Slavery in American Children's Literature, 1790-2010

Chapter 2. Slavery Debates for Children, 1830–1865: Proslavery Responses

52 Chapter 2 Slavery Debates for Children 1830-1865 Proslavery Responses It seemed a pity to leave the beautiful country with its [. . .] negro children, the daddies and maumahs, [. . .] and all the freedom of a rural life [. . .]. —Caroline Gilman, “The Return” (1834) When a man sells land he writes a deed for it; when he sells a negro, he writes a bill of sale. —M. B. Moore, The Dixie Elementary Spelling Book (1864) While “North” and “South” are commonly used shorthand markers for antebellum anti- and proslavery sentiment, neither unwaveringly fits its respective designation. As much as Northern abolitionists had varying commitments to immediate emancipation, there were also an uncounted number of Northerners who agreed with slavery or disavowed abolition altogether, as did New England minister Nehemiah Adams, who described slavery as potentially “the perfection of human happiness” (92). Children could also find proslavery stories in Northern publications, as one sees in “The Water-­ Melon Boats” (1847), which describes for readers of The Youth’s Companion the “delightful times” (58) had by a planter’s children and their slaves. And, of course, Northern racism—even when expressed through an ostensibly abolitionist frame—contributed to white supremacist arguments that justified slavery. Collectively, white Southerners, too, held varying views. Sarah and Angelina Grimké, who grew up in a South Carolina slave-­ 53 Slavery Debates for Children, 1830–1865 holding family, for example, became well-­ known abolitionists; Sarah’s eyewitness account of the treatment of enslaved children even appeared in The Slave’s Friend (“Juvenile Anti-­ Slavery Meeting ” 14). Pockets of rebellion by white citizens—such as in Jones County, Mississippi—revealed violent disagreements about slavery and secession. And while one’s allegiance during the war was not necessarily a sign of one’s position on slavery, that the number of white Southerners who fought in Union armies totaled over a third of those who fought in Confederate armies indicates that the South did not hold an indisputably unified view against Unionist ideals, including slavery.1 That said, the South’s principal literarycontribution to the slavery debate—the plantation story—was unquestionably proslavery. As the debate intensified on a national scale, particularly in the 1830s following Nat Turner’s rebellion and with the rise of radical abolitionism in the North, proslavery ideology became a mainstay of antebellum Southern literature. As one slavery advocate argued, “in an age when the power of the pen exceeds that of the sword, purse and tongue,” literature could serve as a crucial “weapon[. . .] for [. . .] defence” against abolitionist attacks (“Duty” 246). Plantation stories provided just such a weapon. Although today’s general readers are likely to at least be familiar with Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, if not to have read them, it is unlikely many would have heard of John Pendleton Kennedy ’s Swallow Barn; or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion (1832). Yet many critics believe it helped to “inaugurate” the plantation novel.2 Offered, as author Kennedy described it, as “an antidote to the abolition mischief” (qtd in Osborne xl),3 it and the other plantation and proslavery domestic novels that followed would come to define stereotypes of slavery and race that have lasted to the present day. Although the versions of Southern slavery they propagated proved to be popular exports to Northern audiences, not as readily shared with Northern neighbors were other representations of slavery— including slave codes, auction notices, advertisements for runaway slaves, bills of sale, and advice about slave management—that revealed the harsh realities of day-­ to-­ day plantation life for those enslaved .4 Proslavery children’s literature reflected similarly vying representations . Yet, there is not a particularly “radical, moderate, and conservative ” paradigm to follow in exploring proslavery antebellum Chapter Two 54 and Confederate Southern children’s literature, because—unlike abolitionism in the North—Southern proslavery representations in children’s literature did not encounter resistance from general readers. There was not, for example, a “radical” form of proslavery racial representation that argued a drastic change to the status quo. Proslavery literature, for the most part, argued in favor of the status quo (or, more accurately, an idealized past), certainly so in its acceptance of slavery. The expression of racial representations in antebellum Southern children’s literature differed depending on genre, and three categories of proslavery literature—the plantation story, the proslavery adventure novel, and Confederate schoolbooks—contributed distinct tropes to slavery literature, each...