Jefferson’s Legacy, Race Science, and Righteous Violence in Jabez Hammond’s Abolitionist Fiction

Jabez Delano Hammond published The Life and Opinions of Julius Melbourn in 1847, amidst state debates over black suffrage and national debates over slavery expansion. The white New Yorker wrote in the voice of a former slave, fooling some contemporaries and subsequent historians, seeking to link Thomas Jefferson’s legacy to antislavery and racial equality. Placed in the context of Hammond’s other public and private writings, Julius Melbourn represents the evolution, radicalization, and politicization of the antebellum abolition movement. Hammond began as an ardent Jeffersonian but came to advocate violence against the Slave Power before disavowing such tactics in favor of political mobilization before his death in 1855.