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (New York: Collier, 1962), 468Google Scholar; and Frederick Douglass' Paper, June 3, 1853.

58. The Black Abolitionist Papers, ed. Ripley, C. Peter (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 3: 33Google Scholar.

59. McCune Smith, James, North Star, 01 14, 1848Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, November 17, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

60. James McCune Smith, letter to Geritt Smith, July 28, 1848, quoted in Stauffer, John, The Black Hearts of Men (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 160Google Scholar.

61. James McCune Smith publicly endorsed Douglass and the North Star at an 1849 free black public meeting in New York City as proof of the slaves' capacity for liberty and freedom. He also acknowledged Douglass and the North Star at this meeting as unifying forces of black nationalism and called for African American support of the newspaper as a civic duty (Smith, , North Star, 05 4, 1849Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, November 17, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.org>).

62. John Stauffer interprets the introduction as Smith's admiration for Douglass's capacity to transform himself continually into an effective black persona through his writing and public speaking. For more, see Stauffer, , Black Hearts, 54, 89Google Scholar; and Blight, David W., “In Search of Learning, Liberty, and Self Definition: James McCune Smith and the Ordeal of the Antebellum Black Intellectual,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 9, no. 2 (1985): 10Google Scholar.

63. McCune Smith, James, “The Haytian Revolutions,” Colored American, 10 9, 1841Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

64. Colored American: “The Republic of Hayti,” March 11, 1837; “Present Condition of St. Domingo,” July 1, 1837; “Republic of Hayti,” March 15, 1838; “Hayti,” August 4, 1838; “Hayti,” November 3, 1838; “Hayti,” February 2, 1838; and “Hayti,” February 23, 1839, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

65. McCune Smith, James, “Lecture on the Haytian Revolutions,” Colored American, 06 5, 1841Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid.

68. James McCune Smith cites statistics and selective information from the following antiblack historical sources: Edwards, Bryan, An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo (London: Whittaker, 1818–1819), vol. 3Google Scholar; Franklin, James, The Present State of Hayti (Saint Domingo) with Remarks on Its Agriculture, Commerce, Laws, Religion, Finances, and Population, Etc. (1828; rept. Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1970)Google Scholar; and Brown, Jonathan, The History and Present Condition of St. Domingo (1837; rept. London: F. Cass, 1971)Google Scholar.

69. McCune Smith, James, “Lecture on the Haytian Revolutions,” Colored American, 10 2, 1841Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

70. McCune Smith, James, “Haytien Revolutions,” Colored American, 08 7, 1841Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

71. Hutton, Frankie. “Democratic Idealism in the Black Press,” in Outsiders in 19th Century Press History: Multicultural Perspectives, ed. Hutton, Frankie and Reed, Barbara Straus (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1995), 5–19Google Scholar; Hutton, Frankie, The Early Black Press in America, 1827–1860 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood), 6–8, 16, 33Google Scholar; and Reed, , Platform for Change, 98Google Scholar.

72. Howard H. Bell enumerates the African American and abolitionist newspapers dedicated to the cause of black elevation: Freedom's Journal and the Rights of All in the 1820s; the Liberator in the 1830s; and Colored American, the Ram's Horn, and North Star in the 1840s (see Bell, , “National Negro Conventions of the Middle 1840s: Moral Suasion vs. Political Action,” Journal of Negro History 42 [10 1957]: 257–58)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73. McCune Smith, James, “Haytien Revolutions,” Colored American, 10 9, 1841Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

74. McCune Smith, James, “Haytien Revolutions,” Colored American, 10 9 and 16, 1841Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

75. Douglass, Frederick, “Establishing the North Star,” in Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings, ed. Meyer, Michael (New York: Modern Library, 1984), 262Google Scholar.

76. Douglass, , “North Star: Statement of Purpose,” in Meyer, , Frederick Douglass, 266Google Scholar.

77. Frederick Douglass' Paper, April 21, 1848, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, March 26, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

78. Douglass is referring to the attempts of Southerners, such as John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, to invade Haiti with England and France if the Emperor Solouque refused to honor his large outstanding debt to France incurred to support the Haitian leader's attack on Santo Domingo. For a summary of this intervention attempt as well as earlier ones that date back to 1848, see “A Singular Diplomatic Correspondence,” Frederick Douglass' Paper, 12 31, 1852Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, September 28, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

79. Harold, , “Haytian Correspondence No. 1,” North Star, 04 1, 1848Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, September 28, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.com>.

80. Ibid.

81. Ibid.

82. Harold, , “Haytian Correspondence No. 2,” North Star, 06 9, 1848Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, September 28, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.org>.

83. Ibid.

84. Harold, , “From Our Own Correspondent,” North Star, 04 7, 1849Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, September 28, 2002 <http://accessible.palinet.com>.

85. “Toussaint l'Ouverture,” North Star, 09 4, 1851Google Scholar, in Accessible Archives, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, February 1, 2001 <http://accessible.palinet.com>.

86. Douglass, , “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, ed. Lauter, Paul (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1852), 1: 1732–50Google Scholar.

87. Ibid., 1739.

88. Ibid., 1740.

89. Ibid., 1741.

90. Douglass, Frederick, “The Heroic Slave,” in Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings, ed. Meyer, Michael (New York: McGraw Hill, 1953), 344Google Scholar.

91. Ibid., 345.

92. Ibid., 345.

93. Ibid., 347.

94. “Republic of Hayti,” GUE, 03 1822Google Scholar.

95. Douglass, Frederick, “A Trip to Haiti,” Douglass Monthly, 08 1861Google Scholar; and The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, ed. Foner, Philip (New York: International, 1955), 3: 85Google Scholar.

96. Ibid., 87.

97. Ibid., 88.

98. Ibid.