- Antebellum Touring and the Culture of DeceptionThe Case of Master Diamond
In 1821, while performing with James Caldwell’s company in Norfolk, Virginia, actor Noah Ludlow first met visiting star Junius Brutus Booth. Ludlow could hardly believe that the short, disheveled man before him was “one of the brightest ‘stars’ in the Western dramatic horizon.” In fact, he had “some doubts whether he was the real Booth, or some impudent adventurer, who, having heard that Mr. Booth contemplated visiting America, took this peculiar way of introducing himself, and, if possible, ‘humbugging’ the Yankees before the real Booth should arrive.”1 It was not until the fourth act of Booth’s performance in Richard III that Ludlow finally witnessed a great talent and was convinced of the star’s true identity. A few years later, while traveling with a small circus, then-emerging entrepreneur P. T. Barnum was also entangled in a case of mistaken identity, but one of a very different sort. Upon arriving in Camden, South Carolina, he was suddenly abandoned by the blackface minstrel dancer in his company, prompting an instance of the showman’s characteristic resourcefulness: “I had advertised negro songs; no one of my company was competent to fill his place; but being determined not to disappoint the audience, I blacked myself thoroughly, and sung the songs advertised . . . to my surprise, my singing was applauded, and in two of the songs I was encored!” According to Barnum, this act was a bit too convincing. Following one evening’s performance, he intervened in a dispute between a man and some members of the company. Seeing Barnum, the man pulled out a pistol: “You black scoundrel! dare you use such language to a white [End Page 39] man?” Barnum quickly responded: “I rolled up my shirt sleeves, and replied, ‘I am as white as you are, sir.’ He absolutely dropped the pistol with fright!”2
Ludlow and Barnum suggest the prevalence of impersonation and detection, not simply onstage in theatrical productions but also in the broader milieu of antebellum performance culture under the star system.3 Historian James Cook describes the preoccupation with cultural fraud during the period as “artful deception,” a paradoxical reception pattern that encouraged the slippage between “truth” and illusion in nineteenth-century popular entertainments. A commercial strategy epitomized by Barnum’s elaborately staged public hoaxes, artful deception did not invite audiences to detect the sham, but rather, as the New York showman famously explained, to “let the public decide.”4 Indeed, as traveling performers seeking guest engagements became ubiquitous, so did debates over whether a star’s status was deserved, and the term “star” became popularized in quotation marks as an implicit acknowledgment of the title’s instability and ambiguity. This hesitation reflects a broader cultural interest in assessing whether stars were really stars and whether performers were really who they claimed to be.5 The growing geographic circulation of performers in the antebellum period, before images to verify their identities were widely available, instantiated debates over their authenticity. Ludlow’s suspicion toward Booth conveys the impression that “star” billing or even a famous name was not enough to verify an actor’s legitimacy, while Barnum describes an instance of spectators believing a false impersonation rather than doubting the display of “true” identity.
Of course, the cultural interest in authenticity and impersonation—and specifically in racial mimicry—was inherent in minstrelsy. As Eric Lott has argued, the white imitation of nominally black movements, dance, and speech was rooted in both disdain and desire for black cultural practices. “Minstrel performers attempted to repress through ridicule the real interest in black cultural practices they nonetheless betrayed.”6 Instances when the racial counterfeit supposedly broke down especially revealed this mixture of attraction and repulsion, what Lott calls “love and theft.” Like Barnum’s outraged spectator, audiences who claimed to have witnessed the unsettling performances of genuine black men, rather than their white imitators, “subtly acknowledged the greater power of the genuine article, a fact that also illuminates the purpose of the diminished copy.” According to Lott, minstrelsy was much more than white mockery or derision of black culture; rather, it was “a means...