Enlightenment, Revolution, and the New Republic

This is Unit Five of American Literature, part two of two: the writers who took the Revolution's own vocabulary and held the founders to it. Part one ended with Phillis Wheatley grounding her love of freedom in her own seizure from her father's house. That move is this part's governing idea arriving at its payoff. The founders had written a premise about equality and derived a right from it, in public, in a document meant to be quoted. Once that was on paper it could be used by anyone, and the writers in this part use it. Olaudah Equiano turns a childhood aboard a slave ship into the argument that ended a trade. Benjamin Banneker sends Jefferson an almanac as evidence of capacity and the Declaration as a reproach, and Jefferson answers. Absalom Jones puts grievances before government in the language of rights because petition was the political form available to him. Judith Sargent Murray argues that any difference in what men and women achieve comes from their schooling rather than their minds. And then the period's fiction, which arrives as a warning and became the republic's bestseller, before a procedure that sorts any of these texts by what it wants its reader to do next. By the end you will be able to account for Equiano's narrative. To place Banneker and Absalom Jones. To state Murray's argument and place Freneau. To describe *Charlotte Temple* and the seduction novel. And to sort a text of this period by its errand.

Four entries on testimony and petition: a narrative that changed a law, a letter to a founder, and the form available to people without a vote.

Kidnapped at eleven, freed by purchase.

AML 0419 Olaudah Equiano and the *Interesting Narrative*

Born in Essaka in the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Nigeria, Equiano was kidnapped along with his sister at eleven, shipped to Barbados and then to Virginia, sold to a Royal Navy lieutenant who renamed him Gustavus Vassa, and spent a decade at sea before he bought his own freedom. The book argued down the trade.

A child's first sight of a ship.

AML 0420 The Middle Passage in Equiano's Telling

Equiano describes the slave ship as a child who had never seen the sea would: the stench below decks, the flogging of those who refused food, the men who leapt overboard, and his own conviction that he had fallen among spirits. The account became the standard description of the passage. It was written decades later, for a campaign.

A founder's own words, returned.

AML 0421 Benjamin Banneker's Letter to Jefferson

Banneker, born free in Maryland to a formerly enslaved father, taught himself astronomy and built a wooden clock the anchor calls the first made in America. In seventeen ninety-one he sent Jefferson an almanac and a letter quoting the Declaration back at him, and Jefferson replied. The clock's priority is the anchor's claim.

Self-taught, freed, ordained, petitioning.

AML 0422 Absalom Jones and the Petition Tradition

Born into slavery in Delaware in seventeen forty-six, Absalom Jones taught himself to read, attended a Quaker night school, and was freed in seventeen eighty-four. He became the first African American ordained a priest, and his petitions put grievances before government in the Revolution's own language of rights. Petition was the political form available to him.

Four entries on argument, verse and fiction: schooling against mind, a war poet who turned to graves, and the novel everybody read.

The difference is schooling, not mind.

AML 0423 Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes"

Murray, tutored alongside her brother in the classical languages and in mathematics, published "On the Equality of the Sexes" in seventeen ninety. She argues that any difference in achievement follows from a difference in education rather than in mind, and that imagination, reason, memory and judgment are distributed alike between the sexes. The essay predates Wollstonecraft's book.

A war satirist, and a graveyard poet.

AML 0424 Philip Freneau, the Poet of the Revolution

Freneau met James Madison and the novelist Hugh Henry Brackenridge at the College of New Jersey, where together they wrote *The Rising Glory of America*. His later poems include "The Wild Honey Suckle" and "The Indian Burying Ground", turning away from politics toward mortality. His best poems are the least political ones.

The early republic's bestselling novel.

AML 0425 Susanna Rowson and *Charlotte Temple*

Susanna Rowson's *Charlotte Temple*, published in seventeen ninety-one, follows a schoolgirl persuaded to elope to America, abandoned there, and left to die after childbirth. It was among the most widely read novels in the early republic, and the board takes a sample passage from its opening pages. Rowson rests on the survey witness and on the novel itself.

A ruin, narrated as a warning.

AML 0426 The Seduction Novel and the Early American Reader

The seduction novel warns young women by showing one of them ruined, and it dominated early American fiction. Its machinery is a trusting girl, a persuasive officer, a false friend, and a moralizing narrator who addresses the reader directly. The form let novels claim usefulness in a culture suspicious of fiction, so the moral frame was fiction's permission to exist.

Two entries to close: a procedure that sorts any text of this period by what it wants, and the contradiction the period hands forward.

Ask what the reader should do.

AML 0427 Sorting a Revolutionary-Era Text by Its Errand

This period's writing divides by what it is trying to do, and five errands cover the exam's field. A text that instructs offers a method for living and is addressed to a reader who might adopt it, as Franklin's autobiography and almanac do. A text that persuades to action argues a public question in plain language for the widest audience, as Paine's pamphlets do. A text that founds states a premise and derives authority from it, which is the Declaration's form. A text that testifies narrates the writer's own experience as evidence in an argument, which is what Equiano's narrative and Wheatley's Dartmouth poem do. A text that petitions addresses power directly and asks it to act, as Banneker's letter and Absalom Jones's petitions do. Ask who is addressed and what the reader is expected to do next. Testimony and petition overlap, since both put a personal case before a public, and the difference is the addressee: testimony argues to readers at large, while a petition names the person or body it wants to move.

A premise, and the people it omitted.

AML 0428 Reason, Rights, and the Contradiction the Nation Kept

The Enlightenment reached America as a change of method rather than a loss of faith, and the period's forms show it: the almanac, the pamphlet, the essay, the letter, the autobiography and the public declaration, all addressed to a reader assumed capable of being convinced. Franklin is the representative figure, inventing a self in print, compressing prudence into aphorisms behind a mask, setting out a chart of virtues in a bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection, then admitting he never mastered some of them. Crèvecoeur poses the question the nation has argued about since, and answers with a new man melted out of many nations, while quietly leaving out the people held in slavery on the farms he praises. Paine writes to be read aloud in a camp. Jefferson writes a premise, a right, a list of grievances and a conclusion, and produces the period's most consequential prose. The contradiction arrives in the same career, since the man who wrote that all men are created equal also wrote *Notes on the State of Virginia* and held people in bondage while doing it. The period's other writers press exactly there. Wheatley grounds liberty in her own seizure. Equiano turns a childhood on a slave ship into the argument that ended a trade. Banneker sends an almanac as proof and the Declaration as a reproach. Murray argues that the difference is the schooling. What the exam wants is the pairing: the founding documents, and the writers who held the founders to them.

That closes the first period. From here the exam moves into the nineteenth century and its fiction. You can account for Olaudah Equiano, kidnapped at eleven, renamed by a naval officer, at sea for a decade before he bought his freedom, and for his description of a slave ship written from a child's viewpoint decades afterwards for a campaign. You can place Benjamin Banneker, who taught himself astronomy and sent Jefferson an almanac with the Declaration quoted back at him, and Absalom Jones, self-taught, freed in seventeen eighty-four, and petitioning in the Revolution's own language because petition was the form open to him. You can state Judith Sargent Murray's argument that the difference between what men and women achieve is schooling and not mind, and place Freneau, whose best poems are his least political. You can describe *Charlotte Temple* and the seduction novel whose moral frame was fiction's permission to exist. And you can sort any text here into instructing, persuading, founding, testifying or petitioning by asking who is addressed. Unit six opens on the new nation's fiction.