Claiming Exodus: A Cultural History of Afro-Atlantic Identity, 1774-1903

3. Exodus in the Era of Manifest Destiny (1840–1861)

59 CHAPTER THREE Exodus in the Era of Manifest Destiny (1840–1861) We do but follow out our destiny, as did the Ancient Israelite—and strive, Unconscious that we work at His decree, By Whom alone we triumph as we live! —William Gilmore Simms, “Progress in America” We had well find fault with the children of Jacob, for leaving Egypt, as the colored Americans, for leaving the hell of the continent and the piety of demons. —“The Free People’s Hate of the People Enslaved” If Moses authorized slavery, then he also authorized polygamy, concubinage, and divorce; none of which do we now believe to be right. —“Bishop Hopkins on Slavery” All three, polygamy, divorce and slavery, were sanctioned by the law of Moses. But under the gospel, slavery has been sanctioned in the church, while polygamy and divorce have been excluded from the church. —Thornton Stringfellow, “The Bible Argument; or, Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation” By 1840 nearly two and one-half million African Americans suffered in slavery , while more than three hundred thousand free blacks languished under 60 CLAIMING ExoDUS laws that severely restricted their liberty.1 African American leaders and their supporters maintained their demands for freedom, while the majority of white politicians remained invested in strengthening the national economy through Southern slavery, Northern industrialization, and westward expansion rather than joining the movement for emancipation and equality. National discourse continued to posit the United States as a promised land. Yet as Congress persisted in enacting legislation that regulated rather than eliminated slavery, it seemed to African Americans that the United States was Egypt. During the 1850s, congressional legislation and scientific racism initiated serious setbacks in racial uplift efforts that reignited the Exodusinspired integration versus emigration debate within the African American activist community. The revised 1850 Fugitive Slave Act demanded that citizens capture and return runaway slaves. The kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 undermined the gains made by free-state advocates by forcing residents of new territories to determine whether to enter the union as a slave or free state. The US Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 denied enslaved African Americans citizenship. Racist sentiments published in books such as George R. Gliddon and Josiah C. Nott’s Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches (1854) offered “scientific” justification for racial hierarchies that strengthened black codes and quashed African Americans’ hopes for equality . In effect, these developments reaffirmed the nation’s status as Egypt by stripping African Americans of their rights and humanity, subjecting the entire community to slavery. In search of promised lands, African American authors and their supporters of this period, like their predecessors, sustained the momentum of the racial uplift movement by relying on a variety of traditional and innovative rhetorical strategies to decenter national Exodus stories. Some writers evoked episodes in the Exodus narrative to anoint themselves and others as Moses figures, or to transform Mosaic leaders into multifaceted sacred heroes who would identify African Americans as God’s people, initiate emigration enterprises, spearhead antislavery efforts, justify slave revolts, or warn white Americans of divine punishment for enslaving African Americans . Many authors conflated the language of Exodus with secular/republican discourse to present Mosaic leaders as civic-minded revolutionaries who demanded emancipation, claimed citizenship, supported migration, or planned insurrections. The location of the promised land was also on the minds of these authors. In their Exodus stories, some looked for a Moses who would transform the United States or Canada into African Americans’ Canaan. others ExoDUS IN THE ERA oF MANIFEST DESTINY 61 set their sights on homes in a black Atlantic Diaspora, including Central and South America, Haiti, and Africa, where they hoped to settle among people who abhorred slavery. Still other writers viewed the United States as simultaneously Egypt and promised land because slavery and discriminatory laws constrained the African American experience in the nation. Finally, a few authors created fissures in this era’s dominant Mosaic narratives by appropriating the Joseph and Joshua stories to emphasize militant action, such as a massive Southern slave revolt, and a neglected populace, such as free black Northern laborers, which abolitionists had ignored. Ultimately, these Afro-Atlantic Exodus narratives represent the varied, persistent attempts of African Americans and their supporters to achieve freedom and equality for the African American community, efforts that remained unfulfilled yet thrust the nation to the brink of war over states’ rights and slavery. White American...