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7. “The Sweet Waters of Concord and Union”: Pro slavery Rhetoric in a Deliberative Setting
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180 Chapter 6 North Carolina, had sent copies to Jacob Cowan, who used a network of escaped slaves to distribute the pamphlet throughout eastern North Carolina . Johnson’s version of what happened upon authorities’ discovery of the pamphlets is: When news of Walker’s Appeal reached Washington, the town commissioners promptly doubled the night watch; forbade meetings of Negroes except during the day to hear white preachers; disarmed all free Negroes in the town; sent “an address to a select few in every Captain’s Company” of the county militia; ordered immediate musters for a strict examination of the arms required to be held by state law; called out the Washington Guards who “made such a display of strength & discipline as must put a damper on the hopes of all seditious persons present”; ordered the Guards to stay under arms, equipped with twenty rounds of cartridges, and to come fully armed in case of an alarm of fire; and dispatched a wagon to Raleigh for an additional supply of public arms. (516) To put it another way, they panicked. To conclude that this panic led to the reactionary laws is quite reasonable , so one explanation of the 1830 North Carolina laws is that whites were terrified by David Walker’s pamphlet, and its successful distribution. At the same time, though, Johnson mentions a significant fact about the set of laws passed in December 1830 and the additional restrictive measures passed in 1831 in the wake of the Nat Turner rebellion: Most of the restrictive measures passed with regard to the slave in 1830 and 1831, because of the missionary efforts of abolitionists within the State, were proposed as early as 1800 in a bill “for the better regulation of slaves” which originated in the Senate. This bill would have prevented a Negro from keeping or carrying any kind of weapon; from engaging in “riots, unlawful assemblies, trespasses, and seditious speeches”; from engaging in meetings for religious worship unless conducted by a white preacher “of good morals”; and from buying or selling any goods.The bill would also have forbidden an owner to permit slaves of others to come upon his plantation; to teach or cause to teach his slaves to read or write; or to permit a slave to hire his time unless a license be obtained from the county court. The Senate rejected the bill on its first reading. (499–500) The Political Theory of Slave Codes 181 In other words, even before the insurrection panic of 1802, there was a signi ficant group that wanted these sorts of laws.Walker’s Appeal did not create that desire, but it did serve as the occasion (in rhetorical terms) the “reactionary group” (Johnson’s term) could use to get passed laws they had long wanted. My argument is that there were really two “causes” for the laws. They were a response to fear engendered by David Walker, whose role in this is often obscured by more abstract talk about “abolitionists.” In an earlier chapter, I suggested that Simms refuted Martineau’s assertion about the American Anti-Slavery Society’s mailing of pamphlets by pointing to Walker’s Appeal, thereby demonstrating his tendency to conflate all abolitionists . Here, I would like to elaborate on that suggestion, by describing it not as a conflation, but as a substitution, with emphasis on its rhetorical power.Almost certainly,the Niles’Weekly Register is correct.Walker’s pamphlet had been distributed in North Carolina in 1830, and had caused considerable panic (see Hinks 137–45).But,for the governor to name the pamphlet , or for the legislators to debate the issue openly (that is, not in secret session), would mean that they would have had to admit in public that they were terrified of a black man. Such an admission would have been, at best, dishonorable. Displacing Walker with “abolitionists” as historians do, or refusing to name Walker, as did contemporary coverage, protects the honor of slavers by obscuring the scrambling panic inspired in them by an articulate black man. Dillon maintains that slaves took pleasure in the terror that whites demonstrated after insurrection scares; whites certainly thought slaves laughed up their sleeves at the panics (which may have been part of the motivation for the vindictive quasi-judicial lynchings). Slavery worked by inspiring either fear or awe (or both); paternalistic slavers liked to think it was awe, but theorists like Ruffin (discussed below) said it was fear. Either...