To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class

CHAPTER FIVE: Transnationalism, Revolution, and the Anglo-African Magazine on the Eve of the Civil War

CHAPTER FIVE Transnationalism, Revolution, and the Anglo-African Magazine on the Eve of the Civil War We are among those who believe that freedom is destined, ultimately, to triumph . . . yet we are fully satisfied that this great object will not be attained, without great labor, toil, and sacrifice. Tyranny never releases its victim without a struggle. —Anglo-African Magazine (September 1859) When Thomas Hamilton of Brooklyn, New York, launched the Anglo-African Magazine in 1859, he offered “the first literary magazine produced by and for the black community,” opening a new phase in African American literary history. The magazine, which appeared monthly during 1859 and irregularly from 1860 to 1865, ultimately provided a public forum for some of the most prominent figures in antebellum northern black life, including Edward Wilmot Blyden, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Martin Delany, James McCune Smith, Daniel Alexander Payne, Frances Ellen Watkins, and Sarah Mapps Douglass. These and other well-known authors contributed fiction and poetry, philosophical and scientific essays, political and social commentary, and analysis of African American historical subjects. Like the African American newspapers that came before it, the Anglo-African Magazine offered an array of essays designed to mold the tastes, culture, and manners of its readers. With these goals in mind, Hamilton provided a “mixture of articles grave and gay, things serious, and . . . things juicy” for his audience of elite and aspiring African Americans. In the process, the Anglo-African Magazine helped to define the literary character of the northern black middle classes. In keeping with the fact that black conduct and domestic discourse consis- Figure 5. The frontispiece of volume 1 of the Anglo-African Magazine, which Thomas Hamilton issued as a bound collection in 1859. It contained an image of Alexandre Dumas, the author The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), who was of French and African ancestry. The Latin et nigri Memnonis arma inscription comes from Virgil’s Aeneid and refers to “the arms of black Memnon,” an Ethiopian warrior-king who distinguished himself in battle during the Trojan War. Courtesy of Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. On the Eve of the Civil War [111] tently linked the personal with the political, Hamilton’s magazine had a sharp political edge. Just as the editors of Freedom’s Journal had hoped to do some three decades earlier, Hamilton sought to provide an independent voice for members of the northern free black community. Hamilton also intended his publication to boost the spirits of his readers, northern black men and women who had deep antislavery sentiments and who were now grappling with the implications of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which sent waves of fugitives and their families fleeing the United States, and the 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court essentially rendered free African Americans stateless, unable to sue in federal court, obtain passports, or claim any rights that “whites were bound to respect.” As Hamilton wrote in his introduction to the magazine ’s inaugural issue, “In addition to an exposé of the condition of blacks, this Magazine will have the aim to uphold and encourage the now depressed hopes of thinking black men, in the United States—the men who, for twenty years and more have been active in conventions, in public meetings, in societies, in the pulpit, and through the press, cheering on and laboring on to promote emancipation , affranchisement and education.” Hamilton realized that after decades of activism, his readers were disheartened to see “as the apparent result of their work and their sacrifices, only Fugitive Slave laws and Compromise bills, and the denial of citizenship on the part of the Federal and State Governments.” Therefore, many were increasingly inclined to consider emigrating from the land of their birth. Hamilton believed that despite the difficulties they faced, northern black activists were “wrong to despond, wrong to change the scene of the contest” and “set up a breast-work in distant regions.” The “sterner and fiercer the conflict,” he proclaimed, “the sterner and steadier should be the soldiers engaged in it.” And in an effort to prepare his soldiers for the conflict, the Anglo-African Magazine championed a radical political sensibility for elite and aspiring African American readers. This chapter explores the origins of this militant identity and assesses its place...