Historical Image of the Day

"Emancipation," by Thomas Nast, 1865

Historical Image of the Day

We'll close out this series of historical images with a cartoon criticizing American slavery, from Punch, 1848

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Cartoon from Harper's Weekly, 1860. A classic example (though possibly satirical) of how slaveholders tried to scare their slaves with stories of evil abolitionists stealing them. That might have been soothing to the white mind, but slaves obviously did not take this seriously, as seen in their behavior when the Union army came a mere few years later.

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Page from Boys Book of Fun, a deeply unpleasant book from the 1840s.

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Slave seamstress, 18th century

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Runaway slave notice for Harriet Jacobs. Probably between 1835 and 1842, which were the years where Jacobs' lived in an attic in order to escape her master.

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Harriet Jacobs, late in life

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Black women working in cotton field. I'm not sure if this image is from before the Civil War or not, but it's clearly indicative of the type of labor slave women did.

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Slave women processing pork, Wessyngton Plantation, Virginia

Historical Image of the Day

This week's images revolve around female slaves. They are inspired by Harriet Jacobs' anti-slavery classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. One of the greatest non-fiction works in American history. I have assigned it to my survey class this week in order to explore how slavery affected one woman.

Sojourner Truth

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Cover of sheet music for "The Fugitive's Song," antislavery song from 1845

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Cover of sheet music for "Get Off The Track: A Song for Emancipation," 1844

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Lydia Marie Child, comp., The American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1843.

Not sure if this also included weather projects and planting information or not.

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The Slave's Friend, an abolitionist children's book, 1836

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Anti-abolitionist handbill, 1837

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Cover of The Negro Woman's Appeal to Her White Sisters, by Richard Barrett, circa 1850.

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This week's image consist primarily of documents either produced by abolitionists or documents urging resistance to abolition.

Title page of Jonathan Edwards, Jr's. sermon, The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans, 1794.

John Brown, Terrorist

No one, and I mean no one, can question my bona fide disgust and disdain for the Confederacy and everything it stood for.

But as I've said before, John Brown was a terrorist. I don't care that slavery was extraordinarily evil. Well, I do care. But it doesn't mean that John Brown's actions were justified at Harper's Ferry or at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas where he and his sons hacked five pro-slavery settlers to death.

We certainly should not honor Brown today. Tony Horwitz (author of the amazing Confederates in the Attic among other books) agrees, noting that John Brown was basically the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed of his day. Hell, they even kind of look alike. To me, the more apt comparison though is Eric Rudolph. You say John Brown is OK, you say murder of abortion providers is OK.

Does that seem too extreme? I don't think so. It's saying that violent action, even treason, is completely justified if the cause is moral enough. Who is likely to use that message today? Randall Terry and other anti-abortion radicals. They already view themselves as akin to extreme abolitionists.

You might say that our judgment of Brown should rely entirely upon the cause. Maybe. But each generation reinterprets history for its own use. And I am scared of anti-abortion terrorism.

Regardless of the merits of my arguments, David Reynolds' judgments of Brown's plans are questionable.

First, the plan was not absurd. Brown reasonably saw the Appalachians, which stretch deep into the South, as an ideal base for a guerrilla war. He had studied the Maroon rebels of the West Indies, black fugitives who had used mountain camps to battle colonial powers on their islands. His plan was to create panic by arousing fears of a slave rebellion, leading Southerners to view slavery as dangerous and impractical.

Um, no. The plan was totally insane. While Appalachia might be a good place for a guerrilla war, there was no groundwork laid with slaves, nor did Brown have any way to sustain his rebellion. And it's not like West Virginia was exactly pro-black, even as they hated secession and the Virginia elites.

We usually associate Civil War memory in the modern context with right-wing forces and crazy people. Neo-Confederates care a lot more about the war than northerners. Conservatives care more than liberals. But the left has a Civil War memory as well. Michael Tomasky, among others, agrees with Reynolds, arguing

Brown was messianic, and maybe a little bit loony. But he had slavery pretty much pegged. On balance America would have been a hell of lot better off if Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had had a little Brown in them.

I suspect much of the left feels this way. But I hope we can think through our admiration for anyone who hated slavery enough to attack the federal govenrment and consider the larger implications of remembering John Brown today. Also, to say Brown was "maybe a little bit loony" is like using the same words to describe Charles Manson.

It's hard to criticize Brown. He actually wasn't racist, which is remarkable for 1859. He hated slavery, the most evil thing in our history. He acted upon his convictions. But how he did it is far beyond the pale. Honoring Brown would be counterproductive.

Historical Image of the Day

Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, 1851-74

To close my Senator series, I want to talk about somebody a lot of people were suggesting was one of the greatest senators in history, Charles Sumner.

Sumner's courage and bravery cannot be questioned. But what I think keeps him down a bit is his lack of skills as a legislator. He's most famous for being beaten by South Carolina senator Preston Brooks during an anti-slavery speech on the senate floor in 1856. Because it was on the senate floor, Brooks was immune to charges. Brooks nearly killed Sumner with his cane; Sumner was out of the Senate for 3 years recovering from his injuries.

This happening to Sumner was far from unexpected. A biographer says this about him:

Distrusted by friends and allies, and reciprocating their distrust, a man of "ostentatious culture," "unvarnished egotism," and "'a specimen of prolonged and morbid juvenility,'" Sumner combined a passionate conviction in his own moral purity with a command of nineteenth-century "rhetorical flourishes" and a "remarkable talent for rationalization." Stumbling "into politics largely by accident," elevated to the United States Senate largely by chance, willing to indulge in "Jacksonian demagoguery" for the sake of political expediency, Sumner became a bitter and potent agitator of sectional conflict. Carving out a reputation as the South's most hated foe and the Negro's bravest friend, he inflamed sectional differences, advanced his personal fortunes, and helped bring about national tragedy."

I think this is fairly accurate. I imagine the Republicans have more equivalents to Sumner today--he kind of acted like Michelle Bachmann. He was a provocateur far more than a legislator. He did play a leading role in attacking Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction, but he was far from alone in that sentiment and I'm not sure that he did anything unusual in his leadership on this issue.

What did Sumner do to get beaten by Preston Brooks? I'm quoting from his Wikipedia entry, but it's accurate with what I am familiar with:

Sumner said [Stephen] Douglas (who was present in the chamber) was a "noisome, squat, and nameless animal ... not a proper model for an American senator." He also portrayed [Andrew of SC] Butler as having taken "a mistress who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean, the harlot, Slavery." Not content to leave his assault on a political level, Sumner's three-hour oration took a cruel, personal turn as he mocked the 59-year-old Butler's manner of speech and physical mannerisms, both of which were impaired by a stroke that Butler had suffered earlier.

So this wasn't the classiest of guys. He was offensive for a good cause and I have no love lost for anyone he attacked, but this is not the hallmark of a great legislator. To his everlasting credit, no one did more for African-Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction and his spirit led to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the last major piece of legislation to help African-Americans for 80 years. That said act was not enforced and overturned by a Republican dominated Supreme Court in 1883 is no fault of his.

So Sumner deserves credit for much of what he did. But I think being a first-rate senator also means having some ability to function as a senator--to pass legislation, to craft compromise, to show legislative leadership. And Sumner didn't really have any of these qualities.

Kenneth Stampp, RIP

The great historian Kenneth Stampp died at the age of 96. Stampp did more than any other historian to destroy the myth of the contented slave. The historical establishment parroted the southern line about the benevolent white owner and happy slave for over 50 years before Stampp's The Peculiar Institution came out in 1956. While one can certainly criticize that work today, its historical importance both within the profession and in society at large cannot be overstated.