Purpose
This website and the organization of its content was created by Megan VanGorder for Gilder Lehrman Institute's Online Course - Amazing Grace: How Writers Helped End Slavery. Course participants were challenged to create an original anthology of antislavery literary works. This collection of works focuses on the writings of individuals who, either by themselves or with the help of amanuenses, wrote and published their stories from within the slave system. There is an important feature that all of these African American authors have in common - their collective voices and tones against slavery. Each text is accompanied with an introduction and context that serves to demonstrate the profound impact of African American voices in an era of general disenfranchisement. The following anthology supports the notion that words, in the form of slave narratives, provided a genre that vividly illustrated life in slavery, and had the power to impact society and effect change in America.
Scope
The works anthologized span the period commonly known as antebellum America from 1829-1861 and the beginning of the Civil War. The texts are arranged in the anthology in a chronological order in order to convey the shift in the style and content of African American slaves. The first work of this anthology is an excerpt from David Walker's Appeal. It is the only text in the anthology that is not a narrative. Its inclusion indicates that his pamphlet was a catalyst for other African Americans to collectively share their experience and speak boldly in opposition to slavery, as Walker had modeled. In the antebellum period starting after "Walker's Appeal," there was a proliferation of slave narratives. This anthology includes slave narratives that expose the brutality of the experience of countless in the years leading up to the Civil War.
Intended Readership
Primary source texts within this anthology are excerpted and designed with the upper middle school/lower high school reader in mind. Certainly, each text presented in this anthology could be used at higher levels in their entirety. Likewise, the texts could be shortened. It was the aim to choose texts that were compelling and at times, harrowing, to captivate an audience of middle schoolers who are often adverse to and bored by primary sources. The content is mature, but the excerpts were chosen to expose young reader's to the same feeling that affected change in America - that slavery and its cruelty could not exist in a nation that loved freedom. Each passage is accompanied with questions that are meant for discussion and text-based analysis. The questions included are both literal and inferential.
Besides the occasionally graphic content of a slave's experience, some of the texts include words that can be problematic to the modern middle school reader in an academic setting. The word "nigger," has been the cause of banned or censored books in schools all over the United States because of its continued use as the ultimate of racial slurs. The word as used in these texts reflects the commonality of its usage as a derogatory phrase towards African Americans during the antebellum period. Within the context of these slave narratives, the inclusion of the word demonstrates the author's purpose in writing: the slave system was degrading and dehumanizing. Three chosen texts in particular, the Narrative of James Williams: An American Slave: Who Was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama, The Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl I replaced the word "nigger" with "negro," with middle school readers (and parents) in mind. Although I do not disagree with the use of this word and am an advocate of the critical conversations that can come out of the use of this language in primary sources from the antebellum period, I am keenly aware of the sensitivities of young adolescents.
Besides the occasionally graphic content of a slave's experience, some of the texts include words that can be problematic to the modern middle school reader in an academic setting. The word "nigger," has been the cause of banned or censored books in schools all over the United States because of its continued use as the ultimate of racial slurs. The word as used in these texts reflects the commonality of its usage as a derogatory phrase towards African Americans during the antebellum period. Within the context of these slave narratives, the inclusion of the word demonstrates the author's purpose in writing: the slave system was degrading and dehumanizing. Three chosen texts in particular, the Narrative of James Williams: An American Slave: Who Was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama, The Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl I replaced the word "nigger" with "negro," with middle school readers (and parents) in mind. Although I do not disagree with the use of this word and am an advocate of the critical conversations that can come out of the use of this language in primary sources from the antebellum period, I am keenly aware of the sensitivities of young adolescents.
Historical and Literary Features
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In general, the purpose of the slave narrative genre was to uncover, reveal, and incense a national public against the callousness and barbarism of the slaveholding South. Additionally, narratives allowed American citizens to recognize slavery's victims as human. Some of the common themes of the narratives include the working conditions of slaves, the corruption of families (both white and black), a desire for knowledge and learning, and the sexual subjugation of slaves to their white masters.
In the face of Victorian sensibilities with a penchant towards proper expression, slave narratives provoke and expose those most inhuman characteristics with an undeniable candidness. Many of the slave narratives read by the modern reader are appalling and eye-opening in their own right. The nature of slavery and the reports of the conditions of slaves are, at times, almost unbearable. In order to understand the revolutionary effect of the slave narrative genre requires a consideration of the cultural expectations of antebellum America. Slave Narratives as Exposé
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"With the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners, and their mothers slaves." - William Wells Brown in Chapter 1 of Clotel; or, the President's Daughter
Within the context of Victorian ideals, where there was a strict moral acceptability of information sharing, slave narratives challenged the dominant culture. In many ways, slave narratives revealed what white Americans of antebellum America did not want to see about the institution of slavery. The narratives either showed the ways in which whites were directly involved in its blatant inhumanity or they demonstrated a complicity in perpetuating the system by not making concerted efforts towards its destruction. In either scenario, Victorian Americans were uncomfortable with the truths revealed in narratives and what they exposed.
Even today, it can be uncomfortable to confront the harsh realities of slavery within America's history. As slaves bravely expounded on their experience, they exposed and candidly spoke about a system that degraded the most precious forms of humanity. The existence of mixed race slaves, called mulattos, was undeniable. Though the hue of their skin put them on a racial spectrum of value in proportion to their whiteness, the origin of their DNA was not a topic of conversation. Slave narratives exposed and put real scenarios into the libraries of whites, who could no longer turn their heads away from the rape and sexual abuse of women under the slave system. Most notably in this anthology, Harriet Ann Jacobs recounted the advances of her owner as the impetus for her escape.
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Slave Narratives as Autobiography
In 2007, Historian David Blight wrote, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom. The story recounts the narratives of two slaves who were emancipated amidst the chaos and disorder of the American Civil War. Because their narratives were written after the war, they are excluded from this anthology. However, David Blight used these stories to illustrate an unmistakable feature of the slave narrative - that of autobiography. In his introduction, Blight mentioned the mandate proposed by Frederick Douglass that, "blacks were morally bound to uncover and tell their history, to reshape the national memory by pushing their experience to the center of the story." This onus weighed heavily on literate slaves who had escaped, but also on those who had the access and ability to tell their story to a national audience.
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Historian James Olney observed that slave autobiographies, when read one next to another, display an "overwhelming sameness." That is, though the autobiography by definition suggests a unique and personal story, that slave narratives present a genre of autobiographies that tell essentially the same story. When read in conjunction, as in this anthology, there is a distinct repetitiveness. While this repetitiveness disallows the creativity and shaping of one's personal story, as Olney argues, it was equally important for slave narratives to follow a form that corroborated with the stories of others to create a collective picture of slavery as it then existed. In fact, the "same" form presented in all of these unique and individual stories created a powerful and resounding message of the consistent evils of slavery and the necessity of its demise.
Slave Narratives as Propaganda
One of the repetitive features of slave narratives that does not appear in this anthology because of the choice to include excerpted texts is that of prefaced testimonials by white abolitionist friends. In their full versions (which are hyperlinked on every text's page), almost all of the narratives in this anthology contain one or more prefaces or introductions by reputable white members of society. The introductions may have been written by abolitionists or sometimes by the white amanuensis responsible for the dictation of the text. During that preface, the reader is persuaded and reminded very plainly that the proceeding narrative is a "not fiction, but fact; and it will be found fruitful in instruction by those who attentively consider its lessons." This text from the introduction to The Life of Josiah Henson is quintessential of this type of recommendation. It suggests to the reader the purpose for his or her reading and serves to account for the truth of the story contained in the narrative.
Memorably, Ulrich B. Phillips set the early precedent in 1929 that slave narratives were "issued with so much abolitionist editing that as a class their authenticity is doubtful." Countless historians and readers have discounted the stories presented in slave narratives as either wholly or partially constructed for the purposes of anti-slavery propaganda. The form and function of the narratives could either serve as a corroboration to expose the systematic reality of slavery or as a systematic and marginally fictional tool to convince antebellum Americans of the necessary destruction of the institution. Whichever way the text is read, the testimonies against slavery are convincing and passionately conveyed; the potential that they are not wholly accurate does not detract from their impact as literature.
Memorably, Ulrich B. Phillips set the early precedent in 1929 that slave narratives were "issued with so much abolitionist editing that as a class their authenticity is doubtful." Countless historians and readers have discounted the stories presented in slave narratives as either wholly or partially constructed for the purposes of anti-slavery propaganda. The form and function of the narratives could either serve as a corroboration to expose the systematic reality of slavery or as a systematic and marginally fictional tool to convince antebellum Americans of the necessary destruction of the institution. Whichever way the text is read, the testimonies against slavery are convincing and passionately conveyed; the potential that they are not wholly accurate does not detract from their impact as literature.
Slave Narratives as Historical Documents
Any study of such sources and their historical validity must begin with an assessment of the editors of the texts. In the recounting of Southern history, there has sometimes been an outright neglect of slave testimony for the underlying question of its truth. Most, if not all, of the white editors of slave narratives had an abolitionist political viewpoint and implicitly understood the potential effect of these stories on the popular opinion concerning slavery.
In general, as historian John W. Blassingame pointed out, the editors and amanuenses were an admired population who were often noted for their integrity. The editors of Josiah Henson's and Solomon Northup's narratives, Samuel Atkins Eliot and David Wilson, respectively, were legislators. Samuel Eliot, for example, was denounced by abolitionists when he voted for the Fugitive Slave Law. In this case, there does not appear to be an agenda to promote a message against slavery, but rather a desire to present a compelling and true story of Northup's experience. In his research, Blassingame exhaustively vetted the motivations and contexts of white editors to find that they overwhelmingly cross-checked, referenced, and clarified the stories that they heard for the chief concern of historical usage. While this does not distinctively settle the final question of each text's complete truth, it rebuts claims like those from Phillips that slave narratives cannot be trusted.
Slave testimonies, even when presented through the pen of a white amanuensis or editor, stand as important memorials and documents to the experiences of slaves in antebellum America.
In general, as historian John W. Blassingame pointed out, the editors and amanuenses were an admired population who were often noted for their integrity. The editors of Josiah Henson's and Solomon Northup's narratives, Samuel Atkins Eliot and David Wilson, respectively, were legislators. Samuel Eliot, for example, was denounced by abolitionists when he voted for the Fugitive Slave Law. In this case, there does not appear to be an agenda to promote a message against slavery, but rather a desire to present a compelling and true story of Northup's experience. In his research, Blassingame exhaustively vetted the motivations and contexts of white editors to find that they overwhelmingly cross-checked, referenced, and clarified the stories that they heard for the chief concern of historical usage. While this does not distinctively settle the final question of each text's complete truth, it rebuts claims like those from Phillips that slave narratives cannot be trusted.
Slave testimonies, even when presented through the pen of a white amanuensis or editor, stand as important memorials and documents to the experiences of slaves in antebellum America.
Sources Referenced
James G. Basker, "Amazing Grace": Literature as a Window on Colonial Slavery, OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 17, No. 3, Colonial Slavery (Apr., 2003): 28-30.
David Blight, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom Including their Own Narratives of Emancipation (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2007), 23-35.
William W. Nichols, "Slave Narratives: Dismissed Evidence in the Writing of Southern History," Phylon (1960-2002), Vol. 32, No. 4 (4th Qtr., 1971): 403-409.
John W. Blassingame, "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Nov., 1975): 473-492.
James Olney, "I Was Born": Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature," Callaloo, No. 20 (Winter, 1984): 46-73.
David Blight, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom Including their Own Narratives of Emancipation (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2007), 23-35.
William W. Nichols, "Slave Narratives: Dismissed Evidence in the Writing of Southern History," Phylon (1960-2002), Vol. 32, No. 4 (4th Qtr., 1971): 403-409.
John W. Blassingame, "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Nov., 1975): 473-492.
James Olney, "I Was Born": Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature," Callaloo, No. 20 (Winter, 1984): 46-73.
