The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865

Chapter 3: Literary Identity in the New Nation, 1800–1816

3 Literary Identity in the New Nation, 1800–1816  Over the first two decades of the nineteenth century the situations facing African American writers differed in important ways from those of the Revolutionary period. The result was heightened efforts to create a distinctive African American voice within a context in which blackvoiced indictments or commentaries on American affairs continued to have significance. These efforts themselves continued to build on modes of self-assertion and identity that went back to the colonial period while incorporating new elements and new concerns in African American life. The first decade of the nineteenth century presented reasons for both optimism and pessimism on issues of slavery and color. Most important , New Jersey’s Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, of 1804, had put slavery itself on the road to extinction everywhere in the North. From the perspective of many African American leaders, the capstone was the 1807 federal legislation to close the African slave trade on 1 January 1808 as the United States joined Britain in putting a legal end, at least, to what many early antislavery advocates saw as the most nefarious feature of the system. At the same time, free Negro communities continued to grow throughout the North and elsewhere. The process of institution building begun in the late eighteenth century itself became more intensive. African American churches, though not to become wholly independent denominations until the second decade of the century, grew significantly during the first decade, developing a growing number of important leaders. In New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and even Charleston important 92 Bruce REV.PAGE 03 (92-134) 9/26/01 9:29 AM Page 92 steps were taken toward developing African American educational institutions , some with white leadership, others created and sponsored by African Americans themselves. Of no less significance was the founding of a spate of mutual benefit societies in almost all of America’s major cities between 1800 and 1810, with more to come in the ensuing decades. These societies served a variety of functions for their members, including providing insurance to assist the families of the deceased, but also served as centers for communal and even literary activity, as well as settings for the emergence of a self-conscious urban elite. In schools, churches, and voluntary associations many saw grounds for the growth of a community that ultimately could become part of the larger society, proving itself in the context of the American world.1 Such developments could easily be taken as signs of progress and of hope for the future. Surveying the scene in 1813, one African American observer declared that much that had taken place in America during the early years of the century demonstrated that “the land in which we live gives us the opportunity rapidly to advance the prosperity of liberty” and that diligence and dedication alone were necessary for that opportunity to grow. He was not alone in offering such an assessment.2 Not all signs were so positive, however. Even as slavery was seen as at least on its way to ending in the North, there was much to indicate its still firmer hold on the states of the South. Flexibility in the upper South was giving way to stricter controls, especially in the wake of Haiti and then of a rebellion plot led by a slave named Gabriel, a plot uncovered in Richmond, Virginia, in 1800. The slaveholding regimes wanted to forestall the occurrence of such events in the future. Free people of color suffered new disabilities, and restrictive legislation made manumission more difficult and less common after the enthusiasms of the Revolutionary era had waned. On the eve of the abolition of the slave trade, importation reached significant levels: the number of slaves imported in the decade before closure was virtually double that of the preceding decade. The domestic trade continued without abatement.3 In some areas there were real losses. Even in the North, as free black communities grew there were more restrictions placed on free people themselves. In many areas there was a severe curtailing of economic opportunities ; disfranchisement was debated and enacted in Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, and Kentucky. Blacks and antislavery whites built Literary Identity, 1800–1816 93 Bruce REV.PAGE 03 (92-134) 9/26/01 9:29 AM Page 93 schools, but blacks were denied, and continued to be denied, access to public institutions in New York, Philadelphia, and...