Slavery, Reform, and the Woman Question

This is Unit Nine of American Literature, part one of two: the writing that was arguing about slavery while Concord argued about the soul. Unit eight closed on a group of writers who refused to resolve anything. This unit is their contemporaries, who were trying to resolve something specific, and its governing idea, which part two pays off, is that a literature written to change a law reads differently from one written to be admired. Between eighteen thirty and the Civil War American writing turned to argument, and the forms it used were the pamphlet, the newspaper, the lecture, the petition, and above all the narrative of a life. The slave narrative is the period's great American form, and it has a standard shape you can expect on the exam: birth into bondage, a dawning understanding of what slavery is, an act of resistance, an escape, and a new name. We take that shape first, then Frederick Douglass, whose book the board draws two of its nine sample questions from, then the narratives that differ from his, then the pamphlet and the newspaper, then the novel that outsold everything, and then a speech whose text nobody can settle. By the end you will be able to describe the reform decades and the narrative's shape. To account for Douglass and his two turning points. To place Jacobs, Northup and Equiano. To name Walker and Garrison. And to explain how Stowe's novel argues.

Two entries to set the ground: a literature written to change something, and the form that carried most of the argument.

Books written to change a law.

AML 0801 The Literature of Reform

Between eighteen thirty and the Civil War, American writing turned to argument: against slavery, against drink, for prison and asylum reform, and for women's rights. The forms were the pamphlet, the newspaper, the lecture, the petition and the narrative of a life, and every one of them was written to change something. The period's most-read books were arguments.

Five stages, and a vouching preface.

AML 0802 The Slave Narrative as a Genre

The slave narrative tells of birth into bondage, a dawning understanding of what slavery is, an act of resistance, an escape, and a new name in freedom. It usually carries prefaces by white supporters vouching for its truth, which is itself part of the argument the book has to make. That authenticating preface exists to answer a doubt the writer knew was coming.

Six entries on Douglass: a man who renamed himself, a book that put him in danger, and the two scenes the book turns on.

A new name, and a public voice.

AML 0803 Frederick Douglass: From Slavery to the Platform

Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey on a Maryland farm, enslaved from birth and, the anchor says, probably fathered by his mother's owner, Douglass was raised by his grandmother and separated from her at seven. He escaped, renamed himself, and became the period's most formidable speaker. The parentage is the anchor's statement rather than a settled fact.

A book that endangered its author.

AML 0804 The *Narrative* of 1845 and Its Authenticating Letters

Douglass's *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave* appeared in eighteen forty-five with prefaces by white abolitionists testifying that he had written it himself. Publishing it named his owner and put him at risk, which is why he sailed for Britain soon afterwards. The prefaces exist because his authorship was doubted.

A prohibition, read as a map.

AML 0805 Learning to Read as the Narrative's Turn

Sent to Baltimore, Douglass was taught his letters by Sophia Auld until her husband stopped her, saying that learning would spoil a slave. Douglass took the prohibition as instruction: literacy was the road from slavery to freedom, and he pursued it in secret afterwards. The master's objection supplied him the argument.

A kind woman, turned to stone.

AML 0806 Mrs. Auld: How Slavery Corrupts the Slaveholder

Douglass describes a kind, tender-hearted woman who treated him as one human being ought to treat another, and then writes that slavery proved as injurious to her as it was to him: the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The claim is corruption by unchecked power, not natural cruelty.

Two hours, and the whippings stopped.

AML 0807 The Fight With Covey

Hired out to Edward Covey, a notorious slave-breaker, Douglass was whipped daily for months until he fought back in a two-hour struggle, after which the beatings stopped. He presents the fight as the moment a slave in form became a man in fact, and the book turns there. It is the pivot of the book rather than its end.

Your celebration, and not mine.

AML 0808 "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"

Invited to speak on Independence Day in eighteen fifty-two, Douglass told his audience that the day was theirs and not his, and that their shouts of liberty rang hollow to a man in chains. The speech praises the founders and indicts their heirs, and the compliment to the founders is what sharpens the attack.

Four entries on the narratives that differ from his: a woman's ordeal, a free man kidnapped, and the Atlantic book they all descend from.

What the male narratives omit.

AML 0809 Harriet Jacobs and *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl*

Harriet Jacobs published *Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl* in eighteen sixty-one under the name Linda Brent. It tells what the male narratives leave out: that an enslaved woman's ordeal included her owner's sexual pursuit, and that her resistance therefore took another shape entirely. It was published under a pseudonym, and its authorship was long doubted.

Years in a space too low.

AML 0810 Linda Brent, the Garret, and the Woman's Narrative

To escape her owner, Jacobs hid for years in a crawlspace above a shed, too low for her to stand in, watching her children through a peephole. The concealment is the book's central image, and it makes freedom something a mother buys rather than something a man seizes. Her escape is endurance rather than confrontation.

A free man, kidnapped and sold.

AML 0811 Solomon Northup and *Twelve Years a Slave*

Solomon Northup, born free in New York in eighteen-oh-seven and working as a farmer and a musician, was kidnapped and sold south, spending twelve years enslaved in Louisiana before his rescue. His memoir of eighteen fifty-three reverses the usual narrative, because the freedom comes first and is taken. Freedom lost is a different argument from freedom won.

The pattern the later books inherit.

AML 0812 Olaudah Equiano's Place in the Tradition

Equiano's narrative of seventeen eighty-nine set the pattern the American writers inherited: capture, the passage, a series of owners, self-purchase, and a public argument built out of a private life. The American narratives of the eighteen forties and fifties are its descendants and its rivals at once. The tradition is Atlantic before it is American.

Two entries on the writers who refused to ask politely: a pamphlet that named a founder, and a newspaper that would not retreat.

A pamphlet that named Jefferson.

AML 0813 David Walker's *Appeal*

David Walker, born free to an enslaved father and a free mother, ran a Boston clothing store and in eighteen twenty-nine published his *Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World*. It attacks Jefferson as a racist and a hypocrite and calls for resistance. It calls for resistance rather than for patience, which is what made it alarming.

Immediate, and not gradual.

AML 0814 William Lloyd Garrison and *The Liberator*

Garrison founded *The Liberator* in eighteen thirty-one and opened it with "To the Public", promising to be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice, and refusing to retreat a single inch. He demanded immediate emancipation at a time when even most opponents of slavery wanted it gradual, and that demand split the movement.

Three entries on the novel that outsold everything else of its generation, the people inside it, and the mode it belongs to.

An argument built out of feeling.

AML 0815 Harriet Beecher Stowe and *Uncle Tom's Cabin*

Stowe's novel appeared serially and then as a book in eighteen fifty-two, and it outsold everything else of its generation. It was written in answer to the Fugitive Slave Act, and it argues by making readers feel the separation of families rather than by reasoning about property law. It was written against a specific piece of legislation.

Four names that escaped the book.

AML 0816 Uncle Tom, Eliza, Topsy, Simon Legree

Tom is the enduring Christian who refuses to betray others and is beaten to death for it. Eliza crosses the ice with her child. Topsy is the neglected girl who never knew a mother. Legree is the owner whose brutality kills Tom. All four names escaped the novel into the language, and the stage versions coarsened the characters badly.

Tears, aimed at a political end.

AML 0817 Sentimental Fiction and Its Political Work

Sentimental fiction aims at the reader's tears and treats feeling as a moral instrument: if you feel a mother's loss, you will act. The mode dominated mid-century American publishing, was written mostly by women, and was dismissed for a century as the opposite of serious literature. That dismissal has itself been reconsidered since.

Two entries to close the part: a woman who renamed herself for the road, and a speech surviving only in other people's handwriting.

A former slave, renamed for the road.

AML 0818 Sojourner Truth and "Ain't I a Woman?"

Born Isabella Baumfree in New York and enslaved until adulthood, Sojourner Truth took a new name and became a travelling preacher, an abolitionist, and a campaigner for women's rights. Her speech at an eighteen fifty-one convention answered men who argued that women were too delicate to be given the vote. She could neither read nor write.

Two transcripts, taken years apart.

AML 0819 The Speech, the Versions, and the Record

Truth's speech survives only in other people's transcriptions, and they differ. There is an early report by a journalist who was present, and a later, far more famous version written down twelve years afterwards, carrying a refrain and a dialect she probably did not speak. The course names the problem rather than choosing between them.

That is the antislavery writing. Part two takes the woman question and the reform writers around it. You can describe the decades when American writing turned to argument, and name the slave narrative's five stages, with the authenticating preface understood as an answer to an expected doubt. You can account for Douglass, renamed after his escape, publishing a book that named his owner and sent him to Britain, taught his letters until a master said learning would spoil a slave, describing a kind mistress whose tender heart became stone under slavery's influence, and fighting Covey for two hours after which the beatings stopped. You can place Jacobs, who hid for years in a crawlspace too low to stand in, Northup, a free man kidnapped, and Equiano, whose Atlantic book set the pattern. You can name Walker's pamphlet attacking Jefferson and Garrison's refusal to retreat a single inch. And you can explain how Stowe argued by feeling rather than by property law, and why the text of Sojourner Truth's speech cannot be settled.