The Camera and the Press: American Visual and Print Culture in the Age of the Daguerreotype

6. Seeing a Slave as a Man: Frederick Douglass, Racial Progress, and Daguerreian Portraiture

Chapter  Seeing a Slave as a Man Frederick Douglass, Racial Progress, and Daguerreian Portraiture Daguerreian Visions In the February 12, 1852, issue of Gamaliel Bailey’s National Era, a brief ‘‘Anecdote of Daguerre’’ immediately follows the thirty-fourth installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the continuation of chapter 32 and all of chapter 33), in which Tom is beaten for refusing to whip a female slave and is ministered to by a faithless Cassy. It reads: M. Dumas, a short time since, related the following anecdote of Daguerre. In 1825 he was lecturing in the theatre of the Sorbonne, on chemistry . At the close of the lecture, a lady came up to him and said: ‘‘Monsieur Dumas, as a man of science I have a question of no small moment to me to ask you. I am the wife of Daguerre, the painter. For some time he has let the idea seize upon him, that he can fix the image of the camera. Do you think it is possible? He is always at the thought; he can’t sleep at night for it; I am afraid he is out of his mind. Do you, as a man of science, think it can be done, or is he mad?’’ ‘‘In the present state of knowledge,’’ said Dumas, ‘‘it cannot be done; but I cannot say it will always remain impossible, nor set the man down as mad who seeks to do it.’’ This was twelve years before Daguerre worked his idea out, and fixed his images; but many a man, so haunted by a possibility, has been tormented into a mad house.1 Seeing a Slave as a Man 193 Two weeks later, a significantly abbreviated version of the same article appears in Frederick Douglass’ Paper.2 Douglass’s version leaves out both the anxious wife’s question about the feasibility of her husband’s goal and the narrative voice’s concluding suggestion that such seemingly impossible dreams result in madness more often than success, ending instead with Mme Daguerre’s announcement that her husband has had the idea to ‘‘fix the image of the camera.’’ This shared anecdote not only illustrates daguerreotypy’s ubiquity in antebellum popular periodicals, as well as anti-slavery newspapers’ participation in what Meredith McGill has termed the ‘‘culture of reprinting’’; it also indexes with daguerreian clarity significant differences in the two papers’ visions.3 The National Era’s account emphasizes Mme Daguerre’s concern that her husband may never realize his idea, the many years it took Daguerre to achieve the goal of permanency, and the torture of such an extended process. Frederick Douglass’ Paper focuses exclusively on Daguerre’s commitment to his objective, leaving Mme Daguerre’s question ‘‘of no small moment’’ unasked and, thus, doubts about its realization unexpressed. This editing removes any suggestion that torment and madness are the ends of such visionaries; all that remains is the statement that Daguerre ‘‘has let the idea seize upon him that he can fix the image of the camera.’’4 The first issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper announces its (and, thereby, Douglass’s) similar dedication to a seemingly impossible goal: ‘‘all rights for all.’’5 This insistence on universal rights, like the name of his new newspaper, marks Douglass’s definitive break from the Garrisonians and the Liberty Party and from their narrow focus on ending slavery. As the first issue of the National Era declares of the Liberty Party, ‘‘[i]ts power consists in single-eyed devotion to the one idea. It is not a universal-reform party. The principles it advocates are all comprehensive in their scope, and must exert an expansive influence on the minds of its members, disposing them to regard with favor all movements designed to advance the interests of the many, and abate the pretensions of the few; but its great duty is to apply these principles to the one evil.’’6 Douglass’s slogan, like his version of the anecdote about Daguerre, expresses a resolute clarity about his ambitious ends and stops short of discussing any means by which they will be realized—or potentially frustrated. Bailey’s paper is also clear about its much more narrow ambition, but its preferred Uncle Tom’s Cabin–like means of exerting influence and disposing favorable regard could lead one 194 Chapter 6 to conclude, like Dumas in the anecdote, that ‘‘in the present state’’ of...