Slavery and Identity

Slavery andIdentity Charles E.Beveridgeand Charles Capen McLaughlin, eds. The Papers of FrederickLaw Olmsted. Volume II: Slaveryand the South, 1852-1857. Baltimore: JohnsHopkins UniversityPress, t981. 503+ xxipp. John W.Blassingame,ed. The Frederick Douglass Papers.Series One: Speeches, Debates andInterviews. Volume I: 1841-46. New Haven:YaleUniversityPress, 1979.530+ cii pp. Carol Bleser,ed. The Hammonds of Redc/1/Je. NewYork: OxfordUniversity Press, 1981. 421+ xxiipp. Walter M.Merrilland Louis Ruchames, eds. The Lettersof WilliamLloyd Garrison. Volume VJ: ToRouse the Slumbering Land, 1868-1879. Cambridge:Belknap Pressof the Harvard UniversityPress, 1981. 637+ xxpp. C.VannWoodward,ed. Mary Chesnut's Civil War. New Haven:YaleUniversityPress, 1981. 886+ lviiipp. Lawrence T.McDonnell "Thisnew man," the American Crevecoeur sought to understand in 1782, was a man tainted by slavery. Slavery gave the lie to his highflown revolutionaryideals , mocking equality, twisting democracy, denying progress. For mostof the nineteenth century the American's developing identity-individual ,class and n&tional-was primarily bound up with the conflict over blackservitude. The process of sectional division, civil war and national reconciliationwhich destroyed slavery also transformed American identities. Thebrash American who hailed William Henry Harrison's administration in1841 became a new man once more-chastened, but brash still-before theadvent of Benjamin Harrison's presidency two generations hence. The volumesunder consideration here provide a fine opportunity to retrace aspectsof that transformation. Inthe first volume of the massive Frederick Douglass Papers project, the youngmulatto orator steps haltingly onto the public platform and grows into a matchless antislavery spellbinder. The shifting cadences, caustic humorand moral urgency that transfixed white audiences are captured here in sixty summarized or transcribed speeches. Their effect is stunning a centurylater. Perhaps the best record we have of the public lifeof an abolitionistlecturer , this volume collects both the momentary inspirations and thegrinding repetitions that speakers survived upon. Douglass sweeps the spectrumof moral reform, flailingintemperance, two-faced churches, phony Canadian ReviewofAmerican Studies,Volume 15,Number 2,Summer1984,167-183 168 Lawrence T.McDonnell philanthropy, domestic depravity, "bastard republicanism." But his focusis ever fixed on the slave. In the handful of scattered American addressesand the host of British appeals printed here, Douglass consistently reachesfor any device to snag the gawking idle curiosity of his audience and drawit over to indignant abolitionism. In America he hooks sympathy with shuffling professions of inadequacy and enforced inferiority, then lays on the lashof his own slave experience. Milking Daniel O'Connell's reputation in Ireland, Douglass recounts incidents of discrimination which must have strucka nationalist chord among the Catholic underclass. In sleepy Scotland hestirs a whirlwind against Southern donations to the Free Church with the ceaseless appeal to "Send Back the Money!" Crossing into England, he comes as a "reviler of American republicanism" (p. 212). Douglass clearly under· stood that the worst fate for the moral reformer was to be ignored. Consequently , no single evangelical or secular impulse emerges here as intrinsic to his demands for freedom. Forces are pillaged, adopted and discarded with brilliant Machiavellian pragmatism. The shouts and cheers of admiring audiences which punctuate these appeals provide the firmest measure ofhis antislavery success. John Blassingame and his editorial assistants deserve a round of cheers too for the fine book they have produced. Lengthy headnotes describe the circumstances of each speech, audience size and reaction, and alternate newspaper accounts. The footnotes inform without pedantry, and four letters of thanks, printed as appendices, help to gauge British enthusiasm. Especially commendable is the painstaking partial reconstruction of Doug· lass' vast speaking itinerary, now as close to completion as we are likely to achieve. Organizational improvements, however, could be made in future volumes. The editors take unjustified liberties with speech titles, silently supplying headings where newspapers provided none. This seems intrusive and confusing. Worse, it possibly distorts local response to Douglass' lee· tures. As he stumped up and down the British Isles, interest in his orations waxed and waned. Indeed, of more than two dozen addresses delivered in his last three-month tour of Scotland and England, only one was reported at sufficient length for inclusion here. As Douglass' novelty wore off he probably gradually slipped from the headliness. But makeshift titles gloss over this slide. And while these speeches.provide a superb portrait of...