“Drapetomania”
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “Drapetomania” Rebellion, Defiance and Free Black Insanity In the Antebellum United States A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Bob Eberly Myers II 2014 © Copyright by Bob Eberly Myers II 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “Drapetomania” Rebellion, Defiance and Free Black Insanity In the Antebellum United States by Bob Eberly Myers II Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Theodore M. Porter (Co-chair) Professor Robin D.G. Kelley (Co-chair) This dissertation investigates how Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright used science to manufacture consent among slave laborers in the antebellum South. I hope to contribute to debates on black health by addressing the issue of mental health and the role of race in the history of psychiatry. Cartwright’s early essays and anonymous publications, heretofore addressed, provide unique insight into what led the physician to articulate blacks’ acts of defiance and rebellion as instances of mental instability. Instead of viewing black people’s vigilance for freedom as earnest, Cartwright was well known for having delineated a variety of mental disorders to which he claimed all Africans were prone, including shirking work related responsibilities (Dysaesthesia Aethiopica), and the practice of running away to freedom (Drapetomania). This dissertation demonstrates how Cartwright mobilized statistics and diagnostic categories in hopes to convince others to limit black mobility and to eliminate power-sharing. Whether in the form of whites negotiating with slaves, providing incentives for them to work harder, or by rejecting the “Free Negro” category altogether, Cartwright saw his duty as twofold: to correct what he argued was the misguided notion that some blacks held the capacity to endure freedom whereas others did not, and to put forth a therapeutic regimen by which to ii curb blacks’ enthusiasm for freedom — he repudiated gradual and immediate abolition altogether and advocated instead that whites worldwide reduce all blacks to slavery. Following the lead of the Founding generation Cartwright reasoned that there were structurally-based, mental and physiological differences between blacks and whites which led blacks to be governed differently and through coercion. So, in addition to being innovative in his diagnostic claims, on par with Jefferson’s accomplishment in Notes on the State of Virginia, Cartwright consolidated existing scientific opinion and then gave it powerful and influential articulation. He motivated a trans-Atlantic debate about “Free Negro Insanity” which reflected widespread 19th century scientific thinking about race, slave management and stimulating correct conduct in laborers. An inquiry into “Free Negro Insanity” enables a conversation about how trans-Atlantic science and medicine served the requirements of slavery as an institution; How science is used to determine what constituted a slave’s status, what was meant by a slave “running away” and why slaves’ “mental competence” was necessarily an issue. By examining the genealogy of Cartwright’s concepts, one can see better his process of concept-creation and inquire into how ‘objects’ in science get created or set aside for study. Cartwright wrote extensively on the need for Southerners to pursue independent medical education as a way to explore diseases particular to the Southern climate and “its Negroes.” But despite the fact that Cartwright’s early work (published before his tenure as “Professor of Negro Diseases” at the University of Louisiana) established his career and achieved him status, scholars address it rarely. I argue that charting how he achieves, loses and then regains his status provides a unique window into the thinking of the emerging plantation aristocracy on how to regulate “Free Negro” activity in the Mississippi and Louisiana territories as well as in the English, Spanish and French West Indies. This inquiry into conduct disorder and defiance diagnoses helps readers to see both medicines’ curative and productive values. The implications of such a focus stretch from the applied science of 19th century “Negro Management” handbooks and “Plantation Manuals” to the 20th century presence of medical diagnoses like “Attention Deficit Disorder” (A.D.D.), “Hyperactivity Disorder” (A.D.H.D.), and “Oppositional Defiance Disorders” (O.D.D.) which are aimed at curbing the behavior of disobedient, defiant and rebellious youth through pharmaceutical treatments. iii The dissertation of Bob Eberly Myers II is approved. Robert A. Hill Richard Yarborough Robin D.G. Kelley, Co-chair Theodore M. Porter, Co-chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv This dissertation is dedicated to the two loves of my life: Mrs. Carol Ann Myers & Mrs. Willie Rosetta “Tiny” Franklin v Table of Contents: Preface: How Defiance becomes “Disease”.…………………………………...……..…...vii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………....…………xvi Curriculum Vita.................................................................................................................xviii Introduction: “Discarded Diagnoses”…………………..…………………………...…….....1 Part I: Cartwright’s History..................................................................................................54 Chapter 1: Early essays and “the French School”…………………………………….……55 Chapter 2: Quackery: “A Great & Glowing Evil”……….…………………………...…....83 Chapter 3: Mississippi’s “Free Negro Pandemonium”….………………………………..112 Part II: Cartwright’s Reason...............................................................................................156 Chapter 4: Medical Statistics: “A Reason for Her Faith”……………………………...…157 Chapter 5: “East India Cotton”…………………………………………………………...187 Chapter 6: Haiti and the “False Issue” of Skin Color…………………………………….220 Chapter 7: “Canaan Identified as the Ethiopian”……………………………………........251 Part III: Cartwright’s Imagination......................................................................................286 Chapter 8: “Empire of the White Man’s Will”………………………...………………....287 Chapter 9: Comparing American Asylums and Plantations…….……………………......317 Chapter 10: “Drapetomania” and “Dysaesthesia Aethiopica”…….……………………..358 Conclusion: Rejecting Law and Embracing Madness……...………………………….…398 vi Preface: How Defiance becomes “Disease” We have arranged a global civilization whose most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power will blow up in our faces. — Carl Sagan * Far from abnegating man’s emotional needs, science is grounded in them: science matures as it recognizes the role that fantasy plays in all its work...Science is a very human thing…it springs from a need, is directed by curiosity to choose an interesting field of study, and in that field seeks results that concern men. — Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery * Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. — Charles Bukowski * When a person has great insight—the intelligence which brings him out of suffering and darkness—let’s call that awakened person “X.” The question we often ask is, “What does ‘X,’ who is awakened have to offer ‘Y,’ who is still in darkness? What kind of ‘Enlightenment’ and all of that pitiable nonsense. However, we do not care about that now. We only want to ask, “What will ‘Y,’ who remains in darkness, do to ‘X’ who acts with great insight?” What man will do is to praise him, negate him or kill him. — Dialog between J. Krishnamurti and Physicist David Bohm1 * My first night on the job I didn’t know what to expect: The entire campus was in a state of disarray as emergency units went from cottage to cottage collecting official head-counts to determine which kids had escaped. Other counselors explained to me that it was a “lock-down.” The cottages were small bunkers where roughly 300 children, mostly orphans aged 10-18, had been court-mandated to 24-hour care. The heavy black walkie-talkie in my hand barked out “OK we got three runaways, they eloped from Cottage 4 and 5 in what appears to be a coordinated effort.” I learned later that such dizzying scenes were common at the ‘youth treatment facility’ where I elected to work. With the energized, amped-up adult staff struggling to seize kids and the youth as defiant and as excited as I would ever see them, it looked more like a scene from the television show Cops than psychiatric therapy. The rebel leaders — a select few, usually older, 1 Carl Sagan, Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, (2011); Walter Lippmann is cited in David A. Hollinger, In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas, (Johns Hopkins Press, 1985), 49; Jean-Francois Duval and Charles Bukowski, Bukowski and the Beats, (Sun Dog Press, 2002), 12; Jiddu Krishnamurti, David Bohm, Limits of Thought, and Krishnamurti, J. Living in an Insane World (1989), 69-73 vii stronger, deceptively intelligent and to whom everyone paid deference, no matter what — heard the walkie-talkie announcement too and began orchestrating a crisis immediately. Some of their communication was verbal, but some of it just seemed to be understood. With impressive speed and before anyone knew what happened the facility experienced a full on, difficult to contain riot wherein twenty or thirty