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To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement, 1630-1835

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To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement, 1630-1835 TO PLEAD OUR OWN CAUSE: AFRICAN AMERICANS IN MASSACHUSETTS AND THE MAKING OF THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT, 1630-1835 Christopher Alain Cameron A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Heather A. Williams, Adviser Kathleen DuVal, Reader Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Reader Lloyd Kramer, Reader Jerma Jackson, Reader ABSTRACT Christopher Alain Cameron: To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement, 1630-1835 (Under the direction of Heather A. Williams) This dissertation explores the development of slavery in Massachusetts, including the influence of Puritan religious ideology on the institution, and the rise of an antislavery movement among enslaved and free blacks. It further examines the importance of Christianity to slave life during the eighteenth century and examines African Americans’ contributions to the intellectual milieu of the American Revolution. The black abolitionist movement was based in part on the appropriation and transformation of Puritan discourse and whites’ political rhetoric directed against Britain into a discourse of abolitionism. Religion was always central to black abolitionists, both in shaping their language and in cementing them into a community of activists that was able to influence both white and black abolitionists throughout the country. While this community of activists was situated in Massachusetts, they were very much intertwined within the larger Atlantic community, as developments such as the English abolitionist and colonization movements, along with the Haitian Revolution, were central to their own struggle. Thus, I explore the importance of African American activists in Massachusetts to the creation of the antislavery movement within their own country and the ways in which developments throughout the Atlantic World influenced the people who initiated organized abolitionism in America. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates that the story of black abolitionism from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century is one of continuity rather than radical change, as the rhetoric, ideas, and ii strategies of activists after 1830 were heavily shaped by those of their predecessors in the 1700s. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project would not have been possible without the invaluable support, advice, and encouragement from my adviser Heather Andrea Williams. I would also like to thank the rest of my dissertation committee—Kathleen DuVal, Lloyd Kramer, Laurie Maffly-Kipp and Jerma Jackson—for the excellent ideas they gave me during my prospectus defense and supporting my decision to finish the project earlier than anticipated. My graduate colleagues in the history department at UNC have similarly been invaluable to the completion of this study. Randy Browne carefully read each chapter of the dissertation and always offered excellent criticism. This project is what it is largely due to his assistance. Katy Smith, Jennifer Donnally, Eliot Spencer, Catherine Conner and David Palmer also read portions of the project and helped make both my arguments and writing stronger. I would also like to thank some of my undergraduate professors at Keene State College. Joseph Witkowski and Vincent Ferlini chose me to serve as a teaching assistant for their math courses, which were important experiences when deciding to become a college professor. Matthew Crocker’s course on the Early American Republic ignited a passion for history that has remained strong to the present. Many thanks to him for recognizing my potential and pushing me so hard to improve my writing. My undergraduate advisor, Gregory Knouff, similarly provided excellent criticism of my work and invaluable support over my last two years of college. iv During my studies I have received generous financial support from the Royster Society of Fellows at the University of North Carolina. A Mowry Fellowship from the Department of History funded a month of research in Boston. Short-term fellowships from Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Peabody Essex Museum also funded research in New York City and Salem, Massachusetts respectively. Lastly, I would like to thank my family. Alain and Lynn Cameron opened up their home during a key research trip. Before she passed on my grandmother Gisele and her husband Real Cameron did likewise. Many thanks also to my siblings, and most of all to my mother, Sylvie Cameron, for keeping me grounded and always being there for me. I could not have done this without their love and support. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….1 Historiography……………………………………………………………………………….4 Methods and Theory…………………………………………………………………………9 Sources………………………………………………………………………………………13 Organization…………………………………………………………………………………15 CHAPTER 1 Puritanism and Slavery in Massachusetts, 1630-1764……………….………………………20 Introduction……………………………………………………………...………………..…20 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...…55 CHAPTER 2 Black Abolitionist Writers in the Age of Revolution, 1761-1784……………………….…..57 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….57 Phillis Wheatley……………………………………………………………………….……..59 Caesar Sarter…………………………………………………………………………………80 “A Son of Africa……………………………………………………………………………..86 Lemuel Haynes………………………………………………………………………………90 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...98 CHAPTER 3 “We Expect Great Things”: Black Petitioning and Organized Abolitionism in Revolutionary Massachusetts, 1762-1780.......………………………………………......99 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………99 vi Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….134 CHAPTER 4 Abolition in Massachusetts and the Northern Antislavery Movement, 1781-1825….…………………………………………………………………………...…..135 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...……135 Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Massachusetts……………………………….137 Black Freemasonry in Massachusetts………………………………………………………149 The African Baptist Church and the African Society………………………………………161 Paul Cuffe, Prince Saunders, and Black Emigration…………………………………...…..171 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….182 CHAPTER 5 The Politics of Slavery and the Growth of Abolition in Early Antebellum Massachusetts………………………………………………………………….184 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………184 The Politics of Slavery after the War of 1812……………………………………………...186 Freedom’s Journal…………………………………………………………………………..191 David Walker……………………………………………………………………………….193 Interracial Cooperation and Abolition’s New Generation………………………………….205 Maria Stewart and the Growth of Female Abolitionism……………………………………210 Abolition and National Politics……………………………………………………………..214 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….217 . BIBLIOGRAPHY...…………...………………………………………………………..…219 vii INTRODUCTION In 1829 black Bostonian David Walker published his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, an exposition of whites‟ treatment of blacks and a call for resistance to slavery and racism from all African Americans. “Though our cruel oppressors and murderers, may (if possible) treat us more cruel, as Pharoah did the children of Israel,” Walker wrote, “yet the God of the Etheopeans[sic], has been pleased to hear our moans in consequence of oppression; and the day of our redemption from abject wretchedness draweth near, when we shall be enabled, in the most extended sense of the word, to stretch forth our hands to the LORD our GOD.”1 Walker argued that African Americans were treated cruelly by whites, but that God was on the side of the oppressed and would answer the cries of blacks for freedom. Central to Walker‟s vision of freedom for blacks was the assistance of the Almighty. At the same time though, Walker argued that African Americans must take the initiative and work to free themselves. “There must be a willingness on our part, for GOD to do these things for us,” he argued, “for we may be assured that he will not take us by the hairs of our head against our will and desire, and drag us from our very, mean, low and abject condition.”2 While most studies of the antislavery movement begin their examination in Walker‟s era, his blend of religious and political rhetoric in the cause of abolitionism was a tactic African Americans had employed in the fight against slavery since the eighteenth 1 David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, To the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829; New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 0. 2 Ibid. century. Therefore, Walker appears at the end of my study, which focuses primarily on his predecessors in Massachusetts. One such predecessor was a free black man named Caesar Sarter of Newburyport, Massachusetts, who published an essay on slavery in 1774 asking whites “why, in the name of Heaven, will you suffer such a gross violation of that rule by which your conduct must be tried, in that day, in which you must be accountable for all your actions, to, that impartial Judge, who hears the groans of the oppressed and who will sooner or later avenge them of their oppressors!”3 As Walker would later do, Sarter argued that a righteous God would be on the side of African slaves and would judge America for its sin of slavery. It is a common understanding in the scholarship on abolitionism that the “radical” abolitionist movement did not begin until the 1830s. However, Sarter‟s rhetoric, and that of many of his contemporaries in Massachusetts, suggests that eighteenth century abolitionism was
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