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2 A Land without Names: National Anxiety inThe Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore In a letter addressed to The Liberator, antislavery activist and author Lydia Maria Child wrote of Richard Hildreth’s antislavery novel The Slave; or, Memoirs of Archy Moore (1836): “If I were a man, I would rather be the author of that work, than anything ever published in America.”1 It is ironic that the book almost remained unpublished in America. According to Hildreth , he could not find a publisher for his novel and had to print the book at his own expense. Still, no bookseller would put his name on the title page of the book. Though Hildreth later complained that only a personal friend “had the courage . . . to insert his own name in the imprint,” Hildreth himself published the book anonymously.2 Early reviews of the novel suggest that perhaps the reluctance of publishers and booksellers was warranted. John O. Sargent of The Atlas wrote of the book: Some of its details are of a character too revolting to be made public. . . . Were it not for a few passages which we could hardly attribute to a female pen, we might suppose it the production of a lady. . . . But it appears to be the work of a man—and a man of singular strength and power of mind. . . . We are aware of no purpose [that such books] can answer, save that of sustaining and impelling a dangerous excitement.3 Others offered harsher criticisms. In the Boston Daily Advocate, one critic contended that the printer should be banned from printing and perhaps hung unless he revealed the author of the book, who could then be hung in his stead.4 Though there were those, like Child, who praised the novel for its truthtelling , one need look no further than the plot for the source of the controversy surrounding the novel. The central character, Archy, the nearly white son of a mixed-race slave and her master, initiates a love affair with his half-sister Cassy, another nearly white mixed-race slave. Though he knows that she is his half-sister, Archy decides to marry Cassy, who has no idea that Archy is her brother. When their father, Master Moore, finds out, he is incensed, not because they are half-siblings but because he wants Cassy, his daughter, as a mistress for himself. Despite the opposition of their master/father, Archy and Cassy declare themselves married and ask God’s sanction. Realizing that Moore will punish them harshly, they run away together , but they are soon captured and reprimanded. Archy is sold away, and Cassy is placed in a cottage to be her father’s lover. Again she escapes, but she is held captive by a poor white couple. Eventually she is sold to a kind widow, who miraculously lives in the same neighborhood as Archy, and the two are reunited. Archy and Cassy live happily together for a year and have a son. But Archy’s new master is in debt, and Archy is sold once again. Finding himself in the power of a harsh overseer, Archy again runs away, and after a lengthy hiatus in the wilderness, he makes his way north by passing as white. He becomes a sailor and eventually settles in England as a wealthy man, vowing to find his wife and son. Considered the first antislavery novel, the text is teeming with portrayals and themes that would long be a part of both antislavery fiction and mulatto fiction written during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book has been called a model for Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.5 Indeed, Archy has been described as “a proto–Joe Christmas,” because of his self-conscious awareness that his heritage has isolated him from others.6 Both Archy and Cassy reveal the seeds of gendered portrayals of mixed-raced figures. Archy displays both the cowardice of mixed-race characters such as Clarence of The Garies and Their Friends and Honoré f.m.c. of The Grandissimes and the heroism of George of Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Louis of Minnie’s Sacrifice. Cassy foreshadows mulatto characters driven to attempt daring escapes, such as Eliza’s famous trek across the ice. In addition, though the way in which Archy’s life is conscribed by illicit sex was the source of the controversy about the book, sexual indiscretion would become a common topic of mixed-race literature. Antislavery propaganda was filled with stories of...

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