Racializing the Ancient World: Ancestry and Identity in the Early United States

by

Lyra D. Monteiro

B.A., Anthropology and Classical Civilization, New York University, 2004 M.A., Classical Art and Archaeology, University of Michigan, 2006 M.A., Classical Studies-Latin, University of Michigan, 2006 M.A., Public Humanities, Brown University, 2009

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World Brown University

May 2012

Text copyright © 2012 by Lyra D. Monteiro

All images are copyright their respective creators

This dissertation by Lyra D. Monteiro is accepted in its present form by the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date______Susan E. Alcock, Advisor

Date______Seth Rockman, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date______Corey D. B. Walker, Reader

Date______Ömür Harmanşah, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date______Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School

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VITA

Lyra Diana Monteiro was born in Port Townsend, Washington, on December 29, 1981. She studied Anthropology and Classical Civilizations at New York University, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 2003, and graduated summa cum laude in 2004. Between 2004-2006, she studied at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and earned Masters degrees in Classical Art and Archaeology, and in Classical Studies-Latin. At Brown University, she earned a Masters degree in Public Humanities in 2009. Her doctoral studies were supported by the Mellon Fellowship for Humanistic Studies, the Rackham Merit Fellowship from the University of Michigan, the Joukowsky Presidential Fellowship from Brown University, a Graduate Teaching Fellowship from Brown University, the J.M. Stuart Fellowship from the John Carter Brown Library, and the Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society, as well as travel grants from the Rackham Graduate School of the University of Michigan and the Graduate School of Brown University. She is co-founder and co-director of the public art organization The Museum On Site, and has worked on numerous projects in the public humanities, for places including WaterFire Providence, the Smithsonian Institution‘s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. She currently lives in New York City.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation could not have been completed without the support and mentorship of my committee, Susan E. Alcock, Seth Rockman, Corey D.B. Walker, and Ömür

Harmanşah. Their help in navigating the complexities of this interdisciplinary project have been invaluable. I also owe them thanks for their patience and flexibility with the many stops and starts along the way. In particular, Seth Rockman‘s tireless support of my project—ever since I wrote my first, exploratory paper on this topic for his course on

American Cultural History—has motivated me to keep working even when I was losing faith in my own ability to complete it. Seth has consistently modeled a level of rigor, inquisitiveness, and generosity as a historian and a mentor that I can only hope one day to achieve. Corey Walker helped me frame the initial questions behind this project—and never stopped pushing me to address the complexities of the topic—while also maintaining a healthy perspective on the academy and my place within it.

The mentorship of both James T. Campbell (now at Stanford) and Steven Lubar have been essential my academic and public scholarship. Precisely because they were so supportive of my engagement with the public humanities and interest in museum work, their consistent encouragement of my dissertation work helped me stay the course, and not get distracted by too many outside projects. Four brilliant academics with whom I never had the opportunity study—Ralph Rodriguez, Sherine Hamdy, Ian Straughn, and

Ian Russell—were all generous in offering advice and guidance.

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The initial ideas for my dissertation project were greatly improved by comments from and discussion with professors and fellow students in the Mellon Graduate

Workshop I co-organized with Corey Walker. My students from ―Dead White Guys:

Greco-Roman Antiquity and American Identity‖ deserve thanks for helping me think through some of these concepts while I was writing my prospectus; I am particularly grateful to Leo Landrey and Marco McWilliams, whose enthusiasm for and dedication to a course for which they could not receive credit was inspirational.

In addition to fellowship, conference, and research travel support from Brown

University, I am indebted to the John Carter Brown Library, the American Antiquarian

Society, and the American Numismatic Society for research support. The staff and fellows at each institution provided valuable guidance that shaped not only my dissertation project, but also my development as a scholar and a person—especially, Val

Andrews, Karen Graubart, Diego Pirillo, Paul Erickson, Su Wolfe, Amy Hughes, and

Peter van Alfen. The staff of the other archives and libraries in which I completed my research—including the Library Company of Philadelphia, Boston Athenaeum, Rhode

Island Historical Society, Edenton Historical Society, Fluvanna County Historical

Society, New York Public Library for Performing Arts, John Hay Library, Bobst Library at NYU, Lamont Library at Harvard, Providence Athenaeum, Fleet Library at the Rhode

Island School of Design, and the Rockefeller Library at Brown University—were extremely helpful. I would also like to thank Cassandra Vivian for sharing her work on

George Gliddon, and Susan Wood for allowing me to visit her home at Hayes Plantation.

I owe more than I can express to my parents, Sharon and Clarence, who encouraged my curiosity and instilled in me an unflappable faith in my ability to achieve

vi anything I set out to do. I have also been blessed with the support and encouragement of more friends and colleagues than I can mention here, but I must single out my sister Neah

Monteiro, Jenna Rudo-Stern, and Natalie Hulsey, as well as Zac Bruner, Erin Curtis,

Sarah Dawson, Sin Guanci, Nara Hernandez, Alicia Jiménez Díez, Kevin McGee, George

Odafe, Jonathan Olly, Sara Hames, Victor Smith, Greg Stern & Naomi Rudo, and Julie

Waters, for encouraging me, giving me sane advice, and keeping me entertained along the way. I also need to say hello to Jason Isaacs. For my last three months of dissertating,

Jen Vincent and her son, Dex, offered me a beautiful place to stay in Providence, furnished with daily hugs and delightful company, as well as patience and critical support. Special thanks go to two extraordinary people who went far above and beyond the duties of friendship over the past three years as I took this project from start to finish:

Cat Monroe and Michael Stewart. The fact that they are two of the most amazing people I have ever met makes me feel all the more privileged to have been able to take advantage of their wisdom and good humor.

Lastly, my husband, best friend, and collaborator, Andrew Losowsky, deserves a good deal of the credit for this dissertation—from engaging me in repeated conversations about the early ideas, encouraging me to stay focused even through the tough times, making it possible financially for me to work on research and writing rather than bringing in a paycheck, reading and editing numerous drafts, and in the final stages, taking over basic tasks and putting up with my emotional, mental, and physical absence as I gave all my attention to wading through the minutiae of early United States culture. We met just after my second year of graduate school, and I cannot wait to start ―doing life‖ with him as a non-student. I lovingly dedicate this dissertation to him, to us, and to our future.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ...... x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Theoretical and Methodological Approaches ...... 5 Race and Nation in the Early United States ...... 18 American Histories of the Ancient Greece and Rome ...... 31 American Histories of Ancient Egypt ...... 53 Overview of Chapters...... 65 CHAPTER 2: EGYPTIAN MUMMIES AND GREEK GODS: RACIALIZING ANCIENT BODIES IN MEDICINE AND PUBLIC DISPLAYS ...... 68 Science and the Ancient Body ...... 74 Ancient Bodies on Public Display ...... 111 Unwrapping the Mummies ...... 141 CHAPTER 3: FROM BLACK MARC ANTONYS TO WHITE ZIP COONS: CLASSICAL CHARACTERS ON THE EARLY AMERICAN STAGE ...... 156 Performing the past ...... 162 Stage Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians ...... 168 Black Bodies in the American Playhouse ...... 192 Blackface Minstrels in Ancient Drag ...... 203 CHAPTER 4: TEMPLES TO WHITE MASTERY: CLASSICAL PLANTATION LANDSCAPES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF WHITENESS ...... 217 Southern Classicism and Southern Nationalism ...... 222 Architecture and Ideology ...... 225 White Columns ...... 234 Representations of the Plantation ...... 244 Classical Chattel ...... 249

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The Classical Plantation Landscape ...... 266 The House that Caesar Built...... 285 EPILOGUE ...... 290 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 295

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Population of the United States by Race and Status, 1790-1860 ...... 26 Table 2: Black Population of the North, 1790-1860 ...... 26 Table 3: From Samuel Stanhope Smith, Essay on the Causes and Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: J. Simpson and Co., 1810), 261-262 (with additional column on far right, calculating the ratio between the two measurements) ...... 109

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Edward Clay, Life in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: W. Simpson, 1828), Plate 4, caption: ―How you find youself dis hot weader Miss Chloe?‖ ―Pretty well I tank you Mr. Cesar only I aspire too much!‖ New-York Historical Society, ARTstor.28 Figure 2: ―Facial Goniometer‖ for measuring facial angle. Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana (Philadelphia: John Fuller, 1839), 252, New York Public Library...... 80 Figure 3: (left) Cast of Apollo Belvedere, c.1840s, Massachusetts General Hospital, photo by author; (right) Medici Venus, postcard image from c. 1861, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, ARTstor...... 84 Figure 4: ―Ether Dome Mummy,‖ unwrapped in 1823. Massachusetts General Hospital, photos by author...... 87 Figure 5: Samuel George Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca (Philadelphia: John Pennington, 1844), Plate XII. Google Books...... 95 Figure 6: (left) James Prichard, Natural History of Man (London: H. Baillière, 1843), Fig. 48. Google Books. (right) Josiah Nott and George Gliddon, Types of Mankind (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co, 1854), Fig. 62. Google Books...... 101 Figure 7: Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, Figs. 339-444. Google Books...... 104 Figure 8: Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, Fig. 30. Google Books...... 106 Figure 9: Statuary Gallery, Boston Athenaeum, c. 1867, Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views, New York Public Library...... 117 Figure 10: A.P. Dutcher, ―Anatomy and Physiology of the Organs of Respiration, No. II,‖ American Phrenological Journal 16 (1852), American Periodicals Series Online...... 119 Figure 11: Hiram Power, The Greek Slave, 1843. Copy from 1846, Corcoran Gallery of Art...... 132 Figure 12: George Jamieson as Brutus in Julius Caesar, 1859, Theatrical Print Collection, University of Illinois...... 164 Figure 13: ―Edwin Forrest in Five Great Characters,‖ Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1856, Theatrical Print Collection, University of Illinois ...... 165 Figure 14: Edwin Forrest as Metamora (left) and Spartacus (right), Mathew Brady, c. 1860, National Portrait Gallery...... 179 Figure 15: From a broadside from the Broadway Theatre, New York, 1852, America's Historical Imprints...... 193 Figure 16: (left) James Hewlett as Richard III, c. 1827, Harvard Theatre Collection; (right) George Washington Dixon as Zip Coon, 1834, Library of Congress ..... 201 Figure 17: Milford Plantation, Pinewood, South Carolina, photo by author ...... 217 Figure 18: Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana, photo by author ...... 237 Figure 19: Millwood Plantation ruins in 1960, Historical American Buildings Survey 238 Figure 20: Hayes Plantation, Edenton, North Carolina, photo by author ...... 240

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Figure 21: Detail from $2 banknote, the Timber Cutter's Bank, Savannah, Georgia, 1857, American Numismatic Society ...... 246 Figure 22: Detail from $5 banknote, Farmers & Exchange Bank of Charleston, South Carolina, 1861, American Numismatic Society ...... 247 Figure 23: Detail from $50 banknote, Confederate States of America, 1861, American Numismatic Society ...... 248 Figure 24: Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard, John Singleton Copley, 1775, Museum of Fine Arts, ARTstor ...... 251 Figure 25: George Washington, Giuseppe Ceracchi, c. 1790s, Gibbes Museum of Art, image from Maurie McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 224. .... 252 Figure 26: Mrs. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Henry Benbridge, c. 1774, Gibbes Museum of Art ...... 254 Figure 27: Neoclassical Mantelpieces, The Rocks Plantation, Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, c. 1805, image from Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: South Carolina (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1984), 141...... 256 Figure 28: (left) Grecian Lamp, c. 1825-1850, New England Glass Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Winterthur Museum, image from Wendy Cooper, Classical Taste in America (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art and Abbeville Press, 1993), 206; (right) Candlesticks made by John Carter, London, c. 1771-2, Middleton Place, image from McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 272...... 258 Figure 29: Settee, made by John and Hugh Finlay with paintings by Francis Guy, c. 1800- 1810, Baltimore Museum of Art, image from William Elder and Jayne Stokes, American Furniture (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1987), 60...... 260 Figure 30: Gaineswood Plantation, Demopolis, Alabama, photo by author ...... 267 Figure 31: Hermitage Plantation, Savannah, Georgia, polychrome print by the Detroit Photographic Company, Library of Congress ...... 271 Figure 32: Bremo Plantation, Fluvanna, Virginia, Mansion (left) and Barn (right), Historical American Buildings Survey...... 274 Figure 33: Milford Plantation, Pinewood, South Carolina, Barn, photo by author ...... 275 Figure 34: Schoolhouse, Thornhill Plantation, Greene County, Alabama, Library of Congress...... 276 Figure 35: Slave Cabin, c.1934, Thornhill Plantation, Greene County, Alabama, Historical American Buildings Survey...... 277 Figure 36: Temperance Temple, Bremo Plantation, Fluvanna County, Virginia, image from image from Nancy Solomon, ―A Revered Jeffersonian Landmark Renewed,‖ 2007 (ceu.construction.com/article.php?L=5&C=209&P=4, accessed 5/15/2012) ...... 278 Figure 37: Rockery, Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana, photo by author ...... 279 Figure 38: Engraving of Gaineswood Plantation, John Sartain, 1861, Historical American Buildings Survey ...... 280 Figure 39: Neoclassical Garden Sculptures, Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana, photo by author ...... 283 Figure 40: Hayes Plantation, Edenton, North Carolina, White Cemetery, photo by author ...... 284

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Despite being thousands of miles from the Mediterranean Sea, the early United States was littered with the remains of classical antiquity. In the late eighteenth century, as they were busily declaring themselves an entirely new country, Americans1 turned to the ancient language of Latin to express their sense that they were living in a novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages.2 In order to describe the qualities of their reluctant leader George Washington, Americans compared him to Cincinnatus, the Roman hero who laid down his plough to save his country, and later resisted the temptation to become a permanent dictator. As they were drawing up a new constitution, they invested powers in a Senate, named for the governing body of ancient Roman republic. But how do we understand the choice to build the self-consciously new country upon the ruins of an ancient empire? Could the particular challenges embodied in the aspirational slogan e pluribus unum be resolved through a concurrent and relentless invocation of individuals and events from millennia earlier? The architects of the new United States could have drawn on any number of historical epochs, so why did classical antiquity prove so indispensible to their nation-building project?

1 Despite the issues associated with the term, for brevity‘s sake I use ―American‖ as an adjective for citizens of the United States. 2 For these and other examples of early American classicism, see Richard L. Bushman, introduction to Classical Taste in America: 1800-1840, by Wendy A. Cooper (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art and Abbeville Press, 1993), and Elan Shalev, Rome Reborn on Western Shores: Historical Imagination and the Creation of the American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 6-19.

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This dissertation argues that Mediterranean antiquity3 was mobilized in the service of organizing race in a slaveholding republic predicated on equality but erected on exclusion and difference. I focus on the period between the American Revolutionary

War and the start of the Civil War (roughly 1770-1861), during which time growing enslaved and free black populations continuously challenged white definitions of national identity. Previous scholars of the ―big picture‖ of race in the early United States, such as

Winthrop Jordan, Nell Irvin Painter, and David Roediger, have established the extent to which the categories of ―black‖ and ―white,‖ like all ways of generating and organizing difference, were ―made‖ through cultural production—whether in the development of legal structures, visual art, or scientific explanations for existing social hierarchies.

However, the crucial role of discourses surrounding the ancient past in creating and sustaining racial categories in the United States has been consistently overlooked by all but a handful of scholars, such as Wilson Jeremiah Moses and Scott Trafton, who focus specifically on the role of ancient Egypt in the early United States. My focus in this dissertation is on how the pastness of the past was important for conversations about race. When contemporary categories of difference are retrojected onto historical people and cultures,4 it grants those contemporary categories an air of stability and ―truth,‖ that

3 Specifically, ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Carthage. For Greek and Roman references in the United States, I employ the composite terms ―Greco-Roman‖ or the more general ―classical,‖ in order to reflect the extent to which early American classicism mixed and matched fairly indiscriminately between things that were technically of ―Greek‖ origin and things that were technically of ―Roman‖ origin. See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), 24; Shalev, Rome Reborn, 13-18. 4 While xenophobia and ethnocentrism—which are also concepts that draw lines between different socially defined groups—seem to be fairly universal, they do not always represent racialist thinking. Scholarly consensus is that ―race‖ and racism did not exist in the ancient Mediterranean. See James H. Dee, ―Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did ‗White People‘ Become ‗White‘?‖ The Classical Journal 99, no. 2 (2003-2004). Even in his provocatively titled book The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), Benjamin Isaac stops short of arguing that the ethnic identities of the ancient world can be treated as ―races‖ (1). For more on ethnic identities and prejudices in the classical world, see Gary D. Farney, Ethnic Identity and Aristocratic Competition in Republican Rome 2

serves to paper over the fact of their recent genesis.5 Furthermore, in the case of categories that are based on ideas of heredity, we can productively explore the ways in which discourses of history reflect, as Alexander Saxton puts it, the extent to which

―[r]acism is thus fundamentally a theory of history.‖6 In other words, once social inequalities in the present are explained on the basis of race, the past becomes an important proving ground to verify the immutability of racial categories, and the inevitability of the hierarchical structure of contemporary society. My goal in this dissertation is to contextualize black American discourses about history within the broader context of (white) American public history of the ancient Mediterranean, in order to illustrate the extent to which discourses of history in a racialized society are always already about race in the present.

The widespread presence of classical texts, languages, objects, and ideas in the early United States—from the Latin grammar training that was an entrance requirement for all early American universities; to the echoes of classical architecture in Washington,

D.C.; to the ―Grecian gowns‖ worn by ladies of the Early Republic—has been ably

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Jonathan M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Frank M. Snowden, Jr., Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983); Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970). 5 While Painter begins her investigation of the ―history of white people‖ with a discussion of concepts of difference among the Greeks and Romans, explaining this choice as due to the fact that ―many people believe it possible to trace something recognizable as the white race back more than two thousand years‖ (Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People [New York: W.W. Norton, 2010], x), she does not explore the extent to which the idea of ancient whiteness shaped early American ideas about race, except insofar as these ideas were present among black Americans (119-124), and in the craniometric studies of Samuel George Morton (192-193). Similarly, Trafton observes that most scholarship on American Egyptomania ―stands at something of a conspicuous distance from issues of race and American racialization.‖ Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century American Egyptomania (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), xvi. 6 Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London: Verso, 1990), 14.

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catalogued by such scholars as Meyer Reinhold, Caroline Winterer, and Carl Richard.

The overall approach of scholarship on early American classicism tends to employ a rubric of classical ―reception‖ or ―influence‖—whether or not those terms are used explicitly.7 This formulation grants agency to the ancient text/image/object/story, and places the person or culture who ―received‖ or was ―influenced‖ by antiquity in a passive position.8 Instead, a basic assumption of my work was that there is nothing inevitable about the classical past having an ―influence‖ on any later time period—or rather, that such purely etiological questions are only part of the story. Instead, I seek to explore the choices that were made in the early United States as purposeful and conscious efforts to highlight the (real or imagined) ancient origins of a given practice, idea, or object; and to understand how these discourses about the past supported the development of racial and national identities.

The history of the concept of ―race,‖ as well as the interests of early citizens of the United States in classical antiquity, have both received increasing scholarly attention in recent decades. However, the mutually dependent development of these two phenomena has rarely been addressed. By doing so, we can better explain why classical antiquity was so important and pervasive in the early United States, and how the ideas surrounding an entirely fictitious concept of ―whiteness‖ gained such powerful and destructive influence in shaping American life and thought. In order to approach an

7 To pull from two of the most recent books on the subject, Shalev states that classical antiquity ―[t]he classics had an immense influence on the ways in which individuals interpreted and made sense of the Revolution‖ (Shalev, Rome Reborn, 5); and Richard describes his 2009 book as a ―study of the influence of the Greeks and Roman classics in antebellum America. The Golden Age of the Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), ix. See similar wording in Caroline Winterer, The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750-1900 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 2-3; Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America: 1800-1840 (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art and Abbeville Press, 1993), 3. 8 For a rare criticism of this practice, see Daniel Orrells, Gurminder K. Bhambra, and Tessa Roynon, introduction to African Athena: New Agendas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 12.

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understanding of this process, I adopt a methodology that has no precedent in either body of scholarship, by focusing on communal, physical experiences in the early United States, in which modern and ancient objects, buildings, and bodies were simultaneously associated with the ancient Mediterranean cultures of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and

Carthage, and raced according to contemporary American categories of black and white.9

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

My project is directly informed by four bodies of theory, which form two dyads that are

―good to think with:‖ social memory and ethnicity, and materiality and the study of the body. The combination of these different theoretical approaches enables my work to illuminate aspects of life in the early United States that otherwise escape scholarly attention, and thus justifies a reassessment of material that may have been studied by previous scholars; for example, actor John Wilkes Booth‘s choice to shout ―Sic semper tyrannis‖ from the stage of the Ford Theatre, after assassinating the president who had presided over a major stage in the collapse of white supremacy—a moment that I will return to in the Epilogue.

The scholarship on social memory, defined as ―the construction of a collective notion (not an individual belief) about the way things were in the past,‖ informs my thinking about the narration of the past.10 This scholarship generally avoids attributing any truth-value to the interpretations that a given group offers of what they perceive to be

9 Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, integrates intellectual history with things, but her emphasis is overwhelmingly on elite status symbols. 10 Ruth M. Van Dyke and Susan E. Alcock, ―Archaeologies of Memory: An Introduction,‖ in Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth M. Van Dyke and Susan E. Alcock (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 2, which also provides an excellent summary of the developments in the study of social memory, since the basic theory was outlined by Maurice Halbwachs in 1925.

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―their‖ past. Instead, it is grounded in an awareness that both individual and collective memories are always a product of a process of selection, in which some aspects of the past are remembered as significant, and others are actively forgotten.11 As discussed by

Michel-Rolfe Trouillot, the question of how a group decides ―which events to include and which to exclude‖ gains particular importance when we explore those aspects of collective memory that predate the existence of the collective itself.12 As an example of this paradox, by which a given collectivity‘s ―constitution as subjects goes hand in hand with the continuous creation of the past,‖ Trouillot offers the ―discovery of the New

World,‖ an undeniably central moment in both European and white American memory, despite the fact that ―[n]either Europe as we know it, nor whiteness as we now experience it, existed as such in 1492.‖ Even in cases such as this, however, ―when the historical continuities are unquestionable, in no way can we assume a simple correlation between the magnitude of events as they happened and their relevance for the generations that inherit them through history.‖ Instead, those aspects that are remembered and forgotten are dictated by their role in historical narratives—the stories that identity groups construct to explain their existence in the present.

The collective identities that generate social memories can be defined in any number of ways—on the basis of profession, religion, class, sexual orientation, etc.—all of whom seek legitimation and understanding of their present and desired future status within society on the basis of ―their‖ past.13 Thus, we can understand the tendencies of

11 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 14-16. 12 Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 16. 13 Consider, for example, the continued use of the Hippocratic Oath, purportedly unchanged from fifth BCE, in Medical School graduations in the United States; the stories about past events that explain all 6

collective identity groups to retroject their existence onto groups and individuals in the past to whom such identities would have been quite alien, as a constitutive element in the creation of social memory—the goal of which is to establish a group history that will obscure the moment of historical creation of that identity group.

While social memories are important for all culturally constructed identities, they take on a heightened importance in the articulation of ethnic, and ethnic-type identities, because these types of identities are based, to some degree or another, on a sense of kinship between group members.14 As with so many other critical approaches to human culture, contemporary anthropological understandings of ethnic phenomena can be traced to Max Weber‘s discussion of ethnic groups in Economy and Society.15 Weber describes ethnic groups as ―those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration.‖16 Crucially, however, despite the importance of the idea of common descent as the uniting factor, Weber notes that ―it does not matter whether or not an objective blood relationship exists.‖ Subsequent scholars have tweaked this definition many times, adding important nuances, but always continuing to stress the importance of fictive kinship, which is the aspect of ethnic identity that is the focus of

Christian holidays; and the explosion in womens‘ and queer history in the decades since the 1960s and 1970s. 14 I subsume race under the anthropological term ethnicity, a catch-all term for those phenomena within human societies which divide people into groups on the basis of an idea of fundamental difference, expressed ultimately in terms of distinct biology and/or ancestry. This is, of course, a very different use of the term ―ethnicity‖ than the sense in which it is commonly used as a more politically correct way of saying ―race‖ in post-World War II America. See Werner Sollors, ―Ethnicity and Race‖ in A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, ed. David Theo Goldberg and John Solomos (London: Blackwell, 2002), 98. 15 John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, ―Theories of Ethnicity‖ in Ethnicity, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 32. 16 Max Weber, ―The Origins of Ethnic Groups,‖ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity, 35-40.

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this dissertation.17 Whether articulated through genealogical charts, or more subtly deployed through the rhetoric of ―legacy‖ and ―heritage,‖ every ethnic-type identity is ultimately predicated on the idea of a common history—and specifically ancestry—that accounts for how ―we‖ are different from ―them.‖ Whether or not the ultimate ―Adam and Eve‖ for a given ethnic group are explicitly named, or are understood as a more vague sense of ancestral origin in a particular community at a particular time (as is common for diasporic identity groups), the shared belief in the existence of such common ancestors serves to reassure group members that their loyalty and sense of connection to each other is grounded in historical truths. Such analogies based on family relationships make it seem ―only natural‖ for members of an ethnic group to stick together in the face of threats from the outside.18

With a few exceptions, such as James Sidbury and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra‘s recent article on ―Mapping Ethnogenesis in the Early Modern Atlantic,‖19 it is rare to see

―ethnicity‖ invoked in historical scholarship on the early United States, rather than other forms of identity like ―race‖ and ―nation.‖ However, the analytical category of ―ethnic group‖ is one that can fruitfully be understood to embrace the formations that we call

17 See the essays in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity, for several of these later definitions, as well as their own composite definition of an ethnic group as ―a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more elements of common culture, a link with a homeland and a sense of solidarity among at least some of its members.‖ John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, introduction to Ethnicity, 6. 18 While I agree with the defenders of the so-called primordialist perspective on ethnicity that the power of the perceived bond among ethnic group members is analogous to the power of the bond of a child to her parents and siblings (e.g., Steven Grosby, ―The Inexpungeable Tie of Primordiality,‖ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity; Pierre van den Berghe, ―Does Race Matter?‖ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity), I by no means see this as an inevitable pattern of human thinking. Rather, in circumstances in which ethnic identities are mobilized, the analogy of kinship becomes a powerful tool for explaining group loyalty— rather than vice versa. 19 James Sidbury and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, ―Mapping Ethnogenesis in the Early Modern Atlantic,‖ William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 2, (2011); see also the commentaries on this article in the same issue of William & Mary Quarterly, and Jonathan D. Hill‘s book for an explicitly anthropological take on ethnogenesis in the Americas. History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996).

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race and nation as well.20 By understanding race and nation as similarly ethnic phenomena—the former emphasizing physical over cultural markers, and the latter focused on territorial sovereignty21—we can integrate anthropological analyses of the importance of histories for ethnic groups, with the powerful work on the emergence of racial and national identities in the modern era.22 When Benedict Anderson contrasts

―[t]he objective modernity of nations to the historian‘s eye vs. their subjective antiquity in the eye of nationalists,‖ he highlights a paradox of nationalism that falls squarely in the broader pattern of ethnic-type phenomena across time and space.23 In other words, we can understand the importance of ethnic histories in articulating national and racial identities, not just in such notorious cases as Nazi Germany‘s obsession with investigating the ―Aryan past,‖24 but in any context in which ethnic identities are salient.

20 It is important to recognize that a single person may adopt multiple identities that can be characterized as ―ethnic,‖ such that a dark-skinned emigrant from Guatemala City who moves to United States might adopt identify ethnically as Guatemalan, Latina, Indian, American, or any combination thereof, depending on the context. 21 See Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Pluto Press), 3-7, and Sollors, ―Ethnicity and Race.‖ Even diasporic ethnic groups can participate in a kind of ―vicarious nationalism,‖ by grounding their identity in the idea of a homeland that exists either in the past or the hoped-for future (or, quite frequently, both). Hutchinson and Smith, introduction to Ethnicity, 12-13; Milton J. Esman, ―Diasporas and International Relations,‖ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity; Jacob Landau, ―Diaspora and Language,‖ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity; Walter Zenner, ―Middlemen Minorities,‖ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity. 22 e.g. Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991); Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Scott L. Malcolmson, One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000). 23 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 5. While Anderson approaches nationalism outside of the anthropological framework of ―ethnicity‖ that I propose here, in the revised edition of his classic Imagined Communities, he comes to similar conclusions about the importance of an idea of shared history in the creation of new nations (xiv, 187-206). 24 See W.J. McCann, ―‗Volk und Germanentum‘: The Presentation of the Past in Nazi Germany,‖ in The Politics of the Past, eds. Peter Gathercole and David Lowenthal (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990); Uhlrich Veit, ―Ethnic Concepts in German Prehistory: A Case Study on the Relationship Between Cultural Identity and Objectivity,‖ in Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity, ed. Stephen J. Shennan (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989).

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The absence of any ontological basis for ethnic identities means that they are a product of specific historical circumstances in which, for a variety of reasons, it was advantageous for people to develop an understanding of themselves as different from their neighbors (near or far), in some fundamental way. As Duncan Ivison writes, the question of ―authenticity‖ is critically destabilized by an awareness that ―[i]dentities are dynamic in the sense that they are constituted as much by our response to others and to the context we find ourselves in, as they are the product of processes of self-identification and determination.‖25 While ethnic labels may remain unchanged over time and space, ethnic identities are always in flux as they continually adapt to changing circumstances— what it means to be ―Irish‖ in Boston today is very different from what it meant a hundred and fifty years ago—and different again from what it means to be ―Irish‖ in

Ireland.26 Similarly, the histories that constitute the basis of a given ethnic group are always formulated in ways that have specific meaning within the context of their ethnogenesis, and are likewise subject to adaptation as the contexts in which those ethnic groups exist change.

An understanding of the role that social memory plays in defining ethnic groups becomes particularly valuable in excavating the meanings of history in contexts in which political power is restricted to members of only one ethnic group. In such situations, the national history narrative often becomes coterminous with the ethnic history of the group

25 Duncan Ivison, Postcolonial Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 10. 26 The extent to which the maintenance of contextually defined boundaries is actually what defines ethnic groups—rather than any unchanging ―essence‖ that proports to define an ethnic group in isolation—was first formulated by Fredrik Barth. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969). For an overview of more recent scholarship on the importance of context for understanding the genesis, functioning, and disappearance of particular ethnic identities, see Lyra D. Monteiro, ―Ethnicity and Conflict in the Roman Conquest of Spain‖ in TRAC 2007: Proceedings of the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, London 2007, eds. Corisande Fenwick, Meredith Wiggins, and Dave Wythe (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008), 55-57.

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in control, serving to legitimate their power and to justify their oppression of members of other ethnic groups.27 As the ethnic history of the dominant group becomes fetishized, the members of marginalized ethnic groups tend to invest their own ethnic history narratives with a similarly quasi-religious meaning. In response, dominant ethnic groups engage in a relentless policing of the past, in order to demonstrate the ―fallacies‖ of the histories put forward by members of rival groups.28

As with all forms of social memory, ethnic histories can never be based on the life experience of the individual. Instead, group members acquire these memories through various social mechanisms that define and disseminate the aspects of ―the past‖ that are worth remembering. The ―knowledge‖ about the past on which social memories are built comes from a variety of sources. Nevertheless, although throughout this dissertation it may seem that a given situation is the product of particular choices by distinct individuals, it is important to keep in mind the broader social imperatives that shaped those choices, as well as the range of individuals and groups who created, participated in, or witnessed different cultural phenomena.

Some of the most common, and apparently straightforward, means that historians have to access discourses of ethnic ancestry are written records—either official histories, or more casual references to a past that is presented in familiar terms, as ―belonging‖ to members of a particular ethnic group. However, texts alone cannot be expected to tell the

27 See Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, 76-115, for a discussion of the way in which a Hindu identity came to represent ―Indian‖ identity, to the exclusion of those who fell outside of this category. 28 A contemporary example of this kind of policing of the past can be seen in the scholarly reaction to Bernal‘s 1987 book (Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985 [New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987]), particularly Lefkowitz‘s apoplectic response to what she sees as the ―theft‖ of Greek history by Afrocentrists (Not Out of Africa: How “Afrocentrism” Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History [New York: Basic Books, 1996]). See Jacques Berlinerblau, Heresy in the University: The Black Athena Controversy and the Responsibilities of American Intellectuals (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), for an astute assessment of the first decade of scholarly reaction to Bernal‘s book.

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whole story of the meanings of the past—not least because deeply rooted social conventions seldom require or accommodate verbal articulation.29 Furthermore, as

Walker Connor writes of nationalist imagery (in a statement that is equally applicable to other ethnic-type identity groups), ―symbols can speak messages without words to members of the nation.‖30 Thus, in order to more fully appreciate the pervasiveness of the past-claims that were marshaled in support of early American ethnic identities, I focus in this dissertation on the ways in which material discourses may have differed from verbal discourses about the past. Specifically, I explore the interactions between cultural objects and human bodies—what Lynn Meskell refers to as ―the dialectic of people and things‖31—by investigating what Ruth Van Dyke and Susan Alcock describe as the ―four broad, overlapping categories of materially accessible media through which social memories are commonly constructed and observed: ritual behaviors, narratives, objects and representations, and places.‖32

29 See Emile Durkheim for a discussion of the role of ―social facts,‖ or conventions, in shaping human behavior, despite the fact that members of a given society may not be consciously aware of the existence of these facts, or capable of articulating how they operate. The Rules of the Sociological Method, ed. Steven Lukes, trans. W.D. Halls (New York: Free Press, 1982), 50-59. Thus, even intentionally informative and honest testimony of members of a given society cannot be depended upon to provide an accurate picture of the ―rules‖ that shape their culture. An excellent example of this are the discrepancies between what late- twentieth-century Americans said—and often genuinely believed to be true—about the waste they disposed of, and the patterns revealed in William Rathje‘s ―Garbage Project,‖ in which he applied archaeological techniques to the analysis of modern household trash. William Rathje and Collin Murphy, Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), 53-78. Robin Bernstein suggests that the difficulty of verbalizing the motivations for cultural behavior may be particularly complex in the case of race, ―because the ‗whys‘ of race are often unstable and inconsistent, unspoken or unspeakable.‖ ―Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race,‖ Social Text 27, no. 4 (2009): 68. 30 Walker Connor, ―Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond,‖ in Hutchinson and Smith, Ethnicity, 73. 31 Meskell, ―Object Orientations,‖ 4. Contemporary material culture theory tends to use the word ―thing‖ in place of ―object‖ or ―artifact,‖ as a way of clarifying the capacity of the ―thing‖ to act, not merely be acted upon. See the articles in Arjun Appadurai, ed, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Lynn Meskell, ed., Archaeologies of Materiality (London: Blackwell, 2005); as well as to encompass a wide range of physical entities shaped by human involvement with one catch-all term that includes everything from cultural landscapes to works of art to cooking pots. 32 Van Dyke and Alcock, ―An Introduction,‖ 4.

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The interactions between bodies and things are precisely the stuff of which Eric

Hobsbawm speaks, when he describes the invented traditions that are essential reinforcements of identity: ―a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.‖33 As crucial as both things and bodies are to such practices, they have traditionally been studied from slightly different angles. In my approach to the body as a site of analysis, I draw both on a Foucauldian understanding of the central role of bodily control and categorization within political power,34 as well as a phenomenological approach derived from post-processual archaeology, consisting of ―the detailed examination and description of conscious experience and perception.‖35 Although human bodies have important meanings in a variety of cultural contexts, this approach becomes especially helpful in the early United States, where bodies—American and foreign, ancient and modern, real and imagined—were obsessively read for signs of their race, as a means of accessing ―truths‖ about the individual. These truths were supported or shaped by the

33 Eric Hobsbawm, ―Introduction: Inventing Traditions,‖ in The Invention of Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1. 34 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books: 1979). The analytical possibilities opened up by focusing on the cultural construction of the body have been enthusiastically embraced by historians of the early United States; for a few elegant examples, see Sharla Fett, Working Cures: Health, Healing, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Simon P. Newman, Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); and Molly Rogers, Delia’s Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). 35 Michael Shanks, Experiencing the Past: On the character of archaeology (London: Routledge, 1992), 122.

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things with which a given body was associated, and the ways in which they interacted with those things.36

We can gain an understanding of how the meanings and meaning-making abilities of things change as they move through different historical and cultural contexts by

―interrogat[ing] the specific moments of crafting, forging, exchanging, installing, using, and discarding objects.‖37 The ―thingness‖ of things, their existence within the physical world, is at once an obvious and an easily overlooked property of objects, which accounts for their role in expressing and shaping culture: ―Physical presence is the symbolic and experiential bridge that renders abstract thought and belief both tangible and efficacious.‖38 As such, any study of the intellectual history of a given era is incomplete without an understanding of the material setting in which those ideas were created.39 The persistence of objects and buildings, whose physical properties allow them to outlive the social contexts that originally produced them, thus helps us to understand the persistence of outdated ideologies, as objects ―transmit values and ideas from generation to generation.‖40

Material culture studies have been largely semiotic in their concerns, drawing attention to how the meanings generated by a given object are multiple, unstable, and

36 For similar approaches to the role of things and bodies in creating race and identity in the United States, see Caroline Frank, Objectifying China, Imagining America: Chinese Commodities in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Bernstein, ―Dances with Things‖; Bridget T. Heneghan, Whitewashing America: Material Culture and Race in the Antebellum Imagination (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003). 37 Meskell, ―Object Orientations,‖ 7. See also the essays in Appadurai, Social Life of Things. 38 Meskell, ―Object Orientations,‖ 5. 39 See Pierre Bourdieu‘s concept of habitus, for a way of understanding ―things‖ as being much more than epiphenomenal expressions of cultural ideas, but rather as acting in powerful ways to shape worlds of meaning for those who live in, with, and around them. Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 40 S. Sack, ―Poverty Alleviation,‖ in Investing in Culture (Pretoria: Department of Arts and Culture, 2003), 4-5, quoted in Meskell, ―Object Orientations,‖ 14.

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contested. For example, a neoclassical Italian portrait bust of a relative in the house of a wealthy southern family not only, as I will argue, referenced an ethnic history of classical whiteness, but also reinforced the family‘s wealth, cultural attainment, and overseas travel, as well as highlighting the importance of their extended family and, by extension, lineage. At the same time, such a bust could perform functions that appear to be far removed from this kind of symbolism, by providing a reminder of the appearance of an absent or deceased family member, or of what an elderly person looked like in their youth; provoking admiration of the artistic skill involved in its creation; inspiring a more generic contemplation of the beauty of the human form; or serving as a model for an amateur artist. Nor were these meanings entirely distinct from each other, but they built upon one another—or, at times, contradicted each other in ways that created exciting tensions.41 For a visitor from another culture, or the enslaved person tasked with dusting the bust, it could provoke an entirely different set of associations. The multivalence of all objects is such that it is a fruitless effort to try to discern ―the‖ meaning a given object held within a particular cultural context.

One of the many properties of things—including buildings, books, dishes, paintings, landscapes, and so forth—is their capacity to become what Pierre Nora terms lieux de memoire, places where ―memory crystallizes and secretes itself.‖42 Cultural geographer Robert Schein explains the special symbolic power of landscapes in terms that are helpful for understanding their mnemonic function:

41 For example, American sculptor Hiram Power‘s neoclassical ―The Greek Slave,‖ which presented a carefully delineated ―white‖ physiognomy, carved from white marble, in a classical pose, whose nudity both recalled ancient Greco-Roman models, and the nakedness of black bodies at contemporary slave auctions (see Chapter 2 for a larger discussion of this sculpture and its popularity in the antebellum United States). 42 Pierre Nora, ―Between Memory and History: les lieux de mémoire,‖ Representations 26 (1989): 7.

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Their very presence, as both material ‗things‘ and conceptual framings of the world, makes cultural landscapes constitutive of the processes that created them in the first place—whether through the materiality of the tangible, visible scene or through the symbolic qualities they embed that make them inescapably normative.43

While Schein speaks here only of landscapes—a term which refers to the meaningful distribution of ―things‖ in space—recent archaeologies of memory have explored the extent to which ―portable material objects differ little from permanent, monumental mnemonics in that both may be material metaphors for past histories.‖44

Most work on the archaeology of memory focuses on objects that actually were the product of a much earlier time—such as the Athenian Agora,45 or the shrines of the

Haya people of West Africa46—places whose precise meanings changed over time, but which undeniably were created by people who lived prior to those who ascribed mnemonic significance to them. By contrast, the majority of the things that I discuss in this dissertation—from plaster casts of classical sculptures, to Greek Revival mansions on southern slave plantations—were not produced by the ancient Mediterranean societies with which they came to be associated, nor did they claim to be.47 Nevertheless, I argue that objects that were intentionally created to invoke a given past have similar potential in the production and maintenance of social memory as do objects that were actually made

43 Richard H. Schein, ―Race and Landscape in the United States,‖ in Landscape and Race in the United States, ed. Richard H. Schein (New York: Routledge, 2006), 5. 44 Peter Ridgway Schmidt, Historical Archaeology in Africa: Representation, Social Memory, and Oral Traditions (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2006), 72. On the archaeology of memory, see also Susan E. Alcock, Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscapes, Monuments, and Memories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Keith S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis, eds, The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books); Christopher Y. Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (London: Blackwell, 1999); Van Dyke and Alcock, Archaeologies of Memory. 45 Alcock, Greek Past, 51-73. 46 Schmidt, Historical Archaeology in Africa, 71-98. 47 With the exception of the Egyptian mummies discussed in Chapter 2, and occasional small, fragmentary artifacts, almost all ―classical‖ things in the pre-Civil War United States were of relatively recent local or European manufacture. 16

by long-dead people, and that the social memories evoked and created by such objects are no less genuine than memories grounded in objects that are literally from the past.

These approaches to the study of social memory, ethnicity, the body, and material culture, are all at play in my exploration of early American encounters with things associated with the ancient Mediterranean. I investigate the intangible impact of encounters with these tangible objects and spaces through archival research in personal correspondence, business records, wills, and diaries; advertisements and articles in newspapers and magazines; data from archaeological excavations; and close readings of surviving objects, buildings, and landscapes. The specific analytical tools that I apply to my investigation of the different meanings of these cultural products are drawn from a range of disciplines—including Classics, Art History, English, Performance Studies,

Museum Studies, and, of course, Archaeology. My use of this eclectic array of techniques reflects my conviction that the polyvalence of cultural forms—which mean many things to many people—can never be fully understood, and that only by approaching their meanings from several different angles, can we begin to form a clearer picture of how a given cultural product functioned within a given society.48

48 My approach is similar in this regard to that employed by both Melani McAlister (Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001], 4-8), and Caroline Frank (Frank, Objectifying China), both of whom also examine the politics of representation and the meaning of things that were associated with a different time or place within the American context. However, my project can be distinguished from both of theirs in that, while both explore societies whose pasts and presents were understood as ―other‖ to the United States, the classical past was viewed as ―our‖ story by Americans, and the classical present was imagined to exist not in the modern Mediterranean, but in the modern United States.

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Race and Nation in the Early United States

As discussed in the previous section, race can be understood as an extreme expression of the myth of shared ancestry that is an essential part of ethnic identity—in other words, a socially defined division of human populations into different groups, based on observable physical differences (skin color, height, facial features, etc.), which are understood to be genetically transmitted, and indicative of non-observable traits, such as moral and intellectual qualities.49 Like all ethnic groups, racial categories like ―black‖ and ―white‖ have no ontological meaning, so in order to understand the significance of these categories in the early United States, we need to understand the circumstances in which they emerged.50

In the three centuries leading up to the founding of the United States, millions of enslaved Africans and hundreds of thousands of indentured and free Europeans converged in the New World and settled on lands occupied by millions of Native

Americans.51 Initially, African enslavement in the New World was only one of many

49 This definition is derived from the essential readings from anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and literary scholars, collected in Hutchinson and Smith Ethnicity, and Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg, eds, Race Critical Theories (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). 50 Ethnic-type identities are also intimately bound up with other structures of social difference, such as gender and class, making it difficult to address any of these phenomena independently. However, since my primary focus is on ethnic histories of American whiteness and blackness, I address gender and class only insofar as they constitute important elements in the development and deployment of ethnic histories. 51 Walter Johnson notes that between 1620 and 1820, five out of every six immigrants from the Old World to the New World came from Africa. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 4. Throughout the development of whiteness and blackness in the early United States, Native Americans played an important role, but it is one that I only have space to hint at from time to time in this dissertation. In general, this is because, in terms of the discourse surrounding the ancient Mediterranean, Native Americans tended to be present only in ideal form, not in reality. The bizarre process by which the idealized ―Indian‖ of the past was mythologized and recruited as part of the symbolic language of American nationalism, at the same time that the rights and even existence of Native Americans were disregarded on a daily basis in the early years of the republic, has been discussed elsewhere. See Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Knopf, 1998), 188-226; E. McClung Fleming, ―The American Image as Indian Princess, 1765-1783,‖ Winterthur Portfolio 2 (1965); E. McClung Fleming, ―From Indian Princess to Greek Goddess: The American Image, 1783-1815,‖ Winterthur Portfolio 2 (1966). What is most important for my analysis, however, is an 18

forms of servitude practiced in the Americas. Enslaved people of African descent regularly toiled alongside both American Indian slaves and European indentured servants, and, like them, often had the opportunity to earn their freedom and pass that status on to their children.52 However, as a result of what Winthrop Jordan refers to as an

―unthinking decision,‖ Euro-Americans gradually restricted lifelong servitude only to people of African descent—and people of African descent came to be presumptively regarded as slaves.53 At the same time, new labor-intensive crops like sugar and tobacco increased the demand for slaves, and the wealth they generated allowed white slaveowners to increase the distance between themselves and their black property.54 In these circumstances, a white ethnic identity emerged as people of European descent, from various national and religious backgrounds, united under the banner of ―whiteness,‖ adopting an identity that was defined more by the absence of blackness, than by any positive characteristic.55

awareness of how the generic figure of the Indian was repeatedly invoked within the discourse of race, in which they were generally ranked somewhere between white Americans and black Americans within the hierarchy of human races—and often, much closer to white than to black people. See Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997): 13-15; Jordan, White Over Black, xiv, 239-242, 453. 52 Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003): 33-49. 53 Jordan, White Over Black, 44-98. One indication of the degree to which blackness was associated with servitude is future president John Adams‘ expression of his anger at the newly imposed Stamp Act, ―We won‘t be their negroes. Providence never designed us for negroes, I know, for if it had it wou‘d have given us black hides, and thick lips, and flat noses, and short wooly hair, which it han‘t done, and therefore never intended us for slaves.‖ (Humphrey Ploughjogger, pseud.) Boston Gazette, October 14, 1765, quoted in Saxton, White Republic, 30. For a concise discussion of the legal restriction of the rights of people of African descent in British North America, see Barbara J. Fields, ―Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America,‖ New Left Review 181 (1990): 107-108. As first analyzed by Frank Tannenbaum, and later enumerated in countless studies, European enslavement of Africans in the New World developed in distinct ways in different parts of the New World, based in large part on the religious, political, and economic ideologies of the various colonial powers. Slave and Citizen (New York: Knopf, 1946). 54 For the details of this process, see Jordan, White Over Black; Berlin, Generations of Captivity; and Fields, ―Slavery, Race, and Ideology, among many others. 55 Malcolmson, One Drop of Blood, 278-282. Malcolmson attributes the reluctance to adopt the label of ―white‖ to the fact that ―to have been white would have been to place oneself in a position relative to blacks 19

As important as blackness and whiteness were for organizing life in the New

World, beginning in the late-sixteenth century, it is hard to describe them as truly ―racial‖ phenomena until after the Revolutionary War. After winning their independence from

Britain in 1783, white Americans began a ―search for national self-identity, [. . . which] was intimately linked with white American attitudes toward Negroes.‖56 Despite the advances made by black Americans during the War—as they bargained for their freedom in return for military service, invoked the revolutionary rhetoric of liberty to assert their rights as citizens of the new country, or simply took advantage of the disruption of war to run away from slavery—there was no place for them within the body politic of the new nation. As Scott Malcolmson writes,

To the extent Americans wanted a national identity as a people, rather than as human beings who happened to be in America, that identity almost had to be racial; given that white power, and the racial differences within which it developed and which it greatly extended, was already clear by the 1750s, if not earlier, ―American‖ identity would be a white identity.57

The Revolutionary War thus marked a turning point in the development of American ideas about race in two important and linked ways: by presenting a sustained challenge to the justice of slavery, and by nationalizing American whiteness.58 In the words of

Barbara Fields, ―[t]hose holding liberty to be inalienable and holding Afro-Americans as slaves were bound to end by holding [the racial incapacity of Afro-Americans] to be a

and Indians—to have invited comparison as equals—which would have had the effect of reducing one‘s powerful norms to racial peculiarities‖ (279). 56 Jordan, White Over Black, 335. 57 Malcolmson, One Drop of Blood, 290. While Malcolmson is correct to note that the importance of race in the early United States was in part due to the fact that white Americans ―had little else to cling to‖ to define themselves as Americans, both he and other scholars of the development of race in American overlook the importance of constantly creating and recreating a history of whiteness in order to support this new ethnic identity. 58 David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975); Jordan, White Over Black, 269-311; Malcolmson, One Drop of Blood, 285-290.

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self-evident truth.‖59 Some slaveowners who attempted to remedy their contradictory beliefs in the equality of mankind and in the justice of enslaving people of African descent found it impossible, and worked to manumit their own slaves, abolish slavery within their states, and block the spread of slavery into new American territories.60

However, for supporters of slavery, in both the North and the South, what had previously been a tacit assumption of black inferiority now required more elaborate proof, in order to justify the continued enslavement of black people in a country built on the promise of liberty.

The extent to which the American nation was envisioned as coterminous with ethnic whiteness can be clarified by the early laws which defined the boundaries of citizenship in the United States. The Constitution, written in 1787, excluded people of

African and Native American descent from citizenship in the country, most notably

Article I, Section 2, which states:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons

—the last phrase notorious for its avoidance of using the word ―slaves,‖ and for counting nonwhites as less than a person. In 1790, the first Naturalization Act made the exclusivity of American nationalism even more explicit, by specifying that only ―free white person[s]‖ who immigrated to the United States could become citizens.‖ Although individual states and municipalities did sometimes grant free people of color the rights of citizens within their territories, the ―black codes‖ that were created in many places to

59 Fields, ―Slavery, Race and Ideology,‖ 101. 60 Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 103-106.

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govern free people of color, not to mention the continued enslavement of millions of people of African descent, reinforced the idea that only white people were entitled to citizenship.61

The focus on liberty as a justification for the American Revolution initiated the first large-scale movements for the abolition of slavery in the United States. However, even a man such as Virginian St. George Tucker, who opposed slavery and recognized that black people might not actually be inferior, still had difficulty advocating for an equal society, writing in his 1796 proposal for the abolition of slavery in Virginia, ―if prejudices have taken such deep root in our minds, as to render it impossible to eradicate this opinion [of the inferiority of black people, and the impossibility of living with them as equals], ought not so general an error, if it be one, to be respected?‖62 Such statements clarify the extent to which ―White Americans [. . . clung] tightly to the ideal of a humanity beyond race that was nonetheless, as far as anyone could tell, for the time being, restricted to white people.‖63

One of the earliest and most influential defenses of the enslavement of people of

African descent in racial terms was written by slave plantation owner Thomas Jefferson, whose Notes on the State of Virginia is described by Jordan as ―the most intense,

61 Robert J. Cottrol, ―The Long Lingering Shadow: Law, Liberalism, and Cultures of Racial Hierarchy and Identity in the Americas,‖ Tulane Law Review 76, no. 1 (2001): 46-52. The American Colonization Society carried the logic of these legislative exclusions of nonwhites even further. Founded in 1816 by such luminaries as Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and Francis Scott Key, the society‘s solution to the ―problem‖ of free but unequal black Americans was to resettle them in Africa. This vision, which was based on an essentialist concept of blackness, as well as deep-seated fears about forming a nation in which black people were citizens rather than slaves, developed out of ideas that had been discussed for the previous few decades, and was manifested ultimately in the creation of colonies in Liberia in the 1820s. See James T. Campbell, Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 (New York: Penguin, 2006), 32-46; Malcolmson, White Over Black, 185-191. 62 A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It, in the State of Virginia (1796; repr., Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 2008), 89. For additional articulations of this education- based prejudice, and the difficulty of eradicating it, see Malcolmson, One Drop of Blood, 286-289. 63 Malcolmson, One Drop of Blood, 288-289.

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extensive, and extreme formulation of anti-Negro ‗thought‘ offered by any American in the thirty years after the Revolution.‖64 While Jefferson described American Indians in glowing terms, even ranking their oratorical powers alongside those of Demosthenes and

Cicero,65 he devoted even more space to enumerating the inherent differences between white and black people—to the detriment of the latter.66 Over subsequent decades,

Jefferson‘s perspective was elaborated into a highly developed theory of the black man as child, which became articulated in an ideal of paternalistic slavery, in which the slaveowner was the patriarch not only of his white family, but of his black ―family‖ as well.67 This allowed slaveowners to see themselves as benevolent guardians of childlike black men and women, rather than as tyrannical destroyers of human liberty and dignity.

Crucially, while the new national American whiteness theoretically encompassed all people of European descent, at the times when this ethnic identity intersected with the socio-economic realities and gender structures of the Atlantic World, some white people became ―more white‖ than others. As whiteness came to be understood as the diametrical opposite of blackness, the markers of supreme whiteness were similarly defined in contrast to the markers of blackness—owning land, not engaging in manual labor, participating in European cultural conversations, and, crucially, controlling the actions of others, without taking orders oneself—all of which were prerogatives of masculinity and

64 White Over Black, 481. Jordan also suggests that Jefferson‘s ―remarks about Negroes . . . were more widely read, in all probability, than any others until the mid-nineteenth century‖ (429). 65 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), repr. in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Viking Press, 1984), 184-189. 66 Jefferson, Notes, 264-270. 67 For more on this ideal, and how it manifested in slave management, see William K. Scarborough, Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 175-216; James O. Breeden, ed. Advice Among Masters: The Ideal in Slave Management in the Old South (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 365-382.

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of wealth in early American society. Thus, an educated, wealthy, male, married, slaveowning landowner of European descent, represented the epitome of whiteness—and it is no coincidence that nine of the first twelve presidents of the United States fit this description.68 The list of men and particularly women who were not considered to be black, but did not have all of these characteristics of whiteness, is endless, falling on a wide spectrum from European immigrant wage laborers, to the wives and daughters of wealthy slaveowners.69 Thus, in the pages that follow, we must always keep in mind that a hierarchy existed even within whiteness.

Although the American concept of blackness was originally a product of the imaginations and behaviors of people who considered themselves to be nonblack, New

World slaves who had been born into various African identity groups came to adopt a definition of themselves as ―black,‖ and shaped the meaning of this identity in ways that

68 William Henry Harrison had a complicated relationship to slavery, but his experience of slaveownership prior to moving to the free state of Indiana, combined with his continued purchase and ownership of human beings for decades thereafter, speak for his inclusion in the category of southern slaveowning presidents (for a discussion of Harrison‘s slaveowning and his proslavery record throughout his political career, see Gail Collins, William Henry Harrison (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Co., 2012), 32-35, 63-65). 69 For discussion of how the full privileges of whiteness were denied to these groups, see Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 192-241; Virginia Kent Anderson Leslie, ―A Myth of the Southern Lady: Antebellum Proslavery Rhetoric and the Proper Place of Women,‖ in Southern Women, ed. Caroline Matheny (New York: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 1988). The racialized dimensions of class and gender inequality in the nineteenth-century United States was a factor in the linked movements for women‘s rights and the abolition of slavery, but it did not generally result in feelings of solidarity between working class white and free black Americans. For conflicts between white artisans and day laborers and enslaved and free black Americans, see L. Diane Barnes, Artisan Workers in the Upper South: Petersburg, Virginia, 1820-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 39-51, 110-112; Catherine W. Bishir, ―Black Builders in Antebellum North Carolina,‖ North Carolina Historical Review 61, no. 4 (1984); Michele Gillespie, Free Labor in an Unfree World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia, 1789-1860 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000), 44-62, 138-160; Timothy James Lockley, Lines in the Sand: Race and Class in Lowcountry Georgia, 1750- 1860 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 67-72. Instead, in both the North and the South, even non-slaveowning white Americans clung onto their whiteness as a mark of superiority over free and enslaved black Americans, literally turning whiteness itself into a form of property. See Cheryl Harris, ―Whiteness as Property,‖ Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993).

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would help them, too, function within society.70 In other words, they created an ethnic identity based on boundaries that they had not chosen, but which undeniably had meaning in their worlds, so that ―[b]y the early 19th century, at least in the United States, slaves had embraced race, viewed themselves as black, and aggressively used their blackness as a vantage point from which to attack racism and slavery.‖71 While the thoughts and beliefs of the enslaved are harder for us to trace, by the time that free black Americans obtained access to literacy and printing presses, a conception of themselves as members of an ―African‖ race was firmly established.72

While southern slavery outlived the Early Republic, the passage of gradual abolition laws in all northern states, combined with increased instances of manumission throughout the country, and the beginnings of a legal structure that, at least in theory, granted rights to free black men and women who asserted them, led to the birth within this period of thriving free black communities in most northern cities.73 When the first federal census was taken in 1790, free black Americans numbered only 59,527, the majority of whom lived in the North. This number grew rapidly over the next few

70 For a discussion of various other ways that enslaved people of African origin defined their identity in the centuries before accepting a dominant definition of ―blackness,‖ see Rhett S. Jones, ―Psyche and Society in the Slave Construction of Race,‖ Western Journal of Black Studies 28, no. 4 (2004): 484-485. See also Russell Menard‘s discussion, in which he observes that ―Africans and Europeans who arrived in British American during the eighteenth century encountered an increasingly structured, articulated social system and powerful incentives and pressures to embrace the dominant culture, to become Anglo Americans or African Americans quickly and with little resistance.‖ ―Migration, Ethnicity, and the Rise of an Atlantic Economy: The Re-Peopling of British America, 1600-1790,‖ in A Century of European Migration, 1830- 1930, ed. Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 73. 71 Jones, ―Slave Construction of Race,‖ 480. For more on the process by which members of multiple African identity groups came to form a new identity as ―black‖ in the Americas, see Steven W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). 72 On the creation of the ―African‖ identity, see James Sidbury, Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 73 See Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 103-111, 230-244 for the development of free communities of color in the urban North.

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decades, nearly quadrupling by 1820, and reaching nearly half a million by the eve of the

Civil War (see Tables 1 and 2).

Census Year Total Population Free Black Slave (Black) White 1790 3,929,214 59,527 697,681 3,172,006 1800 5,308,483 108,435 893,602 4,306,446 1810 7,239,881 186,446 1,191,362 5,862,073 1820 9,638,453 233,634 1,538,022 7,866,797 1830 12,860,702 319,599 2,009,043 10,532,060 1840 17,063,353 386,293 2,487,355 14,189,705 1850 23,191,876 434,495 3,204,313 19,553,068 1860 31,443,321 488,070 3,953,760 26,922,537

Table 1: Population of the United States by Race and Status, 1790-186074

100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 Percentage of Black Americans Listed on Census as Free

Percentage of Black Americans Listed on Census as Slaves

Table 2: Black Population of the North, 1790-186075

74 Data from Table 1, Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, ―Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790-1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States.‖ Population Division, Working Paper 56 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2002). Native Americans were not counted on the federal census prior to 1860, when their number was recorded as 44,021, with only 239 in the North. 75 Data from Table 2, Gibson and Jung 2002, which covers the states that fall within the current ―Northeast‖ census region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont). If anything, the census data underreports the number of free people of color, since fugitives from slavery would have reason to hide their presence from government officials.

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The numbers alone do not tell the whole story of the great advances made in this period by free black communities, including the creation of strong civic and religious institutions, the formation of alliances to fight slavery and discrimination, and, crucially, the exploitation of print technology to spread their messages to ever wider audiences.76

As these communities gained sufficient mass and cohesion, they began to challenge definitions of American-ness that excluded them. The overwhelming majority of the black voices we hear in this dissertation came from the urban North; however, these communities were quite diverse, often including first, second, and third generation immigrants from Africa, native- and free-born black Americans, runaway slaves from the

South, as well as those who continued to live in bondage.

By the early 1800s, there existed a critical mass of educated, professional,

American-born black northerners, who represented a complicated challenge to an

American whiteness that was based on exclusive possession of these attributes. These free black Americans with middle class aspirations became a constant feature of city streets and places of business, and represented a ―walking contradiction in terms, a social

76 Over the past three decades scholars have produced numerous studies of specific free black communities and institutions, including James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1979); Julie Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Julie Winch, ed, The Elite of Our People: Joseph Willson’s Sketches of Black Upper-Class Life in Antebellum Philadelphia (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Shane White, Stories of Freedom in Black New York (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Marvin McAllister, White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies & Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown’s African & American Theater (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick, Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Jacqueline Bacon, Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007); Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York: New York University Press, 2008); Erica Armstrong Dunbar, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Margot Minardi, Making Slavery History: Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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anomaly, a third party in a system built for two‖: white citizens and black slaves.77 As

Jordan observes, ―[s]lavery had formalized and ritualized relations between Negroes and whites and accordingly had served to clarify the status of both. After abolition, only by separating the Negro, by law or by some less formal means, could clarity be retrieved.‖78

Thus, the more that black men and women gained their freedom in the North, and sought the markers of Americanness—which were also the cultural markers of whiteness—the more their rights and privileges were legislated away, and they were mocked for their speech, appearance, and other supposed markers of their inferiority (see Figure 1 for a popular print, part of a series marking elite black Philadelphians).

Figure 1: Edward Clay, Life in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: W. Simpson, 1828), Plate 4, caption: “How you find youself dis hot weader Miss Chloe?” “Pretty well I tank you Mr. Cesar only I aspire too much!” New-York Historical Society, ARTstor.

77 Jordan, White Over Black, 134. 78 Jordan, White Over Black, 415.

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Although the system of African enslavement in the New World had long been based on a basic idea of difference and inferiority on the part of people of African descent, the dramatic increase in the quantity of free black Americans in the early United

States, as well as their outspoken demands for political and cultural equality, required a re-evaluation of long-held assumptions about white superiority. Out of this context emerged the set of ideas known as ―racial science,‖ which used the scientific79 tools of the Enlightenment to exhaustively measure and categorize human beings, in order to establish definitive taxonomies of racial difference.80 American racial scientists were not content to simply assert anatomical boundaries between ―races‖—based on measurements of the internal capacity of a cranium, or comparisons of the ratios of one body part to another—but they further extrapolated their data to derive mental and emotional qualities from the shapes of bodies, and especially heads.81 By the eve of the

79 I eschew the practice of referring to the techniques of racial science as ―pseudoscience‖ because I am uncomfortable with the implication that ―real science‖ is an objective and infallible method of investigating ―truth.‖ In other words, anything that presents itself as science—using precise, clearly defined methods that are accepted as ―scientific‖ by the scientific community of its own time—is, as far as I am concerned, science. 80 For the role of the Enlightenment thought in the development of racial categories see David Bindman, Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 11-21. For a detailed discussion of the various theories put forward to explain blackness between 1787- 1810, which reflected the increased need to explain race in the context of white nationalism, see Jordan, White Over Black, 512-541. 81 The science of phrenology (the study of heads), which was deeply implicated in the scientific study of racial difference, lives on in our society in the descriptions of ―highbrow‖ and ―lowbrow‖ culture—the former being associated with the supposedly larger frontal lobes of more intelligent brains (i.e. the head shape that was stereotypically white), and the latter with the smaller frontal lobes of less intelligent brains (supposedly possessed by mentally ill white people and criminals, as well as most non-white people). Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Charles Colbert, A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 118-122, 142-145; Cynthia Hamilton, ―‗Am I Not a Man and a Brother?‘ Phrenology and Anti-slavery,‖ Slavery and Abolition 29, no. 2 (2008). See Chapter 2 for a more thorough discussion of phrenology and racial science.

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Civil War—during the same decade in which Darwin published The Origin of Species— racial scientists in the United States ended up arguing that black people were not only intellectually and emotionally inferior to white people, but they were a different species, altogether.82

In the early nineteenth century, the ailing system of plantation slavery was reinvigorated by the cultivation of cotton and sugar in the territories in the old southwest that were newly opened up—opened, of course, by the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans from the lands east of the Mississippi River.83 By the antebellum period, the plantation South was larger both numerically and geographically, with the number of slaves swelling from less than a million in 1790, to nearly four million in 1860 (see Table 1), who were now living and working on plantations from the islands off the coast of the Carolinas to the middle of Texas. For both the free white and enslaved black residents of these plantations, the racial majority/minority structure that existed in the North, and in most southern cities and farms, was dramatically reversed. In this setting, ownership of black slaves was one of the most straightforward markers of whiteness, with the reciprocal result that, particularly in the South, white people were quite literally dependent upon black bodies not only for their productive capacity, but also for their symbolic value as proof of whiteness.84

Toward the end of the 1850s, the twin ideologies of racial science and paternalistic slavery received their ultimate expression in the U.S. Supreme Court‘s Dred

82 Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological, and biblical history: illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton, M.D., 6th ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co, 1854). 83 Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 161-209. 84 Johnson, Soul by Soul.

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Scott decision, which declared that black people were ―so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.‖85 Whether free or enslaved, black people were now explicitly excluded from the American nation.

American Histories of the Ancient Greece and Rome

While American whiteness was propped up by many means, one of the most powerful and most frequently invoked tools in support of white solidarity and superiority were claims to a glorious white past. As discussed above, ethnic histories are a crucial element of ethnic identities, but since ―whiteness‖ was an invention of the early modern Atlantic,

Rhett Jones notes that

There was no white history, no white tradition. Racists later wrote a celebratory history enlisting in this newly created white concept ancient Greeks, seventh century Anglo-Saxons, Renascence (sic) thinkers, and Reformation activists none of whom would have thought of (or described) themselves as white. They were made white in retrospect and those who had seemingly done nothing worth celebrating—for example Celts, Eastern Europeans, and Jews—were rigidly excluded from whiteness.86

Observations such as this—which scholars of race and nation in the early United States have only ever made in passing—represent the starting point for my investigation of the intersections of history and race in the early United States. When situated within the context of the vast amount of scholarship on the importance of ethnic histories for racial and national identity groups, it becomes clear how the social memory of classical antiquity in the early United States supported American racial nationalism.87

85 For more on the implications of this judgment, and a discussion of the reaction of free black Bostonians to it, see Minardi, Making Slavery History, 132-172. 86 Jones, ―Slave Construction of Race,‖ 481. 87 While there is some acknowledgement of the role of classicism in American national identity and social cohesion the work of Shalev (Rome Reborn, 18), Richard (Golden Age, x), and Winterer (Mirror of Antiquity, 1), the racial aspect is consistently overlooked.

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Understanding the extent to which the stories of the past which circulated in the early United States constituted an exclusively white history—whether of the virtues of

George Washington, or the conquests of Alexander the Great—clarifies the power of what Melville Herskovits calls ―the myth of the Negro past‖—namely, that ―[t]he Negro is a man without a past.‖88 Whereas Herskovits speaks to the destructive power of this myth in the mid-twentieth century, Margot Minardi notes that the same idea was central to the ideology of slavery.89 While slave communities certainly developed and maintained social memories,90 one of the crucial tasks of free black communities was to recover and more formally assert their connection with the histories that were defined as

―American.‖ In other words, ―[i]f slavery involves the loss of social and historical rootedness, then emancipation must involve a reverse process, an incorporation into the community, including the ‗community of memory.‘‖91 The challenge for free black

Americans was thus ―to resolve the discontinuities of memory that paralleled the persistence of slavery and other violations of African Americans‘ civil rights in a democratic society.‖92 While Minardi and Elizabeth Bethel focus on the ways in which free people of color excavated and fabricated social memories related to the more recent past in the Americas (primarily from the late eighteenth century, focusing on such figures as Crispus Attucks, the mixed-race man who was the first victim of the Boston

Massacre), and James Sidbury looks at the idea of a pagan African past as a unifying

88 The Myth of the Negro Past (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941) 1-32. 89 Minardi, Making Slavery History, 9.0 90 See Mintz and Price, African-American Culture, for the groundbreaking work which highlighted the extent to which African traditions survived and formed the roots of a shared identity among the enslaved. 91 Minardi, Making Slavery History, 9. 92 Elizabeth Rauh Bethel, The Roots of African-American Identity: Memory and History in Free Antebellum Communities (New York: St. Martin‘s Press, 1997), 24.

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story for early free black Americans,93 this dissertation explores black American interventions into and assertions of ownership over the narratives of the same ancient

Mediterranean pasts that were central to the national and racial identity of white

Americans.

In this section I will focus my discussion on early American invocations of the ancient Mediterranean past in print, to the exclusion of the material, visual, and visceral components of this discourse, which are addressed in the body of this dissertation. In focusing on the racial aspects of this conversation, the summary that follows represents a break from previous approaches to American classicism, which generally take for granted the position of classical antiquity within the early United States.94 Those scholars who have addressed the question of why Greece and Rome were so prominent in the early

United States generally explain it as being the ―heritage‖ to which Americans—as transported Europeans, seeking to make their way in a new world—could look for inspiration from the past.95 In a way, though, this previous scholarship seems to have

93 Sidbury, Becoming African; though on the ―cultural absolutist‖ attitude of this group of black intellectuals, see Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 99-100. 94 e.g. Carl J. Richard, ―Classical Antiquity and Early Conceptions of the United States Senate,‖ in Classical Antiquity and the Politics of America, ed. Michael Meckler (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006); Caroline Winterer, ―Classical Oratory and Fears of Demagoguery in the Antebellum Era‖ in Meckler, Classical Antiquity. An exception to this is the introduction and some of the essays in African Athena, an edited volume that resulted from a conference on the 20th anniversary of Bernal‘s Black Athena. Daniel Orrells, Gurminder K. Bhambra, and Tessa Roynon, eds, African Athena: New Agendas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 95 The words ―inheritance‖ and ―heritage‖ are used in practically every discussion of American classicism. For example, Susan Wiltshire, who claims her purpose is ―not to suggest direct influence or to propose a cause and effect relationship,‖ speaks of ―the political implications of the Graeco-Roman heritage of the Bill of Rights.‖ Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 6. She states that ―the earliest origins of the Bill of Rights lie in classical Athens‖ (9), and concludes that ―the United States is founded on traditions stretching back to Greece and Rome rather than to Jerusalem (185). The characterization of Americans as Europeans in a new land provides the explanation for classicism in such works as Wolfgang Haase, ―America and the Classical Tradition: Preface and Introduction,‖ in The Classical Tradition and the Americas, eds Wolfgang Haase and Meyer Reinhold, vol. 1, Images of the Americas and the Classical Tradition, Part 1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), vii-viii; William J. Ziobro, ―Classical Education in Colonial America,‖ in Meckler, Classical Antiquity, 23. An undergraduate 33

been orbiting around the analysis which I perform here, through its repeated use of the language of ancestry and descent (heritage, inheritance, genealogy, descent, forefathers, etc.) when writing of early American classicism. All of these terms highlight the importance of the pastness of antiquity, as well as of the perception that it was understood to be an ancestral past, and yet the ways in which such an understanding functioned within early American society are never interrogated. Indeed, in the introduction to a recent volume of essays on classical antiquity and American politics,

Michael Meckler offers only two options for how the ―relevance‖ of classical antiquity for the United States can be understood: either as the genealogical ancestor of the United

States, as the founder of Western Civilization; or as a source of universal truths that are equally applicable to all societies, including the United States.96 I propose a third option in this dissertation: that the meaning of classical antiquity in the United States is due fundamentally to the perception, rather than reality, of ―linear descent‖ (a phrase actually used by Meckler in this connection), and that that perception had power primarily because of the specific ethno-nationalist structures of the United States.

professor of mine once pointed out that almost without fail, when something is described as ―natural,‖ it is anything but—and indeed that phrase ought to invite our attention to the degree to which the supposedly ―natural‖ thing is culturally constructed, as well as to understanding why it is beneficial for it to be considered to be natural. This certainly holds true for a common trope in American studies of classical antiquity—for example, Meckler writes, regarding John Adams‘ comments on the fate of the nation towards the end of his life, that ―The concerns over tensions tearing at the United States in 1819 naturally evoked contemplation of the tensions that destroyed the polities—both real and mythic—of the ancient Mediterranean.‖ Introduction to Meckler, Classical Antiquity, 2; while Richard writes, of the reaction of the Founding Fathers to taxation by the British, ―it was only natural that, when confronted by unprecedented parliamentary taxation during the 1760s and 1770s, they should turn to the most ancient and revered of political theories to explain this perplexing phenomenon‖ (Richard, ―Early Conceptions,‖ 31). However, such contemporary opponents of classical education as Thomas S. Grimké of South Carolina, criticized how ―Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus are studied with laborious attention, as though an American could not be an enlightened and valuable citizen without them, while the history of his own state and nation is utterly neglected.‖ Address on the Truth, Dignity, Power and Beauty of the Principles of Peace, and on the Unchristian Character and Influence of War and the Warrior (Hartford: George F. Olmsted, 1832), 54n. 96 Introduction to Meckler, Classical Antiquity, 3-4.

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Among scholars working on the early United States, it has become a truism that the new country was essentially past-less, since it rejected its continuity with the English past (and the pasts of other European nations) following the Revolutionary War.97 This observation belies the ways in which national pasts function more generally—for in the most basic sense, no nation is born with a past. Instead, one of the important insights of

Hobsbawm and Ranger‘s The Invention of Tradition is that all new nations must create a past in order to make their existence in the present moment appear inevitable.98 On the other hand, scholars specifically concerned with issues of race in the early United

States—including Moses and Trafton—have been attuned to the extent to which

―representations of the ancient world played an overdetermined part in the formation of variously configured American identities.‖99 Thus, while I draw heavily on the work of previous scholars in this outline, the connections that I explore between classicism and

American racial nationalism are entirely new.100

If, as I argue, Greco-Roman whiteness was such a pervasive assumption, it is not surprising that there was far less explicit reference to the race of the Greeks and Romans,

97 e.g. Malcolmson, who refers America‘s ―lack of a fixed past, indeed its break with the past‖ (One Drop of Blood, 289); and François Furstenberg, who describes Americans in the Early Republic as ―a people who could not look back toward a primordial shared past.‖ In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Viking, 2006), 37-38. 98 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For discussions of the different ways in which classical antiquity was recruited as a national ancestor for England, France, and Germany, beginning in the eighteenth century, see Suzanne L. Marchand, Down From Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Athena S. Leoussi, Nationalism and Classicism: The Classical Body as National Symbol in Nineteenth-Century England and France (New York: St. Martin‘s Press, 1998); Richard Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen: The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology (London: Routledge, 2000). 99 Trafton, Egypt Land, 14. 100 While Moses and Trafton focus on the role of ancient Egyptian pasts in the construction of black and white American identities, I contextualize these ideas as part of a broader discourse about antiquity, in which the whiteness of ancient Greece and Rome was the starting assumption that shaped all other discussion of antiquity in the early United States.

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and to their genealogical connection to white Americans, than there was discussion of, for example, the idea of black Americans‘ connections to ancient Egyptians. However, the racialized meaning of classical antiquity, and the metaphor of biological ancestry that underlay white America‘s connection to classical ―heritage,‖ were made explicit by two of the most important theorists of race in the early United States, at either end of the period discussed in this study.

In Thomas Jefferson‘s influential 1787 book, Notes on the State of Virginia, in order to justify his conclusion that free people of color could never enjoy the equality he wrote of in the Declaration of Independence, he addressed the issue of the inferiority of enslaved black Americans thus:

Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.101

The ancient Greek mathematician Euclid was singled out as the benchmark for white intelligence. Furthermore, to prove that inherent deficiencies, rather than their treatment under slavery, were responsible for the lower level of intelligence he observed, Jefferson discussed the example of ancient Roman slavery, which he considered to have been even more harsh than slavery in Virginia:

Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master‘s children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition [of enslavement] then, but nature, which has produced the distinction [between black and white Americans] . . . . Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary,

101 Jefferson, Notes, 264.

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unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.102

By invoking classical slavery, Jefferson reinforced the status of the Greco-Roman past as

America’s past, and the ―natural‖ place to find models for modern America. He further defined the enslaved Greeks, Epictetus, Terence (who was understood as being born in

North Africa),103 and Phaedrus as white, showing that even in slavery, the brilliance of the white race shone through. Finally, his paranoia about racial ―mixture‖ tied this argument from antiquity into the growing desires to purge the United States of blackness, which resulted ultimately in the colonization movement of the nineteenth century.

Seven decades later, Virginian George Fitzhugh, a prolific proslavery apologist, expressed a theory for the conflict between the South and the North that was based on deep-seated racial differences. Having previously established his opinion about the sub- human nature of black Americans, Fitzhugh now asserted that white southerners were

―more white‖ than white northerners, on the basis of biological connection to the Greeks and Romans.104 This theory was articulated over the course of several articles in De

Bow’s Review, including one in February 1861, in which he described northerners as descended from Anglo-Saxon serfs, ―who came from the cold and marshy regions of the

102 Jefferson, Notes, 268, 270. He also described the slaves in Homer‘s Odyssey as being ―whites,‖ noting that, once again, despite their degraded condition, ―we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity‖ (Jefferson, Notes, 269). 103 Phillis Wheatley, a contemporary black poet who Jefferson criticized in this same piece, viewed the African-born Terence as her own predecessor. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London: Printed for A. Bell, bookseller, Aldgate, 1773), 9-10. 104 This argument reflected the long-standing self-perception of the southern white elite, who saw themselves as America‘s aristocracy. See Chapter 4 for a discussion of how this concept was manifested in the slave plantation landscape.

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North; where man is little more than a cold-blooded amphibious biped.‖105 In a later article, Fitzhugh explained that the South, on the other hand, was populated by

Huguenots and Anglo-Normans, both of whom traced their ancestry to France. Fitzhugh further elaborated that:

All the French have probably more of Roman blood in their veins than of any other. Their language, laws, institutions and turn of thought prove them to be a Latin people. This was especially the case with the Huguenots, who abounded most in the south of France, which was first conquered and settled by the Romans. The ―nostra Provincia‖ of the Romans, the modern Provence, was conquered and Latinized before the time of Julius Caesar, and there the Huguenots most abounded. Besides Roman blood, these men probably possessed a good deal of Greek blood, for the Greek colony of Marselles was settled before the Roman conquest; and we find, in Caesar‘s day, that the Helvitic, at the head of the Rhone and on the borders of Germany, employed the Greek letters to keep their muster roll. The Greek colony must have been a large one to have spread its influence so far. Indeed, the French character is a blended likeness of the Greek and Roman. The Huguenots, like the Romans, are classically and compactly proportioned, betraying, in the outlines of their persons and fine muscular development, the ―multum in parvo‖ . . . . The Huguenots are a Mediterranean people, a very superior race, both in mind and body, and constitute the best element of Southern society. Next to them stand the Anglo-Norman, the purity of whose blood has been impaired by intermarriage with the Anglo-Saxon. The Normans who conquered England were men of Southern extract, and not Northmen, as the English, to avoid confessing a conquest of their country by the French, falsely allege.106

Later in the piece, Fitzhugh clarified that these southern Huguenots were not only ―of the

Roman race,‖ but they were ―the picked people of that race.‖107

Over the decades between these two explicit articulations of the racial significance of American classicism, we can trace how the status of classical antiquity as white heritage was produced and reproduced as a central part of the American ideology of white supremacy. The classical conditioning of the white elite began at an early age.

105 ―The Message, the Constitution, and the Times,‖ De Bow’s Review XXX (1861): 162, quoted in Edwin A. Miles, ―The Old South and the Classical World,‖ North Carolina Historical Review 48, no. 3 (1971): 264. 106 George Fitzhugh, ―The Huguenots of the South,‖ De Bow’s Review, XXX (1861): 516-517. 107 Fitzhugh, ―Huguenots of the South,‖ 520.

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From the time they were around eight years old, white boys from families of means either attended grammar schools, or received private tutoring at home, where they began to acquire grammatical knowledge of the ancient Greek and Latin languages.108 In the colonial and early national periods, female children were rarely taught Greek or Latin, but instead read English translations of ancient literature, as well as histories of the ancient Mediterranean written by modern authors.109 Elite white children of both genders thus gained knowledge about the ancient world as known to the Greeks and Romans, as they learned about the lands from North Africa to India through the eyes of such authors as Herodotus and Arrian.110

This ritual of initiation into the sacred knowledge and ethnic history of whiteness also served as a way of binding together the white elite of the North and the South, even as sectional tensions grew over different attitudes towards slavery. Not only did children of both the northern and southern elite learn the same texts, in preparation for their attendance at the same colleges, but, from their earliest introduction to ancient languages,

108 On white male classical education in the early United States, including discussion of specific texts and curricula, see Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 12-38; Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 11-43; Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 249-304; Miles, ―Old South‖; Michael O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), I: 323-25; Richard, Golden Age, 2-17; David J. Bederman, The Classical Foundations of the American Constitution: Prevailing Wisdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 3-9. 109 For a discussion of female education in vernacular classicism, see Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 26-39. The study of classical languages was associated with a masculinity that was in opposition to femininity (5- 6, 8, 12-26). 110 Among the standard educational texts of this era was Charles Rollin‘s Ancient History. See Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 27-29; William Gribbin, ―Rollin‘s Histories and American Republicanism,‖ William and Mary Quarterly 29 (1972); Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 263-64). This 13-volume work covered the entire world of the ancient Greeks and Romans—the 1734 English translation of the Ancient History gave its full title as The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians, and Greeks (London: Printed for James, John and Paul Knapton, 1734). Rollin later followed this up with a multivolume Roman History from the foundation of Rome to the Battle of Actium (London: Printed for James and Paul Knapton, 1739-1750).

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most of the children of the southern white elite had been trained by tutors from the

North.111 At the same time, membership in this conversation was specifically denied to black Americans through restrictive educational policies—most famously the bans on slave literacy that existed in much of the South, but also through the exclusion of black children from public and private institutions of learning in the North. The African-born poet Phillis Wheatley, who was enslaved in Boston but received a higher level of classical education than most white women of her day, was thus an anomaly—one that was quite threatening to men like Thomas Jefferson, who made a point of criticizing her work in Notes on the State of Virginia.112

Grammar school education and tutoring at home prepared white boys, and later white girls as well, to enter schools or colleges in both the North and the South, which extended their learning in Greek and Latin. While college curricula eventually expanded to include other areas of learning, the entrance requirements for colleges throughout the

United States continued to be almost exclusively related to classical subjects, in order to make sure that students would be able to perform the necessary quantities of reading of

Greek and Latin authors that comprised the curriculum of the Bachelor of Arts degree.113

For example, according to the laws of Brown University established in 1783, students seeking admission had to be able ―to read accurately construe and parse Tully and the

111 Christie Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 97. For excerpts from the diary and letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, a northerner who tutored the children of the wealthy Carter family of Virginia, see Edgar W. Knight, ed, A Documentary History of Education in the South Before 1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949) I: 573-623. 112 Jefferson, Notes, 267. 113 On college curricula in the early United States, see Richard, Golden Age, 5-11; Ziobro, ―Classical Education.‖ Because most early colleges were established as religious seminaries, readings from the pagan authors of Greece and Rome shared space on the curriculum with the ―Greek Testament,‖ as the Christian New Testament was known, and not always comfortably.

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Greek Testament, and Virgil; and shall be able to write true Latin in prose, and hath learned the rules of Prosody.‖114

The classical education of the American elite presented them with an ancient history that they were encouraged to understand as that of their own society—for example, Mississippi slaveowner Frances Terry Leak advised his son, John, a student at the University of North Carolina in the 1850s, to ―Get acquainted with the histories of the

U. States, England, Greece & Rome, as proper knowledge for every American.‖115

Unlike the history of England, the Greeks and Romans offered white American schoolchildren an image of ―their‖ past in which society was built around the institution of slavery.116 For example, Demosthenes, the widely venerated spokesman for Greek democracy, made casual mention of slavery in his orations, including a reference to the skilled slaves he inherited from his father;117 while the sober Roman Cato the Elder provided prescriptions for farm managers that could easily be transferred to slave overseers on American plantations, in his writings on Agriculture—including instructions that the manager should ―keep [the slaves] hard at work to stop them getting involved in

114 Corporation Records of 1783, ―The Laws of the College in Providence in the State of Rhode Island, Enacted by the Fellowship and Approved by the Trustees of Sd. College,‖ repr. in The History of Brown University, 1764-1914, by Walter Cochrane Bronson (Providence: Brown University, 1914), 508. Richard notes that these requirements were virtually identical to those employed at colleges throughout the country for more than two centuries (Founders and the Classics, 19). 115 Leak Diary, 29 November, 1852, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, quoted in Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 126. Similarly, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina advised a law student to first study Gibbon‘s history of Rome, and then the histories of England and America (Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 126). 116 For the classical texts most often used in proslavery arguments, see Margaret Malamud, Ancient Rome and Modern America (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 70-97; J. Drew Harrington, ―Classical Antiquity and the Proslavery Argument‖ Slavery and Abolition 10 (1989); Harvey Wish, ―Aristotle, Plato, and the Mason-Dixon Line,‖ Journal of the History of Ideas 10, no.2 (1949). Interestingly, Aristotle, whose concept of ―natural slavery‖ as part of the ideal political system was frequently cited in support of American slavery, was not a regular part of the curriculum prior to the antebellum period. 117 Against Aphobus 27.9-10, in Greek and Roman Slavery, ed. and trans. Thomas Wiedemann (London: Routledge, 1994), 95. For examples of Demosthenes‘ orations on American college curricula, see Knight, Education in the South, III: 101 and IV: 309.

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trouble or things that don‘t concern them;‖ and that the manager ―must not think that he is wiser than his master.‖118

The sense of continuity between the past and the present was thus reinforced, as classical history was used to prove that, in the words of slavery apologist Thomas R.R.

Cobb, slavery ―has been more universal than marriage and more permanent than liberty.‖119 The overwhelming lack of censure for slavery in these texts normalized white

American slave ownership by providing an ancient pedigree for the institution. Indeed,

Cicero‘s writings in On Duties, in which he emphasized the need to treat slaves justly, ―in the same way as if they were hired workmen,‖ offered a model of benevolent slaveholding that would have appealed to advocates of paternalism.120 Other classical texts offered support for the idea that modern American slavery represented an improvement on classical slavery; for instance, the example of Cato‘s calculation in his work on Agriculture that it was profitable to work a slave to death in seven years was highlighted as the opposite of the modern American attitude.121

In addition to its value in condoning American slavery, classical learning was further associated with whiteness through policies of access: most public and private

118 Agriculture 5, in Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, 148-49. Readings from Cato were commonly part of pre-college education of elite children (Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 11). 119 Thomas R.R. Cobb, An Inquiry Into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States, to which is prefixed, An Historical Sketch of Slavery (Philadelphia: T. & J.W. Johnson & Co., 1858), xxxv. For more on the specific references to slavery in ancient texts, and how they were deployed to support the arguments of pro- slavery southerners, see Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 270-295, 366-367, 519. 120 On Duties 1.13.41, in Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, 187. Cicero‘s writings were commonly read both before and during college (Winterer, Culture of Classicism,11-13)—for instance, they were required reading for the Sophomore class at Davidson College in North Carolina in 1854 (Knight, Education in the South, IV: 309), and for the Junior class at South Carolina College in 1860 (Knight, Education in the South, III: 101), and featured in the curriculum of the Virginia Institute in the late 1840s/early 1850s. Mark Miller, Dear Old Roanoke: A Sesquicentennial Portrait, 1842-1992 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1992), 19. 121 Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 280-81.

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grammar schools did not admit black students,122 nor did the colleges where classical languages were taught, prior to the opening of Oberlin College in 1833. But at the same time that black Americans were absent as students and professors, they were conspicuously present in service capacities, whether enslaved or free. The role of slaves at educational institutions in the South has yet to be given proper consideration by scholars, but it is clear that slaves were common on campuses throughout the period of this study.123 Even students who were sent North to study often were accompanied by slaves; for example, eight-year-old James Hamilton Couper of Georgia took his personal slave, Sandy, with him when he went to school in New Haven, Connecticut.124 This contrast in roles was precisely what offered such delight to Virginian Edward Pollard, when he described how ―Big Lewis‖ would show visitors to the University of Virginia the college‘s copy of Raphael‘s ―School of Athens,‖ and identify the figures in the painting, ―but being studiously trained in habits of respect to his betters, he was accustomed to name each philosopher with the careful prefix of ‗Mister,‘ as ‗Mr.

Socrates,‘ ‗Mr. Plato,‘ &c.‘‖125

In the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the exclusiveness of white access to classical knowledge was increasingly challenged as more and more black Americans gained freedom, and sought education for themselves

122 See the discussion of the long fight for admission of black students into Boston‘s regular public schools in Horton and Horton, Black Bostonians, 70-76. 123 O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order, I: 324; Farnham, Southern Belle, 42, 121-26, 145. 124 James E. Bagwell, Rice Gold: James Hamilton Couper and Plantation Life on the Georgia Coast (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000), 14. 125 ―A Re-Gathering of ‗Black Diamonds‘ in the Old Dominion,‖ Southern Literary Messenger XXIX (1859): 295, quoted in Miles, ―Old South,‖ 259.

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and their children.126 They sought access to the already established American past of ancient Greece and Rome, and learned to emulate Cicero‘s style in their speeches, and to use examples from classical history in their arguments against slavery.127 In their published writings, black Americans included many classical citations, as much to show their membership within a community of privileged knowledge, as to invoke an ancient heritage that white Americans claimed as their own.

Some black American intellectuals went beyond this kind of symbolic possession of classical antiquity, by locating racially black peoples in the past on which to base their own claims to ancestral greatness. Sometimes they focused on individuals from Greco-

Roman antiquity who were born in Africa, including the Roman emperor Septimius

Severus, the playwright Terence (the same one that Thomas Jefferson referred to as

―white‖ in Notes on the State of Virginia), and St. Augustine.128 Others looked to the

North African civilization of Carthage, including David Walker, who, in his 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, invoked ―that mighty son of Africa, Hannibal, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, who defeated and cut off so many thousands of white

126 For example, the African School (later the Smith School) in Boston, founded in the home of Primus Hall in 1798 (Horton and Horton, Black Bostonians, 70-71); and by the 1850s, Philadelphia‘s Institute for Colored Youth and Baltimore‘s William Watkins Academy for Negro Youth both emphasized classical curricula (Richard, Golden Age, 4). For more on antebellum black American classicism, see Margaret Malamud, ―Black Minerva.‖ 127 For example, a black literary society in Washington, D.C., held a fundraiser to buy the freedom for a friend, with a program that included ―Plato and the Immortality of the Soul,‖ ―Brutus—on the death of Ceaser (sic),‖ and ―Epilogue to Addison‘s Cato.‖ Reproduced in Letitia W. Brown, Free Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1790-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 118, quoted in Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 181. 128 Wheatley, Poems of Various Subjects, 9-10; John Marrant, A Sermon Preached on the 24th Day of June 1789, Being the Festival of Saint John the Baptist, at the Request of the Right Worshipful the Grand Master Prince Hall, and the Rest of the Brethren of the African Lodge of the Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons in Boston (Boston: Thomas and John Fleet, 1789), in Black Atlantic Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Living the New Exodus in England and the Americas, eds. Adam Potkay and Sandra Burr (New York: St. Martin‘s Press, 1995), 121n43.

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Romans.‖129 Indeed, Walker made it clear that he not only accepted the whiteness of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but that he saw their behavior as representative of an inherently white propensity to violence:

The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood- thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.—We view them all over the confederacy of Greece, where they were first known to be any thing, (in consequence of education) we see them there, cutting each other‘s throats— trying to subject each other to wretchedness and misery—to effect which, they used all kinds of deceitful, unfair, and unmerciful means. We view them next in Rome, where the spirit of tyranny and deceit raged still higher. We view them in Gaul, Spain, and in Britain.—In fine, we view them all over Europe, together with what were scattered about in Asia and Africa, as heathens, and we see them acting more like devils than accountable men.130

In contrast to those black Americans who were eager to claim Greco-Roman heritage for themselves, Walker clearly had no desire to be associated with them.

For white Americans, however, classical education did not end with college training. As they advanced into adulthood, a large number of wealthy white Americans embarked on the European Grand Tour, making pilgrimages to the lands where the Greek and Roman civilizations were born.131 The Grand Tour was a truly national practice of

129 David Walker, Walker’s Appeal, in four articles (Boston: D. Walker, 1829), repr. in David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. Peter P. Hinks (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 22. An interesting extension of this discourse can be seen in an abolitionist broadside from 1836, called ―Portraits of Hannibal and Cyprian, with vignettes illustrating African character and wrongs,‖ from the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, reproduced in Margaret Malamud, ―Black Minerva: Antiquity in Antebellum African American History,‖ in Orrells, Bhambra, and Roynon, African Athena, 83. For a discussion of the meanings Carthage held for white Americans during the Revolutionary Era, which focuses mainly on the precedent it offered as a commercial nation, see Caroline Winterer, ―Model Empire, Lost City: Ancient Carthage and the Science of Politics in Revolutionary America,‖ William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2010). 130 Walker, Appeal, 19. 131 On American Grand Tour practices, see Paul R. Baker, The Fortunate Pilgrims: Americans in Italy, 1800-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1964); Richard, Golden Age, 19-21; Steven L. Dyson, Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical Archaeology in the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 1-23; Robert A. Leath and Maurie D. McInnis, ―‗To Blend Pleasure with Knowledge‘: The Cultural Odyssey of Charlestonians Abroad,‖ in In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999). While the Grand Tour included several ancient Greek sites in southern Italy, mainland Greece itself was rarely included on the itineraries of American tourists, due to the greater difficulty and danger of travel there (Dyson, Ancient 45

American whiteness; however, the relative leisure and wealth that characterized the lives of southern slave plantation owners allowed them to travel to Europe earlier and more frequently than other Americans.132 On the other hand, the different socioeconomic structure of the North meant that a greater proportion of white northerners traveled to

Europe.133 These travelers made the requisite stops in London, Paris, Florence, Rome, and Naples, and often visited other cities where they had family connections.134 Of all the countries they visited, however, Michael O‘Brien notes that ―Italy was the most sacred, most comprehensive of European destinations, being ancient, medieval, religious, aesthetic, and thereby central to understanding the modern dialectics of cultural identity.‖135 Placed within the context of classical education, these visits to Italy were very much about bringing to life ancient worlds—for example, South Carolinian Yale student Louis Manigault wrote with excitement for his upcoming tour that ―I want very much to see that great city (Rome) of which I have heard so much during the last two years.‖136

Those Americans who did not travel to Europe could vicariously experience the

Grand Tour through letters sent home by their friends and relatives, as well as the books

Marbles, 19-21). An important early exception was Nicholas Biddle, future president of the Second United States Bank, who went to Greece as part of an extended Grand Tour in 1806. Nicholas Biddle, Nicholas Biddle in Greece: The Journals and Letters of 1806, ed. by Richard A. McNeal (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). 132 See Leath and McInnis, ―Cultural Odyssey,‖ 11, for a discussion of the conditions that facilitated the Grand Tours of Charlestonians, specifically. Michael O‘Brien estimates that just over half of the ―southern intellectuals‖ he profiles in Conjectures of Order traveled to Europe, including many who studied there (I: 19). For more on the Grand Tour practices of the very wealthiest of southern slaveowning families, see also Scarborough, Masters, 40-82. 133 Baker, Fortunate Pilgrims, 21. 134 Leath and McInnis, ―Cultural Odyssey‖; O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order, I: 96, 100-105. 135 O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order, I: 147. 136 Louis Manigault to Charles Izard Manigault, 18 June 1847, Louis Manigault Papers, Duke University, Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution to the Civil War (microfilm), ser. F, part 2, reel 5.

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and travel guides that many travelers wrote about their experiences, and the artifacts and artwork they brought back with them.137 Some of the most widely read accounts of the

Grand Tour were by authors such as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, but far less well-known writers published their stories as books or in magazines.138

For elite white Americans who embarked on the Grand Tour, their status as slave owning or otherwise privileged individuals in a racially divided society had important implications for their experiences overseas. Although slavery was illegal in many of the countries they visited, southerners sometimes brought their slaves with them when they traveled.139 In the primarily white European context, the awareness of how easily white

Americans could become incorporated into the circles of the European elite, in contrast to the enslaved black Americans who they viewed as clearly different, would have accentuated the connections that white southerners felt between themselves and the ancient Greeks and Romans (as well as modern Europeans), and the distance they perceived between their slaves and those same ancient cultures.

137 Such letters abound in manuscript collections from this era, providing varying levels of detail on experiences and encounters in classical lands. For some of the more extensive accounts of American visits to Italy, see R.S. Pine-Coffin, Bibliography of British and American Travel to Italy to 1860 (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 1974). 138 Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller (Philadelphia: H.C. Carey & I. Lea, 1824); James Fenimore Cooper, Gleanings In Europe: Italy (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1838); Pine-Coffin, Bibliography. 139 Traveling with slaves was probably a common practice for those who could afford it, particularly when traveling with children and elderly family members, but mention of American slaves in Europe is surprisingly lacking in the secondary literature, and only occasionally found in correspondence from the period. For example, the family of Governor William Aiken brought their ―colored woman servant from Charleston‖ with them to Europe in the late 1840s (Gabriel Edward Manigault Autobiography, 1887-1897, Manigault Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution to the Civil War [microfilm], ser. J, part 4, reel 1); while the family of Nathaniel Russell Middleton brought their slave, Lydia, along with them on their Grand Tour in 1835-36. Maurie D. McInnis, The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 245. The nurse ―Marie‖ who accompanied Gabriel Manigault‘s family on their European travels in 1836 may also have been a slave. Annie Jenkins Batson, Louis Manigault: Gentleman from South Carolina (Roswell, GA: Wolfe Publishing, 1995), 7.

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The very different attitudes to race in contemporary Europe presented uncomfortable situations to the race-conscious slaveowners, such as when South

Carolinian Charles Izard Manigault‘s children studied piano in Paris alongside two black children from Cuba, one of whom ―gained a prize for Music (he performed on the piano)

& on receiving his prize (a Book) he grinned, & made a regular Negro bow by wiping one foot all along the floor just as our Cook Joe does when you give him anything.‖140

Similarly, the only published travel narrative by an American slave who accompanied his white owner on the Grand Tour, David Dorr‘s 1858 A Colored Man Round the World, offers no evidence that Dorr was ever treated differently from his white companions.141

Indeed, his description of his visit to Italy reveals much the same sense of connection to the ancient sites as preserved in the accounts of white travelers. For instance, upon entering Rome he took his readers on a historical and topographical tour of the city, emphasizing the buildings built by great men of the past; and provided a charmingly familiar description of his visit to ―Pompeii and Herculanium, two great cities that

Vesuvius, in her tipsy spree, belched all over, destroying population, temples, theatres, and gladiatorial arenas.‖142 In fact, were it not for the fact that subtitle of the book highlighted its author‘s status as a ―quadroon,‖ much of Dorr‘s narrative read as if it could have been written by any of the dozens of white travelers who described their encounters with Europe. As such, particularly in light of Dorr‘s status as a fugitive slave

140 Charles Izard Manigault to Charles H. Manigault, 1 October 1 1846, Letterbook, 1846-1848, Charles Izard Manigault Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, quoted in O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order, I: 113. 141 The highly educated Dorr—who was apparently light-skinned enough to pass for white—traveled in the company of his owner, Cornelius Fellowes, and had apparently been promised his freedom at the end of the trip. Malini Johar Schueller, ―Introduction‖ to A Colored Man Round the World by David Dorr, edited by Schueller (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), xi. Thus, his encounter with Europe was already on different footing than that of other slaves who accompanied their owners on the Grand Tour. 142 David F. Dorr, A Colored Man Round the World (Ohio: Dorr, 1858): 96-98, 104.

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at the time he published the book, it can be understood as an attempt by a black American to assert membership in the cultural community of whiteness. Indeed, as Malini Johar

Schueller notes, the writing of such a narrative positioned Dorr as one who could travel,

―impl[ying] a certain freedom of mobility and access to sights and cultural spaces‖—in direct contrast to the more common positioning of the slave as one who is property to be moved.143 Dorr‘s rejection of the segregation of American heritage suggests that at least some enslaved black travelers may not have interpreted the Grand Tour as a reinforcement of white supremacy.144

While life in the early United States featured countless opportunities for performances of ownership over classical heritage, one particular event that fell directly in the middle of the period of my study invited more overtly political and public performances on the world stage. In 1821, Greek nationalists launched a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, which they concluded successfully in 1830.

Americans responded to this event with a great outpouring of support.145 Stories about ancient Greek history, art, and philosophy filled newspapers during these years, framed by introductions and epilogues that suggested these writings offered proof of the need to support the struggle of the modern Greeks, who were, by implication, the heirs of these ancient heroes.146 Although the United States did not take an official position on the conflict—having recently adopted the isolationist Monroe Doctrine—dozens of

143 Schueller, ―Introduction,‖ ix. 144 A different kind of heritage narrative seems to have drawn John Nile, a black man from the United States, to Italy: the American consul‘s record of his death in Leghorn indicated that he was Catholic, suggesting he was one of the many American Catholics who came on pilgrimage trips to the Vatican in the nineteenth century (Baker, Fortunate Pilgrims, 155-182). 145 See Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 41-43. 146 See the numerous examples in Paul Constantine Pappas, The United States and the Greek War for Independence, 1821-1828 (Boulder, CO: East European Manuscripts, 1985), 30-32.

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individuals volunteered to fight for Greece, including William Townshend Washington, a white Virginian, who went to Athens in 1825, and died two years later;147 and James

William, a black man from Baltimore, who was injured in a sea battle with the Turks in

1827.148 Organizations of various kinds arranged to send money and supplies to support the cause.149 The first city to offer its support to the Greeks was Charleston, South

Carolina, whose citizens sent fifty barrels of dry meat, and a letter of encouragement, in the fall of 1821.150 Throughout the 1820s, fundraising balls were held for the ―Cause of the Greeks,‖ in cities throughout the country.151 On a more official level, the state legislatures of Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Carolina sent resolutions to

Congress supporting the Greek cause.152

This remarkable display of affection towards a country so distant from the United

States, and to which few early nineteenth century Americans could trace their immediate ancestry, reflected the status of ancient Greece as an ethnic ancestral culture for white

Americans. While analysis of American support for the Greek War of Independence often attributes it in large part to a generic enthusiasm for democratic rebellions that

147 O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order, I: 162. 148 Steven Addison Larrabee, Hellas Observed: The American Experience of Greece, 1775-1865 (New York: New York University Press, 1957), 142-143. Americans were generally less captivated by the early efforts at Italian unification, although at least one member of a wealthy southern family, James Johnson Pettigrew of North Carolina, went to Sardinia in 1859 to enlist in the army (Scarborough, Masters, 41). 149 Others raised money to pay for the ransom of Greek captives, and for Greek orphans to live in the United States. Pappas states that the first Greek refugees began to come to the United States in 1823 (Greek War, 36). For example, New Yorker Sam Ward not only contributed money towards the ransom of a Greek boy and girl from Turkish captivity, but also brought the boy to live with him in his house, and raised him as a member of the family. Allecia Hopton Middleton, Life in Carolina and New England During the Nineteenth Century, as Illustrated by Reminiscences of the Middleton Family of Charleston, South Carolina, and of the DeWolf Family of Bristol, Rhode Island (Bristol RI: Printed for the author, 1929), 43. 150 Pappas, Greek War, 32. 151 See McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 162, and Pappas, Greek War, 27, for examples. 152 Pappas, Greek War, 43. It is interesting to note that all of the states to take this step were southern. Daniel Webster tried diligently to persuade Congress to take military action in the conflict in Greece, but without success (Pappas, Greek War, 61-81; Richard, Golden Age, 52-53).

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Americans saw as successors to the American Revolution, the contrast between white

American enthusiasm for the Greek War, and lack of support for liberation movements in the Caribbean (most notably, of course, the Haitian revolution) or elsewhere in Europe

(including the Serbian revolt from Ottoman rule)153 indicates that more was at work than a straightforward love of democracy. American support for the war can better be understood in terms of the logic of fictive kinship: if the ancient Greeks were white

America‘s ancestors, and were also those of the modern Greeks, then Americans and

Greeks were kin. Americans devoted time, money, and even their lives to defend a land that they understood on some level to be their ancestral homeland, as a way of performing these links of imagined kinship. Both Americans and Greek rebels also spoke of the Greek Revolution as a sequel to the American Revolution, making a connection that was beautifully poetic: Greece gave birth to the ideals of democracy that inspired

America‘s revolt, which in turn inspired the revolt of the modern children of Greece.154

Black Americans and abolitionists attempted to capitalize on the broader public outcry over Greek ―enslavement‖ by the Ottomans, in order to draw attention to the enslavement of black men and women in the United States. The African Theatre in New

York City, for instance, hosted a fundraising ball for the Greek cause on January 1,

1824—a day that black New Yorkers celebrated as the anniversary of the United States‘ transatlantic slave trade ban.155 The advertisement for the event that ran in the New-York

Evening Post stated,

153 Pappas, Greek War, xv. 154 Pappas, Greek War, 27-28. 155 George A. Thompson, A Documentary History of the African Theatre (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 222; McAllister, White People, 180-181).

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This appeal, it is hoped, will be felt with peculiar force on that day, which cannot fail most powerfully to recall to the descendants of Africans, the blessings of freedom, and prompt them to unite with their white brethren in resisting the arm of despotism wherever it may be reared.156

Such efforts to link the black American and modern Greek causes seem to have succeeded in at least once case: three white girls in Maryland initially proposed a society to help Greek children, but instead worked to help local black children.157 However, just as how during the American Revolution antislavery voices had failed to successfully capitalize on the outrage over the treatment of free Englishmen in the colonies to bring attention to the plight of the black slave, most active and tacit supporters of slavery ignored the parallel between the Greek ―enslavement‖ that they condemned, and the black enslavement that they condoned.

The obvious link between the two discourses of Greek and black American freedom also stood out dramatically to one slaveholding Virginian, who drew the opposite conclusion to abolitionists. According to an anecdote that survives in two slightly different, and much later, accounts, Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke,

―when the women of Virginia were making garments for the Greeks, pointed to long gangs of slaves, and said, ‗Ladies, the Greeks are at your doors.‘‖158 Randolph himself knew the transgressive nature of this statement, which doubtless would have raised an outcry among the assembled women and others who heard of it, and may have encouraged them to support him in opposing American military involvement in

156 New York Evening Post, 30 December 1823, repeated 31 December 1823, transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 222. 157 Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 43. 158 This story was recounted in an 1856 speech to the National Women‘s Rights Convention by Ernestine Rose, in which she linked the cause of women‘s rights to that of abolition. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, History of Woman Suffrage (Rochester: Charles Mann, 1881), I: 666. For a slightly different retelling of the incident, see Powhattan Bouldin‘s 1878 account, quoted in Fox- Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 42-43.

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Greece.159 However, for most white Americans, to compare the ―white‖ Greeks, who they remembered publicly as the founders of all that was good and beautiful in government and art, to the black slaves who they equally publicly declared to be unintelligent and ugly, could also highlight the injustice of Ottoman rule in Greece.160 As we shall see at various points in this dissertation, the comparison between black American and Greek slavery was often one of contrast, not of analogy, such that for southern audiences, any contemplation allotted to the similarity between the treatment of Greeks and the treatment of black slaves served only to increase indignation over the former, and quietly endorse the suitability of the latter.

American Histories of Ancient Egypt

This brief overview of early American classicism reveals some of the ways in which it operated to support a racial regime that justified the oppression and enslavement of black people. The exclusion of people of color from the American present was thus reinforced by their exclusion from the American past. However, this exclusion was increasingly troubled by the discourse surrounding another ancient Mediterranean civilization which, although it never outstripped or even matched classical antiquity‘s status, had an undeniable and growing presence within American culture. That civilization was, of course, ancient Egypt.

159 On Randolph‘s opposition to American support for the Greeks, and fear that those who supported it were trying to undermine the legitimacy of southern slavery, see Pappas, Greek War, 66, 70-1. The editor of the National Intelligencer, W. W. Seaton, was also concerned about the way the Greek cause was being linked to anti-slavery in the North (Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 42). 160 A similar phenomenon occurred in the discourse surrounding the enslavement of white American sailors and merchants by ―Barbary pirates‖ in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

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Whereas classical antiquity was a central part of the educational system,

Americans initially gained access to knowledge about ancient Egypt through three more esoteric contexts: the biblical story of the Hebrew Exodus; the narrative of the origins of freemasonry; and Greek and Roman texts that discussed the country of Egypt, either in historical terms or as a part of the Hellenistic and later Roman Empires.

Towards the beginning of the period of my study, both black and white American discussions of ancient Egypt followed roughly the same two narratives, the first of which was based on the biblical story of Hebrew enslavement in Egypt. Ever since the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, fleeing religious intolerance in England, different groups of

Americans imagined themselves as the latter day embodiment of the biblical story of

Moses and the Promised Land.161 Similarly, enslaved individuals who were exposed to

Christianity and Islam saw a direct analogy between their situation and that of the

Hebrews enslaved by an evil Pharaoh. The story of God‘s assistance in freeing the slaves added a dimension of hope for a people who were so thoroughly oppressed that it was difficult to imagine obtaining freedom by any means other than divine assistance.

Although difficult to date precisely, songs sung by the enslaved provide a valuable indicator of the significance of the figure of Moses and his miraculous, divinely assisted emancipation of the enslaved Israelites. The most well-known example here is the spiritual ―Go Down Moses,‖ which made explicit reference to the Exodus story, as we can see in the first stanza:

Go down Moses, Way down in Egypt Land; Tell old Pharaoh,

161 Moses, Afrotopia, 44-50.

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Let my people go.162

This song, and the broader tradition that came to be used in white abolitionist rhetoric as well, mapped an imagined geography of the United States, in which the agricultural lands of the American South became Egypt, the Mississippi River became the Nile, the black slaves became the Hebrews, and the white slaveowners became the Pharaoh.

Within the Masonic tradition, by contrast, ancient Egypt had nothing to do with slavery, but was rather associated with the ancient wisdom of the order. For instance, white Mason William Smith, in a 1783 book, wrote of how, ―Moses, a man supremely skill‘d in all the Egyptian learning . . . being divinely taught in the art of building, became Grand Master-mason or Builder among the Israelites.‖ Egypt came up in a similar context in a 1789 speech by black Mason, John Marrant, who wrote that after the flood,

the earth was again planted and replenished with Masons the second son of Ham carried into Egypt; there he built the city of Heliopolis—Thebes with an hundred gates—they built also the statue of the Sphynx, whose head was 120 feet round, being reckoned the first or earliest of the seven wonders of arts.163

Ultimately, this tradition can be traced to the Greco-Roman understanding of Egypt as a culture far more ancient than their own, and a source of mysterious wisdom, as well as continuing to produce new scientific knowledge. As demonstrated by Martin Bernal, this understanding of ancient Egypt predominated in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

European thought on Egypt, as well.164

162 The importance of this song and the Exodus analogy is shown in the choice by black Americans to sing it outside of the White House as Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. William Wells Brown, The Negro in the American Rebellion, quoted in Trafton, Egypt Land, 2. 163 Marrant, A Sermon, 111. 164 Bernal, Black Athena.

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Egypt‘s status as a generically ancient (and thus, implicitly white) civilization began to change in the early nineteenth century. As increasing numbers of free black

Americans gained access to the textual discourse of American classicism, they encountered a passage from Herodotus in which he wrote, regarding a group that lived on the Black Sea: ―It is clear that the Colchians are Egyptians . . . . My own inference is based first on the fact that they are black skinned and have woolly hair.‖165 Scholars who work with race-related materials from this period will recognize this last phrase, with its focus on skin color and hair texture, which occurs again and again in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century descriptions of what a slave or black person looks like. Ironically, however, its association with American slaves made it that much easier for abolitionists to argue that the Egyptians were also black. Given Herodotus‘ reputation as ―the father of history,‖ what better proof could there be that the Egyptians, the revered builders of the pyramids were of the same race as the black men and women now oppressed in the

United States? The location of Egypt on the continent of Africa further reinforced this concept, turning the Mediterranean Sea into a North/South dividing line between white and black.

By claiming ancient Egypt as a black ethnic past, black Americans could point to

Egyptian achievements, such as the building of the pyramids, as powerful proofs of the intelligence and sophistication they were capable of—in direct contradiction to the arguments of Jefferson and others that rendered them unfit for freedom and citizenship.

And while Egyptian greatness on its own was important, Egypt‘s relationship to ancient

Greece and Rome granted it an additional value as an ancestor culture for black

165 Histories 2.104. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.

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Americans. Given the contemporary understanding that Greek and Roman civilization were inspired by that of ancient Egypt, a black Egyptian past established black American claims to the same cultures of classical antiquity that lay at the foundation of white

American identity.

Around the same time that black Americans began to recruit the builders of the pyramids as racial ancestors, ancient Egypt gained much greater visibility within the

United States, as news, publications, and artifacts flooded the country following the

Napoleonic occupation of Egypt in 1798. No longer was Egypt simply a far away land of mystery, but actual Egyptian things began to come to the United States, prompting a different kind of reaction to and understanding of this ancient culture. Egyptian aesthetics were disseminated to residents of the United States through graphic prints, books, and panoramic displays. Actual objects created by ancient Egyptians were displayed in museums throughout western Europe, where Americans saw them in their travels to cities like London and Turin.

One of the intellectuals credited with laying the groundwork for Napoleon‘s invasion of Egypt was also very influential in the American discourse of Egyptian race.

Frenchman Constantin-François Chasseboeuf, better known as Volney, wrote two major works related to the eastern Mediterranean, and linked the ancient Egyptians to contemporary African slaves in both. In his 1787 Travels in Syria and Egypt, he described the appearance of the present-day Copts, ―the remains of the ancient

Egyptians,‖ as ―characterized by a sort of yellowish dusky complexion, which is neither

Grecian nor Arabian; they have all a puffed visage, swoln eyes, flat noses, and thick lips,

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in short, the exact countenance of a Mulatto.‖166 Lest this connection be imagined to apply only to modern (and in Western eyes, degenerated) Egyptians, Volney also noted that ―when I visited the sphynx . . . I saw its features precisely those of a negro.‖ 167 This prompted him to make what David Wiesen describes as the first full statement of ―the essential link between African blacks and the development of European Civilization,‖168 and to use this link to attack modern slavery for the degeneracy it caused in a once-great people:

How are we astonished . . . when we reflect that to the race of negroes, at present our slaves, and the objects of our extreme contempt, we owe our arts, sciences, and even the very use of speech; and when we recollect that, in the midst of those nations who call themselves the friends of liberty and humanity, the most barbarous of slaveries is justified; and that it is even a problem whether the understanding of negroes be of the same species with that of white men!169

This idea appeared again in Volney‘s more esoteric 1791 book The Ruins, or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature.170 His spectral guide revealed to him:

Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of Thebes with her hundred palaces, the parent of cities and monuments of the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe.171

166 Constantin-François Volney, Travels through Egypt and Syria, in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785 (1787; New York: John Tiebout, 1798), I: 53. 167 Volney, Travels, I: 53-54. 168 David S. Wiesen, ―Herodotus and the Modern Debate Over Race and Slavery,‖ The Ancient World 3, no. 1 (1980): 6. 169 Volney, Travels, I: 55. 170 Moses credits the 1802 English translation of The Ruins with influencing black American thought about Egypt (Afrotopia, 55). 171 Constantin-François Volney, The Ruins, or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature (1791; London: J. Johnson, St. Paul‘s Church-yard, 1796), 34.

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Over the next few decades, the idea that ancient Egypt was the original home of the black African race gained strength within the free black American community, and references to Herodotus and Volney served as the starting point of nearly every historical account of the race. As free black intellectuals mobilized print technology to spread their ideas through newspapers, pamphlets, and books, ancient Egypt reoccurred repeatedly, as either a detailed topic of discussion, or as a casual reference to the ―well established fact‖ that the ancient Egyptians were black. I would like to consider here a handful of examples of the former practice, to see how the many complexities of the meaning of ancient Egypt in the nineteenth-century United States were navigated by some of the most prominent abolitionist and early black nationalist thinkers, and how they employed the idea of ancient Egypt as an ancestral black past to the benefit of their collective identity as black Americans.172

David Walker gave great prominence to the Egyptian ancestry of black

Americans in his radical 1829 anti-slavery pamphlet, An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. In the first article of the piece, Walker directly addressed the fact that

Some of my brethren do not know who Pharaoh and the Egyptians were—I know it to be a fact, that some of them take the Egyptians to have been a gang of devils, not knowing any better, and that they (Egyptians) having got possession of the Lord‘s people, treated them nearly as cruel as Christian Americans do us, at the present day. For the information of such, I would only mention that the Egyptians, were Africans, or coloured people, such as we are—some of them yellow and others dark—a mixture of Ethiopians and the natives of Egypt—about the same as you see the coloured people of the United States at the present day.173

Such a statement challenged the contemporary equation of slave ownership with whiteness, and enslavement with blackness, in powerful ways. Next, Walker drew out the

172 For additional sources on black American ancestry claims related to ancient Egypt, see Malamud, ―Black Minerva.‖ 173 Walker, Appeal, 10.

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implications of the biblical story of Exodus, in light of the new knowledge that the

Pharaohs were black, noting that, although they held the Hebrews as slaves, they showed them a level of respect entirely unlike the treatment of black Americans by white

Americans. Walker quoted a series of biblical passages to show the position attained by the Hebrew leader Joseph, who was given an Egyptian wife by the Pharaoh, who also granted him such authority that ―‗according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou.‘‖174 He then contrasted this with white

American treatment of black slaves and noted how American institutions ―prohibit us from marrying among the whites,‖ thus suggesting that (black) Egyptians treated the race they enslaved more humanely than did white Americans.175

By the time that black intellectual Hosea Easton gave prominence to the Egyptian

―heritage‖ of black Americans in his 1837 A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and

Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States, the status of the

Egyptians as the ancestors of black Americans was so firmly established among those likely to read his work that he tacitly accepted Egyptian blackness as a starting point for his arguments. The long introduction of his thin pamphlet focused largely not on the

United States, but on the history of the ancient Mediterranean. Easton explained this focus thus: ―As the intellect of a particular class will be in part the subject of this treatise,

I wish in this place to follow the investigation of national difference of intellect, with its cause, by comparing the history of Europe and Africa.‖176

174 Walker, Appeal, 10. 175 Walker, Appeal, 11. 176 Hosea Easton, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States (Boston: I. Knapp, 1837), 8.

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In the arguments that followed, Africa, and specifically Egypt, were presented and drawn upon as representing the history of black Americans; while Europe, and specifically Greece and Rome, were presented and drawn upon as the history of white

Americans. Easton stated that, ―It is evident from the best authority extant, that the arts and sciences flourished among [the African] branch of the great family of man, long before its benefits were known to any other.‖177 In other words, not only were Easton‘s ancestors capable of civilization, but they attained it even before the ancestors of his oppressors did. Easton supported this assertion by quoting at length from the work of

William Guthrie, whose book A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial

Grammar circulated widely in the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century United

States.178 Guthrie‘s words, as quoted by Easton, were:

It is from the Egyptians, that many of the arts, both of elegance and ability, have been handed down in an uninterrupted chain, to modern nations of Europe. The Egyptians communicated their arts to the Greeks; the Greeks taught the Romans many improvements, both in the arts of peace and war; and to the Romans, the present inhabitants of Europe are indebted for their civility and refinement.179

Although this was identical to a passage in the introduction to Guthrie‘s wide-ranging work, where it served as a general explanation of the origins of knowledge, when these words were embedded in Easton‘s work their meaning changed in important ways.

Easton‘s readers encountered these words with the knowledge that the Egyptians of whom they read were black. The final sentence was thus a very powerful one, as it suggested that modern white Americans were indebted to the ancestors of black

Americans for their own civilization. Easton aimed thus to encourage a recognition on the

177 Easton, Treatise, 1837. 178 William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar, 4th ed. (London: J. Knox, 1774). Easton only referred to Guthrie as ―a historian,‖ but the source of this passage was easy to identify through a Google Books search. 179 Easton, Treatise, 8-9.

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part of white supremacists that the classical civilization they prided themselves on had its ultimate origin in Africa; and to encourage their respect for modern black Americans on these grounds.

Egypt thus became a source of a noble heritage for the ―children of Ethiopia‖—a way of referring to people of African descent generally—and also a way to claim that members of the black race were involved in the project of ―civilization,‖ which ultimately led to the creation of America. This connection was important for those black Americans who sought respect and acceptance within American society. The story of a black Egypt offered a way that black people could be conceived of within the already established narrative of the origin and nature of the American nation: not blending into the Greco-

Roman story, but instead serving as its prequel.

The ethnic history of a black Egypt was one of the important motivations for

David Dorr‘s account of his journey to Europe and the Middle East. Describing himself on the title page as a quadroon, Dorr stated at the beginning of the book that he was proud to have had ―the satisfaction of looking with his own eyes and reason at the ruins of the Author‘s ancestors of which he is the posterity. . . . Luxor, Carnak, the Memnonian and the Pyramids . . . .‖180 In contrast to the generic nature of much of his writing on his journey—calculatedly generic, as it revealed his ability to travel and appreciate Europe in the same way that white Americans did—Dorr explicitly claimed the artistic greatness of the ancient city of Athens for his own heritage, writing that

The conquest of Alexander the Great, in Egypt, among the Africans, was considered the greatest triumph of conquest ever made by man, because it enabled the warlike people of Greece, to adorn their triumphs with the spoils of the

180 Dorr, Colored Man, 11.

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vanquished. Egypt was a higher sphere of artistical science than any other nation on the earth.181

Despite the wide circulation of the idea that the Egyptians were the black ancestors of black Americans, the majority of white American cultural production related to ancient Egyptians managed to avoid even discussing the question of race—which, once again, in a society in which the default was ―white,‖ simply reinforced the idea that the Egyptians were white. Rather than move away from the racially ambiguous ancient

Egyptians, ancient Egypt was remarkably visible in the antebellum United States— whether in the monumental gates created for new rural cemeteries, the Washington

Monument inspired by Egyptian obelisks, or travel literature written by Americans who journeyed to Egypt itself. Indeed, despite the fact that fewer artifacts made the journey from Egypt to the United States, as compared with Europe, Egyptological showman

George Gliddon noted in 1843 that

In England, to this very hour, there are no public lectures whatever on Egyptian Archaeology: and the fact that many thousands of America‘s citizens have spontaneously attended Discourses upon Hieroglyphics, in some European circles is yet unbelieved, in others it is a topic of mingled wonder and applause.182

Trafton argues convincingly that this interest in ancient Egypt was tied directly to the uncanniness of the culture‘s status as somehow both white and black, in an American society that only recognized the possibility of the two categories existing separately.183

By and large, those white Americans who explicitly acknowledged the existence of the idea that the Egyptians might have been black treated it with derision. I argue that we can read such challenges to black American claims of Egyptian heritage primarily as a

181 Dorr, Colored Man, 134. 182 George R. Gliddon, Ancient Egypt. A Series of Chapters on Early Egyptian History, Archaeology, and Other Subjects connected with Hieroglyphical Literature (New York: J. Winchester, 1843), 1-2. 183 Trafton, Egypt Land.

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need to maintain the fiction, so fundamental to the justification of a system of slavery in a democratic society, that black people were incapable of civilization. These challenges took many forms, some of which overlapped with the ways in which Greco-Roman heritage was claimed. All of these efforts reassured both white slaveowners and those non-slaveowners who were invested in the idea of black inferiority that the wonders of ancient Egypt were not produced by black people, but could instead be added to the tally of ancient white achievement.

The importance of proving the whiteness of the ancient Egyptians intersected with the project of racial science, as will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2. In 1854, the year of publication of the culminating work of this school of thought, Josiah Nott and George

Gliddon‘s Types of Mankind, Frederick Douglass responded in his commencement speech at Western Reserve College, on ―The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically

Considered.‖ Well aware of the arguments of the ethnologists, Douglass highlighted how their ―contempt for negroes, is ever conspicuous,‖ but countered with the same argument that black intellectuals had been employing for the previous three decades:

The fact that Egypt was one of the earliest abodes of learning and civilization, is as firmly established as are the everlasting hills [. . . .] Greece and Rome—and through them Europe and America have received their civilization from the ancient Egyptians. This fact is not denied by anybody. But Egypt is in Africa. Pity that it had not been in Europe, or in Asia, or better still in America! Another unhappy circumstance is, that the ancient Egyptians were not white people; but were, undoubtedly, just about as dark in complexion as many in this country who are considered genuine Negroes; and that is not all, their hair was far from being of that graceful lankness which adorns the fair Anglo Saxon head[. . . .] it may safely be affirmed, that a strong affinity and a direct relationship may be claimed by the Negro race, to THAT GRANDEST OF ALL THE NATIONS OF ANTIQUITY, THE BUILDERS OF THE PYRAMIDS.184

184 Frederick Douglass, ―The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,‖ in African-American Social and Political Thought, ed. Howard Brotz (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992), 233, 237-238. Capitalization original.

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Overview of Chapters

The following chapters each move roughly chronologically from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, exploring a variety of settings in which racialized American bodies interacted with things associated with Mediterranean antiquity; or in which ancient sculpted and mummified bodies were examined and categorized according to American definitions of race. Unlike much of the material covered in this introductory chapter, all of the settings I discuss in the following chapters represent collective experiences, in which groups of both black and white Americans experienced the ―ancient‖ object, performance, or space together. Because social situations in the early United States were rarely segregated, in each of the communal experiences discussed in the chapters, both of the primary ethnic groups of the early United States were present. As a result, their different roles and relationships within these contexts had specific meaning for the racialization of the ancient world.

Chapter 2 explores how arguments about these ancestry-based identity claims both crystallized around and were activated by the figures of the mummy and of classical sculpture. In the first half of the nineteenth century, thousands of copies and casts of

Greek and Roman sculptures, and dozens of Egyptian mummies could be seen in the houses of wealthy Americans, on display in traveling shows, and in the collections of institutions of various kinds. These ancient bodies were ―raced‖ both by casual viewers and through precise scientific measurements, in ways that supported understandings about ancient race, and by extension, modern American identity.

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In Chapter 3, I address the popularity of theatrical presentations of the ancient

Mediterranean on early American stages, by exploring what happened when white and black theater producers cast already racialized American bodies in the roles of enslaved and free Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Carthaginian characters, in plays such as

Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar, Louisa Medina‘s The Last Days of Pompeii, and T.D.

Rice‘s The Virginia Mummy. At such performances, mixed-race American audiences witnessed living, breathing, speaking embodiments of figures from antiquity. The bodies on stage could be racially categorized as precisely as were the ancient mummies and sculptures discussed in Chapter 2, in ways that either reinforced or challenged prevailing assumptions about the race of ancient peoples.

Finally, in Chapter 4, I explore how the South‘s wealthiest slaveowners built their worlds in the image of ancient Greece and Rome, reinforcing their own classical identities. The classicizing architecture of the plantation mansion—with its profusion of white columns, pediments, and faux-marble walls—thus came to represent a concrete metaphor for group identity, a recurring physical cue that served as a mnemonic both for appropriate behavior within the plantation environment, and for the links that white slaveowners repeatedly asserted between themselves and ancient Greeks and Romans. At the same time, the classical landscapes and lifestyles of white slaveholders were dependent on the sustaining labor of the black men and women, who not only physically constructed and maintained these landscapes, but also were given classical names that marked them as part of the property of their white owners.

Together, the objects, performances, and spaces explored in this dissertation provide fascinating glimpses into the ways that early citizens of the United States

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understood their encounters with Mediterranean antiquity. In a circular manner, ancient civilizations needed to be racially categorized in order for their meaning in the present to be understood; while at the same time the racial categories assigned to them served to justify and legitimate racial hierarchies in the present—or to validate the proposals of reformers.

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CHAPTER 2: EGYPTIAN MUMMIES AND GREEK GODS: RACIALIZING ANCIENT BODIES IN MEDICINE AND PUBLIC DISPLAYS

A Scene with the Mummy

Yesterday, the Egyptian Mummy was opened to the prying eyes of the curious, who desired to see the mortal remains of humanity which existed two thousand years before the Christian era. Previous to the ceremony, there was gathered round a collection of bald-pated and spectacled gentlemen, whose thoughts seemed to have little to do with things modern, and from their air of mystery, they appeared to be lost in the gloom of ages. These ancient gentlemen were inspecting the characters on the case of the dried specimen of antiquity, when suddenly they were startled by a voice from amid the folds of the linen which wrapped the mummy— ―Open the box! open the box!‖ said the voice. ―Who are you?‖ inquired one of the learned Thebans, whose curiosity had got the better of his astonishment. ―I am a descendant of the Pharaohs,‖ answered the voice within. ―Are you a genuine Mummy?‖ ―Yes, genuine and no mistake, regularly manufactured in Egypt by some of the first artists.‖ ―Do you come from Ham?‖ ―Ham—no, I am a better specimen of dried beef.‖ ―What do you want here?‖ ―Ask yourself, your confounding prying Yankee inquisitiveness has waked me up from a slumber of ages.‖ A thought struck the scientific questioner, and he determined to settle a mooted question. ―Were the Egyptians black or red men?‖ ―Red as the knave of hearts.‖ ―What caused the decline of the Egyptian nation?‖ ―It didn‘t decline; like the modern Celt, the Egyptians emigrated to America.‖ ―To Mexico?‖ inquired the doctor. ―Yes; open the box, open the box.‖ ―Then the pyramid at Cholulu is—‖ ―Exactly; it is nothing else.‖ ―And you are—‖ ―Bobby.‖ ―Bobby who?‖ said the astonished inquirer. ―Bobby Blitz;‖ and a little man with a peculiar head of hair glided out of the hall and disappeared into the Lecture Room of the Museum.

Philadelphia Public Ledger, January 18, 1851

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In the winter of 1851, Philadelphia‘s Chinese Museum was the site of an extended spectacle of scientific, masculine, historical, and racialized knowledge, focused on the mummified body of an ancient Egyptian woman. This particular mummy was the property of George R. Gliddon, a man known for his lectures and exhibitions of Egyptian antiquities, who would publicly unwrap the mummy, along with that of a mummified child, on the evening of January 18, 1851. That same night, Antonio ―Signor‖ Blitz, a well-known Philadelphia ventriloquist was performing with his doll ―Bobby‖ in the

Museum‘s lecture room, and according to this anecdote, took time to play with a group of doctors and scientifically minded gentlemen before his show.1 The questions they asked reveal the issues they most urgently sought to resolve through examination of the mummified body. They were not concerned with knowing what the mummy believed while alive, how the process of embalming worked, when exactly it had lived—instead, the obvious follow-up to the questions ―Who are you?‖ and ―Are you a genuine mummy?‖ were questions concerned with racial origin: ―Do you come from Ham?‖ referring to the cursed son of Noah in the Bible, the presumptive progenitor of ―the Negro race‖; and ―Were the Egyptians black or red men?‖2

1 Blitz‘s performances in the museum had been going on at least since November 1850 (Philadelphia Public Ledger, 4 November 1850). 2 While I focus in this chapter on the debate over whether the Egyptians were black or white, some Americans imagined the Egyptians as ―red,‖ and hence ancestors to Native Americans, sometimes suggesting that the pyramids of the Americas were built by Egyptians who had migrated across the ocean. For examples of this discourse, which is discussed in Trafton, Egypt Land, 17, see J. Frost, Review of Crania Aegyptiaca, in Arthur’s Ladies’ Magazine of Elegant Literature and the Fine Arts (December 1844): 252; Edgar Allen Poe, ―Some Words with a Mummy,‖ Broadway Journal 2 (1845): 252; John Collins Warren, ―Description of an Egyptian Mummy, Presented to the Massachusetts General Hospital with an Account of the Operation of Embalming, in Ancient and Modern Times,‖ Boston Journal of Philosophy and the Arts, I (1823): 274; ―Mutability of Human Affairs,‖ Freedom’s Journal 1, no. 4 (1827); Alexander W. Bradford, American Antiquities and Researches into the Origin and History of the Red Race (New York: Dayton and Saxton, 1841), 296-97.

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The story clearly struck a chord with its readers. When it was initially printed in the Public Ledger in Philadelphia, the story was as much an advertisement as an article, ending with the promise that ―How this voice was made to proceed from a wooden case will be explained this afternoon and evening at Blitz‘s Lecture Room‖; but in the weeks following this initial advertisement, the story was reprinted in newspapers from New

London, Connecticut, to Victoria, Texas.3 Blitz continued the gag in his act, promising ―a very curious dialogue with the mummy‖ in an advertisement the following week,4 and included the story in his autobiography.5 Although the story was almost certainly fictional

(it is hard to imagine that the attendees of this event would have been so gullible as to believe that a mummy could speak to them), it provides a useful representation of mid- nineteenth-century white American interest in Egyptian mummies. Blitz‘s power to put words in the mouth of the mummy, to make the mummy speak, reflected the broader cultural fascination with racializing mute bodies—whether dead or artificial. The new field of racial science, as well as the techniques of viewing taught on the streets and in museums, were grounded in a certainty that truths about race could be determined from examination of the physical body. Again and again, however, observers reverted to the need to (re)animate the mute body, imagining what it looked like in life, or calling forth

3 Most acknowledged the Trenton True American as their source. New Orleans‘ Daily Picayune reprinted it on January 30, 1851; The Natchez Courier on February 4, 1851; Montgomery‘s Daily Alabama Journal on February 7, 1851; New London Democrat on February 8, 1851; Macon‘s Georgia Telegraph on February 18, 1851; Victoria, Texas‘s Texian Advocate on February 20, 1851; New York‘s Spirit of the Times on March 1, 1851. 4 North American and United States Gazette, 22 January 1851. The Public Ledger highlighted the mummy incident as a particular draw for audiences: ―Blitz, since his affair with the Mummy, has made a great stir, and everybody wishes to get sight of the individual who can make the tongue wag again after a silence of nearly four thousand years‖ (20 January 1851). 5 Antonio Blitz, Life and Adventures of Signor Blitz: being an account of the author's professional life; his wonderful tricks and feats; with laughable incidents, and adventures as a magician, necromancer and ventriloquist (Hartford, CT: T. Belknap, 1871), 178-79.

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words from its silent mouth.6 The resulting acts of literal and interpretive ventriloquism revealed the underlying anxieties and meanings associated with the ancient bodies.

In the period between the first unwrapping in 1823 and the Civil War, Egyptian mummies literally embodied ancient Egypt in the American imagination. They were unwrapped on the examination tables of anatomists and in public lectures, and displayed as ―curiosities‖ in museums around the country, where they were seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans. The location of Egypt, a sophisticated early civilization, in

Africa, meant that Egyptian mummies required Americans to confront contemporary concerns about race and citizenship. Unlike the other fragments of the Egyptian past that circulated in the early United States, Americans now ―possess[ed] the men themselves, who raised Ancient Egypt from the quarries,‖ so that

The mortal remains of some of the identical individuals who may have conceived the idea, or indeed actually fabricated, the tombs, temples and gigantic obelisks that may endure till the elements shall melt with fervent heat, at this moment constitute the private cabinet of a Philadelphia physician!7

With other traces of Egyptian antiquity, from the writings of classical historians to the pyramids, it was often possible for Americans to sidestep the question of Egyptian race.

However, an Egyptian mummy, displayed in a museum or a lecture hall, was an actual human body that Americans could not view without attempting to categorize it racially.

The debate about the race of the ancient Egyptians thus formed the subtext of American encounters with mummies, forcing them to search for signs that would confirm the race of the long-dead people. Given the highly charged nature of conversations about race and

6 Franny Nudelman, John Brown’s Body: Slavery, Violence, & the Culture of War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 50-51; Charles D. Martin, ―Can the Mummy Speak? Manifest Destiny, Ventriloquism, and the Silence of the Ancient Egyptian Body,‖ Nineteenth-Century Contexts 31, no.2 (2009). 7 ―Science of Ethnography in America,‖ The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 32 (1845): 501.

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slavery during these same decades, and the widely held reverence for the ancient

Egyptians, the mummies—identifiably human remains with an unmistakably black appearance—represented a crisis of disambiguation for both white and black Americans.

The many layers of wrapping surrounding the bodies of the mummies inspired a desire to see what lay beneath, and a hope that this would definitively settle the debate surrounding their race.

A parallel phenomenon occurred at the same time with classical and neoclassical sculpture. Wealthy white travelers admired the ancient sculptures they encountered in their travels through England, France, and Italy, and many brought home marble copies and plaster casts of their favorites.8 Dozens of American sculptors set up studios in

Florence and Rome, carving their own interpretations of these ancient figures out of marble from ancient quarries.9 Most earned money through commissions for copies of famous ancient works, and by carving neoclassical portrait busts of American visitors to their workshops.10

These classical and neoclassical sculptures were often displayed in the overlapping institutions of universities, museums, art clubs, and other cultural spaces in the United States, where they reached far broader audiences of Americans, who also encountered descriptions of them in lectures, popular books, and newspaper articles. The naturalistic technique of these sculptures, whether created by ancient hands, or by

Americans and Europeans working centuries later, demanded racial classification of the

8 James Fenimore Cooper described ―a shop filled with statuary, Venuses, Apollos, and Bacchantes‖ destined for the tourist trade, when he visited Leghorn in 1829 (quoted in William L. Vance, America’s Rome [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989], I: 204). 9 Sylvia E. Crane, White Silence: Greenough, Powers, and Crawford: American Sculptors in Nineteenth- Century Italy (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1972), 3-8. 10 Vance, America’s Rome, I: 188; Dyson, Ancient Marbles, 13.

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bodies represented. Because the white marble or plaster ―skin‖ of these sculptures supported the broader presentation of the Greeks and Romans as the ancestors of white

Americans,11 the racial categorization of the men and women portrayed in classical sculptures was much more secure than that of Egyptian mummies. In conjunction with theories that linked human intelligence and emotional capacities to physical appearance, classical sculpture was used as a powerful proof of the inherent superiority of the white race. Deployed in support of the existing racial hierarchy, these sculptures, in their ―white silence,‖12 served as tacit reinforcement of the justice of the increasingly embattled institution of slavery.

This chapter explores how these ancient bodies, newly introduced to American public life, both interrupted and were incorporated into contemporary discourses surrounding the racial identity of ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. By looking at the ways in which they were examined and presented within the developing field of racial science, and how they were interpreted for and understood by a larger museum-going public, I argue that the bodies of Egyptian mummies and sculptural representations of

Greeks and Romans together represented a crucial site for debates concerning the race of these ancient populations, which were so important for American understanding of the racialized world in which they lived. Access to these bodies varied based on race, class, and gender, and inevitably the conversation was dominated by the elite white men who purchased, examined, and dictated the terms of display of classical sculptures and

11 Although some nineteenth-century scholars were aware that classical sculpture was originally painted, and hence the color of the bare marble was not intended to represent skin, this knowledge was not widespread. 12 Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning used this evocative phrase in her poem ―The Greek Slave,‖ written in response to Hiram Powers‘ neoclassical marble sculpture of the same name, whose classicizing style, combined with the topic of enslavement, invoked complex reactions regarding slavery and race in America (Savage, Standing Soldiers, 28).

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Egyptian mummies. However, female, free black, and lower-class white viewers also intervened in terms that worked within the parameters set out by elite white men, while also subverting those parameters—as we have seen already in the opening anecdote, where Signor Blitz, as an immigrant and a performer, took such pleasure in muddying the waters of scientific racial thought.13

Whether directly associating them with debates over slavery, or contemplating the objects in a seemingly more detached way, Americans inevitably viewed these ancient bodies through a racialist lens. To understand what they saw, we need first to establish the place of mummies and sculptures within the production of racial knowledge in Early

Republican medical science, and as part of the culture of spectacle surrounding museums, galleries, and public lectures, before seeing how these worlds collided at the 1851 mummy unwrapping in Philadelphia‘s Chinese Museum.

Science and the Ancient Body

The early nineteenth century saw the development of the field of racial science in the

United States.14 White men, working within the emerging discipline of professional medicine, created arguments to support the supposed physical, mental, and emotional

13 Blitz‘s nativity is unclear. An obituary claimed he was born in England (―Signor Antonio Blitz,‖ New York Times, 29 January 1877), but his name—or, at least, his stage name—suggests Italian and German roots. 14 The important works on racial science in the nineteenth century include Mia Bay, The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People, 1830-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Robert E. Bieder, Science Encounters the Indian, 1820-1880: The Early Years of American Ethnology (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1986); Bruce Dain, A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981); Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny; Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987); Jordan, White Over Black; William R. Stanton, The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America, 1815-1859 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

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inferiority of black people, and the corresponding superiority of the white race. By measuring, examining, and dissecting the bodies of individuals of all backgrounds, they

―discovered‖ subtle markers that distinguished the black race from the white race. Their arguments ―established inequality as a fact of nature, divinely sanctioned and, by definition, beyond the reach of political remedy.‖15 Racial science thus proved that slavery was not only acceptable, but actually good for black Americans; and also affirmed the validity of social boundaries between free black and white Americans in the

North and in the urban South.

The techniques and cadavers from which these conclusions were derived came from the practice of anatomical dissection, which became a standard part of the curriculum of the medical schools that were created in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Dissection was a crucial part of professional training for young, middle-class white men, which granted their medical practice cultural authority through the symbolic and physical violation of the bodies of women, black people, and the poor.16

Fanny Nudelman notes that, in conjunction with racial science, ―[d]issection instrumentalized the body, narrowing rather than expanding its social significance,‖ as the bodies of individuals were disassociated from their social position, and turned into representative racial types.17

15 Nudelman, John Brown’s Body, 48. 16 Michael Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 44-97. Sappol focuses on mainstream anatomical practice, which required the exhumation and/or appropriation of the bodies of the recently (and American) dead. Although some of the social attitudes discussed in his work are not necessarily relevant to the display and dissection of long-dead Egyptian mummies, many of his insights can be fruitfully applied, and many of the attitudes he identifies are easily recognizable in this material. 17 Nudelman, John Brown’s Body, 7, 48-51.

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The acquisition and dissection of Egyptian mummies and of the bodies of the recently deceased occupied analogous positions in the medical sphere. Although they were not as scarce as Egyptian mummies, cadavers of the recently deceased were not easy to come by. The gruesomeness of dissection meant that very few people volunteered their own bodies, or those of their relatives, to advance the science of anatomy.18 As a result, medical schools resorted to grave robbing, and sought to acquire the bodies of the poor.19 Numerous states passed laws against grave robbing, and fears or reports of such activities were constantly in the news. Savvy editors saw the irony in the juxtaposition of advertisements for exhibitions of Egyptian bodies, with criticism of grave robbing, as one observed:

A Boston paper mentions that three persons were tried at the court sitting in that city for disinterring dead bodies. . . . This same paper, we believe, mentions the arrival of another Egyptian mummy, and we suppose the very same jury and judges who convicted and condemned the stealers of dead bodies in Massachusetts, will go and see the mummy, and thus reward stealers of dead bodies at Thebes.20

Later that year, the same publication asked, upon the arrival of a new group of mummies in the United States, ―Will not some ‗learned Theban‘ ere long take a hint from the statute book of this country, and have a law enacted, making it penal for persons to violate the

18 See Fabian on the distinctions drawn between those who collected skulls, and those whose skulls were collected (Skull Collectors, 11-12). The leading anatomist John Collins Warren was an exception: in his will, he donated his body to the Harvard Medical School, to be dissected and displayed. Harold C. Ernst, The Harvard Medical School, 1782-1906 (Boston: 1906), 6. 19 On the social and cultural contexts and consequences of this ―economy of death,‖ see Sappol, Traffic in Dead Bodies, 13-43. The disproportionate use of the bodies of the poor was manifested in the collection of Samuel G. Morton, who had the largest collection of human crania in the world, but stated that the 52 Caucasian heads in his collection in 1839, ―with a single exception, derived from the lowest and least educated class of society.‖ Crania Americana; or, A comparative view of the skulls of various aboriginal nations of North and South America: to which is prefixed, An essay on the varieties of the human species, and on the American race in particular (Philadelphia: John Fuller, 1839), 261. 20 Providence Patriot, 24 January 1824, and New York Mirror, 7 February 1824, quoted in Su J. Wolfe, Mummies in Nineteenth Century America: Ancient Egyptians as Artifacts, with Robert Singerman (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2009), 36.

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sanctuary of the dead?‖21 The overlap between the cultural meanings of mummies on display, and recently deceased corpses, came out strongly in a court case held in New

York in 1829.22 While a mummy was on display in 1828 in a public house in

Rensselaerville, New York, seven or eight men, among them two or three ―students in a doctor‘s shop,‖ stole the mummy, ―determined to dissect this wonder of the ancient arts.‖23 Unable to recover the body, the owners of the mummy brought suit against them.

The trial raised a complex set of questions about the legitimacy of ownership of a human body, as the defense argued that the body was ―an article in which there could be no property,‖ because ―It was against natural feeling, and contrary to the laws of the whole civilized world, to permit a traffic in human bodies.‖24 Although the morality invoked here is certainly related to the general attitudes against grave robbing (which itself tended to target black cemeteries),25 this debate over ownership of humans ought also to be considered in light of the recent abolition of slavery in the State of New York, which had taken place just over a year previously. The defense also proposed that only the heirs of the mummy could do what they chose with the body—an argument the plaintiffs countered with the observation that the defense ―were not at liberty . . . to set themselves up as heirs—certainly not at this distance, without showing a more perfect genealogical tree.‖26 Perhaps this last point was intended in jest, but the question of who the heirs of

21 Providence Patriot, 23 June 1824, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 41. 22 Wolfe, Mummies, 59. 23 Aurora & Pennsylvania Gazette, 1 October 1829; see also the discussion of this case in Wolfe, Mummies, 59. This act fit within the common practice of medical students acquiring their own cadavers for study, which was done as much as to express their ―newly acquired right of eminent domain over the dead‖ as out of necessity (Sappol, Traffic in Dead Bodies, 80-88). 24 Aurora & Pennsylvania Gazette, 1 October 1829. Italics original. 25 Nudelman, John Brown’s Body, 41-42; Sappol, Traffic in Dead Bodies, 44-45. 26 ―Trover for a Mummy,‖ American Jurist and Law Magazine 3 (1829): 402.

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the Egyptians were—as a race, rather than as individuals—was hotly contested in the early nineteenth century.

When doctors obtained access to mummies through more legal means they regularly sought to address this question of racial inheritance. In the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, medical doctors came to believe that ―truths‖ about race were contained within the physical body, which made dissection the essential tool for accessing these truths. The centrality of dissection to racial theories was remarked upon by a former slave, who complained about how ―skillful anatomists, have passed their lives [. . .] in dissecting the bodies of men and animals in order to prove that I, who am now writing, belong to the race of Ourang-Outangs.‖27 Racial scientists believed that if they applied this racial technique to the analysis of Egyptian mummies, they could establish, in a way that textual and other physical sources could not, which American race could rightfully claim these accomplished people as ancestors. Additionally, since the developing racial ideology of the nineteenth century United States increasingly stressed the antiquity of the races, it required proof that the physical features that were understood to distinguish black and white people from one another also existed in the past. In this context, the bodies of ancient peoples were never neutral objects of scientific analysis.

Instead, they were approached and studied with the pre-determined racial assumptions that Greeks, Romans, and elite Egyptians were white, and that Egyptian slaves (the biblical story of the Hebrew exodus aside) were black.

27 Pompée-Valentin Vastey, quoted in Robert Benjamin Lewis, Light and Truth, From Ancient and Sacred History (Portland, ME: D.C. Colesworthy, 1836), 326. Bay states that the original source for this quotation is unknown (White Image, 236), although Lewis dated it to 1817. Contrast this to a generation earlier, when Jefferson explicitly categorized racial abilities as being inaccessible ―to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents‖ (Notes, 269). The ―Ourang-Outang‖ featured frequently in discussions of black American bodies, and referred to what we now call a chimpanzee (Jordan, White Over Black, 29). 78

Most readily at hand as evidence for this hypothesis were the sculpted bodies of

Greeks and Romans (or rather, more often than not, of their gods). Ever since the sculptures had been discovered during the Renaissance, the ―perfection‖ of their forms was lauded by European artists, and came to represent the pinnacle of human achievement and beauty.28 The sculptures were also central to the work of late- eighteenth-century European scholars in articulating their new theories about the different types of mankind encountered and subjugated as a result of European colonialism.29 The work of scientists Johann Lavater, Johann Blumenbach, Pieter Camper, and Georges

Cuvier was most influential in laying the groundwork for American racial science.30

Although each scientist employed different tools, they all focused on the features of the body to categorize humans into distinct races (Blumenbach‘s division into five races—

Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Negroid, and American—being perhaps the most influential), and explained variations in skin color, hair type, bone shape, and facial features as illustrations of the relative fitness of the races. Although these scientists did not generally argue that the different races were actually fundamentally different species,

Caucasians always maintained the highest classification in their analyses. The terms in which their hierarchies were elaborated varied from study to study, and granted white supremacy the intellectual flexibility to withstand various challenges. They offered the

28 Johann Joachim Winckelmann‘s 1764 book History of the Art of Antiquity presented influential theories about their origin and aesthetics, and was the seminal work for this praise of the beauty of Greco-Roman sculpture. 29 Bindman, Ape to Apollo, 123-24. 30 Bindman, Ape to Apollo; Dain, Hideous Monster; Fabian, Skull Collectors; Jordan, White Over Black, 222-230; Stanton, Leopard’s Spots. Their key works for this discussion include Blumenbach‘s 1775 On the Natural Varieties of Mankind, especially the 1795 revision; Lavater‘s 1789-98 Essays on Physiognomy; The Works of the late Professor Camper, on the Connexion between the Science of Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting, Statuary, 1794; and Cuvier‘s 1817 The Animal Kingdom, Distributed According to its Organization. Although their work was not always in agreement, their basic principles of using measurable physical traits to distinguish between different races were both innovative and highly influential.

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security of a rational system of science that could be applied casually, at a glance, to a white or black body, or proven more precisely through careful measurements, to confirm the racial hierarchies upon which American society was based.31

The scientists of the eighteenth century ―provided early-nineteenth-century ethnologists with a collection of intellectual arguments—a kit bag, so to speak—to rummage through and rework.‖32 One of the most useful tools in this ―kit bag‖ was the

―facial angle‖ measurement, which provided ―proof‖ of the necessary link between modern white men and ancient Greeks; and of the distance between this great ancient race, and modern black men (see Figure 2 for a mid-nineteenth-century device for measuring this angle).

Figure 2: “Facial Goniometer” for measuring facial angle. Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana (Philadelphia: John Fuller, 1839), 252, New York Public Library.

31 On the centrality of these hierarchies in the post-Revolutionary United States, see Fields, ―Slavery, Race and Ideology.‖ 32 Bieder, Science Encounters the Indian, 12.

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The facial angle measurement was first developed by Dutch scholar Camper in 1770, who described it thus:

The basis on which the distinction of nations is founded may be displayed by two straight lines; one of which is to be drawn through the meatus auditorius to the base of the nose, the other touching the prominent centre of the forehead and falling thence on the most advancing part of the upper jaw bone, the head being viewed in profile.33

Camper used the facial angle to define what he saw as real differences between individuals of different races, which represented a clear natural hierarchy existing between different races. Camper found that African and Asian heads had a facial angle of

70 degrees, in contrast to the average 80 degree facial angle of Europeans. This difference gained distinction through comparison with Greek sculptures:

On this difference of 10° in the face angle the superior beauty of the European depends; while the high character of sublime beauty which is so striking in some works of ancient statuary, as in the head of Apollo and in the Medusa of Sisocles, is given by an angle which amounts to 100°34

The chief concern in Camper‘s work was to justify and understand the relationships between the European race to which he belonged, and the peoples it encountered through colonial ventures. But when these conversations were transferred to the United States, they took on a new meaning and new urgency in a country in which interactions between black and white people were an everyday occurrence, and one fraught with tension over the inequality that separated them.

American scientists used measurements such as the facial angle, combined with other physical features, to create more-or-less standardized ―types‖ for the different races.

33 Translation from George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, eds, The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1859), s.v. ―Facial Angle.‖ 34 Ripley and Dana, Cyclopedia, ―Facial Angle.‖

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Although the precise terms in which they formulated this varied, these descriptions from

Dr. Samuel G. Morton of Philadelphia were fairly representative. He described ―The

Caucasian, or White Race‖ as:

Characterised by a naturally fair skin, susceptible of every tint: hair fine, long, and straight: the face is oval, and the features pre-emineutly [sic] regular and symmetrical. The skull is large, having its anterior portion broad and elevated, indicating the predominance of the intellectual over the animal faculties. The face is small in comparison with the head; the nasal bones are arched, and the teeth vertical. Facial angle—seventy to seventy-five degrees.35

As this description shows, not only the size, but also the shape of the skull was considered to be important, providing indications of the intellectual and moral character of the individual, in a simplified theory of phrenology.36 By contrast ―The Negro, or

Black Race,‖ was described as:

Characterised by a black skin, woolly hair, flat nose, and large lips; the face is prominent, and elongated at the mouth; the forehead is low and narrow, and the head itself is long, compressed laterally, and prominent at the occiput. The teeth are large and nearly vertical. Facial angle, 60 to 65°.37

35 Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana; or, A comparative view of the skulls of various aboriginal nations of North and South America, Prospectus (Philadelphia: John Fuller, 1838), 4, henceforth Crania Americana (Prospectus). Note the difference, here and below, between the facial angles Morton measured, and those Camper gave. 36 Developed by Franz Joseph Gall in the late eighteenth century, phrenology was extremely popular in the United States by the 1830s (Colbert, Measure of Perfection; Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 118- 122, 142-145). It identified different portions of the head as the sites of different intellectual and moral characteristics, employing circular arguments that supported the assumption of white superiority. For example, after assigning the intellectual and moral organs of the brain to the front of the head, the Fowler brothers (leading American proponents of phrenology) wrote ―The European race (including their descendants in America), possess a much larger endowment of these organs, and also of their corresponding faculties, than any other portion of the human species. Hence their intellectual and moral superiority over all other races of men.‖ Orson S. Fowler and Lorenzo N. Fowler, Phrenology Proved, Illustrated, and Applied, 35th ed. (New York, 1846), 26, quoted in Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, 143. Although ethnologists like Morton did not emphasize the details of phrenology, they tended to agree that ―the general facts of Phrenology are true.‖ Josiah C. Nott, Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races (Mobile: Dade and Thompson, 1844), 23. 37 Morton, Crania Americana (Prospectus), 6. Morton repeated these descriptions, with variations, in his later publications. Morton, Crania Americana, 5-6; Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca; or Observations on Egyptian Ethnography derived from Anatomy, History and the Monuments, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. II (Philadelphia: John Pennington, 1844), 3-4; Morton, An Illustrated System of Human Anatomy, Special, General and Microscopic (Philadelphia: Grigg, Elliot and Co, 1849), 69. A 82

The features of skin color, hair texture, and the shapes of the nose, lips, and head, served rhetorically as the phenotypical markers of race, and showed up again and again in

American descriptions of individuals both black and white, in a wide variety of contexts.38 But in practice, ―[s]kin color was, in fact, the only distinction between races that white Americans could rely on to distinguish blacks from whites,‖39 granting this trait a special importance in American encounters with ancient bodies.

Both European and American racial theorists turned frequently to classical sculptures when articulating the distinctions between different races of humanity. The appeal of these sculptures as exempla came from a combination of their origin in great ancient societies, and the direct and intimate relation that sculpture holds to the human body. This relationship granted sculptures, in the words of Kirk Savage, ―a unique scientific and documentary power‖ that helped ancient sculpture become ―an authenticating document of a normative white body, a ‗race‘ of white men.‖40

The sculpture most commonly called upon to serve as this normative white body was the Apollo Belvedere (also known as the Pythian Apollo), whose facial angle of 100 degrees Camper used as the standard for the most beautiful head (Figure 3, left).41

discussion of the specific bones of the face that caused these variations was presented in Morton, Human Anatomy, 53-73. 38 These descriptors were applied far more commonly to black than to white individuals, since the black race was that which was marked as deviating from the ―norm.‖ However, white men and women who were presented as examples of greatness were often described in phrenological terms. Interestingly, too, there was a discourse about the ―whitening‖ of black Americans, used as proof of their potential for citizenship, which attributed to them the phrenological features of Caucasians. Hamilton, ―Phrenology and Anti- slavery‖ and Todd Vogel, ReWriting White: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 30-32. See also Bay, White Image, 38-87, which quotes many examples of this kind of argumentation. 39 Bay, White Image, 77. 40 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 8. 41 See Bindman for the importance of this sculpture in European racial theories; he credits Winckelmann‘s praise of the Apollo Belvedere with inspiring its prominence within racial science (Ape to Apollo, 208). Winckelmann‘s opinions were also known in America. For example, a passage from Winckelmann on the 83

Americans saw this sculpture as the pinnacle of white beauty, and in turn as an illustration of ―the relationship of physical beauty to intellect and culture.‖42 It became an important object of study in medical schools, where, alongside the Medici Venus (Figure

3, right), it served as the exemplar of the ideal human body—a body that was implicitly the exclusive property of white men, much like the field of medicine itself.43

Figure 3: (left) Cast of Apollo Belvedere, c.1840s, Massachusetts General Hospital, photo by author; (right) Medici Venus, postcard image from c. 1861, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, ARTstor.

Apollo was reprinted in American papers in 1823. ―The Apollo Belvidere,‖ Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), September 1, 1823; and Carolina Observer (Fayetteville, NC), September 25, 1823 (both papers credited the Boston Statesmen). 42 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 9. 43 The use of the Apollo Belvedere in medical schools has not been fully studied, and is only occasionally referenced in the secondary literature. A biography of Edward V. Valentine indicates that the Medical College of Virginia had a collection of casts which included the Apollo Belvedere in the mid-1850s. Elizabeth G. Valentine, Dawn to Twilight: Work of Edward V. Valentine (Richmond, VA: The William Byrd Press, 1929), 28. A description of the hall in which John Collins Warren lectured at Harvard Medical School stated that ―The Venus de Medici and Belvidere Apollo (the first in marble, the second in plaster) stood sentinels at each side of the door which he entered.‖ Nathan P. Rice, Trials of a Public Benefactor, as Illustrated in the Discovery of Etherization (New York: Pudney & Russell, 1859), 36. Warren also wrote that the museum in the new medical college building on Grove Street included ―the Venus de Medicis, given by President Everett, and the Apollo Belvidere, which I purchased from Solomon Willard, given by myself.‖ Quoted in Edward Warren, The Life of John Collins Warren, M.D. Comprised chiefly from his autobiography and journals (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860), 417).

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For instance, Dr. John Augustine Smith referred to it and other sculptures in an 1808 lecture on anatomy, in which he sought to prove that white and black people were different species.44 The presence of the phenotypical markers of whiteness, such as hair, lips, nose, and profile, sculpted out of literally white, unpainted marble, allowed nineteenth-century Americans to read classical sculptures as ―white.‖45 Savage suggests that Greco-Roman sculptures were used initially ―to visualize and articulate a new racial construct,‖ a theory which, in consequence, ―transformed the understanding of classical sculpture by racializing it.‖46 However, when considered in the context of the broader racialization of ancient cultures already underway in the service of white supremacy, the order of this logic should be reversed. Instead, the Apollo Belvedere, due to its origin in a classical antiquity that was already associated with American whiteness, served as proof and reinforcement of the whiteness and corresponding perfection of the bodies and minds of the ancient Greeks.

Although classical sculptures offered an elegant proof of the hereditary ties between great ancient white men and their modern American ―descendents,‖ the first opportunities that American scientists had to put their racial theories to work on an actual ancient body came from a civilization whose racial status was much more ambiguous. In

1823, a Dutch merchant named Jacob van Lennep sent an Egyptian mummy to the

44 Smith measured the facial angle of the Apollo and other sculptures at the American Academy of Fine Arts in New York, acknowledging that either ―great degeneracy had taken place‖ in modern white men, or ―the statues, busts, and impressions which remain of the Greeks and Romans‖ represented the ideal rather than the reality of their appearance—which would only serve as further proof of the utility of the facial angle as a marker of perfection. John Augustine Smith, ―A Lecture Introductory to the Second Course of Anatomical Instruction in the College of Physicians and Surgeons for the State of New-York,‖ New York Medical and Philosophical Journal and Review 1, no. 1(1809): 39. 45 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 42. 46 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 12.

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Massachusetts General Hospital.47 The box in which it arrived was labeled ―GUM,‖ making it the first of several mummies whose bodies would be smuggled into the country, just as cadavers were smuggled from place to place in the United States.48 One of the men tasked with determining its authenticity was Harvard‘s Professor of Surgery and Anatomy, Dr. John Collins Warren.49 His analysis, published in Boston Journal of

Philosophy and Fine Art, reveal the extent to which the charge to ―authenticate‖ the mummy actually required that he ―race‖ it. While race was not even a question in

Warren‘s dissections of the recently deceased, he had to go to some lengths to identify the race of the long-dead mummy. He described the phenotypical racial markers he saw on both the mummy itself and its coffin (Figure 4).

47 Bob Brier, The Encyclopedia of Mummies (New York: Facts on File, Inc, 1998), 136; R. Jackson Wilson, ―Thebes to Springfield: The Travels of an Egyptian mummy,‖ in Padihershef: The Egyptian Mummy, eds. Joyce Hanyes and R. Jackson Wilson (Springfield, MA: George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, 1984), 29. Van Lennep was based in Smyrna and had business relationships with Boston. He acquired the mummy with the assistance of the British consul at Alexandria, and asked the captain of the Sally Ann, R.B. Edes, to take it to Boston and exhibit it ―in some suitable manner, in my firm‘s name [. . . to] excite the curiosity of the public, and I hope gratify the learned‖ (Boston Daily Advertiser, May 3, 1823, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 13). Edes and van Lennep‘s agent, Bryant Tilden, sent the mummy to Harvard‘s Medical College when it arrived. 48 Van Lennep wrote that the mummy traveled ―under the denomination of Egyptian gum, on account of his [the captain‘s] men,‖ which surely aided the mummy‘s passage through customs, as well (Boston Daily Advertiser May 3, 1823, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 13). On the smuggling of cadavers for medical dissection, see Sappol, Traffic in Dead Bodies, 111-116. 49 Sappol, Traffic in Dead Bodies, discusses Warren‘s work within anatomy, but not his involvement in the analysis of mummies.

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Figure 4: “Ether Dome Mummy,” unwrapped in 1823. Massachusetts General Hospital, photos by author.

Each of the descriptions Warren gave of the mummy betrayed his interest in linking the black body of the revered Egyptian with white rather than black Americans. As he described both the coffin and the body itself, Warren listed ―nose broad, but not badly proportioned, mouth well formed,‖ attempting to avoid association with the staples of the stereotypical ―African face,‖ of thick lips and a broad, flat nose.50 He gave the most attention to eliminating the characteristic ―black skin and woolly hair‖ that Herodotus attributed to the Egyptians. Collins described the face painted on the mummy‘s coffin as being ―of a reddish colour,‖ and acknowledged that the skin of the mummy itself was black, but made sure to clarify that it was only because it was ―deeply imbued with the embalming bitumen.‖51 Although he noted that it had hardly any hair, Warren was certain there was ―just enough of it remaining however to show that it was not black nor crisped

50 Warren, ―Egyptian Mummy,‖ 274. 51 Warren, ―Egyptian Mummy,‖ 274, 278.

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or woolly, but of a heavy brown or reddish brown colour.‖52 Faced with the overall dark appearance of the mummy, Warren found the whiteness he sought to ascribe to the entire mummy in the teeth, which were ―perfect . . . quite white and shaped like those of the

European.‖53

Warren‘s attention to identifying the race of the mummy reflected the extent to which an individual‘s race defined how nineteenth century Americans understood his or her nature. Warren wrote that ―Inquiries have been made, whether this mummy had originally and natively the black colour it now possesses; and this has led to the general question, what was the national colour and race of the ancient Egyptians?‖54 The dark skin of this ancient human demanded an explanation because of what Jordan describes as

―the primacy of color in the white man‘s mind, the long-standing feeling that the most

Negro thing about the Negro was his blackness.‖55 Warren quoted Herodotus‘s statement about the appearance of the Colchians, conceding that ―Of course it would follow that the

Egyptians were of a black colour and woolly haired; and in another instance [Herodotus] alludes to the blackness of their complexion.‖56 After quoting additional ancient sources,

Warren acknowledged ―the authorities mentioned above seem to lead us irresistibly to the conclusion that the Egyptians were of the negro race; especially when it is noticed that there is not a single ancient author to favour a different hypothesis.‖ However, Warren argued, the opposite view was sustained by ―evidences of a different character, derived from monuments, temples, statues, sculptures, paintings, and the Egyptians themselves,

52 Warren, ―Egyptian Mummy,‖ 278. 53 Warren explained that his comment about the shape of the teeth was a reference to the opinion expressed by Blumenbach and others ―that the Egyptians had the incisor teeth pointed like the canines or dog teeth.‖ 54 Warren, ―Egyptian Mummy,‖ 282. 55 Jordan, White Over Black, 516. 56 Warren, ―Egyptian Mummy,‖ 283.

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as represented by their mummies.‖ This last source—―the Egyptians themselves‖— placed the medical doctor Warren on his own territory. After discussing the observations of Egyptian art found in the work of Denon, Winckelmann, and the Description de l’Egypte, which seem to distinguish the ―red‖ Egyptians from the ―black‖ Negroes,

Warren added the evidence of his own observations:

On examining the head of our mummy we found the jaws not prominent like the negroe‘s; the forehead not slanting and the breadth across the temples sufficiently ample. The remains of the hair are not woolly but strait, and of a yellow colour. A mummy at Roxbury, in the vicinity of Boston, belonging to Ward Nicholas Boylston, Esq. has a fine conformation of head. . . . The forehead is elevated and large, the jaws filled with fine teeth, not prominent, and the head altogether of the European or Caucasian form.57

These observations, supported by the descriptions of mummies found in European works, all facilitate Warren‘s conclusions that

this celebrated people were not Negroes, that the configuration of their heads was European, and their skin of a red colour, like that of the Hindoos. The few instances of black figure and formation are the representations of slaves or prisoners, brought to Egypt, as at the present day from the interior of Africa.58

Thus, what began as a consideration of whether the noble ancient Egyptians were black, ended with the conclusion that not only were they Caucasian, but they had black slaves, just like modern white Americans. There could hardly be a more explicit statement of contemporary racial concerns in medical encounters with the bodies of ancient Egyptians.

57 Warren, ―Egyptian Mummy,‖ 284-285. Boylston acquired his mummy (possibly only a mummified head, without the body) in 1818 (Wolfe, Mummies, 9-10). It was apparently not exhibited to the public, and it is unclear when Warren examined it. Subsequent reports from doctors who examined other mummies were similarly concerned with distancing mummies from black Americans, by denying those features generally associated with people of African descent. For example, Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell (sometimes Mitchill), described a mummy brought to New York in 1824 as follows: ―The hair was entire upon the scalp, not crisped but straight, not coarse but exceedingly fine—of a chesnut brown colour, mixt with a few scattering white stragglers, showing that the lady had lived long enough to be going gray[. . . . teeth] in a perfectly white and sound state. The nose was entire, though somewhat flattened by pressure. The whole complexion was black, entirely perhaps, or at least in a great degree occasioned by the antiseptics, aromatics and conservatories with which the body had for so many ages been enveloped‖ (―Another Mummy,‖ Philadelphia Aurora, July 22, 1824, reprinted from the New York Daily Advocate). 58 Warren, ―Egyptian Mummy,‖ 285.

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The physical features Warren used to make a racial attribution for the mummy saw fuller codification in the racial science of the American School of Ethnology. An

1854 description of this school listed its aims as follows:

Ethnology demands to know what was the primitive organic structure of each race?—what such race‘s moral and psychical [sic] character?—how far a race may have been, or may become, modified by the combined action of time and moral and physical causes?—and what position in the social scale Providence has assigned to each type of man?59

Dr. Samuel G. Morton was recognized as the founder of the school, and was the first to codify its theories, in his 1839 book, Crania Americana.60 The primary subject of the book was the categorization of Native American groups on the basis of their skulls, but

Morton opened the work with an extensive essay ―On the Variety of the Human Species,‖ in which he put forward studies of skull shapes, cranial capacities, and facial angles, as proof of the inherent differences between the races.61 His central argument suggested that the internal capacity of the skull was a measure of intelligence, and that it was largest in the Caucasian and smallest in the Negro race.62 Drawing on his collection of hundreds of crania—the largest of the world—Morton correlated the physical distinctions derived

59 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 49. 60 For the reviews of Crania Americana, which circulated far more widely than did the book itself (which was extraordinarily expensive, at $20), see Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 39-40. Morton‘s life and work are discussed in detail in Fabian (Skull Collectors, see 80-91 on the circulation of Crania Americana, in particular) and Stanton Leopard’s Spots. For Morton‘s work on Native Americans, see Bieder, Science Encounters the Indian, 55-103. 61 Morton, Crania Americana, 27-88. 62 For this reason, Morton relied less on facial angle, since it was not a reliable measure of brain capacity. However, he observed that ―although a full angle is no proof of superior intelligence, the converse of this is for the most part true; for a very contracted angle, whether in nations or individuals, is generally accompanied by a low grade of mental development‖ (Human Anatomy, 71).

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from an array of precise measurements, to the intellectual and emotional characters of different races, using contemporary examples from around the world.63

Morton‘s concern with racial divisions reflected the tensions within his home city of Philadelphia, which had one of the largest free black populations of any urban center in the United States.64 This setting was far from coincidental to Morton‘s theories, because, as Winthrop Jordan observed, free black people contradicted the logic that equated blackness with slavery, and thus ―constituted an invitation to the development of a new rationale which would tell white men who they were and where they stood in the community—the rationale of racial superiority.‖65 Morton‘s studies of contemporary crania satisfactorily ―proved‖ his case for biological distinctions between races in the present—distinctions which justified the racial restrictions that existed in his city.

However, Morton‘s theories required that these racial characteristics be shown to be immutable over time, which led him, and the other members of the American School of

Ethnology, to focus on ―the exceedingly ancient and highly civilized occupants of the classic Nilotica Tellus.‖66 Through the circular logic of craniometry, the race revealed by

Morton‘s measurements could not only settle the question of Egyptian race, but also prove his argument that the races were fixed and immutable over time. The extent to which this concern drove Morton‘s interest in Egyptian antiquity is clear from his

63 Fabian (Skull Collectors, 36-42) and Stanton (Leopard’s Spots, 27-29) describe the creation and content of Morton‘s collection of skulls. Stanton states that Joseph Rodes Buchanan of Cincinnati and John Collins Warren also held large collections of crania (29). 64 See Fabian for the overlapping worlds of Morton and free black Philadelphians (Skull Collectors, 91- 118). 65 Jordan, White Over Black, 134. 66 J. Aitken Meigs, ―The Cranial Characteristics of the Races of Men,‖ in Indigenous Races of the Earth by Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon (1857; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1868), 321. This Latin phrase, meaning ―Land of the Nile,‖ nicely assimilated the Egyptians into the Caucasian Greco-Roman past.

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personal research collection, in which he bound together in a single volume pamphlets related to the subjects of ancient Egypt, cranial measurement, and enslaved and free black

Americans.67

In the opening essay of Crania Americana, Morton argued that the ancient

Egyptians were members of the Caucasian race, using evidence both from ancient skulls and from monuments.68 Urgently seeking to prove the racial ties between ancient

Egyptians and modern white Americans, he described the ancient Egyptian face as follows: ―the nose was rather long, and joined the head much in the Grecian manner; the eye was elongated and rather oblique; the lips were well formed, the chin rounded and moderately full, and the whole expression mild and pleasing.‖69 Responding directly to

Volney‘s assessment of Egyptian race, which, as discussed in the Introduction, was key in supporting the blackness of the Egyptians in the United States, he offered a somewhat convoluted explanation:

He looked upon the Sphinx, and hastily inferred from its flat features and bushy hair, that the Egyptians were real Negroes: yet these circumstances have no weight when we recur to the fact, that the Budhists of Asia . . . represent their principal god with Negro features and hair, and often sculptured in black marble; yet among the three hundred millions who worship Budha, there is not, perhaps, a solitary Negro nation. . . . There is no absolute proof, moreover, that the Sphinx represented an Egyptian deity: it may have been a shrine of the Negro population of Egypt, who, as traffickers, servants, and slaves, were a very numerous body.70

Reaching first for an explanation that suggested that his white Egyptians worshiped the figure of their black slaves, then claiming that one of the greatest monuments of Egypt

67 Library Company of Philadelphia, catalog number Am 1847 Bar (b.w.) 51662.O .1 (Morton). 68 At the time he wrote Crania Americana, Morton possessed two Egyptian crania, which he dissected in December 1833, in front of 80 members and guests of the Academy of Natural Sciences. Morton, Catalogue of Skulls of Man, and the Inferior Animals, in the Collection of Samuel George Morton (Philadelphia: Turner & Fisher, 1840), 7, 9. 69 Morton, Crania Americana, 28. 70 Morton, Crania Americana, 29. Italics original.

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was built for its ―traffickers, servants, and slaves,‖ this statement reflected the extremity of Morton‘s need to preserve the intelligent and sophisticated race of Egyptians as white, rather than black. Returning to the subject of his own study, however, Morton found even more support for his argument:

But with reference to the physical character of the Egyptians, there is a source of evidence to which some allusion has already been made, and which is more conclusive than any other: I refer to the embalmed bodies of the Theban catacombs . . . . [which] retain almost every feature in perfection. Here are the very people who walked the streets of Thebes, they who built Luxor and the Pyramids; and yet among the thousands whose bodies curiosity and avarice have dragged from their tombs, I am not aware that a solitary Negro has been discovered.71

The further proof of this point—that Egyptian mummies were exclusively Caucasian— would be the subject of Morton‘s later work.

While writing Crania Americana, Morton wrote to the United States‘ Vice Consul in Cairo, George R. Gliddon, who was in New York to purchase agricultural machinery in

1837. He asked Gliddon to help him acquire ―twenty-five or thirty‖ ancient skulls, specifying that ―I do not care to have them entirely perfect specimens of embalming, but perfect in the bony structure, and with the hair preserved, if possible.‖72 Gliddon took up the task enthusiastically, and sent Morton 137 Egyptian skulls (100 of which were ancient), along with his own assessments of the possible racial assignations of the crania.73

71 Morton, Crania Americana, 31. 72 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, xxxv. 73 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 1; Fabian, Skull Collectors, 105-106. In an 1841 letter to Morton, Gliddon wrote ―I am hostile to the opinion of the African origin of the Egyptians [. . . .] I urge your pausing, and considering why the ancient Egyptians may not be of Asiatic, and perhaps of Arabic descent. [. . .] At any rate, they are not, and never were, Africans, still less Negroes‖ (Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, xxxvi-xxxvii).

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In Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), Morton published the results of his analysis of the skulls provided by Gliddon and others.74 Explicitly adopting Blumenbach‘s suggestion that a study of Egyptian ethnology be undertaken using a sufficient sample of mummified crania, Morton found that all the skulls were either Caucasian, Negro or mixed— categories which, although Morton did not point this out, corresponded to the American categories of white, black, and mulatto.75 Morton unwrapped each cranium, sometimes leaving traces of the linen wrapping which adhered too closely to the skin, other times removing the skin and hair entirely. The results were vividly captured in the descriptions and plates that he provided, which illustrated each of the skulls in his analysis.76 For instance, in the description of one of the crania, Morton wrote that ―The hair . . . was necessarily removed with the integuments, on account of the imperfect nature of the embalmment.‖77 Using special apparatus, he measured the facial angle of each complete cranium, and filled it with lead shot to measure its capacity.78 He also took particular note of the hair and used it, along with the shape of the skull, to assist in his racial categorization of the specimens.79 For example, based on variations in their bone

74 The material in this book was originally delivered in lectures before the American Philosophical Society on December 16, 1842, January 6, 1843, and April 6, 1843, and published in the society‘s Proceedings (Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 1). Highly favorable reviews of the work, often including lengthy extracts, appeared in publications as diverse as the American Journal of Science and Arts (47 [1844]: 8-11) and Arthur’s Ladies’ Magazine of Elegant Literature and the Fine Arts (Frost, Review of Crania Americana). Fabian‘s description of this book implies that it was a collaboration between Gliddon and Morton (Skull Collectors, 106-107). 75 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 3. Cuvier and Virey also examined mummy skulls, and drew similar, though more impressionistic conclusions (Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 20, 22). 76 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 5-19, and Plates I-XIII. 77 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 10. 78 For Morton‘s explanation of his choice to switch from white pepper seed to lead shot for measuring internal capacity, see Crania Aegyptiaca, 20. For a reassessment of Morton‘s measurements and calculations in both Crania Americana and Crania Aegyptiaca, see Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 50-72. 79 These were, at least, the features he focused on in his description of the racial types represented in the collection, presumably because all of the crania would have had the characteristically dark skin of mummies (Crania Aegyptiaca, 3-4).

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structure, Morton declared that eight of the crania represented on Plate XII (Figure 5) came from three different types of Caucasians: Semitic (1 and 2), Egyptian (3, 4, 5, 8, 9) and Pelasgic (6).80

Figure 5: Samuel George Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca (Philadelphia: John Pennington, 1844), Plate XII. Google Books.

This last designation is particularly interesting. The Pelasgic, or Greek, crania, amounted to fully a third of the Caucasian skulls in Morton‘s study, and revealed ―the Pelasgic

80 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 15, 18-19.

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lineaments [that] are familiar to us in the beautiful models of Grecian art.‖81 By contrast,

Morton found only one ―unmixed Negro‖ cranium in the entire collection (image 7 in

Figure 5).82 In other words, Morton‘s racial science suggested that rather than being black men, Egyptians were in large part actually Greeks, the highest form of Caucasian, who were more broadly understood as the ancestors of white Americans.83

Morton did believe that black people existed in Egypt, but he argued that their scarcity among the mummified bodies implied that they were low-status individuals whose bodies were not embalmed. This was an important revelation, and was succinctly stated among the fifteen conclusions to the work: ―Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the same as it is now, that is of servants and slaves.‖84 This statement clarified the stakes of Morton‘s study of the long-dead peoples of Egypt: the status of black and white men in antiquity could serve as a proof of the

81 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 3, 19-20. As Gould points out, the Greek or ―Pelasgic‖ skulls represent ―the most bulbous crania,‖ another example of Morton‘s circular reasoning (Mismeasure of A Man, 61). The privileging of these heads was reiterated in Morton‘s later work, when he illustrated one of his Egyptian crania in his general anatomy textbook, as ―the most beautiful in outline, and the most harmonious in its proportions‖ of the more than 800 skulls in his collection. Morton, Catalogue of Skulls of Man and the Inferior Animals, in the Collection of Samuel George Morton, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Merrihew & Thompson, 1849), 71, henceforth, Catalog (3rd ed.) 82 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 18. Morton also used the categories of ―mixed‖ and ―Negroid,‖ for 13 skulls with traits of both races. His descriptions of these skulls matched strongly the characteristics he elsewhere attributed to the ―negro‖ form, suggesting a desire to reduce the number of ―pure negro‖ skulls in the collection. For example, he described one Negroid skull as possessing ―A small head, with a low receding forehead, and strong, small nose, projecting maxillae, and obvious Negro expression. A little hair remained, which was cut short, and was coarse without being woolly‖ (17). 83 At the time he wrote Crania Aegyptiaca, Morton also possessed ―Fragments of an ancient Roman? Head,‖ from near Baiae, which was given to him by Dr. M. Burrough (Morton, Catalog [3rd ed.], 105). He did not even mention it in his craniometric studies, perhaps because it was too fragmentary, but likely also because its traits were a foregone conclusion. J. Aitken Meigs—the curator of Morton‘s collection after his death—wrote, without providing any evidence of study, that ―the Greeks and Romans—[were] respectively, the intellectual and physical masters of the world. In the Greek skull, we behold the emblem of exalted reason; in the Roman, that of unparalleled military prowess‖ (Meigs, ―Cranial Characteristics,‖ 309). 84 Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 66. The importance of this conclusion was highlighted in the quote from Crania Aegyptiaca that Morton put on the title page of the third edition of his Catalogue of Skulls, in 1849: ―The physical or organic characters which distinguish the several races of men, are as old as the earliest records of our species.‖

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appropriate status of black and white Americans in the present. In other words, thousands of years may pass, but the ultimate facts of nature—that black men were made to serve white men—never change.

The confidence with which Morton made the initial racial classifications of the specimens reveals his essential certainty that race was carried within bone structure.

Morton solidified his reputation as an expert on the racial attributes of skulls by a remarkable act, which, importantly, involved a skull from an ancient Mediterranean race.

According to an anecdote recorded by a colleague, in 1847, Morton received a skull that had been sent from Naples, with no further indication about its origin:

Day after day would Morton be found absorbed in its contemplation. At last he announced his conclusion. He had never seen a Phoenician skull, and he had no idea where this one came from; but it was what he conceived that a Phoenician skull should be, and it could be no other.85

Six months later, a letter arrived, saying that the skull had been discovered during the exploration of a Phoenician tomb in Malta, giving proof of not only ―the extraordinary acuteness of Morton, but they also prove the certainty of the anatomical marks upon which Craniologists rely.‖

Morton‘s skills were lauded even beyond medical circles, for they offered much- desire proof of kinship between ancient Egyptians and modern white Americans. A review of Crania Aegyptiaca in a ladies‘ magazine crowed that while European scholars

had succeeded in determining pretty satisfactorily what the Egyptians had done— that they had created arts and instituted civil society, built the most gigantic structures on the face of the earth, and conquered almost the whole world in their wars; but it still remained for a modest unpretending physician of Philadelphia . . . to determine who these same Egyptians were,—to shew that they were not negroes or Ethiopeans, but Caucasians, white men like ourselves—not descended from Hindoos, or Tartars, or Scythians, but from honest ancestors with Roman

85 Henry S. Patterson, ―Memoir of the Life and Scientific Labors of Samuel George Morton,‖ in Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, xl.

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noses, and red cheeks, and long flowing hair;—in short that the fathers of learning have the right sort of pedigree—that they ―come of dacent people.‖86

More pointedly, the Charleston Medical Journal wrote after Morton‘s death in 1851, ―we of the South should consider him as our benefactor, for aiding most materially in giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race.‖87

The significance of Morton‘s work on ancient skulls was equally clear to

Frederick Douglass, who confronted it directly in his 1854 commencement address at

Western Reserve College. In his talk, he dwelled on the subject of the race of the

Egyptians, weighing in on an argument that proponents of racial science used to disenfranchise him and millions of other black Americans. Focusing on the Crania

Americana, Douglass directed his audiences‘ attention to Morton‘s description of the

―‗Copts and Fellahs,‘ whom every body knows are descendants of the Egyptians,‖ and who Morton categorized as ―Caucasians‖:

Mark the description given of the Egyptians in this same work: “Complexion brown. The nose is straight, excepting the end, where it is rounded and wide; the lips are rather thick, and the hair black and curly.” [. . .] A man, in our day, with brown complexion, ―nose rounded and wide, lips thick, hair black and curly,‖ would, I think, have no difficulty in getting himself recognized a Negro!!88

Using the words of Morton against him, Douglass pointed out the contradiction that kept the question of the race of the ancient Egyptians alive.89 Douglass perceived Morton‘s

86 Frost, Review of Crania Americana, 252. Italics original. 87 Quoted in Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 144. Georgian scholar William B. Hodgson expressed similar sentiments to Morton directly, in a letter from March 29, 1844 (Morton Papers, Historical Society of Philadelphia, quoted in Horsman, Josiah Nott, 96). Also, see Fredrickson for Gliddon‘s and Morton‘s enthusiasm for—and promotion of—pro-slavery interest in Crania Aegyptiaca (Black Image, 77). 88 Douglass, ―Claims of the Negro,‖ 233-34, italics original. The passage Douglass quoted came from pages 24-25 of Morton, Crania Americana, and the majority of it represented not Morton‘s own words, but his explicit quotation of Englishman Edward Lane‘s 1836 An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. 89 The Anglo-African Magazine featured an article by Haitian Bishop James Theodore Holly, which similarly challenged racial scientists to ―prove, if they can, to the full satisfaction of their narrow souls and gangrened hearts, that the black faced, woolly haired, thick lipped and flat nosed Egyptians of ancient times 98

motives in national terms: ―with characteristic American assumption, he says, ‗It is easy to prove, that whatever may have been the hue of their skin, they belong to the same race with ourselves.‘‖90 Although this sentence actually came from a passage in which Morton quoted the words of European scientist Cuvier,91 Douglass understood the sentiment as fundamentally ―American‖—meaning white American—in its bias against black people.

Douglass and racial scientists also parted ways over the racial attribution of

Egyptian sculptures of the 13th century BCE pharaoh Ramses II. When speaking of his enslaved mother in his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass lamented his early separation from her, but said:

There is in ―Prichard’s Natural History of Man,‖ the head of a figure—on page 157—the features of which so resemble those of my mother, that I often recur to it with something of the feeling which I suppose others experience when looking upon the features of dear departed ones.92

Douglass‘ readers who looked up that figure in Prichard‘s Natural History of Man, would have found an image of the pharaoh Ramses the Great (Figure 6, left).93 Douglass developed an extremely personal expression of the broader argument for ancestral connection between black Americans and ancient Egyptians: while in public he would argue that black people were, in general, descended from the Egyptians, in private

did not belong to the same branch of the human family that those negroes do, who have been the victims of the African Slave-trade for the past four centuries.‖ ―Thoughts on Hayti,‖ in Anglo-African Magazine 1 (1859): 6, quoted in Trafton, Egypt Land, 62-63. 90 Douglass, ―Claims of the Negro,‖ 234. 91 Morton, Crania Americana, 31. 92 Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), 52. 93 James Cowles Prichard, Natural History of Man: comprising inquiries into the modifying influences of physical and moral agencies on the different tribes of the human family (London: H. Baillière, 1843), 157. Prichard showed this image in the context of his discussion of the non-European appearance of the ancient Egyptians, which fit with his broader argument that the five races arrived at their current state through evolution over time from a single origin.

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Douglass claimed to remember the mother he lost in slavery by looking at the image of a

Pharaoh of Egypt.

But while Douglass saw a resemblance between Ramses II and his black

American mother, James McCune Smith pointed out in his introduction to My Bondage and My Freedom that white craniometrists saw something else entirely: ―The authors of the ‗Types of Mankind‘ give a side view of the same on page 148, remarking that the profile, ‗like Napoleon‘s, is superbly European!‘‖94 In other words, in the assessment of white racial scientists, the head of the same person was proof of the whiteness of the ancient Egyptians (Figure 6, right).95

94 James McCune Smith, introduction to Douglass, My Bondage, xxx. Smith, as the first African American to earn a medical degree, engaged directly in debates about phrenology on several occasions, including in his first series of public lectures in New York and Philadelphia, where he spoke to mixed-race audiences on the ―fallacy of phrenology.‖ Bay, White Image, 59-63; John Stauffer, introduction to The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. Stauffer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), xxi; Vogel, ReWriting White, 32. Unfortunately, we only know of these lectures through newspaper reports on them, which do not indicate whether or not he used mummies or sculptures as part of his argument. Although they had limited access to the scientific training required to directly counteract the ―evidence‖ of white racial scientists who argued for black inferiority, other antebellum black lecturers joined Smith in tackling the subject of ethnology, including Dr. John Rock (Bay, White Image, 56-58). 95 Although neither Prichard‘s nor Types of Mankind‘s images of Ramses were reproduced in My Bondage and My Freedom, when they are juxtaposed, we can see that they are actually images of different sculptures of the same pharaoh.

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Figure 6: (left) James Prichard, Natural History of Man (London: H. Baillière, 1843), Fig. 48. Google Books. (right) Josiah Nott and George Gliddon, Types of Mankind (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co, 1854), Fig. 62. Google Books.

Types of Mankind, published for one thousand subscribers in 1854, and in a larger edition in 1855, was the product of a collaboration between Gliddon, the provider of

Morton‘s Egyptian skulls, and Josiah Nott, an Alabama doctor who had taken a special interest in mummies as part of his analysis of black inferiority.96 Using evidence from

Egyptian mummies, Nott and Gliddon made a definitive case for their theory of

―polygenesis,‖ which divided humanity into multiple different species, with distinct origins reflected in their status in the present.97 For its mid-nineteenth-century American readers, the most important distinction discussed in the book was that between black and white people; and the most important associations were those that placed Egyptians,

96 Horsman, Josiah Nott, 89-91, 101-102; Fredrickson, Black Image, 78-79. The early popularity of Types of Mankind can be measured by the fact that it sold 3,500 copies in its first four months in print (Horsman, Josiah Nott, 179). 97 On American theories of polygenesis, and the conflicts with ―monogenesists‖ who relied on the biblical story of Adam and Eve to argue that all humanity had a shared origin, see Fredrickson, Black Image, 71-96; Horsman, Josiah Nott, 84-103.

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Greeks, and Romans in the same racial type as white Americans. Although its publication in 1854 predated Darwin‘s On the Origin of Species (1859), it remained in print for several decades, providing continued support for the idea of a fundamental, biological distinction between black and white people.98

The authors divided the labor of writing so that Josiah Nott was primarily responsible for the first part of the book (although Gliddon added to the text), while

Gliddon wrote the second and third parts.99 Even before he met Gliddon, Nott articulated the origins of his own interest in ethnology, and established his authority to speak on it:

Born in a slave State, and having passed [my] childhood and manhood in daily intercourse with the white and black races, it is but natural that [I] . . . should have become deeply impressed not only by the physical but also by the moral and intellectual differences which exist between them: nor is it less natural that a doubt as to their common origin should suggest itself to [my] min[d].100

Nott was raised as a member of South Carolina‘s white elite, and established his medical practice in Mobile, Alabama, where he himself owned a large number of slaves.101

Beginning in the mid-1840s, he also built a reputation as a lecturer on the subject of racial difference, always using examples from Gliddon and Morton‘s work on Egyptian antiquity to support his case for permanent black inferiority.102 The centrality of Egyptian race to his argument was established in the opening lines of a lecture he delivered in

1843:

98 Horsman, Josiah Nott, 170. A 10th edition was published in Philadelphia in 1871. For reviews of the work, which excited great attention among defenders of the biblical theory of the unity of mankind, see Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 163-173. 99 For more on their collaboration, see Horsman, Josiah Nott, 170-200. 100 Josiah C. Nott, Two Lectures on the Connection Between the Biblical and Physical History of Man, Delivered by Invitation, From the Chair of Political Economy, etc., of the Louisiana University, in December, 1848 (New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1849), 5. 101 For Nott‘s early life, training as a physician in Philadelphia, and early medical practice in South Carolina, in which his patients also included both slaveholders and slaves, see Horsman, Josiah Nott, 11- 36. The Mobile Census of 1840 (quoted in Horsman, Josiah Nott, 58), listed nine slaves in his household, which was a large number for a non-plantation owner. 102 e.g. Nott, Natural History, 11-17, 35-36; Nott, Biblical and Physical History, 29, 31, 37.

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Before entering upon the Natural History of the human race, it is indispensably necessary, as a preliminary step, to examine some points in chronology, and to take a glance at the early history of Egypt. I must show that the Caucasian or White, and the Negro races were distinct at a very remote date, and that the Egyptians were Caucasians. Unless this point can be established the contest must be abandoned.103

He did not feel the need to abandon the ―contest,‖ and in 1848, Nott told the Louisiana legislature, who had invited him to speak on the subject, that although he wished slavery could be ended, Negroes simply were not intelligent enough for freedom: ―Numerous attempts have been made to establish the intellectual equality of the dark races with the white; and the history of the past has been ransacked for examples, but they are nowhere to be found.‖104 Of course, his approach to understanding the races of men in the past employed a problematic circular logic—in an 1843 lecture, Nott determined from

Morton‘s study that

the conclusion to my mind, is irresistible, that the civilization of Egypt is attributable to these Caucasian heads; because civilization does not now and never has as far as we know from history, been carried to this perfection by any other race than the Caucasian—how can any reasoning mind come to any other conclusion?105

In Part I of Types of Mankind, Nott turned to different parts of the history of the world to argue for black inferiority, as part of an extended discussion of the different species of humanity. One particular image, placed near the end of Nott‘s section, encapsulated the phrenological and ancestry-oriented claims of the work (Figure 7).106

103 Nott, Natural History, 8. Italics original. 104 Nott, Biblical and Physical History, 31. Nott was the only one of the major figures of the American School of Ethnology to make explicit links in his public writing between the theory of the diversity of mankind and the political issue of slavery (Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 192-93). 105 Nott, Natural History, 16. 106 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 458. Charts with the Apollo Belvedere (or another classical sculpture) on one end, and an ape or monkey of some kind on the other, appeared in a variety of works before Types of Mankind, beginning, apparently, with a chart drawn by Petrus Camper in the 1770s (see Painter, White People, 65-66, and her Fig. 5.3).

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Nott juxtaposed profile views of the ―Apollo Belvedere,‖ a ―Negro,‖ and a ―Young

Chimpanzee,‖ each accompanied by profile views of defleshed crania from each

―species.‖

Figure 7: Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, Figs. 339-444. Google Books.

The primary visual argument at work was one of facial angles—or, more simplified, silhouettes. Those of the Apollo Belvedere, and the ―Greek‖ skull107 that accompanied it,

107 The woodcut was actually taken from Volume I of Prichard‘s Researches into the Physical History of Man, and was the skull of Constantine Demetriades, a man from Corfu who taught Modern Greek at Oxford (Meigs, ―Cranial Characteristics,‖ 310).

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were nearly vertical, in contrast to the others—indeed, at the angle it was depicted, the

―Creole Negro‖ skull revealed an even ―worse‖ silhouette than that of the ―Young

Chimpanzee.‖ The cultural associations between the beauty of the Apollo Belvedere and the intelligence that was the privilege of whiteness were further reinforced by the juxtaposition of the faces themselves. While America‘s black population was represented by the face of black man, the slippage between the white head of the Greek sculpture, and the head of a modern white American, was such that one could stand in for the other. This highlights how racial theorists ―did not generally apply the same rigorous standards of comparison to actual European heads and bodies, but this was because it was taken for granted that white Europeans were the legitimate progeny of the ideal classical type.‖108

The whiteness of the Apollo Belvedere‘s marble face—extending even to his hair—set him in a different category from the black man and the monkey, reinforcing the cultural connections between the two.109 More subtly, the positioning of the images, with the

Greek god literally above the others, reaffirmed the hierarchy of American culture.

Together, the color and the placement suggested that the black man was an intermediate species, between god-like white men, and animals—and closer to the latter than the former. Thus, in the instant of viewing, ―‗white‘ and ‗man‘ become conflated, and the

Negro drops to a liminal status, wavering between the realm of man and the realm of animals.‖110 Although Nott admitted that he had chosen extreme examples in this image,

108 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 11. 109 Jordan attributes this association to the coincidence that ―Englishmen were introduced to the anthropoid apes and to Negroes at the same time and in the same place (White Over Black, 29, and also 29-32, 228- 239, 490-510 for the persistence of this association). The geographical coincidence was emphasized by Nott and Gliddon‘s later work, Indigenous Races of the Earth, in which they devoted the final section of the work to showing how ―the most superior types of Monkeys are found to be indigenous exactly where we encounter races of some of the most inferior types of Men‖ (650). 110 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 9.

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he argued that ―each animal type has a centre around which it fluctuates—and such a head as the Greek is never seen on a Negro, nor such a head as that of the Negro on the

Greek.‖111

In addition to marble exempla from antiquity, Nott relied on mummy heads in his analysis, using them as proof of the fixity of the races. One of these came from a mummy in the Anatomical Museum of the University of New Orleans in Louisiana, whose head was illustrated in profile (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, Fig. 30. Google Books.

Nott did not pause over the image to explain what characteristics showed that it was

Caucasian, allowing his readers to infer from the profile they observed that the mummy

111 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 460. While Nott elsewhere argued that ancient Germans were the racial ancestors of modern white Americans (e.g. Biblical and Physical History, 37, 47—part of the broader racial Anglo-Saxonism of the first half of the nineteenth century, as discussed in Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny), the choice to focus on the Greeks here reflected an underlying sense that Greeks were ultimately the ancestors of modern white Americans. He made a similar choice in Indigenous Races of the Earth, where he asked, ―does anyone pretend . . . that carnal intercourse between an Eskimo and a Negress ever originated what we understand by a Greek . . . ?‖, using Greeks as the ultimate embodiment of Caucasian-ness (445, original italics).

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was indeed that of a white man.112 Elsewhere, Nott made a direct link between the appearance of Egyptian mummies and that of modern Americans:

Some of the heads we have selected as illustrative of the antiquity of a high ―Caucasian‖ type, might readily pass unnoticed at the present day in the streets of London, Paris, or New York; while others, again, are so strictly African, that the typical difference cannot be mistaken.113

Aside from eliding the existence of individuals of African descent in New York,114 this statement asserted a direct link between the populations of ancient Egypt and modern

America. Later, Nott reproduced the woodcut of the skull that Morton identified as a

―pure negro‖ in Crania Aegyptiaca (number 7 in Figure 5), stating that it ―establish[es]

Nigritian indelibility of type, even to the woolly hair; because, our American cemeteries could yield up thousands of heads identical with this woman‘s.‖115 While Nott imaginatively reanimated the Caucasian Egyptians, to place them alongside living New

Yorkers, he chose to contain the black mummy among the black American dead, in the same black cemeteries that were the source of medical school anatomy specimens. These

American comparisons emphasized the distinction between the races in the past and the present—and the pure whiteness of the ancient Egyptians.116

112 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 133. This particular mummy was unwrapped by Gliddon in Boston in 1850, and thus was not part of Morton‘s research on Egyptian crania. 113 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 233-34. Although they were not included in Nott and Gliddon‘s study, a note on page 314 indicated that Dr. Warren possessed ―two finely preserved Roman crania, from the ashes of Pompeii,‖ which Nott recalled as being ―highly characteristic of this division of the Pelasgic race.‖ 114 New York was presumably selected for this comparison at least in part because of its lower proportion of black residents in comparison to, for example, Nott‘s hometown of Mobile. The physical features of Mobile‘s black residents were also discussed as part of Nott‘s analysis (Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 259-60, 398). 115 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 267. 116 In their later work, Nott and Gliddon conceded that ―a certain but really infinitesimal and ephemeral quantum of Ethiopian and Nigritian blood had, through the importation of concubines, all along, from the XIIth Dynasty‖ been corrupting the blood of Egypt‘s rulers—certainly a distasteful admission for men as opposed to ―amalgamation‖ as they were (Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races, xx).

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Racial theorists like Nott and Gliddon, who argued for fixed biological differences between different types of people, did have some obstacles in their way, including a previous generation of scholarship by the likes of College of New Jersey president Samuel Stanhope Smith.117 In 1810, Smith published an enlarged edition of his

1787 Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human

Species, in which he acknowledged the observable differences between individuals, but argued that they represented only neutral adaptations to the different climates in which they and their ancestors lived, and could not be correlated to different races in ways that dictated their inherent intellectual and emotional capacities.118 In the years following

Smith‘s first presentation of his work as a lecture at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, the Essay had come under attack from a variety of sources.119 In his second edition he responded to these challenges, in particular a claim by English scholar

Charles White that the bones of black and white people were differently shaped. To disprove White‘s argument that black people had disproportionately long arms, Smith combined measurements taken by White and other scholars, with some of his own, in a table that compared the height of the individual with the length of one of the lower arm bones (Table 3):

117 On the continued influence of Smith‘s work, see Fredrickson, Black Image, 71-72; Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 177. 118 Jordan marks Smith‘s work as ―the first major American study of the races of mankind‖ (White Over Black, 486). Smith‘s argument represented the tail end of the popular eighteenth-century idea that the races evolved to their present states based on environmental circumstances, and therefore black people in the United States would, over time, evolve to look, act, and be the same as white Americans (on this theory and its demise, see Jordan, White Over Black, 512-541). In other words, Smith‘s general argument was effectively ―denying inherent inferiority yet conceding present inferiority‖ (Jordan, White Over Black, 509). 119 Samuel Stanhope Smith, An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: J. Simpson and Co., 1810), 3-7. For contemporary reactions to this work, see Jordan, White Over Black, 486-517; Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 15-23.

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Height of person. Length of ulna. Feet. Inches. Inches. The first is of a female measured 5 8 ½ 10 6.85 by Mr. White The second of a man by Mr. Ward 5 8 9 7/8 6.89 The third a female by Mr. Crozier 5 3 1/8 10 6.31 The fourth a male by Mr. Foxley 5 1 ¾ 10 6.18 The statue of the Venus de 5 9 ¾ 6.15 Medicis, framed according to the standard of perfect beauty conceived by the ancient artists, gives the following proportions An European woman measured by 5 8 ¾ 6.86 Mr. White Another European woman by Mr. 5 4 9 ¾ 6.56 White The following measures I have 5 2 3/5 9 ¼ 6.77 taken of four young women in Princeton—viz. two young ladies 5 8 9 3/5 7.08 A young black woman in my 4 9 ¼ 9 1/10 6.29 family Another young black woman, a 5 3 10 2/10 6.17 proportion not very different from that of the Venus de Medicis

Table 3: From Samuel Stanhope Smith, Essay on the Causes and Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: J. Simpson and Co., 1810), 261-262 (with additional column on far right, calculating the ratio between the two measurements)

While the figures generally revealed the fallacy of White‘s argument, Smith focused on the comparison between the final entry, that of a young black woman whose height to ulna ratio came the closest to that of the Medici Venus—the female counterpart to the

Apollo Belvedere, as an image of human perfection (Figure 3)—although she ―was perfectly black and removed by at least three, and probably four descents from her

African ancestors.‖120 Using the pinnacle of white female beauty, Smith showed that the

120 Smith, Essay on the Causes, 262.

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proportions of the Medici Venus could be found in a black female body, while at the same time, the widely ranging proportions of the other subjects disproved the correlation between the shape of the body and race.

Smith‘s arguments, based on the idea that environmental differences accounted for racial differences, were drowned out in later years, as the primary work of those who measured ancient and modern bodies served to reinforce the idea of innate differences between black and white people. The new racial science of the American School of

Ethnography came to dominate popular and scholarly understanding of the inexorable links between physical characteristics and intellectual and emotional capacities—what

Robert Young describes as ―a theory of a permanent natural apartheid,‖ that neither time nor legislation could erase.121 These arguments both relied upon and shaped preconceptions regarding the race of mummified ancient Egyptian bodies, and marble sculptures of Greek and Roman bodies, both of which were recruited to prove the fixity of racial types over time. Racial scientists consistently found that the bodies of mummies and sculptures corresponded to the ―white‖ phenotype, and served to reinforce the biological, ancestral connection between the great civilizations of the ancient

Mediterranean and modern white Americans. Thus, it was fitting that these two kinds of ancient bodies presided together over one of most important medical events of the century: when Dr. John Collins Warren performed the first operation using ether anesthesia on October 16, 1846, he did so under the watchful eyes of the mummy he had first studied in 1823, and of a sculpture of the Apollo Belvedere.122

121 Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), 129. 122 A series of mid-1840s daguerreotypes taken in the Massachusetts General Hospital‘s operating theater, now known as the ―Ether Dome,‖ in the mid-1840s show both the sculpture of the Apollo and the mummy 110

Ancient Bodies on Public Display

The challenges brought by individuals such as James McCune Smith, Samuel Stanhope

Smith, and Frederick Douglass against the links between ancient bodies and modern white Americans, worked directly within the medical discourse of racial science.

However, as mummies and sculptures were viewed by broader audiences in public lectures and exhibitions, the dominance of the medical discourse gave way to a wider set of approaches to understanding these ancient bodies. The lives of classical sculptures and

Egyptian mummies outside of medical examination rooms were equally bound up with the racial concerns of the early nineteenth century. The culture of public spectacle into which they were incorporated was one that offered unique opportunities for people of all classes, genders, races, and ages, to interact in an undifferentiated space. As such, it was a key location for working out social anxieties around issues such as status and group membership.

Alongside the birth of the United States as a country, a range of institutions of public culture were created, which made widely available the art, artifacts, and knowledge that had previously been confined to the houses and private organizations of the elite.123 Large cities, including Boston, Charleston, New York, and Cincinnati, housed

in this room. See images in Rajesh P. Haridas, ―Photographs of Early Anesthesia in Boston: The Daguerreotypes of Albert Southworth and John Hawes,‖ Anesthesiology 113, no. 1 (2010). The mummy was placed in the operating theater at some point after it was returned to the hospital following its tour of the United States in the 1820s. Bowditch, writing in 1851, said that ―This mummy is now an appropriate ornament of the operating room at the Hospital.‖ Nathaniel I. Bowditch, A History of the Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1851), 61. The sculpture of the Apollo was donated to the Massachusetts General Hospital, part of the Harvard Medical School, by classicist and politician Edward Everett in 1845, a year before he became President of Harvard (Bowditch, Massachusetts General Hospital, 185), and is shown in Figure 3, left. 123 David R. Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale’s Museum and its Audience (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995).

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institutions ranging from more serious organizations, such as art academies and Lyceums that hosted public lectures, to more raucous museums that displayed taxidermied mammals next to invented objects, such as Barnum‘s ―Feejee Mermaid‖ (made out of a monkey and a fish), and featured shows by traveling musicians and magicians.124 Smaller cities and towns hosted visiting lecturers and exhibits in their town halls, churches, and taverns.125 Despite their different content and tone, the cost of admission for these spectacles was generally between 25 and 50 cents, meaning that, theoretically, all but the poorest of laborers could share the same leisure activities as were patronized by the socioeconomic elite.126 This was part of a broader democratization of knowledge in this period, as the elite classes came to see it as their role to compile and make available works of great art, the wonders of the natural world, and the lessons of history. Motivated not so much by disinterested generosity, as by the desire to maintain influence within a society that was less and less under their control, the elites developed a ―conception of education [that] consisted of a didactic, moralizing approach,‖ as they condescended to share objects and information previously confined to their own houses and educational

124 For a concise overview of the development of the earliest American museums, and the European institutions that inspired them, see Edward P. Alexander, ―Early American Museums: From Collections of Curiosities to Popular Education‖ The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, 6 (1987). For the public lectures of the Lyceum Movement, see Donald M. Scott, ―The Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America.‖ Journal of American History 66 (1980). On the history and development of ―dime museums,‖ a term that can be used to distinguish these institutions from the publicly endowed museums of the second half of the nineteenth century, see Andrea S. Dennett, Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 10- 33. On the growth of art academies in the United States, see Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 77-85. 125 On lecture locations, see Scott, ―Popular Lecture,‖ 763. For the range of spaces in which traveling mummy exhibitions were held, see Wolfe, Mummies, 23-32. 126 Dennett finds that admission to ―dime museums‖ varied between 10 to 50 cents, and averaged 25 cents for adults, with children under 12 half-price (Weird and Wonderful, 8). Rockman states that the going rate for day laborers in Baltimore was, from the 1790s, $1/day, though he emphasizes that many laborers were not able to find regular work at this rate (Scraping By, 84); while women who worked as seamstresses in the early 1820s, at the bottom of the economic ladder in the gendered economy, might earn as little as 6 ¼ cents a day (140).

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institutions.127 Those with the money ―asserted their place as culturally interested citizens‖ by purchasing season memberships to museums, or subscribing in advance to lectures, in order to pay the costs of hiring and transporting exhibits and speakers that would be accessible to all for a small admission fee.128 The results were entertainments that ―could divert a heterogeneous audience while supporting the new industrial morality of hard work, temperance, and perseverance.‖129 Charles Wilson Peale, owner of what many regard as the first American museum, consciously catered to working audiences by providing artificial illumination to keep his museum open during the evening hours, ―To

Accommodate those who may not have leisure during the day light to enjoy the rational amusement which the various subjects of the museum afford.‖130

The spaces of museums and lecture halls represented ―neutral ground upon which all parties and conditions . . . meet,‖ where wage-laborers rubbed shoulders with powerful politicians, where everyone who paid had equal access to view or touch or hear the latest entertainment.131 However, this rhetoric of inclusivity obscured the extent to

127 Joel J. Orosz, Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990: 81. Orosz focuses particularly on Charles Wilson Peale‘s aims in creating his museum. 128 David R. Brigham, ―Social Class and Participation at Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum,‖ in Mermaids, Mummies, and Mastodons: The Emergence of the American Museum, ed. by William T. Alderson (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1992), 102. For example, an annual ticket at Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum in 1810 cost $10 (98) and at Boston‘s Columbian Museum in 1805 cost $5, compared to an admission price of 50 cents. Columbian Museum, Milk-Street, Boston (Boston: Josiah Ball, 1805), Early American Imprints Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker 8219. Nearly half a century later, subscribers to a series of eight lectures in Philadelphia in 1851 paid $3 in advance, and individual lectures could be attended for 50 cents. George R. Gliddon, Proposal. Printed for Private Circulation among Mr. Gliddon’s Friends (Philadelphia, 1850), 1. On the social, racial, and class makeup of subscribers to museums and lectures, see Brigham, ―Social Class‖; Scott, ―Popular Lecture.‖ 129 Dennett, Weird and Wonderful, 5. The popularity of the entertainment options provided by museums has been linked to the increased numbers of working-class boarders in major cities in the Eastern and Western United States (24, 35-36). 130 Aurora. General Advertiser, February 25, 1797, quoted in Brigham, Public Culture, 5. 131 ―Places of Public Amusement,‖ Putnam’s Monthly 3 (February 1854), 148-49, quoted in Scott, ―Popular Lecture,‖ 808. On the diversity of these audiences, see Scott, ―Popular Lecture,‖ 783, 800-801; Dennett, Weird and Wonderful, 4-5.

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which the audiences were overwhelmingly urban and Anglo-Saxon.132 The collective experience of these audiences helped to reinforce their understanding of themselves as

―the public,‖ and to normalize the exclusion of immigrants, black Americans, American

Indians, and the working poor from the American body politic.133 Rules about who could enter museums varied, but there certainly were active restrictions against black admittance. A rare glimpse at these restrictions comes from Barnum‘s American Museum in New York City in 1849, which posted the following ad in New York City papers:

NOTICE TO PERSONS OF COLOR—In order to afford respectable colored persons an opportunity to witness the extraordinary attractions at present exhibited at the Museum, the Manager has determined to admit this class of people on Thursday morning next, March 1, from 8 A.M. till 1 P.M.134

Museum attendance by members of marginalized groups was further limited by cultural factors.135 The low proportion of black attendance at museums comes out strikingly in

David Brigham‘s study of visitors to Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum, in which he was able to locate hundreds of individual visitors to the museum, but could only identify one black visitor, ―Mr. Shaw‘s Blackman,‖ who had his silhouette traced at the museum in 1802.136

Lectures were similarly restricted, as evidenced by the care that phrenologist George

132 Within the broader category of lectures and museum entertainment, different types of institutions attracted different classes of visitors. For instance, Scott notes that lecture audiences were primarily middle class (―Social Class,‖ 809), while Dennett notes that large working class audiences sustained museums (Weird and Wonderful, xii). See also Brigham, Public Culture, which looks at various indicators for who went to Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. 133 Brigham notes that museum visits by Native Americans were rare enough to attract attention in the press (Public Culture, 30). 134 New York Atlas, February 25, 1849, and New York Tribune, February 27, 1849, both quoted in James W. Cook, The Colossal P.T. Barnum Reader: Nothing else like it in the Universe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 6. Additional indications of restrictions on black museum entrance come from the Washington Museum in New York City, which excluded ―people of colour‖ from its evening hours (Brigham, Public Culture, 30), and from Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum, which also restricted black American access in the evenings. Charles C. Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Wilson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980), 289-90. 135 These are harder to access, but relate to the ways in which spaces and experiences were coded as the property of different groups, and either unwelcoming or uninteresting to other groups. 136 Brigham, Public Culture, 70-71. The designation of this individual as only the possession of ―Mr. Shaw‖ suggests that he was not visiting on his own, but rather in the company of his master or owner.

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Combe took not to upset his white audiences, when he instructed a young black man who wished to attend his lectures in Philadelphia to stand near the back door, so that other audience members would assume he was simply a servant waiting for his master.137

Although some black Americans made record of their visits to museums and attendance at public lectures—and black businessman James Forten even owned a share of Peale‘s

Philadelphia Museum—the numbers were disproportionately small in comparison with the overall museum-going population.138

Museums, galleries, and lecture series thus represented public rituals that created and defined an American public that was rhetorically inclusive, but in practice extended primarily to those Americans who were white and middle class. This public was nationalized by the fact that the same speakers and exhibits toured from city to city, serving to knit together a national community as residents of different cities viewed and heard the same objects and ideas, engaging in a collective experience that they were aware that they shared.139 ―Coming attractions‖ were previewed by news of how they had been received in other cities, and for months after speakers and exhibitions had left, stories of their adventures in later cities were reported in newspapers. The topics of these lectures and exhibitions were also important in drawing the boundaries of the American public, as they delineated and made sense of the knowledge and objects that belonged to the nation.140 In particular, artifacts and images representing European civilization

137 Fabian, Skull Collectors, 98. 138 Forten purchased his share from Edmund Peale in 1839 (Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum, 290). 139 Scott, ―Social Class,‖ 808. Although the institutions of museums and public lectures were certainly more popular in the North and West, I believe the extent to which the South was excluded from these national spectacles can be overstated. Each of the exhibitions and lecture series discussed in this chapter were presented in the North, West, and South. 140 Steven Conn discusses Thomas Jefferson‘s donation of the minerals collected on Lewis and Clarke‘s expedition to Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum as an illustration of the link between natural history museums 115

provided a noble lineage for white American achievement, while ―artifacts of human difference‖ supported a process by which white Americans took possession of knowledge about the nonwhite peoples of the United States and the world.141 Institutions of public culture were themselves framed in national terms, as Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum exhibited in the Pennsylvania State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, beginning in 1802, and P. T. Barnum named his New York institution the

―American Museum.‖142

But within these overarching structures, audience members were at liberty to determine for themselves the value of what they saw and heard. Neil Harris describes antebellum museum exhibitions and performances as functioning within an ―operational aesthetic,‖ which he defines as ―a delight in observing process and examining for literal truth.‖143 Combined with the broader culture of scientific advances that defined the era, and the democratic philosophy that honored each man‘s personal judgment, this approach to objects and performances ―structured problems of experiencing the exotic and unfamiliar by reducing that experience to a simple evaluation‖—an evaluation that was

and the rhetoric of the American nation. Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 34. 141 Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Western versus Non-Western division crystallized into the categories of history/art versus science (see Conn, American Intellectual Life, 87-95). On the use of ―artifacts of human difference‖ to delineate the boundaries of the national community, see Brigham, Public Culture, 122. When African Americans were presented in museums, it was generally in ways that marked them as freaks, or even linked them to animals, as with P.T. Barnum‘s exhibition of ―What is it?‖ which opened in 1860. Dennett, Weird and Wonderful, 30-31; James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 121-162. A rare African American artifact was the ―African Bow‖ of a South Carolina slave, displayed at Peale‘s Museum, which supported a patriotic narrative because it was supposedly used against the British-occupied house of the slave‘s owners during the Revolutionary War (Brigham, Public Culture, 124-125). 142 Brigham, Public Culture, 16, 48-49, 56. 143 Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 79.

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aimed at determining whether or not something was ―real.‖144 Crucially, this was a question that each viewer could answer for themselves, as exemplified by P.T. Barnum‘s response to a visitor‘s question of ―is it real or is it humbug?‖: ―That‘s just the question: persons who pay their money at the door have a right to form their own opinions after they have got up stairs.‖145 Within these contexts, visitors to Barnum‘s and other museums could also ―form their own opinions‖ about the races of ancient bodies on display.

While both classical sculptures and Egyptian mummies were frequently displayed in these general museums of curiosity, Greco-Roman sculptures were also on view in the cast galleries of art academies (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Statuary Gallery, Boston Athenaeum, c. 1867, Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views, New York Public Library.

144 Harris, Humbug, 78. This preoccupation is revealed in the anecdote at the start of this chapter, in which the scientific gentlemen ask ―Are you a genuine Mummy?‖ 145 Quoted in Harris, Humbug, 77.

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Articulating a vision of a new, culturally sophisticated nation, Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1787 Notes on the State of Virginia of the need to ―begin a public library and gallery, by laying out a certain sum annually in books, paintings, and statues,‖146 and by the first years of the nineteenth century, groups in several East Coast cities were doing just that.

Sending their orders with travelers on the Grand Tour, or relying on the serendipity of the pieces sent to them, places such as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the American

Academy of Fine Arts in New York, and Cincinnati‘s School of Design for Women, began to amass collections of white plaster casts of classical sculptures.147 The casts were used for sketching and modeling training at the academies, and they were also exhibited to the public, along with the work of American artists, for a cost of around 25 cents.148 It was in these settings that ―[m]any citizens of the new Republic got their first, if rather indirect, contact with classical art.‖149 The sculptures they encountered, in particular the

146 Jefferson, Notes, 275. 147 Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 77-85; Crane, White Silence, 10-16; Wayne Craven, Sculpture in America, rev. ed. (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 84; Dyson, Ancient Marbles, 23; Vance, America’s Rome, I: 203-204; Edgar P. Richardson, ―Allen Smith, Collector and Benefactor,‖ American Art Journal 1, no. 2 (1969). Philadelphia‘s first academy, the Columbianum, opened its cast gallery in 1795 with a borrowed cast of Venus; and the later Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts opened in 1807, featuring casts donated by Joseph Allen Smith, as well as a collection selected specifically for the academy by Nicholas Biddle, which included the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoön, and the Medici Venus. ―Catalogue of Statues and Busts in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.‖ The Port Folio, 3 (1807). New York‘s American Academy of Fine Arts opened in 1803, with casts of ancient sculptures procured by Robert and Edward Livingston, using the funds raised by a subscription drive; and Samuel F.B. Morse helped create the National Academy of Design in 1826. Other early-nineteenth-century cast galleries included the Boston Athenaeum (which started collecting casts in 1822) and Charleston‘s South Carolina Academy of Fine Arts (founded in 1821). 148 Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 81, 84. There was a certain amount of overlap between the display functions of art academies and museums, as an extensive cast collection was displayed in Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum in 1804-1810, before being incorporated into the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Guide to the Philadelphia Museum (Philadelphia: Museum Press, 1805), Early American Imprints Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker 9106, p.8. Similarly, at Boston‘s Columbian Museum, classical figures were displayed alongside natural curiosities. Columbian Museum, Milk-Street, Boston (Boston: J. Ball, 1804) Early American Imprints Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker 6053. 149 Dyson, Ancient Marbles, 22.

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Apollo Belvederes and Medici Venuses that were found in all major cast collections

(Figure 3), served as three-dimensional reinforcements of perfections of whiteness attributed to them by racial theorists.

As representatives of ancient white beauty, classical casts were seen as models of ideal (white) American health. Medical doctors were invited to lecture at art academies, using the casts as examples of healthful bodies.150 White American women were urged to emulate the un-corseted shapes of the ancient women, through diagrams such as the one published in the American Phrenological Journal in 1852 (Figure 10).

Figure 10: A.P. Dutcher, “Anatomy and Physiology of the Organs of Respiration, No. II,” American Phrenological Journal 16 (1852), American Periodicals Series Online.

150 For the practice of medical anatomy lecturers in art academies, see Donald R. Thayer, ―Early Anatomy Instruction at the National Academy: The Tradition Behind It,‖ American Art Journal 8 (May 1976). Dr. John Bell, a proponent of phrenology, lectured on anatomy at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Colbert, Measure of Perfection, 74).

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In images such as this, the white body of the ancient goddess was presented as an appropriate model for a modern white American woman—the visual contrast was one of health, between two figures united by race. In general, the link between classical (and neoclassical) sculpture and white race was such that an anti-slavery author satirically warned sculptors that ―A black Apollo, whatever the symmetry of his proportions, the majesty of his attitude, or the divinity of his air, would meet with great good fortune if it escaped mutilation, or at least defilement,‖ and advised them to cover any dark statues with whitewash.151

At the same time, mummified Egyptian bodies were subject to this same racialist gaze when they were exhibited in American cities. Although they were occasionally displayed in art academies,152 mummies more commonly found homes in museums of natural history and curiosity. For instance, at Barnum‘s American Museum in New York, in the 1850s, an Egyptian mummy was displayed on the fourth floor, alongside

Norwegian snowshoes, ―a ball of hair found in the stomach of a sow, and a collection of shoes and slippers.‖153 In these spaces, visitors could stare at bodies that offered an even closer connection with the ancient world than classical sculpture. The fact that these were

―the men themselves—they are the personages, preserved in human form,‖ distinguished from ―All other antiques [which] are but the works of man,‖ brought with it a certain set

151 ―Prejudice against Color,‖ Anti-Slavery Almanac, 1, no. 6 (1841): 9, quoted in Wendy J. Katz, Regionalism and Reform: Art and Class Formation in Antebellum Cincinnati (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2002), 162. An article from the Philadelphia Citizen, which described an enslaved black man in Georgia as being ―in form an Apollo Belvedere,‖ directly played with this taboo, ennobling the man by associating him with the figure of Apollo (reprinted in The Emancipator, November 25, 1846). 152 The first venue in which an Egyptian mummy was displayed outside of Boston was New York‘s Academy of Fine Arts (Wolfe, Mummies, 23). 153 Dennett, Weird and Wonderful, 33.

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of possibilities for interpreting and understanding their status as the creators of

―civilization,‖ and their presence in America.154

The earliest recorded mummified Egyptian body part in the United States was a hand that was sent to the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1767, as a gift from neoclassical painter Benjamin West.155 West, a former resident of the city, had been living and working in England, and presumably would have encountered some of the mummies known to be in England since at least 1722. His reasons for sending the mummified hand are unknown, but the minutes of the Board of the Library Company described it as ―being a real & valuable curiosity.‖156 Despite its value as a curiosity, however, it seems not to have excited much attention in the 1760s, since no further reactions to this object were recorded.

Much greater enthusiasm greeted the exhibition of mummies in the 1820s. The first of these was the mummy examined by Dr. Warren, at the Massachusetts General

Hospital, in 1823. Following Warren‘s race-laden ―authentication‖ of the mummified body, it was put on display in Mr. Doggett‘s Repository of the Arts, as a fundraiser for the

Boston Dispensary, a free public clinic.157 Far exceeding expectations, the mummy was displayed for several months in Boston, attracting an audience of ―Clergy, Literati,

Legislators, and Ladies,‖ according to The Columbian Centennial.158 Over the next year, the mummy was displayed in New York City, Richmond, Charleston, Augusta, Savannah,

Philadelphia, Baltimore, Albany, and Providence, revealing the extent and nature of

154 From a placard used to advertise a mummy exhibition in Kirkland, Ohio, described in ―Egyptian Antiquities,‖ Times and Seasons 2 (1842): 774, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 112. 155 Wolfe, Mummies, 7. 156 Library Company Minutes, 14 December, 1767, vol. 1, p. 253, Library Company of Philadelphia. 157 Wolfe, Mummies, 13-22. 158 Quoted in Wilson, ―Thebes to Springfield,‖ 30.

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American interest in ancient Egyptian bodies.159 This interest would be reaffirmed in the display of the dozens of other mummies that came to the United States in subsequent years, when they became an essential part of the collections of museums.

Reactions to mummy exhibitions revealed the visual impact that the black skin of the mummies had in the highly racialized United States. Whereas Dr. Warren, as did other doctors who subsequently examined mummies, took pains to explain away the color of the skin, and at times even avoided using the word ―black‖ at all, casual visitors had different reactions. When the mummy Warren examined traveled to Baltimore, a letter from a Charlestonian to his friend in Georgia (later reprinted in several newspapers), described it as ―Dark and unlovely‖;160 while another report first described it as having ―a black face‖ and later stated ―it was black.‖161 The habit continued well into the 1830s, when Josiah Quincy, after seeing a group of mummies owned by the Mormons, described them as ―shrunken and black with age.‖162 Of the same mummies, Christopher Crary recalled, ―They were not very pleasing objects to look up—fried skeletons and as black as coal tar. Whether this was from age, the materials for embalming, or were real

Negroes, I could not tell.‖163

While these viewers of mummies accepted the blackness of the skin as a given, and speculated in print that the bodies were those of black men and women (in the

American racial sense), others were so desperate to un-blacken mummies that they tried

159 Wolfe, Mummies, 23-32. 160 Georgian, March 27, 1824, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 27; Saturday Evening Post, April 24, 1824 (repr. from the Charleston City Gazette). 161 ―The Mummy,‖ Saturday Evening Post, July 10, 1824 (from the Winchester Republican). 162 Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals, 386-87, quoted in H. Donl Peterson, The Story of the Book of Abraham; Mummies, Manuscripts, and Mormonism (Springfield, UT: Cedar Fort, Inc., 1995), 187. 163 C. Crary, Pioneer and Personal Reminiscences (Marshalltown, IA: Marshall Printing Company, 1893), 33, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 118.

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to identify them with specific individuals in classical (and hence prototypically white) history. A mummy‘s head that was later given to Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum experienced an intense period of interest when its owner, Reverend Thomas Hall, declared it to be the head of Roman general Pompey the Great.164 In 1835, a newspaper article suggested another mummy might be ―the mother of Agamemnon, for aught that appears,‖165 referring to the Greek hero of the Trojan War. Such attributions reflected a desire to associate mummies with ancient cultures more readily assimilated within the white American story.

The respect shown to the bodies of the dead Egyptians on display in museums and galleries represented a dramatic contrast to lack of respect given to the bodies of black

Americans, dead or alive. Antiquarian John Fanning Watson, on encountering a mummy for the first time, exclaimed ―Statue of flesh, come prithee tell us!‖166 linking the body directly to the classical and neoclassical sculptures on view elsewhere in his city— sculptures that only ever depicted great white men, white female allegories, or Greco-

Roman gods. Watson and others longed for the mummy to teach its ancient wisdom, a request they would never make of a black American man or woman. As an article about a mummy unwrapping, in the abolitionist newspaper The North Star put it, ―it would be bad taste enough to be paying great respect to the corpse of a nigger, if it be royal.‖167 No doubt some of the appeal and uncanniness of the encounter with the Egyptian mummies,

164 Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), June 2, 1820, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 11-12. The Roman general Pompey was indeed beheaded in Egypt, according to Roman historians, and Hall focused on one particular ancient source that suggested that his body had been buried rather than burned, as would have been customary. 165 Cleveland Whig, March 28, 1835, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 108. 166 Watson manuscript and scrapbook, c. 1830, Library Company of Philadelphia, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 29. 167 ―Were the Thebans Negroes,‖ The North Star (Rochester, NY), June 27, 1850.

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which thousands of white Americans sought out in the early nineteenth century, was due to this contrast, and the excitement that it caused.168

The first recorded reaction of a black viewer of an Egyptian mummy appeared in an anonymous piece in Freedom’s Journal in 1827.169 Inspired by his encounter with the mummy, the author launched into a wide-ranging exploration of many of the key points that would form the basis of his discussion of the nature of ―the black race‖ and the evils of slavery.170 His piece opened with a face-to-face encounter with what he perceived to be one of his ancestors:

During a recent visit to the Egyptian Mummy, my thoughts were insensibly carried back to former times when Egypt was in her splendor, and the only seat of chivalry, science, arts and civilization. As a descendant of Cush, I could not but mourn over her present degradation, while reflecting upon the mutability of human affairs, and upon the present condition of a people, who, for more than one thousand years, were the most civilized and enlightened.171

The unnamed author reacted to the experience of being in the presence of the mummy, connecting the biblical Ham‘s son Cush to the ancient Egyptians, and in turn to contemporary black Americans. Ham and his many sons featured frequently in the discussions of the origin and nature of the black race. Cush was one of these sons—not

168 Sappol notes a similar phenomenon with female dissection subjects in medical schools (Traffic in Dead Bodies, 85-88). 169 ―Mutability of Human Affairs,‖ published in three parts in issues 4, 5, and 6 of Freedom’s Journal. The author‘s name was not given, but since it was common in this period for editors to publish their opinions anonymously—or rather as ―the opinion of the paper‖—it is quite possible that either of the editors, John Russwurm or Samuel Cornish—or both of them—had a hand in writing this piece (this is the assumption, for example of Bacon‘s [Freedom’s Journal, 150, 157] and Bay‘s [White Image, 26] discussions of the article). While the identity of the author is not a part of my argument, I do assume it to have been written by a black man, due to the author‘s self-description as a ―descendent of Cush,‖ combined with the male domination of black literary production in this period. 170 Trafton states that this visit took place in the summer of 1824, and was to Rembrandt Peale‘s Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts in Baltimore (Trafton, Egypt Land, 222). Moses, Dain, and Martin place the visit in 1826, at Peale‘s Museum in New York (Moses, Afrotopia, 51; Dain, Hideous Monster, 129; Martin, ―Can the Mummy Speak?‖, 113). Wolfe, who has produced the most comprehensive listing of mummy exhibitions in the nineteenth-century United States, is less confident about which mummy the author of the Freedom’s Journal article may have seen, and suggests that it was most likely to have been the one on display in John Scudder‘s museum in New York (personal communication, January 2010). 171 ―Mutability of Human Affairs,‖ issue 4.

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the cursed Canaan, but the son whose name was associated with the land also known as

Ethiopia or Nubia, further up the Nile, to the south of Egypt. In linking him here to the ancient Egyptians, the anonymous author made an intrvention into the debate about which of the descendents of Noah founded Egypt—and whether they were more black or more white.

His emphasis on Egypt‘s splendor, chivalry, science, art, civilization, and enlightenment, fit in with the broader civilizationist discourse of the time, and provided a crucial contrast to the predominant image of black people as savages.172 The author lamented:

Mankind generally allow that all nations are indebted to the Egyptians for the introduction of the arts and sciences; but they are not willing to acknowledge that the Egyptians bore any resemblance to the present race of Africans; though Herodotus, ―the father of history,‖ expressly declares that the ―Egyptians had black skins and frizzled hair.‖173

In the rest of the article, he repeatedly pointed out the similarities between the ancient cultures of Egypt and Ethiopia (Cush), the land he looked to as his direct ancestor, and whose status as a black land was unassailable. For instance, he noted that both Egypt and

Ethiopia had developed a social structure with ―orders of priesthood,‖ ―writing,‖ a king, a

―philosophy‖ led by wise men who ―were remarkable for their contempt of death.‖ A black Ethiopia thus blackened a more ambiguous Egypt, creating an oblique claim that allowed the author to refer to Egypt and Ethiopia as more or less the same thing, and assimilating both into the ethnic history of black Americans. The human body of the

172 Moses, Afrotopia, 21-35, discusses this tradition of ―vindicationism‖ and ―contributionism,‖ which focused on the existence of African civilizations, refuting the popular image of Africa as a land of savage tribes. 173 ―Mutability of Human Affairs,‖ issue 4.

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Egyptian mummy represented an actual creator of Egyptian civilization, embodying the achievements of black American ancestors.

Overall, the version of ancient Egypt presented in the article conformed to the image of a ―noble‖ ancestral past, so important as a foundation point for the development of a positive black identity in the United States. Nevertheless, the body of the mummy itself—robbed from its tomb and on display in an American city—testified to the violation and commodification of even that noble past: ―But her kings, to preserve whose bodies from sacrilegious hands, they were erected, where are they? Have they not been torn from their ‗vaulted sepulchers,‘ and exhibited to a gazing world? Have not they too been bought and sold?‖174 This last phrase forcibly wrenched the romantic consideration of the mummy into the brutal world of American slavery. The clearest reference here was, of course, to the black bodies that were being bought and sold in the United States in the context of slavery and slave markets.175 However, the bodies of free black Americans were also turned into a market commodity in this period by the insatiable appetites of medical schools for cadavers for anatomical dissection.176 In each case—mummy, slave, and medical specimen—the violation represented by the theft of the body was compounded by its destiny, which was to be ―rendered inferior by virtue of the exhibition before those who are consequently exalted by the display.‖177 The black author‘s identification with the mummy he encountered showed that there was no question in his mind that beneath the bandages lay an African brother.

174 Italics original. 175 See Johnson, Soul by Soul. 176 Nudelman (John Brown’s Body, 41-42) and Sappol (Traffic in Dead Bodies, 44-45), list several examples of the theft of black bodies, and Fett (Working Cures, 152-157) discusses the impact of these practices on black attitudes towards doctors in the South. 177 Martin, ―Can the Mummy Speak?‖, 116. The audiences in both the museums and the dissection rooms would also have been primarily or exclusively white.

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The location of this article leant additional significance to its contents. It was published in three parts, beginning in the fourth issue of Freedom’s Journal, the first black-run newspaper in the United States. Founded by Samuel Cornish and John

Russwurm, Freedom’s Journal was published in New York City from 1827 to 1829, and distributed throughout the United States.178 Its existence and aims derived from the critical mass achieved by the free black American community in New York and in the

United States,179 as well as an awareness of ―the expediency of its appearance at this time, when so many schemes are in action concerning our people‖180—referring to the contemporary movements related to abolition, African colonization, and black equality.

Although the paper was relatively short-lived, its impact in creating cohesion and a sense of belonging among free African American communities throughout the eastern United

States should not be underestimated. Benedict Anderson‘s observation—that ―the very conception of the newspaper implies the refraction of even ‗world events‘ into a specific imagined world of vernacular readers; and also how important to that imagined community is an idea of steady, solid simultaneity through time‖—helps us to understand how print technology can be one of the key elements in effectively building ―imagined communities,‖ and how analysis of a newspaper can teach us about the nature of such a community.181 Freedom’s Journal was consciously designed to serve as an avenue for

178 See Bacon (Freedom’s Journal, 51-54), on evidence for the distribution and readership of Freedom’s Journal. 179 The list of agents contained in the first issue of Freedom’s Journal, indicates there was support for the project from the outset in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington, D.C., New York, and New Jersey. See Bacon (Freedom’s Journal, 13-35) and Dain (Hideous Monster, 119-123) on the context in which Freedom’s Journal was created. 180 Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm, ―To Our Patrons,‖ Freedom’s Journal 1, no.1 (1827). 181 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 63. See Bacon (Freedom’s Journal, 1-3) on the significance of the black press to the free black community.

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black American communication of ideas to both internal and external audiences on a national scale.182

In this context, we can explore how ―Mutability of Human Affairs‖ fulfilled the goals of the newspaper. One of the messages the editors of Freedom’s Journal wanted to communicate to their audiences concerned the glories of ancient Egypt, and the connection between the presumptive birthplace of ―civilization‖ and contemporary peoples of African descent living in the United States.183 The anonymous author of

―Mutability of Human Affairs‖ achieved this by grounding his linkage between glorious ancient Egypt, and the degraded state of the modern black race, in the body of an

Egyptian mummy that he had ―visited‖ in the United States.

While this piece in Freedom’s Journal prepared its readers to view the mummies they encountered in museums as black, the life of the mummy as a curiosity was in general framed by the medical discourse of racial science, as can be seen in the ways that exhibitions were advertised, how mummies were interpreted within galleries and other exhibition spaces, and how spectators recorded their impressions. Following the pattern established by Dr. Warren‘s examination of the Massachusetts General Hospital‘s mummy, doctors were regularly called upon to establish the authenticity of mummies newly arrived in the United States.184 These statements were then displayed alongside the

182 Cornish and Russwurm envisioned two audiences for their paper: free black Americans, who suffered from ―minds contracted by slavery, and deprived of early education,‖ and who were in need of the paper‘s efforts ―for the moral, religious, civil and literary improvement of our injured race,‖ and white Americans or ―the publick [which has] been deceived by misrepresentations. . . . From the press and the pulpit‖ (―To Our Patrons‖). 183 On the themes of Egypt and Ethiopia in Freedom’s Journal, see Bacon, Freedom’s Journal, 149-159 and Dain, Hideous Monster, 123-136. 184 For example, Dr. Warren, Dr. Abraham R. Thompson, and Dr. J. Stearns Hurd all examined the mummy that Larkin Turner brought to the United States in 1824 (Wolfe, Mummies, 35); seven Philadelphia doctors examined a group of mummies owned by Michael Chandler in 1833 (Wolfe, Mummies, 103-104); and a 128

mummies, or shared in advance in newspaper advertisements. For example, the first mummy to tour the states was accompanied by an excerpt from Dr. Warren‘s analysis, which served as a certification of its authenticity; his article in the Boston Philosophical

Journal was also reprinted in full as a separate pamphlet, and quoted extensively in newspaper accounts related to the exhibition of the mummy in various parts of the United

States.185

We can gain a glimpse of how this information was received by someone who viewed the mummy displays from the diary of William Slade. Slade, who saw the

Massachusetts General Hospital mummy in Boston in 1823, wrote: ―Has turned black.

Said to be, when alive, red, just the color and likeness on the coffin.‖186 His statement indicated the way in which the evidence of his eyes—the mummy is black—was countered by Dr. Warren‘s analysis—that the mummy used to be red—which may have been ―said‖ in oral as well as written form at the exhibition.

Interpretive materials distributed at mummy exhibitions echoed the language of

Warren‘s description of the mummy in 1823 by highlighting a set of phenotypical markers that indicated race. For instance, the pamphlet accompanying a mummy displayed in New York in 1824 was based on a medical analysis by Dr. Samuel L.

Mitchell, and directed visitors‘ attention to only five features of the body on display, four of which were ―racial‖ attributes of the body:

1. The many folds and wrappers of cloth with which it is enfolded or shrouded. 2. The dusky colouring derived from the embalming materials, the composition of which is unknown to moderns. 3. The conversion of the scalp and of the face by mummy brought to the United States by John L. Hodge was ―submitted to the inspection of a number of physicians,‖ according to the Rhode Island American, June 10, 1825, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 135. 185 Wolfe, Mummies, 16-29. Another example is the medical testimony on the placard that accompanied later exhibitions of mummies by Michael Chandler (Wolfe, Mummies, 112). 186 William Slade, ―Journal‖, September 23, 1823, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 21.

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an incorporation of the embalming materials with skin and flesh, into a black mass, called in the strictness of language, mummy. 4. The perfect condition of the hair, of a bright chesnut or auburn color, turned somewhat gray, but straight and fine and perfectly free from crisping or frizzling. 5. The admirable soundness and whiteness of the teeth.187

Overall, Mitchell seemed intent not on proving the whiteness of the mummy, but on proving its non-blackness, through detailed enumeration of phenotypical markers associated with race.

The focus on physical markers of race, analyzed through the methods of phrenology, was also apparent in an account of four mummies that were exhibited in

Ohio, signed by the humble moniker ―Farmer.‖188 The author noted of one of the mummies, ―the head indicating motherly goodness,‖ and another had ―superior head, it will compare in the regions of the sentiments with any in our land; passions mild.‖ But phrenology also indicated negative traits, and ―Farmer‖ went on to describe the last mummy as follows:

The head approximates to the form of the orang outang. The occipated and bazillar regions very large; the head indicating a person of the lowest grade of human beings. Slander, fight, and devotion to the passions were undoubtedly peculiar traits in her character.

The terms here resonated specifically with those used to characterized black Americans— monkey-like and of the lowest grade of human beings—but the mummy was the best wrapped of all the examples. ―Farmer‖ used this fact to prove a broader point: ―Is not this circumstance an intimation to us that rank was not according to merit—that superiority in station did not follow from superiority of mind, but from extraneous circumstances.‖

187 Egyptian Mummy, With Its Sarcophagus (New York: E. Conrad, 1824), quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 50. Another example of this language can be found in a pamphlet distributed at the exhibition of a mummy in upstate New York, which stated, ―It is of a dusky colour, derived from the embalming materials, and not the original colour; the hair is sandy and perfectly strait.‖ (Egyptian Mummy (Ithaca, NY: A.P. Searing & Company, 1827), quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 56. 188 Painesville Telegraph, March 27, 1835, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 109-110.

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Even if phrenology suggested that a black person held a high station in ancient Egypt, this viewer found a way to argue that she did so without merit.

Phrenology was also put to use in racializing the heads of Greco-Roman sculptures. In Herman Melville‘s popular lectures on ―Statues in Rome,‖ he applied a more lighthearted, but no less racialized brand of phrenology to the famous sculptures of

Greece and Rome:

The head of Julius Caesar fancy would paint as robust, grand, and noble; something that is elevated and commanding, typical of the warrior and statesman. But the statue gives a countenance of a businesslike cast that the present practical age would regard as a good representation of the President of the New York and Erie Railroad, or any other magnificent corporation. And such was the character of the man—practical, sound, grappling with the obstacles of the world like a giant.189

Each description mapped the face of a modern white American onto that of the classical sculpture, emphasizing the resemblance between the two.

Straightforward readings of marble sculptures that connected them to white

Americans were interrupted by Hiram Power‘s sculpture The Greek Slave, which was first exhibited in the United States in 1847 (Figure 11).

189 Herman Melville, The Piazza Tales, and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860, eds. Harrison Hayford, Alma A. McDougall, and G.Thomas Tanselle (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1987), 400-401; see also pp. 518-522 for information on the lecture tour itself. Melville had a deep interest in phrenology, which was evident throughout his work. Samuel Otter, Melville’s Anatomies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

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Figure 11: Hiram Power, The Greek Slave, 1843. Copy from 1846, Corcoran Gallery of Art.

In this work, the neoclassical sculptor portrayed the body of a young Greek woman captured by the Turks, referring to the Ottoman rule over Greece. More than a decade after the Greek War of Independence spurred myriad demonstrations of white and black

American affiliation to Greece as an ancestral homeland, it remained a popular subject of romantic storytelling.190 Remarking on the exceptional popularity of The Greek Slave,

Caroline Winterer writes that ―[t]he statue derived its power from collapsing into the

190 Crane, White Silence, 203. See Chapter 1 for more discussion of American interest and participation in the Greek War.

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familiar classical female form three overlapping American preoccupations of the period

1830-1860: black chattel slavery, women‘s rights, and the liberation of modern Greeks from Turkish rule;‖191 while Charles Colbert shows the centrality of the sculpture to phrenological discourses of (white) American bodily perfection.192 But there was another, crucial aspect to the power of this piece: the way in which it played with the racial significance of classical sculpture in the United States.

Powers was an American artist, who worked in Washington, D.C., in the mid-

1830s as a portrait sculptor, creating busts of President Andrew Jackson, Senator John C.

Calhoun of South Carolina, and other prominent politicians, in which they were represented wearing togas.193 In 1837, he joined American sculptors such as Horatio

Greenough and Thomas Crawford by moving to Italy, where the inspirations of classical sculpture were close at hand, marble was cheap, and inexpensive but skilled artisans could assist their work. Like most of his contemporaries, the majority of Powers‘ work at his studio in Florence consisted of commissioned portrait busts.194 But three of his most famous works, Eve, The Greek Slave, and The Fisher Boy, were all classically inspired nudes.

Although the subject of The Greek Slave was purportedly modern, the combination of the classical style, the white marble, and the label ―Greek,‖ placed it firmly within the traditional association of the ancient Greek body with the modern white race. The model for the image was the ancient series of sculptures of Venus/Aphrodite

191 Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 165. 192 Colbert, Measure of Perfection, xii-xiv, 282-314. 193 Crane, White Silence, 169-182. Andrew Jackson sat for him in 1835; John C. Calhoun and several other politicians sat for him in 1836. 194 Crane, White Silence, 189-194.

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that were displayed in galleries around Europe, all featuring variations on the pose of the goddess standing, nude, with one or both hands vainly protecting her modesty.195 The very first figure Powers modeled from wax as a child was supposedly the head of the

Medici Venus (Figure 3, right), a cast of which he saw in Cincinnati.196 He expressed his admiration for the original of the sculpture, which he saw in person his adopted city of

Florence, writing

It is my opinion that no entirely original statue of a female can ever equal the Venus di Medici. No other attitude embodies so much grace. There is not an angle in it. From head to foot, all the movements are curves and in strict accordance with Hogarth‘s line of grace.197

Basing his own sculpture on this masterpiece, Powers did not attempt to create something new; rather, his work consciously invoked the legacy of the Medici Venus, the same sculpture hailed by racial scientists as the exemplar of white female beauty. The sculpture had become a short-hand for the perfection of white womanhood, such that

Nott, co-author of Types of Mankind, described the Caucasian female as having ―rose and lily skin, Venus form, and well chiseled features.‖198 The Greek Slave, however, was even more ―white‖ than the Medici Venus, because she was created in the context of modern racial science: ―The neoclassical visage, with the facial angle prominently displayed by her turned head, recalled the archetypes of whiteness used by racial theorists and thereby

195 Craven, Sculpture in America, 116. 196 Lynne D. Ambrosini, ―‗Pure, White Radiance‘: The Ideology of Marble in the Nineteenth Century,‖ in Hiram Powers: Genius in Marble, eds. Lynne D. Ambrosini and Rebecca A.G. Reynolds (Cincinnati: Taft Museum of Art, 2007), 10 (although she states that the original source for this anecdote was Charles Edward Lester‘s 1845 The Artist, the Merchant, and the Statesman, which Hiram Powers complained contained inaccuracies). 197 Powers to Longworth, 7 December 1837, Cincinnati Historical Society, quoted in Crane, White Silence, 195. 198 Josiah Nott, ―The Mulatto a Hybrid—Probable Extermination of the Two Races if the Whites and Blacks are Allowed to Intermarry,‖ American Journal of the Medical Sciences VI (1843): 252-53, quoted in Horsman, Josiah Nott, 87. Similarly, Gliddon described one of his family‘s slaves in Egypt as ―rivaling the Venus de medicis in form and strikingly in face,—but with long, soft wavy hair, small mouth; in short, no negress‖ (Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races, 531).

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removed the figure as far as possible from the popular conception of blackness.‖199 This was no accident, as Powers was obsessed with creating perfect heads for his idealized sculptures—a perfection that was defined according to the phrenological markers of whiteness.200 While, ironically, the Medici Venus was widely considered to be phrenologically flawed,201 when Powers made his own Venus, in the form of The Greek

Slave, he sculpted her a head that was clearly coded ―white‖ by all of the phrenological principles of his day.

This unambiguously white slave, made by the hands of an American sculptor, toured the United States in 1847-49.202 It was seen by thousands of people in cities from

New York to Louisville, Kentucky, for entrance fees ranging from 25 cents to $1.203 In addition to the copies on tour, numerous reproductions in marble and plaster of the full- length sculpture, as well as busts, made their way into public and private galleries around

199 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 30. 200 See Colbert for Powers‘ attention to phrenological details in both his portrait busts and idealized sculptures (Measure of Perfection, 169-209). Crane writes that Powers used ―as many as a dozen models to render one perfect idealized face‖ (White Silence, 256). 201 Phrenologists had long criticized the size of the Medici Venus‘s head (see Colbert, Measure of Perfection 1997: 77, 82, 84), and Powers concurred that ―No woman with such a cranium would have sense enough to keep out of a fire‖ (newspaper clipping, n.d. Louisville KY, Archives of American Art, Hiram Powers Papers, 1146, quoted in Colbert, Measure of Perfection, 287). Nathaniel Hawthorne, who visited Powers in Florence in June 1858, summarized Powers‘ opinion that ―the poor face was battered all to pieces and utterly demolished.‖ Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, vol. 2 (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1870), 21-22, quoted in Crane, White Silence, 254. 202 The sculpture was completed in 1843 and exhibited in London before it was brought to the United States (Crane, White Silence, 204-212). It was mentioned in passing in American newspapers before being exhibited in the United States, for example, Daily Picayune, May 11, 1844. Two copies of the sculpture toured the United States, and sometimes competed with each other for audiences (Crane, White Silence, 213-218). For the ownership and exhibition histories of the six full-size copies of the sculpture, see Richard P. Wunder, Hiram Powers: Vermont Sculptor, 1805-1873 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991) II: 158-167. 203 The sculpture was also exhibited in Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Boston, New Haven, Sandusky and Zanesville, Ohio, St. Louis, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Augusta, Charleston, Columbia, and Pittsburgh. Wunder, Hiram Powers, I: 251 and II: 161, 164; Linda Hyman, ―The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers: High Art as Popular Culture,‖ Art Journal 35, no.3 (1976): 217. The first tour of the sculpture, which included Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Cincinnati, and Baltimore, earned $22,582.21 (Crane, White Silence, 218; Craven Sculpture in America, 118).

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the United States.204 Unofficial ceramic versions of the sculpture were available for around $20, manufactured in America at places such as the Trenton Pottery Company and

Christopher Webber Fenton‘s factory in Vermont.205 The sculpture‘s shape was also assumed by ―model artists,‖ white women who posed nearly naked in the position of the sculpture before paying audiences.206

The audiences that viewed The Greek Slave were made up of a wide range of social classes, including ―people from the least educated portions of the country, as well as those who have been abroad.‖207 Whether or not they made the link consciously, the statue‘s clear reworking of the Medici Venus inflected American viewers‘ encounters with the sculpture. Those who had been on the Grand Tour were familiar with the original, and the Medici Venus was also a staple in American cast galleries.208 The clear similarities between the two works added to the complexity of the encounter with The Greek Slave, a figure who was not a white goddess, but a white slave. Miner Kellogg, who organized the initial exhibition of the sculpture in the United States, reported the story of a visitor to the opening day of the Baltimore exhibition who was particularly confused:

A strapping fellow came in and walked up to the statue with an expression of astonishment. After looking for a time steadily at the statue, [he] turned to the boy and asked ―Is this a slave?‖ ―Yes, Sir.‖ After looking for a moment in silence,

204 Powers‘ studio produced three 2/3 size marble copies, as well as marble and plaster copies of anatomical details of the sculpture, including its torso and feet; and numerous ceramic and bronze copies were made by other manufacturers (Wunder, Hiram Powers, II: 167-177). See Katz for the circulation of busts of The Greek Slave (Regionalism and Reform, 167-169). 205 Wunder, Hiram Powers, II: 168. 206 Colbert, Measure of Perfection, 301-302. 207 ―The Greek Slave,‖ Christian Inquirer 1 (1847): 207. 208 See, for example, the lists of casts in early cast galleries provided by Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 77-85. The Medici Venus was actually among the first three classical sculpture casts in the country, brought to Boston in 1729 by English painter John Smibert (Dyson, Ancient Marbles, 23).

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says, ―Why! it ain‘t black‖!! ―No,‖ said the boy, ―it is a Greek slave and the Greeks are white.‖209

Similarly, a poem printed in the New York Herald, the month after The Greek Slave arrived in the city, described the reactions of different types of Americans to the sculpture, observing:

A Carolinian, fresh from his plantation Gazed till o‘ercome with perspiration— His brains were racked—something was not right— He‘d never seen a slave girl half white.210

In a country in which slaves were only ever black people possessed by white owners, the inversion of a white woman implicitly possessed by a dark Turk, represented an uncomfortable role reversal that attracted viewers to the sculpture as much as did the beauty of its form. The experience of viewing the sculpture was further shaped by the fact that this was the first time that Americans encountered a sculpture of a slave of any color.

Savage argues that sculptures‘ ―obsession with the ideal human form made the whole subject of slavery extremely difficult for sculptors to represent.‖211 Since the black body was the symbol of slavery in the United States, this also meant that the figure of the slave was ―the black antithesis of classical whiteness‖—and hence ―the embodiment of what was not classically sculptural.‖212

Reactions to The Greek Slave reflected the conflicting messages the sculpture seemed to portray. Although Powers himself did not link his sculpture to the American

209 Miner Kellogg to Hiram Powers, 14 April 1848, Box 2, Hiram Powers letters, Cincinnati Historical Society, quoted in Wunder, Hiram Powers, II: 228. 210 New York Herald, September 1847, Hiram Powers Scrapbook, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, quoted in Hyman, ―High Art,‖ 222. 211 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 8. 212 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 12, 15.

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anti-slavery cause, many abolitionists embraced it as an indictment of slavery.213 An article in the Christian Inquirer highlighted the sculpture‘s nudity, which had already attracted much attention.214 Instead of questioning the propriety of the sculpture, the author here focused on the sexual service to which the chained, unclothed Greek woman was implied to be destined. The article made a powerful and subversive link between the traditional nudity of classical and neoclassical sculpture and the nudity of the American slave market, reminding its readers that ―Every day does our sister city of New Orleans witness similar exposures, with a similar purpose.‖215 The experience of joining dozens of other people in viewing the life-sized, life-like sculpture, which was displayed on a rotating pedestal, placed viewers in the same position as that of a purchaser at a slave auction. Responding to the fact that the sculpted body conformed to standards of classical white beauty, the writer in the Christian Inquirer urged ―Let no one keep down the natural promptings of his indignation by the notion of wooly heads and black skins.‖ The concluding physical description emphasized that it was the white appearance of the body that allowed The Greek Slave‘s plight to elicit sympathy among those who tolerated the bondage of black people in the United States.

213 For abolitionist interpretations of the sculpture, generally, see Vivian M. Green, ―Hiram Powers‘s Greek Slave: Emblem of Freedom,‖ American Art Journal 14, no.4 (1982): 36-39. Green also discusses anti- slavery responses to the British exhibition of the sculpture. 214 On the controversy caused by the sculpture‘s nudity, see Craven, Sculpture in America, 117; Hyman, ―High Art,‖ 217-221; Crane, White Silence, 220-222. Nudity was always an issue with the display of classical and neoclassical sculpture in the early United States. Female nudes were sometimes kept in separate compartments, so as not to offend those who did not wish to see them; separate days were set aside for ladies to view the galleries without the presence of men; and fig leaves were placed over the genitals of male nudes (see Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 79-85). 215 Christian Inquirer, October 9, 1847, quoted in Savage, Standing Soldiers, 28). Interestingly, the writer used this opportunity to explain that some of the slaves sold in New Orleans were nearly as white as the sculpture: ―Let him not ignore that white skins, fair hair, delicate beauty, often enhance the market value of his countrywomen thus exposed for sale.‖ Powers himself, in a letter to his patron Nicholas Longworth, defended his statue‘s nudity by pointing to the historical reality of the slave market, stating ―The Slave is compelled to stand naked to be judged of in the slave market‖ (Powers to Longworth, 5 May 1858, Powers Collection, Cincinnati Historical Society, quoted in Crane, White Silence, 221).

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A letter published in Frederick Douglass‘ The North Star focused more directly on the sculpture as art in order to highlight the paradox of an enslaved classical body:

This beautiful and lovely creature appeals to all the noble and just sentiments of the soul; and learns it to detest that depravity in man, which suggests or tolerates so great a crime, as is manifest in the slave system. In the act of ENCHAINING and degrading to the brute level a being of which this magnificent piece of statuary is but a cold and lifeless resemblance.216

The writer made even more direct links to the southern institution of slavery by conflating anti-slavery rhetoric with the anti-Turkish sentiments that were the immediate subject of the work:

And to the feeling heart and discerning eye, all slave girls are GREEK, and all slave mungers TURKS, wicked cruel and hateful; be their names HASSAM, SELIM, JAMES, JUDAS or HENRY; their country Algiers or Alabama; Congo or Carolina, the same.

The trans-racial nature of these claims denied the relevance of racial categories in negotiating right and wrong. At the same time, the writer knowingly inverted the dominant racial order, by making enslaved black women ―Greek,‖ and Carolina slaveowners ―Turks.‖

Powers himself, although he disavowed the abolitionist cause, must have anticipated these comparisons.217 In his own descriptions of the sculpture in his personal correspondence, as well as in the pamphlet that accompanied the sculpture‘s exhibition, he explicitly placed The Greek Slave in the context of the Turkish slave market, as a

216 S.F., ―The Greek Slave,‖ The North Star (Rochester, NY), October 3, 1850. 217 Regarding the debate over slavery in new territories, Powers wrote to a friend ―I am not an abolitionist, but go tooth and nail against its extension,‖ and in general held the prejudicial views towards black Americans that were fairly standard among white Americans (Hiram Powers to Nicholas Longworth, 12 January 1858, Powers Collection, Cincinnati Historical Society, quoted in Crane, White Silence, 267). Powers invoked with the subject of slavery again in his c.1848-50 sculpture America. Charmaine Nelson, ―Hiram Power‘s America: Shackles, Slaves, and the Racial Limits of Nineteenth-Century National Identity,‖ Canadian Review of American Studies 34, no.2 (2004).

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justification of her otherwise-improprietous nudity.218 Despite his residence in Italy,

Powers retained an interest in American life, and having grown up and begun his career in Cincinnati, Ohio—directly across the river from the slave-state of Kentucky—he was certainly aware of the resonance of the slave market in the United States, and of the political associations his chained white maiden would attract. Nevertheless, the publicity for the sculpture‘s tour, as well as the official interpretation of the sculpture provided at exhibitions, never hinted at this comparison.

This silence on the part of the artist facilitated the ability of pro-slavery audiences to take an affirmative message from the sculpture, appropriating its symbolism for their own position. The sculpture attracted large audiences in New Orleans, Louisville, and

Columbia, South Carolina, and at least one plantation owner purchased a copy of it for his house.219 Both their written responses, and the popularity of the sculpture when exhibited in the South, confirm how slaveowners ―refused to view the work as an allegory of their slave system,‖220 and instead took its subject as a reinforcement of the injustice of a superior, white woman being dominated by dark men, and of the power of

Christian faith to see her through her ordeal.

218 Crane, White Silence, 221. 219 John Preston, one of Powers‘ early patrons, had a copy of The Greek Slave in his house in Columbia, South Carolina, at the time of the Civil War. Rodger Stroup, ―Up-Country Patrons: Wade Hampton II and His Family,‖ in Art in the Lives of South Carolinians, Nineteenth-Century Chapters, ed. David Moltke- Hansen (Charleston: Carolina Art Association, 1979), RSb-6. South Carolina Governor Robert Francis Withers Allston greatly admired the sculpture, and in 1851 remarked that he wished it could be placed in the hall of the Library of the South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina). R. Stockton, ―R.F.W. Allston: Planter Patron,‖ in Moltke-Hansen, Art in the Lives, RSa-7. 220 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 29.

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Unwrapping the Mummies

At the intersection of the medical discourse of racial science and the public interpretation of mummies stood George R. Gliddon, co-author of Types of Mankind, and lecturer on

Egyptian antiquities. His ―mummy opening‖ in Philadelphia in January 1851, which was the subject of this chapter‘s opening anecdote, represented a site at which the concerns of medical and museum viewers of ancient bodies came together as part of a public spectacle.

Gliddon was born in England, but lived much of his early life in Egypt, where his father, John, was the American consul at Alexandria, a position George later held for

Cairo.221 Gliddon shared his deep interest in Egyptian antiquity with Americans who visited Egypt, arranging visits to the Pyramids and other ancient sites.222 His concern with the race of the ancient Egyptians can be traced back more than a decade before his collaboration with Josiah Nott in Types of Mankind. In addition to supplying Samuel G.

Morton with the more than one hundred Egyptian crania that formed the basis of his

221 Cassandra Vivian, ―George Gliddon in Egypt‖ (Published by the author, 2004), 1-2; Fabian, Skull Collectors, 103. Gliddon‘s family owned several slaves when he was a child, most of whom were black (Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races, 531). Although his parents manumitted their slaves out of conscience, Gliddon made clear he did not share their philosophy (532). 222 Vivian, ―George Gliddon in Egypt,‖ 3-12. Gliddon‘s hospitality was featured in the Egyptian travel narratives of Sarah Haight (Letters from the Old World by a Lady of New York [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1839]: I: 107, 110, 122-23, 151-54, 230) and George Jones (Excursions to Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus and Balbec, from the United States Ship Delaware, during her recent cruise [New York: Van Nostrand and Dwight, 1836], 46-47), selections from whose work were published in American periodicals. For example, The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge published selections from Haight‘s book in its December 1, 1836 issue, and from Jones‘ in its May 1, 1837 issue; and the Quarterly Christian Spectator published an excerpt from Jones in its September 1, 1837 issue.

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Crania Aegyptiaca, Gliddon followed Morton‘s work diligently, and became a leading proponent of the work of the American School of Ethnology.223

Many Americans first encountered Gliddon through his lecture tours in the early

1840s, in which he presented information on ancient Egypt to more than a hundred thousand people.224 Appearing in cities from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to St. Louis,

Missouri, to Mobile, Alabama, Gliddon‘s ―audiences ranged from 200 to 2000 persons, averaging in the large cities, 500 of the elite of American Society.‖225 His lectures were illustrated with expensive and dazzling books, images, and objects about and from ancient Egypt, including an eight-foot-tall painting of the Great Pyramid at Giza and embalmed body parts.226 As described by a contemporary, Gliddon thus turned the lecture room into ―a new and magic region‖ in which ―the present vanished,‖ transporting his spectators to the distant past.227

Gliddon presented multi-part series of two-hour lectures in each city. These lectures shared Egyptological research that dispelled ―religious prejudices‖ against the

223 Gliddon constantly referred to Morton‘s research in his published work, particularly Ancient Egypt and Otia Aegyptiaca: Discourses on Egyptian Archaeology and Hieroglyphical Discoveries (Philadelphia: John Penington, 1849). The two men also maintained a lengthy correspondence, some of which is reproduced in Vivian, ―George Gliddon in Egypt,‖ and Cassandra Vivian, ―George Gliddon in America‖ (Published by the author, 2004). Fabian credits Gliddon with being one of the primary promoters of Morton‘s ideas to non-medical audiences (Skull Collectors, 91, 107). 224 Luke Burke, ―Introduction, by the editor of the ‗Ethnological Journal,‘‖ in Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 5. Gliddon‘s lectures on Egyptian antiquity established him as the main expert on the subject, such that Edgar Allen Poe included him among the unwrappers of a mummy in his 1845 short story, ―Some Words with a Mummy.‖ See Vivian, ―George Gliddon in America,‖ for more on Gliddon‘s American tours. 225 Burke, ―Introduction,‖ 5. The full list of Gliddon‘s lecture-tour cities also includes Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, Richmond, Columbia, Augusta, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Chillicothe, Ohio. 226 These were mentioned throughout reports of his lectures—see, for instance, Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 22, 76. Burke described the ways that Gliddon decorated the spaces that hosted his lectures: ―the spectator entered a large hall the four walls of which were completely covered with a magnificent, and costly series of fac-simile paintings of Egyptian subjects, while on either side of the Lecturer stood a table, the one containing an assortment of antiques from the valley of the Nile; the other, all the principal publications of the school of Champollion, with other works usually referred to in the course of the lectures‖ (―Introduction,‖ 4-5, italics original). 227 Burke, ―Introduction,‖ 5.

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Egyptians, linking their culture to that of the Bible and Greece and Rome;228 and that proved the Egyptians themselves to be ―Caucasians, and white men.‖229 In his lectures,

Gliddon worked to bring the distant Egyptian landscape into the world of his American audiences, stating ―If converted into brick, the materials of the Great Pyramid would build the entire city of Philadelphia!‖230 He also defended Egyptian slavery, citing biblical authority in terms that implicitly served to justify contemporary practice in the

United States.231 Gliddon spread his ideas beyond the lecture room through the publication of the material from his first series of Boston lectures in his 1843 Ancient

Egypt: A Series of Chapters on Early Egyptian History, Archaeology, and other subjects connected with Hieroglyphical Literature, which went through twelve editions and sold over 25,000 copies; and a collection of reviews and notes from his later lectures, which he published as Otia Aegyptiaca in 1849.232 His grateful audiences wrote glowing

228 Burke, ―Introduction,‖ 6. 229 Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 25. Most of the description of these lectures came from Otia Aegyptiaca, published in 1849, which was comprised of newspaper reports of Gliddon‘s lectures, excerpted from the Pittsburgh Telegraph of March 1847, the Mobile Tribune of February 1848, and the St. Louis Era of April 1848; supplemented by notes from Gliddon (unless otherwise indicated, it is unclear which report was quoted at which point). Although some of Gliddon‘s lectures focused specifically on ethnology, he frequently referred to the race of the Egyptians in his discussions of other topics (for example, the phrase quoted here came from his discussion of who built the pyramids). As elaborated further in Types of Mankind, Gliddon‘s ―Caucasians‖ were not an undifferentiated group, but rather, the Egyptians were white descendants of Ham, whereas white Americans represented the Anglo-Saxon descendants of Ham‘s brother Japheth (Otia Aegyptiaca, 53). 230 Otia Aegyptiaca, 27, italics original, with the same point made on pp. 24 and 29. Gliddon also compared the size of the Pyramid to the Bunker Hill monument (26-27, 31); and to the Native American mounds in Ohio (36). 231 Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 49. 232 The sales figures came from Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 100. Copies of Ancient Egypt sold for 25 cents, and were available for purchase at Gliddon‘s lectures. Portions were also reprinted in several periodicals, including the Southern Literary Messenger 11 (1845): 366-369 and 426; and the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 33, no. 2 (1845): 44.

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reviews of his lectures, including a Miss Woodman, who praised Gliddon in poetry for reviving knowledge of ancient Egypt.233

Anne Fabian writes that the racial aspects of Gliddon‘s lectures ―helped to smuggle ideas about racial hierarchy into American culture. Audiences who bought tickets to hear Gliddon lecture on the pyramids learned about the antiquity of racial differences.‖234 However, since American interest in ancient Egypt was already racialized, the topic could hardly be discussed without addressing the issue of Egyptian race. Thus, Gliddon pointed out that, were the ancient Egyptians black, ―we, who trace back to Egypt the origin of every art and science known in antiquity, have to thank the sable Negro, or the dusky Berber, for the first gleams of knowledge and invention.‖235 To disprove this idea, he featured Morton‘s analysis of Egyptian ethnography to support the linked arguments that the different races of humanity had different origins, and that, in ancient Egypt, black men and women were ―ever captives and slaves [. . .] in every respect, the same anciently as at this day.‖236 Black abolitionist Martin Delany mocked

Gliddon‘s ―literary blunders,‖ which ―mak[e] all ancient black men, white; and asser[t] the Egyptians and Ethiopians to have been of the Caucasian or white race!‖237 But

Gliddon‘s status as an authority on the subject of Egyptian race was such that he was sought out by Secretary of State John C. Calhoun in 1844, who wished to know more about the ―the radical difference of humanity‘s races,‖ proven by the existence of distinct

233 H.J. Woodman, ―Stanzas suggested by Gliddon‘s Lectures on the Antiquities of Egypt,‖ Knickerbocker; or New York Monthly Magazine 23, no. 1 (1844): 29. 234 Fabian, Skull Collectors, 103. 235 Gliddon, Ancient Egypt, 58. Gliddon‘s specific concern in this passage was to disprove the hypothesis that Egyptian civilization was born in Nubia or Upper Egypt, and later descended the Nile to Lower Egypt—a land he believed to be indisputably Caucasian. 236 Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 9. 237 Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (1852, repr. New York: Arno Press, 1969), 129, italics original.

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races in ancient Egypt, to support his pro-slavery arguments in negotiations with foreign powers regarding the annexation of Texas as a slave territory.238 Thus, when Gliddon started the 1849-1852 lecture tour in which he exhibited and unwrapped mummies in cities stretching from Boston to New Orleans, he was already widely regarded as an expert on Egyptian race.

The museum in which Gliddon unwrapped two mummies in January 1851, was known as both the ―Philadelphia Museum‖ and, more often, the ―Chinese Museum,‖ because when the building was built in the late 1830s, it was designed to hold Nathan

Dunn‘s collection of Chinese antiquities on one floor, and Peale‘s Philadelphia Museum on the other.239 The Chinese collection was hugely popular, providing Philadelphians a view of a complex, ancient culture that was so different from their own, and from the

Greco-Roman antiquity that they understood to be part of white American ethnic history.240 Although the collection left Philadelphia in 1841, the memory of the exhibition was preserved as the space continued to be referred to as the ―Chinese Museum.‖241

238 Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 50-51 (quote from 51); Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 62. 239 Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum, 274-281. 240 On Dunn‘s exhibition, see Fabian, Skull Collectors, 59-61. The place of Chinese civilization in United States museums is a fascinating and complex subject. Ronald and Mary Zboray write that ―[b]ecause [the Chinese] developed an enduring civilization, they necessarily complicated the ongoing discourse of alterity—of civilized (i.e., white) versus primitive (e.g., Africans and Native Americans)—in contemporary debates over national self-definition.‖ Ronald J. Zboray and Mary S. Zobray, ―Between ‗Crockery-Dom‘ and Barnum: Boston‘s Chinese Museum, 1845-47,‖ American Quarterly 56, no.2 (2004): 272). Interestingly, another venue for Gliddon‘s Panorama and collection of Egyptian antiquities was the ―Museum Rooms, Chinese Buildings‖ in New York City. Gliddon’s Egyptian Collection (New York, between 1850 and 1857), New-York Historical Society. 241 For instance, on April 16, 1842, the Philadelphia Horticultural Society announced that their meeting would be held ―in the grand saloon of the late Chinese Museum‖ (North American and Daily Advertiser, April 16, 1842); and on July 3, 1846, the Philadelphia Inquirer printed an announcement of ―Whig Festival 4th of July at the Chinese Museum.‖ Peale‘s Museum also moved out of the building in the mid-1840s (Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum, 307-308).

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Over the following decades, the space was filled with a variety of other exhibits— including another Chinese collection in the late 1840s242—and also hosted temperance association meetings, a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other gatherings prompted by the political events of the day.243 With a capacity in the thousands, it functioned as something of a ―town hall,‖ and was a place familiar to those who attended the mummy unwrapping on January 17, 1851.244 Some of those visitors may have also attended a recent meeting in the museum, which took place on November 20, 1850, prompted by the controversy over the recently passed Compromise of 1850, particularly its reinforcement of the original Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 (which required that authorities in free states pursue and return fugitive slaves to their owners in slave states).245 The abolitionist response to this bill was one of great concern, resulting in some calls for free states to secede from the union. The meeting at the Chinese Museum was designed to show opposition to such a move. The speeches emphasized the legality of the law and the justice of returning ―fugitives‖ to their owners; they also affirmed the sanctity of the union of the states, under threat from ―reckless, senseless, remorseless abolition.‖246 At its conclusion, more than five thousand of the men in attendance waited around to sign a document to this effect—in opposition to those who stood in solidarity with both enslaved and free black Americans. At the time of this meeting, Gliddon‘s exhibition,

242 On March 26, 1847, The North American advertised a Chinese collection on view in the museum. 243 The Public Ledger of February 13, 1843, contained an advertisement for a temperance meeting; Emerson‘s lecture was mentioned in the same paper on January 28, 1843; and the Philadelphia Inquirer of November 28, 1846, had an article about a dinner held for Daniel Webster at the museum. 244 The Cleveland Daily Herald, February 16, 1843 (repr. from the Public Ledger), listed the capacity as 4,500, and reports of meetings held at the museum regularly described attendance at between one and five thousand. 245 Proceedings of the Great Union Meeting, held in the large saloon of the Chinese Museum. Philadelphia, On the 21st of November, 1850, Under a call signed by upwards of Five Thousand Citizens, whose Names are appended to the Proceedings. Philadelphia: B. Mifflin, 1850. 246 From George M. Dallas‘s speech, Proceedings of the Great Union Meeting, 10.

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complete with one unwrapped and three wrapped mummies, was already on view in the museum, and attendees at the meeting may have contemplated the ancient Egyptian bodies as they affirmed their disrespect for the bodies and lives of black Americans. The polarizing event concerned Philadelphia‘s abolitionists, one of whom hoped that

many of the signers of the Call will feel mortified at the result, that they are publicly committed to the support and defense of the Slavehunting law, and against that statute which the humanity of Philadelphia had thrown as a bulwark around our own colored citizens, and expressed the opinion that ―The plantation lords could not ask for more willing and submissive serfs to execute their will, nor desire more pliant knees to bend at their nod‖ than those at the meeting that evening.247

Gliddon‘s unwrapping of the mummies—which took place in the same space less than two months later—was a no-less racially charged event. Primed by the work of racial scientists, and the testimony of their own eyes, spectators at mummy unwrappings were eager to learn the race of the individual beneath the wrappings. Public mummy unwrappings were rare occasions, due to the scarcity of mummies in the United States.248

Often, the performances were accompanied by academic lectures by experts, and they always included medical doctors, to add an air of legitimacy to the proceedings, and to read the body revealed by the unwrapping.249 The audiences at these events were routinely described by newspapers as constituting the cream of society;250 however, the

247 ―Great Demonstration of Northern Servility,‖ Pennsylvania Freeman, November 28, 1850. 248 The first took place in New York City‘s Castle Garden in 1824 (see Wolfe, Mummies, 132-134). Wolfe describes several other unwrappings that took place over the course of the nineteenth century (Mummies, 132-172). 249 For example, surgeons Samuel Akerly and Valentine Mott attended the New York mummy unwrapping in 1824 (Wolfe, Mummies, 134); while Dr. Steven and Dr. Post unwrapped a mummy at Peale‘s Museum in New York in 1826 (Wolfe, Mummies, 137). 250 For instance, the Mercantile Advertiser of March 6, 1826, described ―a respectable audience of ladies and gentlemen‖ at an unwrapping (quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 137) and the Boston Medical and Surgical 147

cost of attendance started at around fifty cents, which made the event as accessible as many other forms of popular entertainment.251 The organizers of these unwrappings sometimes restricted access, as for instance at New York‘s Peale‘s Museum in 1826, when ―children cannot be admitted,‖ and at American Museum in the same city in 1832, when there were ―No ladies admitted‖—placing the spectacle more clearly alongside medical dissections, which were the domain of men.252

One of the exciting realities of unwrapping mummies ―live and in public‖ was the element of chance involved. Upon their arrival in a new city, traveling mummies were universally described as royalty or religious leaders.253 Such descriptions can be understood, in part, as reflecting the owner‘s desire to market his product, but they were also inspired by the energy expended on the elaborate preservation of the bodies. But contrasting with the expectations of an elite body was the visible blackness of the mummies themselves. Experts explained away the black skin that was gradually revealed underneath the many layers of sarcophagus, cartonage, and linen wrappings, as being due to the chemical process of embalming, but for some viewers at least, this explanation fell

Journal of June 12, 1850, wrote ―We do not remember to have seen together, at one time, so large an audience composed of individuals distinguished for their acquirements in learning, as there was at the exhibition and unrolling of the mummy by Mr. Gliddon.‖ These descriptions may have served to elevate the spectacle of the mummy unwrapping above the more suspect practices of medical dissections. 251 For example, Gliddon‘s mummy unwrappings in 1850 and 1851 cost 50 cents, (Gliddon, Proposal, 2; Wolfe, Mummies, 145). For comparison, theatrical performances at Barnum‘s museum in Philadelphia in November 1850 cost 25 cents, as did admittance to Gliddon‘s regular lectures that accompanied the Panorama of the Nile (Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 4, 1850). 252 New York Evening Post, March 2, 1826, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 137; New York Commercial Advertiser, March 12, 1832, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 139. On the parallel restrictions against female spectators at anatomical dissections, see Sappol, Traffic in Dead Bodies, 88. Racial restrictions were not mentioned, but as discussed above, there may have been more general policies against admitting black people to the venues in which these displays took place. 253 For instance, The Baltimore Patriot of May 28, 1824 imagined the Massachusetts General Hospital‘s mummy to be ―probably some young belle of the family of Pharaoh‖ (quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 30); and the Friends Review of December 25, 1847, described a mummy on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of Natural Sciences as ―The body of a priest‖ (quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 69).

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short. Frederick Douglass‘s newspaper, The North Star, published in 1850 an account of a mummy unwrapping that Gliddon performed in Boston, where both the race and the sex of the body were a surprise to the audience.254 The piece, titled ―Were the Thebans

Negroes,‖ concluded with the statement that, rather than being the body of a white woman, as Gliddon had advertised, the mummy‘s body ―furnished evidence of little else than that it was a veritable ‗he-nigger‘ afterall.‖255 It is unclear whether this was the interpretation of a black or white spectator at the event, or was written by someone who was not actually in attendance; however, the trope of discovering blackness where whiteness was anticipated hit on one of the key anxieties surrounding the bodies of ancient Egyptians.

For the mummies Gliddon unwrapped in January 1851, this anxiety was built up by the display of the mummies, still in their wrappings, for months in advance, alongside two other mummies, one unwrapped, and one intact. Together, they formed part of

Gliddon‘s display of Egyptian antiquities that had framed the exhibition of the ―Panorama of the Nile‖ in Philadelphia, since September 1850.256 At 7:30pm each evening, and sometimes at 3pm in the afternoon, the Panorama was unrolled before crowds who had paid 25 cents each.257 The 900-foot-long panorama took viewers on a journey along the

Nile as it appeared in the nineteenth-century, going up the river from Thebes showing one bank, and returning down to Thebes, showing the other bank.258 The experience was

254 ―Were the Thebans Negroes.‖ 255 The incident was widely reported, but other writers only spoke of the gender confusion (for example, in Daily Evening Transcript, June 7, 1850; and the Christian Register, June 15, 1850). See also Trafton, Egypt Land, 42-45. 256 ―Gliddon‘s Panorama,‖ Saturday Evening Post, September 28, 1850. 257 Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 4, 1850. 258 When displayed in New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., the panorama was accompanied by ―Egyptian, Arabian, Turkish, Greek, and other Oriental Music,‖ which may have been the case in 149

narrated by Gliddon himself, and further elaborated on by a pamphlet, for sale at the exhibition for 25 cents, which contained more information on the geography of Egypt.259

The panorama provided an immersive, collective experience of the Egyptian landscape— one visitor wrote ―we come away feeling as if we had actually been in the land so vividly described and illustrated,‖260 while another stated that ―The city of Cairo—the pyramids of the vicinity—the views of ancient cities, temples, and monuments strewed along the

Nile—all stand before the viewer as if they were really and physically in his presence.‖261

This sensory knowledge of the place of origin of Egyptian mummies and artifacts, gave audience members a deeper sense of connection to them.

Prior to entering the Panorama display itself, Philadelphia visitors encountered the saloon of the Chinese Museum, which was filled with hundreds of specimens of

―curiosity‖ that Gliddon had brought with him from Europe and Egypt, in order to delight his American audiences, and to contextualize their encounter with the Panorama.

Mummies of crocodiles, paintings of the pyramids, papyrus fragments, and a replica of the Rosetta Stone, greeted the visitors who gathered every evening to view the

Panorama.262

The enthusiastic response of Philadelphians to this display encouraged Gliddon to unwrap the mummy in January 1851. First, the crowds had persuaded Gliddon to extend

Philadelphia, as well (Gliddon’s Egyptian Collection; ―Mr. Gliddon‘s Panorama,‖ Daily National Intelligencer, April 2, 1851). 259 George R. Gliddon, Handbook to the American Panorama of the Nile. London: James Madden, 1849. Gliddon was unusually silent on the subject of Egyptian race in this work, noting ―The subject of Ethnology I deem it expedient to postpone,‖ until Dr. Morton can examine the ―mass of new materials‖ he had collected (Handbook, 26, italics original). His previous works, Ancient Egypt and Otia Aegyptiaca, were also available for sale at the exhibition. 260 Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, August 6, 1850. 261 ―Gliddon‘s Exhibition‖ Daily National Intelligencer, March 29, 1851. 262 Gliddon, Handbook, 24-25. For more on the Panorama exhibition, see Vivian, ―George Gliddon in America,‖ 5-7.

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his originally planned two weeks in Philadelphia—set to end October 7, 1850. Then, in

November, Gliddon announced his plan to unwrap two of the mummies in the exhibition, as part of a lecture series at the museum, much as he had done earlier in the year at

Boston‘s Tremont Temple. He released a four-page proposal, described as ―printed for private circulation among Mr. Gliddon‘s Friends‖ indicating a select group of people with privileged knowledge, refined tastes, intimate associations with Gliddon, and most importantly, the financial means to support the unwrapping as subscribers.263 The first page featured an image of the inner and outer coffin of one of the mummies, which was on display at the time at the Chinese Museum. The text emphasized the rarity of having intact mummies to unwrap for the American public, and the expense required to create such an event. But Gliddon proposed more than a simple evening of unwrapping—he desired to present to the public a series of eight lectures over the course of four weeks.

The first five lectures would lead up to the unwrapping of the mummies, the sixth was the one in which ―Two mummies to be unrolled,‖ and the last two would discuss the revelations from the mummies as to the ethnological characteristics of the ancient

Egyptians. For a cost of $3, the presumptively male subscribers received reserved seats for all events, and could bring along ladies for an additional $2 and children for $1.50.

The public could also buy tickets to individual lectures for 50 cents. Most of the lectures would be held in the small saloon of the museum, but the culminating event of the mummy unwrapping would take place in the large saloon—in recognition of the broader audience for this kind of a spectacle.

263 Gliddon, Proposal.

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Around 500 people subscribed to the series, including Dr. Samuel G. Morton, the author of Crania Aegyptiaca, as well as religious and civil leaders such as the Episcopal

Bishop of Pennsylvania, Alonzo Potter, and Mayor Charles Gilpin—many of whom may have attended Gliddon‘s previous lecture series in the city, in May 1843 and February

1845.264 Most of the audience for the 1851 lecture series would have already viewed the

Panorama of the Nile at least once, and examined the mummies and other artifacts on display, as a prelude to the spectacle of the unwrapping. The knowledge and familiarity that they had acquired of these Egyptian objects and Egyptian bodies fueled their desire to know and see more—and to see themselves in the Egyptian mummies that were to be unwrapped.

In the weeks leading up to the unwrapping, what newspapers described as ―a rather small, though very intelligent and appreciative audience‖ gathered twice a week to learn about the latest scholarship on ancient Egypt.265 Doors opened an hour before the lectures began, allowing audience members to revisit the artifacts on display; and the lectures only lasted one hour, with the hope that ―attendance on Mr. Gliddon‘s Course will not interfere materially with the social engagements of the season.‖266 This smaller group was joined by hundreds of others for the main event of the unwrapping of the

264 ―Mr. Gliddon‘s Lectures,‖ North American and United States Gazette, December 17, 1850, which also listed ―Dr. J.L. Mitchell . . . Rev. Richard Newton, Job R. Tyson, Esq., Thomas J. Wharton, Esq, Joseph Warner, Dr. Isaac Parrish . . . Henry C. Carey, Esq., besides a whole bevy of ladies, with Mrs. Rush at their head,‖ among the subscribers. Sources for Gliddon‘s earlier lecture series include ―Ancient Egypt. Mr. Gliddon‘s First Lecture,‖ Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette, May 4, 1843; ―Egypt. Mr. Gliddon‘s Second Lecture,‖ Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette, May 6, 1843; ―Mr. Gliddon‘s Third Lecture. Ancient Egypt,‖ Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette, May 9, 1843; ―Mr. Gliddon delivers his last lecture this evening,‖ North American and Daily Advertiser, February 10, 1845. 265 ―Mr. Gliddon‘s Lectures,‖ North American and United States Gazette, December 31, 1850; ―Mr. Gliddon delivered the third lecture of his Course on Egypt,‖ North American and United States Gazette, January 7, 1851. A small notice in the same paper on January 8, 1845, described his Monday night lecture as having drawn ―a large audience.‖ 266 Gliddon, Proposal, 3.

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mummies during Gliddon‘s sixth lecture, on January 17, 1851, when ―An audience of about one thousand persons, consisting of ladies, medical, scientific and professional men, were present.‖267 The back of the stage was decorated with ―several mummy cases, outer and inner coffins, some mummies, papyrus, and ornaments,‖ and three doctors oversaw the unwrapping.268 The following week, Gliddon rounded off the series with two more lectures, described in the pre-circulated pamphlet as: ―THE OPENED

MUMMIES—Exposition of the anatomical, chemical, ethnological, and other scientific results; together with the archaeological and historical deductions thence proceeding, and their application to our present day,‖ and ―ETHNOLOGY—Egypt‘s testimony. How and why the Monuments of the Nile, in the debated question of the aboriginal ‗Unity‘ or

‗Diversity‘ of human Races, corroborate the Xth Chapter of Genesis.‖269

Although we do not know the content of these last two lectures, it seems likely that they reinforced Gliddon‘s arguments that the ancient Egyptians were Caucasians, and that their achievements thus offered further proof of the inherent and perpetual differences between black and white men.270 The importance of this theme to Gliddon‘s mummy unwrapping in Boston was remarked upon by an abolitionist, who wrote of the lectures surrounding the event, ―We were assured, therefore, by the learned doctors, that

267 ―Opening of the Mummies at Philadelphia,‖ The Sun (Baltimore), January 21, 1851. 268 Morton was conspicuously absent from the stage, possibly due to his generally weak health, but his colleagues in attendance, Henry Patterson, David Gilbert, and William Grant would certainly have been familiar with his work and collection of crania. 269 (original italics) Gliddon, Proposal, 2-3. In Part II of Types of Mankind, Gliddon laid out his argument related to chapter 10 of Genesis in some detail; essentially, he argued that although the writer claimed that the sons of Noah repopulated the entire earth after the flood, he was speaking only from his own experience of the world, and he had not encountered black people—see the map of the world known to the writer of Genesis X (Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, after page 553), which did not include sub-Saharan Africa. See Gould for a similar argument from naturalist Louis Agassiz, another supporter of the work of Morton, Nott, and Gliddon (Mismeasure of Man, 46); and Josiah Nott‘s presentation of the same argument in (Biblical and Physical History, 51-86). 270 Gliddon later stated that the lectures for this series had been written in collaboration with Morton, whose views Egyptian race were quite clear (Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races, 553).

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the Thebans were not Africans, but a nobler race, and had none of the peculiarities of niggerdom.‖271 The structure of Gliddon‘s Philadelphia lecture series—which moved from the monuments and other achievements of the Egyptians, to focus on their mummified bodies—situated the bodies of the mummies as the owners of the ultimate truth of Egyptian race. However, by the time that the mummies‘ bodies were examined in the final two lectures, their whiteness was overdetermined by their association with the greatness of ancient Egypt that had been the focus of the entire lecture series. Gliddon had employed this structure before, and from the record of newspaper accounts of his

United States lectures that he compiled and annotated in his 1849 publication Otia

Aegyptiaca, we can imagine something of the content and conclusions of his final two lectures in Philadelphia. In his lectures, Gliddon sprinkled references to Egyptian race throughout his discussion of the monuments and culture of ancient Egypt, as he made constant reference to the fact that the ancient Egyptians were Caucasian and white.272 But the subject of Egyptian race came to center-stage when Gliddon examined the physical bodies themselves. In Otia Aegyptiaca, Gliddon quoted a newspaper account from

Mobile, Alabama, which described how he had addressed the subject of Egyptian race by first holding up a piece of bitumen alongside two mummified heads, declaring ―it was this blackening substance which had altered the primitive Caucasian color of their skins.‖273 He then ―pointed out an engraving of the mummified head of a Negress, from the ‗Crania Aegyptiaca‘ of Dr. Morton‖ as scientific proof of the scarcity of black men among the Egyptian dead, and finally to ―the mummied heads of a man and a woman; the

271 ―Were the Thebans Negroes.‖ 272 e.g. Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 9, 25, 49. 273 Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 75. Gliddon delivered eight lectures for the Franklin Society in Mobile, arranged by Josiah Nott (Horsman, Josiah Nott, 107).

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foot of a girl, and the gilded hand of a lady.‖274 Gliddon supplied an account of what the newspaper left off, inviting his audience to imagine:

How surprised would both of these individuals be, could we recall them to life, to learn that we moderns have actually speculated in learned works, whether their countrymen were Africans or even Negroes—whether the color of their skins was not (as the Egyptian males and females are painted on the monuments,) crimson, or yellow; or, black as they now are with bituminous saturation [. . . .] or their hair actually wool!275

Thus, Gliddon invited his presumptively white audience to empathize with their fellow white men, who were falsely being imagined to be black, encouraging a strong sense of racial indignation and investment in the issue of Egyptian race. This sense of connection was made even clearer in a declaration that we can imagine being repeated (in the appropriate gender) at the conclusion of Gliddon‘s Philadelphia lectures as well: ―In this man‘s skull . . . we behold one of ourselves—a Caucasian, a pure white-man; notwithstanding the bitumen which has blackened the skin.‖276

274 Gliddon also helped distribute copies of the Crania Aegyptiaca by taking some with him to Charleston (Fabian, Skull Collectors, 107). 275 Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 77, italics original. 276 Gliddon, Otia Aegyptiaca, 77.

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CHAPTER 3: FROM BLACK MARC ANTONYS TO WHITE ZIP COONS: CLASSICAL CHARACTERS ON THE EARLY AMERICAN STAGE

Philadelphia, New York, and London Colored Comedian.

MR. HEWLETT‘s Second Night. Mr. Hewlett respectfully informs the ladies and gentlemen of Philadelphia, that he intends giving a Grand Entertainment, prior to his return to London, to fill his engagement at the Coburg Theatre, at No. 62 ½ South Fourth- street, This Evening, January 12. [….] [Hewlett will perform]: Richard Third, in imitation of Mr. Kean. –Act 1st. and 2d. Richard, Mr. Hewlett. The latter part of the last scene, act V. A Scene in Othello, in imitation of Mr. Kean.—a scene in Brutus, or the fall of Tarquin. An Imitation of Mr. Cooper in Virginius. Commencing at these lines, ―The claim of Claudius—Appius‘ client—Ha, I see thee master Claud.‖ The following speech of Damon, (I am here upon the scaffold.) [….] Mr. Hewlett will conclude with a scene in imitation of Mr. McCready, from Coriolanus. [….] Admission 50 cents. Doors open at 6 and performance to commence at 7 o‘clock.

Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, January 12, 18261

While all social behavior is performance, the actions that take place within a playhouse carry a heightened symbolic meaning that is commensurate with their explicit theatricality. Particularly where performances of the past are concerned, the social categories to which the actors are assigned by contemporary society are crucial to the meanings that their characters hold. Theater always operates on an idea of the basic plausibility of what is happening on stage. However, that plausibility, expressed through casting and costuming choices, is structured by the social categories at work within any given society. In the case of the early United States, for example, leading actresses would sometimes intentionally transgress gender boundaries to play the Shakespearean roles of

1 Transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 168.

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Hamlet and Macbeth—and the subversiveness of these performances, as well as the fact that that they never became the norm, highlighted the fact that casting a man as Hamlet was considered to be the default. Similarly, when a black actor such as James Hewlett donned classical garb, and recited words associated with white actors‘ portrayal of ancient Romans and Greeks, his performance was exciting precisely because it was implausible. That is, early American theater—and white American ethnic history more generally—had so thoroughly ―proven‖ the whiteness of the Greeks and Romans through the repetitive embodiment of Greco-Roman characters by white Americans, that it was unthinkable that Brutus, Virginius, Damon, or Coriolanus were black.

In light of the inherent tension raised by these doubly-mimetic acts—pretending to be both another person, and a member of a different identity group—this chapter seeks to explore how the playhouse served as a crucial site of race-making in the early United

States. By examining five frequently performed plays—some of which have received very little modern critical attention—I explore how theatrical performances asserted the whiteness of ancient Greeks and Romans, and the blackness—or at least, racial

―suspectness‖—of ancient Egyptians and other North Africans, by consistently casting the former as white, and marking the latter as dark-skinned or non-white. These tendencies increased over the time period addressed in this chapter, such that in the

1750s, it was perfectly acceptable for George Washington to play the role of the admirable Numidian prince Juba in Joseph Addison‘s 1713 play, Cato; but by the antebellum period, Cato had all but disappeared from the American stage, and the most prominent ancient North African on the American stage, the Egyptian priest Arbaces in

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Louisa Medina‘s The Last Days of Pompeii, was portrayed as a racial outsider in Roman

Pompeii, and as a person of pure evil.

Such theatrical performances reassuringly affirmed the racial ancestry claims at the root of white American identity; however, the theater also had the potential to challenge those claims. What did performances such as those described above—in which a black man imitated respected contemporary white men, who was in turn embodying presumptively white ancient heroes—mean to early American audiences? Did James

Hewlett‘s patrons attend merely to laugh at the spectacle, and if so, did his portrayal of the contemporary actor Thomas Cooper performing the role of morally upright Roman

Virginius give them more satisfaction than his imitation of Edward Kean as Othello?

And, conversely, what did it mean for a white actor to ―black-up‖ to play an ancient

North African?

This chapter explores some of the ways in which these performances of the ancient Mediterranean past supported or challenged emerging concepts of race and heritage in the early United States, by providing ―ocular proof‖ of the whiteness or blackness of characters from what were considered to be ―ancestral‖ pasts. 2 While the actors and the characters they played quite literally take ―center stage‖ in this discussion, it is important to keep in mind range of other participants in these performances, including not only the writers, actors, managers, and set designers who mounted the shows night after night, but also the audiences who bought their tickets and gathered to witness the events on stage.

2 Heather Nathans uses this phrase in her discussion of the role of theater in ―providing the ‗ocular proof‘ that men and women of African descent could plausibly perform the role of citizen,‖ but theater was equally important in establishing white people as both American citizens and descendants of Greeks and Romans. Slavery and Sentiment on the American Stage, 1787-1861: Lifting the Veil of Black. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 61.

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The playhouse was truly a microcosm of the society of the early United States.

American actors offered living, breathing, and speaking representations of characters, past and present, which white Americans identified as part of their worlds—whether they served as elegant exemplars of ―people like us,‖ or offered contrasting figures, against which they could reaffirm their identity with fellow (white) Americans. Similarly, despite the fact that the white elite remained a primary audience, the front of the house—almost without exception up until the early 1840s—was filled with every race, gender, and class represented in a given town or city. From presidents to prostitutes, society ladies to enslaved coopers, all were contained under the same roof, and, for the space of a few hours, watched the same stories represented by their countrymen and countrywomen on stage.3

While the living, breathing human beings on both sides of the proscenium were primarily American, the material performed on the early American stage generally was not.4 Despite the fact that most plays performed in the early United States were written by

European playwrights, we ought always to be attuned to the different meanings a given play could have had for those watching it—and how the shared experience of watching a particular collection of people perform on stage also impacted the meaning of the play.

Even a fairytale set in a land loosely based on an orientalist concept of ―Arabia,‖ translated by a British playwright from a French original, would take on a set of meanings that was specific to its American context, when performed on an American

3 On the makeup of early American theater audiences, the most comprehensive work remains David Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater and Culture, 1800-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 46-75. Grimsted also discusses the class segregation of theaters in major cities, starting in the 1830s. 4 The relationship between early American theater and that of the United Kingdom is nicely summarized in Peter P. Reed, Rogue Performances: Staging the Underclasses in Early American Theatre Culture, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 2-4.

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stage before an American audience. This is the setting about which Shane White, in his provocative study of the first professional black theater company in the United States, writes that, ―[e]xponentially more than is the case nowadays, the theater—not only the stage but also the pit, boxes, and gallery—was a place of fantasy where racial tensions and all manner of other social concerns could be played out.‖5

Excavating the meanings that theatrical performances held in the early United

States is often difficult to do, both because few early American theatergoers left anything more than a handful of words confirming that they ―went to hear Forrest in Macbeth;‖6 and because many of the meanings these performances held were either so subtle and integral to the experience as to elude articulation, or so obvious to contemporary viewers that they were not considered worthy of comment. Even the reviews of plays that were regularly published in American periodicals, and reprinted in towns hundreds of miles away from the original performance, tended to focus more on the scripts themselves, and on the composition of the audience, than they did on describing what was done on stage.

Despite these difficulties, theatrical performances in the early United States represent far too richly symbolic and resonant a milieu to abandon entirely to the silences of the historical record. In order to explore some of the ways in which theatrical performances of the classical past contributed to the construction of whiteness and blackness in the early United States, I adopt a range of techniques that have been used by recent scholars of the early American theater, including David Grimsted, Eric Lott, and

Peter Reed, among others, beginning with the assumption that ―[a]ll popular drama

5 White, Stories of Freedom, 185. 6 From the journal of future Confederate colonel, Randall McGavock, when a student at Harvard, October 19, 1848. Pen and Sword: The Life and Journals of Randal W. McGavock, ed. Herschel Gower (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1959), 157.

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passes a censor. . . . No popular form is deposited in the vaults of memory and frequent production if it does not vivify home truths that already lurk in an audience‘s consciousness.‖7 In order to elucidate some of these ―home truths‖ that have escaped previous scholarly attention, I begin with a brief discussion of the specific theoretical issues raised by ―performing the past,‖ and will then examine a handful of scripts to explore how American racial categories were mapped onto the words, settings, and costumes used in plays set in the ancient Mediterranean. Next, I elaborate on the role of race in the theatrical context in which these plays were performed; and finally discuss how blackface minstrelsy drew on the powerful tensions inherent in the black American intervention into the ethnic history of American whiteness.

Over the last few decades, several scholars have explored the image of black people in three basic theatrical categories: blackface performances by white actors in

―legitimate‖ theater; theatrical performances by black American actors; and blackface minstrelsy.8 By contrast, this chapter addresses theatrical performances across all three of these categories, in which American blackness was invoked in plays set in the ancient

Mediterranean. Combining the valuable insights of this previous scholarship with an awareness of the crucial role that stories about antiquity played in reinforcing white claims to racial superiority in the early United States, allows us to see how the theater, in particular, supported this narrative. Thus, whereas Heather Nathan sees her work as

7 W.T. Lhamon, Jr., Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 30. 8 On theatrical performances by black Americans, see McAllister, White People; Thompson, Documentary History; White, Stories of Freedom. On blackness in ―legitimate‖ theater, see Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment; Reed, Rogue Performances. On blackface minstrelsy, see W.T. Lhamon, Jr., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow; Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); William J. Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

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focusing on the point at which modern scholars notice that they do not ―get the joke,‖9 my own analysis addresses a phenomenon which appears so familiar to modern readers— the embodiment of ancient Greek and Roman characters by white actors—that it does not stand out to us as exceptional at all, or worthy of explanation. Indeed, the contemporary discourse surrounding ―color-blind‖ casting accepts as a basic premise the ―whiteness‖ of ancient Greeks and Romans to such an extent that a black Medea or Marc Antony is considered to be ―casting against race.‖10 I wish to trouble this implicit assumption in this chapter, in order to shed light on the very real consequences of the American theatrical

(and later, cinematic) tradition of casting Greeks and Romans—those civilizations lauded as the ultimate ancestors of American societies—as white.

Performing the past

One obvious feature shared by plays set in ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt was that they took place in ―before‖—a time prior to the present.11 As occurred in the performances that mark the starting point of the Western theatrical tradition—the tragedies of ancient

Athens—members of the society of ―today‖ embodied the characters, spoke the words, and enacted the deeds of historical characters.12 As scholars of modern performances of

9 Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 4. 10 The extent to which classical characters have come to represent an exclusively white past is revealed by Joseph Papp‘s choice of the Roman plays Julius Caesar and Coriolanus for the first two performances of his groundbreaking, all-black Shakespeare company, in 1979; as well as theater historian James V. Hatch‘s description of these performances of having ―seriously and successfully introduced onto America‘s stages the concept of black actors playing nonblack roles.‖ Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch, A History of African American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 425. 11 In this chapter, I am equally interested in plays that involve historical events and historical individuals that are ―real,‖ as well as those that are invented. 12 See Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). With the crucial exception of Aeschylus‘ The Persians, all extant Greek tragedies were set in the mythological past, but were nonetheless crucial in the articulation of various components of identity.

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the past have affirmed, ―our preoccupation with performing history‖ reflects, in part, the power of such performances in supporting nationalist and other identity-based agendas.13

Freddie Rokem, in his seminal work on performances of the past, writes that

The theater very forcefully participates in the ongoing representations and debates about these pasts [which are seen as the foundation of collective identities], sometimes contesting the hegemonic understanding of the historical heritage on the basis of which these identities have been constructed, sometimes reinforcing them.14

What sets theatrical representations of history apart from other discourses about the past is the ―live presence of actors on the stage,‖ providing a visceral sense of proximity to— and therefore knowledge and understanding of—the past.

Performances of the past offer an important sense of understanding of history, not only in terms of its chronological relationship to the ―present‖ (the time in which the play is performed), but also in terms of what we can call genealogy or ancestry. Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks discuss this phenomenon at modern historical sites that employ

―living history‖ approaches, such as Celtica in Wales, a site that shares ―a story of genealogy and the true identity of the Welsh.‖15 Visitors to this site are guided by an intermediary—in Pearson and Shanks‘ case, ―a nice modern Welsh boy, speaking

Welsh,‖ who was supposed to represent an Iron Age blacksmith. Despite the fact that visitors know that their guide is not actually a person from the past, his modern Welsh identity was critical to the believability of his representation, making him what Pearson

13 Scott Magelssen, introduction to Enacting History, eds. Magelssen and Rhona Justice-Malloy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011), 3. See also Leigh Clemons, ―Present Enacting Past: The Functions of Battle Reenacting in Historical Representation,‖ in Magelssen and Justice-Malloy, Enacting History; Amy M. Tyson, ―Men with Their Muskets and Me in My Bare Feet: Performing History and Policing Gender at Historic Fort Snell Living History Museum,‖ in Magelssen and Justice-Malloy, Enacting History. 14 Freddie Rokem, Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), 3. 15 Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks Theatre/Archaeology (London: Routledge, 2001), 116.

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and Shanks call ―an authentic intermediary‖ by virtue of his supposed genealogical link to the people whose story he shares. Similarly, to the extent that an early nineteenth- century, white American actor such as George Jamieson could be considered an

―authentic‖ figure to represent the Roman patriot Brutus in Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar

(Figure 12), a biological as well as cultural descent was implied.

Figure 12: George Jamieson as Brutus in Julius Caesar, 1859, Theatrical Print Collection, University of Illinois.

When we combine this awareness with the politics of race in early American theater, it becomes evident that, if the proper color of the American stage was ―white,‖ then the proper color of antiquity was also white. With few exceptions, black Americans

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were generally excluded from the stage. Whenever a white actor assumed the role of a

Caribbean princess or an African slave, the racial distance between them and those nonwhite characters was relentlessly made visible through the use of makeup and what were described in one script as ―dark flesh colored stockings and arms,‖16 while the lack of color-altering makeup needed to play other non-white-American characters implied, by contrast, that those characters were also ―white.‖ Thus, when white Americans wore tunics and togas, and gave Julius Caesar or Antigone the appearance and sound of contemporary white America, this served to reinforce broader social messages about the whiteness of classical antiquity. This principle is particularly evident in an 1856 image from Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, which illustrated the actor Edwin

Forrest in costumes and poses associated with five of his most famous roles (Figure 13).

Figure 13: “Edwin Forrest in Five Great Characters,” Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing- Room Companion, 1856, Theatrical Print Collection, University of Illinois

16 Description of costume of character of Yarico in a 1794 acting edition of George Colman‘s play Inkle and Yarico, quoted in Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 105.

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In all five roles, Forrest embodied historical characters, but in contrast to the white, actively unprinted space on the engraving that marked Forrest‘s skin in his roles as a noble Roman, an English folk hero, a Scottish king, and a Roman slave, Forrest‘s skin was depicted as so darkly painted in his role as the Wampanoag warrior Metamora, that the features of his face were barely discernible. The racial significance of an image like this is clear: Roman slaves and their masters, and nobles and commoners of the British

Isles were all as white as white Americans, while the difference between a white

American actor and a historical ―noble savage‖ such as Metamora was such that it must be marked with stockings and paint.

The default whiteness conveyed by the racial homogeneity of the actors was reinforced in interesting ways by the economics of theater in the early United States. In any given season—particularly when on tour—acting companies generally performed a different play every evening. As a result, the actors themselves had to make rapid changes between one role and the next. Touring thespian Harry Watkins observed that at times, ―It is impossible to tell what the bill will be for two days at a time. You don‘t know what to study.‖17 In order to cope with this system, actors tended to specialize in different character types. Thus, the same mannerisms, vocal nuances, and physical characterizations—and even, when memories failed or rehearsal time was too short, some of the same lines—would have appeared in plays set in the contemporary United States as well as those set in ancient Rome. Additionally, costumes and set pieces were frequently

17 Diary entry from August 28, 1848, when performing in Boston. Maud Skinner and Otis Skinner, eds., One Man in His Time: The Adventures of H. Watkins, strolling player, 1845-1863, from his journal (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938), 64.

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recycled18—a backdrop of classical columns could thus represent a fancy house in New

York City as well as the forum in Rome.

The white and black Americans who performed the roles of ancient men and women on stage were operating within what Rebecca Schneider refers to as ―the again of a time out of joint.‖19 By embodying historical characters, they offered themselves and their spectators a new way of ―knowing‖ the past. Whenever they took on the roles of historical characters, actors attempted to capture ways of feeling and being that were true to those characters. Even though their portrayals were inevitably drawn from the cultural contexts of the actors, they became ―true‖ embodiments of the past, both to the actors and their audiences. It is important to keep this aspect of the experience of performing these roles in mind, and consider the kinds of affective knowledge that American actors gained from stepping into these roles, night after night.

The pastness of the plays explored in this chapter also made it possible for them to explore otherwise taboo subjects like slave revolt, miscegeny, and black or female rule.20 When these subjects were presented on stage as if they were taking place in contexts both long ago and far away, their threats could be experienced and processed more abstractly. However, it was important that the context in which they were presented had an intimate connection to the audience. The effect was similar to the cathartic power

18 Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled, 81-82; Reed, Rogue Performances, 19-20. 19 Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 1. 20 While these issues could safely be explored in the past, rarely was more than one evinced in any given play. Perhaps the combination of female rule, miscegeny and the explosive question of the race of the ancient Egyptians explains the relative absence of Shakespeare‘s Antony and Cleopatra from the stage in the early republic and antebellum periods. In contrast to other Shakespearean works, the play received its first American production only in 1846 at New York‘s Park Theatre, and was rarely revived before the Civil War. T. Allston Brown, A History of the New York Stage, From the First Performance in 1732 to 1901 (New York: B. Blom, 1964), I: 65.

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of ancient Athenians watching the larger-than-life, but still plausible, trials and tribulations of Homeric characters who they regarded as their ethnic ancestors. In other words, a slave like Spartacus could lead a bloody revolt, a powerful North African woman like Dido could rule Carthage and seduce the white founder of Rome, and a crafty

Egyptian could dominate the white Pompeians, but all would be vanquished in the end by securely white, securely male representatives of Greco-Roman culture, thus reassuring

(male) white Americans that their forebears had always succeeded in staving off destruction at the hands of deviant ―others.‖ Together with the social meaning of the ancient societies in which these stories took place, such theatrical explorations of uncomfortable and even dangerous subjects heightened the appeal of performing and watching plays about the ancient world in the racially insecure world of the early United

States.

Stage Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians

An exploration of the plays set in the ancient Mediterranean that were performed in the early United States reveals how they promoted the presumptively white primary audience‘s identification with ancient Greeks and Romans as their racial ancestors, and affirmed their suspicion of the ancient Egyptian, Numidian, and Carthaginian characters on stage. In order to explore how these processes played out, I offer a close reading of four of the most popular classical plays in the early United States: Joseph Addison‘s Cato

(1713), John Banim‘s21 Damon and Pythias (1821), Robert Montgomery Bird‘s The

21 The play is often credited jointly or solely to Richard Lalor Shiel, an Irish politician and writer, but was apparently composed in its entirely by Banim, with Shiel only helping to promote the play through his influential contacts. Patrick Joseph Murray, The Life of John Banim (London: William Lay, 1857), 79.

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Gladiator (1831), and Louisa H. Medina‘s Last Days of Pompeii (1835).22 Although each of these plays had a very different story of creation, authorship, and performance history, they all became standard pieces of the American theatrical repertoire for several decades, and were performed before thousands of Americans across the country.23 While Cato and

The Gladiator have received critical attention previously, my reading here explores the ways in which they, and the other plays, represented certain ideals of American whiteness, even as they raised issues of slavery and American blackness. In addition to a face-value reading of the scripts of these plays, I also offer scraps of evidence for how the characters were ―read‖ by Americans within their white primary audience; leaving for the next section an exploration of how black Americans and their white allies troubled the normative work of American theater.

The first of these plays, Addison‘s Cato, is also the most widely discussed among early Americanists, in part due to its influence on the rhetoric of the American

Revolution.24 The significance of Cato as a republican hero—and hence, as a hero for

22 While the record of the performance history of plays in the late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries is far from complete, these four plays are among those most frequently mentioned in those sources that exist (newspaper ads, playbills, mentions in diaries, etc.). My data on American performances of these do plays comes from searches in America‘s Historical Imprints, the American Periodicals Series Online, America‘s Historical Newspapers, and American Broadsides and Ephemera; as well as following histories of theater in different cities and states: Brown, New York Stage; William G.B. Carson, The Theatre on the Frontier: The Early Years of the St. Louis Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932); Carson, Managers in Distress: The St. Louis Stage, 1840-1844 (St. Louis: St. Louis Historical Documents Foundation, 1949); James H. Dormon, Jr., Theater in the Ante bellum South, 1815-1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967); Joseph Gaer, ed., The Theatre of the Gold Rush Decade in San Francisco (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970); West T. Hill, Jr., The Theatre in Early Kentucky, 1790-1820 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971); Reese D. James, Old Drury of Philadelphia: A History of the Philadelphia Stage, 1800-1835 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932); Michael Staples Shockley, The Richmond Stage, 1784-1812 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977); Arthur Herman Wilson, A History of the Philadelphia Theatre, 1835-1855 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935). 23 The lead role of Spartacus in The Gladiator was only played by Edwin Forrest during his lifetime, but dozens of other American actors around the country performed the supporting roles. 24 See Fredric M. Litto, ―Addison‘s Cato in the Colonies,” William and Mary Quarterly 23 (1966); Henry C. Montgomery, ―Addison‘s Cato and George Washington,‖ Classical Journal 55 (1960). Smaller discussions of the play appear in such works as Richard, Founders and the Classics, 36, 45; Winterer, 169

citizens of the early United States—was quite straightforward. Cato‘s belief in the Roman

Republic was absolute, and he defended his support for it with such stirring lines as ―A day, an hour of virtuous liberty, / Is worth a whole eternity in bondage,‖ and upon learning of his son‘s death, ―What pity is it / That we can die but once to serve our country!‖25 A fan of the theater summarized the appeal of the play in a 1792 article, in which he urged the Park Theatre to include the play in their next season: ―The piece breathes throughout the whole, such a delicacy of passion, and such an ardent spirit of liberty, that it would charm every mind of sensibility, and kindle heroic ardor in the breath of every true American.‖26

Cato‘s stoicism, his love of country and of liberty, and his management of his family made him an ideal model for white American masculinity. Despite the suitability of Cato himself as a republican hero, however, and the popularity of the play on both sides of the Atlantic prior to the Revolutionary War, the play was rarely performed by professional actors in the new country. After being one of the very first plays mounted at

Philadelphia‘s Southwark Theatre in March 1793, following the repeal of the post-

Revolutionary ban on theater, and a revival at the same theater ―By Desire of the Patriotic

Society,‖ only two other professional productions of the play—one in Boston in 1795, and one in New York in 1801—seem to have taken place over the next few years.27

Mirror of Antiquity, 51; Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 25; Edwin A. Miles, ―The Young American Nation and the Classical World,‖ Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974): 262. Although the performance of Cato by Washington‘s troops at Valley Forge is often framed as the ultimate illustration of the patriotic significance of the play, see Mark Bryan‘s argument that this moment has been misread, and is better understood as an elite display put on by Washington‘s officers, than as a ―gift‖ from Washington to his weary troops. Mark Evans Bryan, ―‗Slideing into Monarchical extravagance‘: Cato at Valley Forge and the Testimony of William Bradford Jr.‖ William and Mary Quarterly 67, no.1 (2010). 25 Act II, Scene 1, and Act IV, Scene 4. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations come from the edition of Cato published in Boston in 1793. 26 Daily Advertiser (New York), March 31, 1792. 27 Columbian Centinel (Boston), March 25, 1795; The Port-Folio, April 4, 1801.

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Outside of the major theaters of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia Cato fared no better: not a single production of the play is recorded in the comprehensive catalogs of regional theater in Richmond (1784-1812), St. Louis (through 1844), Gold Rush San

Francisco, and Kentucky (1790-1820).28 The play was seen on major stages again, briefly, starting in 1837, when George Vandenhoff revived the play, and performed in its title role as he toured throughout the major cities of the East, from Boston to Charleston.

While Vandenhoff‘s performance was praised as being a ―sublime portrait of the noble

Roman,‖ the play itself was criticized as not being particularly suitable to being staged;29 and no other actors took on the role after Vandenhoff abandoned it. Instead, starting as early as the 1780s, the play appears to have been relegated to the status of an elocution lesson for schools—which is the setting in which Washington Irving performed in it when he was ten years old.30

In order to understand the speed with which the play lost favor with American audiences, we can consider the role that the young Irving took in his classroom recitation of the play: Juba, a Numidian prince.31 Set in North Africa, and written nearly a century before and a continent away from the racial structures that defined the early United

States, the play presented Juba as both black and (thanks to Roman tutelage) civilized.

Furthermore, the play both emphasized the racial distinction between Romans and

28 Shockley, Richmond Stage, 1977; Carson, Managers in Distress; Carson, Theatre on the Frontier; Gaer, Gold Rush Decade; Hill, Theatre in Early Kentucky. 29 This judgment may have been partially based on Cato‘s literary qualities (or lack thereof), but there were many other plays that critics disapproved of but were nonetheless popular with audiences. 30 The play was commonly incorporated into school texts up to the time of the Civil War, including Noah Webster‘s An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking (the 6th edition of which was printed in 1790); as well as reprinted in editions specially ―published to aid elocution in the schools of the United States,‖ such as that printed in Worcester by Isaiah Thomas (second edition in 1787). See also Litto, ―Addison‘s Cato,‖ 447-448. 31 On Irving as Juba, see S.S. Advocate, ―In a Tight Place,‖ The Youth’s Companion, March 17, 1864.

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Numidians (who were described as ―tawny‖), and repeatedly expressed the ability of

Numidians to learn to be like Romans, bringing to mind the central debate in the early

United States over whether, given the same advantages of education, black men could become intelligent and productive citizens.32 Juba‘s upright character even made him a worthy suitor for Marcia, the Roman daughter of Cato, whom Juba‘s general, Syphax, described as a ―pale, unripen‘d beaut[y] of the North,” and was in Juba‘s eyes, ―fair, (Oh, how divinely fair!).‖33 Marcia reciprocated Juba‘s affections, describing him as ―the loveliest youth that ever warm‘d / A virgin's heart.‖34 Whereas in 1758, George

Washington could write to Sally Fairfax that he would be ―doubly happy in being the

Juba to such a Marcia as you must make,‖35 by the time that the growing free black communities of the early nineteenth century began to claim ancient North Africans as their own ancestors, the matter of playing that character on an American stage had become far more complex. This may help to explain why, by the time that the United

States had become a ―theater-going culture‖ in the early 1820s, the play had all but disappeared from the repertoire.

While Cato soon faded from the American stage, other plays set in the ancient world formed a sizable portion of the body of material seen on early American stages.

One of the most popular, from the moment of its New York debut in 1821, was Irishman

32 For an indication that black theater audiences were expected to identify with the character of Juba, see the negative review of a production of the play in New York, which stated that ―even the mob in the gallery [the standard seating area for black theatergoers] are careless if Juba, the philosophical negro, win or lose his love‖ (Port-Folio, April 4, 1801). White disdain for Africans was modeled by Cato‘s sons within the play (Act I, Scene 1), but even they could not deny how well Juba ―cop[ies] out our father‘s bright example‖; while Juba‘s general, Syphax, spoke at length about the positive attributes of Africans which he considered the Romans to lack (Act I, Scene IV). 33 Act I, Scene 4. 34 Act IV, Scene 3, 35 George Washington to Sarah Fairfax, September 25, 1758, quoted in Litto, ―Addison‘s Cato,‖ 441.

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John Banim‘s play Damon and Pythias.36 The story was based on a fable shared by

Roman historian Valerius Maximus, set in the ancient Greek city of Syracuse. It received by far the most pre-Civil War performances of all the plays discussed in this chapter, sometimes running simultaneously at two theaters in the same city;37 and was often chosen for such symbolic occasions as the opening of the Jenny Lind Theater in San

Francisco in 1850.38

The titular characters embodied the ideals of the philosophical senator (Damon‘s devotion to Pythagoras was referenced throughout the play), and the patriotic soldier

(Pythias‘ valor in battles with Carthaginians was similarly mentioned multiple times).

The supporting characters comprised the bloodthirsty tyrant and his sycophantic followers; Damon‘s loyal (former) slave, faithful wife, and noble child; Pythias‘ aging father, foolish bride, and harsh mother-in-law. Together, these various parties shed light on the power and uniqueness of the friendship between Damon and Pythias, each of whom demonstrated his willingness to give up his life for the other. Their love and loyalty melted even the tyrant‘s heart, and he revoked Damon‘s death sentence, allowing for a happy ending.

Damon, who had the lion‘s share of the lines, and was generally played by the more famous actor, took the stage after an opening scene in which Dionysius and his minions plotted the overthrow of the Syracusan republic. Damon lamented how ―There is

36 On Grimsted‘s tables of the most popular plays performed in Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and St. Louis, Damon and Pythias ranks 13th from 1816-1831, right behind Shakespeare‘s Macbeth; and 18th from 1831-1851 (Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled, 252, 254). 37 This occurred in Philadelphia on at least three occasions: October 14, 1842, when different productions played at the Arch Street Theatre and the Walnut Street Theatre; October 9, 1851, again at the Arch Street Theatre and the Walnut Street Theatre; and on December 21, 1855, at the Walnut Street Theatre and the City Museum (Wilson, Philadelphia Theatre). 38 Gaer, Gold Rush Decade, 18.

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now / No public virtue left in Syracuse,‖ and expressed his disgust at his fellow citizens‘ eagerness to seek ―Their own devouring slavery.‖39 When the play opened in 1821, aging

Revolutionary War veterans and their children would certainly have identified with

Damon‘s decision that in order to protect ―My land of birth.‖40 he had to oppose its current leadership. As the United States lurched toward civil war over the succeeding decades, the risks Damon took through his words and ultimately violent actions continued to appeal to white northerners and southerners, as well as free and enslaved black Americans. Similarly, Pythias‘ self-sacrificing offer to sit in Damon‘s cell, in order to give him time to inform his wife and son of his coming execution, presented a model of loyalty and selflessness. Together, the onstage words and actions of these two men provided the moral evidence of Greek perfection, to correspond with the physical perfection that white Americans worshiped in the Apollo Belvedere (see Chapter 2).

One of the many interesting elements of this play, particularly in light of the broader presentation of ancient Greece as part of the ethnic history of white Americans, was the prominence of the relationship between Damon and Lucullus, a freedman who remained loyal to his former master. The characters shared the stage five times during the play, allowing Lucullus to repeatedly declare his devotion. In Scene 2 of Act I, when he realized that Damon‘s life was at risk, Lucullus exclaimed, ―My lord, / I was your slave; you gave me liberty; / And when I see you peril‘d—‖; and when Damon was temporarily released from jail in Scene 3 of Act III, Lucullus greeted him, ―Oh my dear lord, my master, and my friend,‖ reiterating his continued deference and gratitude toward the man who had once owned him. Lucullus‘ loyalty and awareness of his lower rank would have

39 Act I, Scene 1. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations come from the 1860 edition of Edwin Forrest‘s prompt book for the play. 40 Act I, Scene 1.

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seemed entirely appropriate to supporters of slavery, and was shown to be much more than a façade when, in Act IV, Lucullus risked his own life in order to prevent his master from returning to Syracuse to face his death sentence. Lucullus begged, ―My generous master, do not slay me!‖ and reminded Damon ―You were ever kind and merciful, nor yet

/ Commended me unto the cruel whip, / And I did love you for it!‖ before he admitted that, he ―could not hold my hand‖ from killing Damon‘s horse, in order to keep him safe.

The slave‘s (for Damon reverted to calling him that) improper action thus set Damon up for another opportunity to reveal his own virtue, as he prepared to kill Lucullus and himself, and was stopped only when another means of saving his friend, Pythias, presented itself.

When leading British and American actors, such as Thomas Cooper and Edwin

Forrest, embodied the roles of the noble ancient Greeks Damon and Pythias, in front of

American audiences, their whiteness was accepted as entirely suitable for the roles they performed. Furthermore, the script occasionally drove this point home, by comparing

Greek skin to marble—recalling how white statues represented Greek bodies in the

United States.41 In Act V, Scene 1, Pythias‘ bride, Calanthe, lamenting her new husband‘s doom, described her ―Cheek that ne‘er shall blush again; / Whose marble may be spotted o‘er with blood, / But not with modesty . . . .‖ In a society in which the ease of seeing a blush on a white face as opposed to a black face was frequently pointed to as one of the many ―fundamental differences‖ between the races, this comment reminded the audience that what they saw on stage was ―true:‖ the ancient Greeks of Syracuse were as white as the white Americans who impersonated them. Similarly, the white master/black

41 See Chapter 2 for a thorough discussion of the role of classical sculptures as representing white bodies in this era.

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slave parallel raised by the scenes between Damon and Lucullus, would have been further enhanced by the costumes described in edition of the play printed in Philadelphia in the

1830s, which had Damon wearing a ―Grecian white shirt,‖ in contrast to Lucullus‘ ―Plain dark Grecian shirt.‖42

If Damon and Pythias offered an excellent vehicle for (free) white American virtue, not all theatergoers were happy to rely on British playwrights for such material.

Forrest, who frequently performed in the role of Damon, gained much of his popularity by playing into this nationalistic sentiment, and offering a patriotic alternative to the

British theater. Forrest was proud to be an American actor in a star system that generally revered the British actors who toured the new country. Forrest‘s status as the American tragedian was such that Walter Meserve describes him as ―strong, direct, and representative of masculine America.‖43 The most extreme expression of this was the so- called ―Shakespeare Riot‖ of 1849, in which Forrest‘s supporters attacked a performance of his rival, British tragic actor, William Macready (for whom the role of Damon was originally written), in a confrontation that left around two dozen New Yorkers dead.44

Forrest‘s nationalism and egotism were also expressed in his promotion of

American writers, and in 1829 he founded a yearly competition for new American tragedies—encouraging plays that also happened to showcase his own talents. The winning plays, considered as a group, provide a useful reminder of the range of subjects

42 John Banim [incorrectly attributed to Richard Shiel], Damon and Pythias, or, The Test of Friendship. Philadelphia: Frederick Turner, c. 1830s). 43 Walter J. Meserve, Heralds of Promise: The Drama of the American People During the Age of Jackson, 1829-1849 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 29. 44 Nigel Cliff, The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Random House, 2007. There was a hefty element of class conflict in this encounter, as the house where Macready was playing was one of the relatively new theaters designed for elite entertainment, and the group that allied with Forrest was largely working class.

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that fell under the rubric of an ―American‖ play: they were set in colonial North and

South America, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and medieval England.45 The play that won the first year was John Augustus Stone‘s Metamora, which was based on the story of the Wampanoag leader King Philip, and situated the Native Americans as the protagonists, and the English settlers as the enemy.46 Such a story was considered a suitable subject for an ―American‖ play because of the broader social construction of

Native Americans as the spiritual ancestors of the (white) United States.47 The fact that

Greeks and Native Americans both fell into the same category of ―like us‖ for white

Americans is confirmed by the following year‘s winning play: a story set in the ancient

Greek city of Thebes, called Pelopidas. Ultimately, this play by Philadelphia doctor,

Robert Montgomery Bird was never produced. Bird‘s brother, Henry, encouraged him not to rework Pelopidas, but instead to develop a different play that he was working on:

―Stick to the Gladiator: it is not only a captivating but popular name, and a character altogether more suited to Forrest‘s Roman figure & actions.‖48 Bird followed his advice, and in 1831 he again won Forrest‘s competition. The play proved fantastically successful,

45 For more on Forrest‘s prize and the winning plays, see Meserve, Heralds of Promise, 44-69; Ginger Strand, ―‗My Noble Spartacus‘: Edwin Forrest and Masculinity on the Nineteenth-Century Stage,‖ in Passing Performances: Queer Readings of Leading Players in American Theater History, eds. Robert A. Schanke and Kim Marra (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 21-24. An overly narrow conception of what types of plays could be important for American identity shapes Jeffrey Richards‘ Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic, which only examines plays set in the United States or in closely related Caribbean or European settings. 46 See Lepore, Name of War, 191-226, for a detailed discussion of the play within the context of Jackson‘s contemporaneous ―Indian Removal‖ policy. 47 For survey of this phenomenon, focusing specifically on white American impersonation of Native Americans, see Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 48 Henry Bird to Robert Montgomery Bird, December 31, 1830, Diedrich Collection, William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, quoted in Jeffrey H. Richards, introduction to The Gladiator, in Early American Drama, ed. Richards (New York: Penguin, 1997), 166.

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and Forrest continued to play the lead character of Spartacus—based on the historical figure who led a major slave revolt in 1st century BCE Italy—for several decades.49

Although the play was set in a context that was historically and geographically distant from the slave plantations of the United States, the parallels between this story and the black slave revolts that white Americans feared were quite clear. Indeed, the threat—or promise, depending on one‘s perspective—of slave revolt was on every

American‘s mind when the play opened in Philadelphia in September 1831, mere weeks after the partially successful Virginia uprising organized by Nat Turner—and more than a month before Turner would be captured and publicly executed.50 However, while white

Americans comprehended Nat Turner‘s revolt as a battle between races, they saw the story of the Thracian slaves‘ battle with their Roman owners as one in which both sides were white—and in which one group of decadent white men had wrongly enslaved valiant members of their own race.

Both Forrest‘s quintessential (white) American-ness, and setting of the play within the glorious white past served to distance his portrayal of Spartacus from Nat

Turner and other black revolutionaries. Uniquely among the plays discussed in depth in this chapter, one of the conditions of Forrest‘s writing contest was that he owned exclusive performance rights to the play, so every antebellum American spectator who

49 Reed, Rogue Performances, 151, states that the play had been performed more than 1000 times by 1854. 50 Bird was well aware of this fact, writing in his journal that ―At this present moment there are 6 or 800 armed negroes marching through Southampton County, Va. . . . If they had but a Spartacus among them— to organize the half million of Virginia, the hundreds of thousands of other states, & lead them on in the Crusade of Massacre, what a blessed example might they not give to the world of the excellence of slavery!‖ (Robert Montgomery Bird, ―Secret Record,‖ unnumbered pages 2-3, Robert Montgomery Bird Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, quoted in Reed, Rogue Performances, 172-73).

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cheered on Spartacus was seeing him embodied by this same actor.51 Along with the other popular role to which Forrest had exclusive rights—the Native American hero,

Metamora—Forrest regularly represented two important characters from the imagined pasts that buttressed white American identity: the spirit of the free, noble savage, who grew out of the American soil and was uncorrupted by European vices; and a manly, unjustly oppressed male hero of ancient Rome. While the former was performed in makeup that darkened Forrest‘s skin—marking him as a ―red man‖—and the latter was performed with Forrest‘s natural complexion on display, the same voice mannerisms of the most American of actors brought each character to life (see Figure 13 and Figure 14).

Figure 14: Edwin Forrest as Metamora (left) and Spartacus (right), Mathew Brady, c. 1860, National Portrait Gallery.

51 For shorter periods of time, individual actors also maintained a monopoly over other roles, including Thomas Hamblin‘s performances through the late 1830s as Arbaces in The Last Days of Pompeii, a role that he originated in 1835.

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While both Metamora and The Gladiator presented stories with complicated social messages, each settled them comfortably by the final scene. In the case of The

Gladiator, the theme of slave revolt was too dangerous an issue to leave unresolved, and here history was kind to early American theater makers. As much as audiences were encouraged to empathize with Spartacus‘ struggle, the character‘s ultimate capture and execution comfortably echoed the capture and execution of Nat Turner (which, at the time of the play‘s debut, was still an uncertain outcome). If even so strong, smart, and white a slave as Spartacus could be subdued—eventually—then so could the supposedly inferior black slaves that white Americans feared.

The identification of Spartacus as a slave who was white, and therefore safely distant from the black slaves of white Americans, was enhanced by what the playwright‘s brother, Henry, described as Forrest‘s ―Roman figure & actions.‖ Forrest‘s whiteness qualified him to portray a Roman in a way that—although it was rarely articulated— black or other non-white Americans would have been entirely disqualified. Indeed, one observer described the actor as having ―the form of an Apollo with the strength of a

Hercules: his deep musical voice was under perfect control, and in the pathetic scenes of

Cade and Virginius, full of tears.‖52 Although the character of Spartacus was, historically speaking, not Roman but Thracian, Henry Bird‘s characterization of him as Roman indicated how well-educated Americans did not view the play as one in which enslaved outsiders struggled against evil Roman masters, but rather as one in which Roman slaves rebelled from Roman masters. This practice both reinforced the more straightforward association of white Americans with Romans, and distanced the slave revolt in the play

52 Joseph Jefferson, The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson (New York: The Century Co, 1889), 157.

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from the white American enslavement of individuals who they defined as ―not like us‖— both non-white, and non-American. As a result, some proslavery audiences responded to the play in much the same way that they embraced Hiram Powers‘ sculpture of The

Greek Slave, which, like Forrest‘s The Gladiator, toured the United States in the final decade of the antebellum period: as a presentation of white, Greco-Roman slavery that reaffirmed the impossibility and injustice of enslaving white people, and implied the necessity and justice of enslaving black people.53

Nevertheless, for those slaveowning and non-slaveowning white Americans who nervously followed every new rumor of slave unrest, watching the play must have been an unsettling experience. Right from the opening speech, Bird pulled no punches in articulating the violent ambitions of rebellious slaves. Spartacus‘ brother, Phasarius, declared that ―my fingers itch to be at th[e] throats‖ of those who ―traffic in human flesh,‖ and urged his companions, ―Get me up a rebellion, and you shall see this great man [their owner] brained by the least of his merchandise.‖54 Switching to blank verse,

Phasarius reminded his fellow slaves that

[. . .] there are some thousands in this realm, Have the same wish with us, to turn their swords Upon their masters. And ‘tis natural, That wish, and very reasonable, very reasonable.

The graphic descriptions of Phasarius‘ lust for the blood of those who enslaved him, and the revolutionary plot he went on to outline, were not even entirely muted when his

Roman owner, Bracchius, entered the stage. The exchange that followed indicated some

53 A similar process occurred in the early national period, with cultural production and discourse surrounding the enslavement of (white) Americans by (dark, if not black) North Africans of the Barbary states. See Allison for a discussion of how this played out across a variety of cultural forms, including Susanna Rowson‘s 1794 play, Slaves in Algiers (Crescent Obscured, 61-86). 54 Act I, Scene 1. Unless otherwise noted, all references to the text of this play come from Jeffrey Richards‘ 1997 critical edition.

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observation on Bird‘s part of the delicate negotiations between American slaves and masters. Bracchius told Phasarius, ―Fellow, thou knowest I love thee, and will enfranchise thee,‖ but also made clear that first Phasarius would have to fight for him in the arena, which Phasarius rejected. When his master threatened to beat him, the following exchange occurred:

Phasarius. Thou art my master; but I know, though wouldst as soon set me free, as scourge me. Both would destroy thy subsistence, and one thy life; in either case, I would fight no more. And if thou wert to touch me lawfully with the thong, thou knowest, I would unlawfully murder thee. Bracchius. You shall be crucified! Phasarius. Then shall the crows pick forty thousand crowns from my bones; for so much are these muscles worth. Bracchius. Out upon you, villain! It is my favour has made thee so insolent. Phasarius. It is my knowledge of my own price, and not they favour, which is more perilous than thine anger. Pr‘ythee, threaten me no more; or I shall grow peaceable, and spoil thy fortune. Bracchius. You have sworn never to decline the combat. Phasarius. Ay; so I have. But I have found no one regards a slave‘s oath; and why now should the slave?

This exchange continued for a few more minutes, until another free Roman entered and was able to back up the flailing slaveowner in the face of the challenge from his

―property,‖ but not before Phasarius had articulated many of the motives and methods of resistance employed by enslaved black Americans.

In addition to making explicit the male slaves‘ resentment, resistance, and violent ambitions towards their owners, the first act of the play repeatedly demonstrated the power of the cruel market in slaves to tear apart families, with brothers, children, wives, and husbands unable to determine their own movements—a theme that was a powerful

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element of American abolitionist rhetoric.55 Later in Scene 1 of Act I, another Roman,

Lentulus attempted to sell Spartacus to Bracchius, who refused to purchase him but instead offered Lentulus a woman and child. As the slaveowners haggled over the price of the woman and boy—and Lentulus first contemplated buying only the boy, then only the woman—Spartacus discovered they were his long-lost wife and son, and cried out

―Villains, do you put them up for sale, like beasts? / Look at them: they are human.‖

Bracchius then claimed he would not to sell them at all, and Spartacus pleaded with his owner, Lentulus, to ―Buy—yes, that‘s the word; / It does not choke me—buy her, buy the boy; / Keep us together— .‖ Lentulus was finally swayed by Spartacus‘ desire to regain his family only when he promised to fight in the arena in order to earn the money his family would cost.

The cruel impact of slavery on family was invoked again as Spartacus and his long-lost brother Phasarius were united in Scene 3 of Act II, but only as opponents in gladiatorial combat. The Roman spectators tried to force them to fight, even after they discovered their relationship. This offered Spartacus another opportunity to affirm his own humanity in contrast to those who enslaved him, calling the powerful praetor

Crassus a ―hard, unnatural man‖ for demanding that brothers fight each other to the death. Their resistance then launched the historic slave revolt, as Spartacus built on

Phasarius‘ call of ―Freedom / For gladiators!‖ shouting for:

Death to all their masters! [. . .] Death to the Roman fiends, that make their mirth Out of the groans of bleeding misery! Ho, slaves, arise! It is your hour to kill! Kill and spare not—for wrath and liberty!— Freedom for bondmen—freedom and revenge!

55 See Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 192-207, for a discussion of the use of this rhetoric in the similarly theatrical ―slave auctions‖ held by abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher in the 1850s and early 1860s.

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This speech was first performed on American stages in the same year as Nat Turner‘s partially successful revolt, a time when white southerners were recommitting themselves to the institution of slavery, while their fear of their own slaves would only grow over the following decades. It seems clear that an exchange such as this one could not have been written, acted, or watched without provoking thoughts of the relationships of slaves and masters in the contemporary United States.56

From an examination of Bird‘s research notes, Peter Reed suggests that he took care not to be too explicit in his invocations of racial slavery in the United States,57 but he left enough in the play that might cause controversy. Although there were no speaking black characters in The Gladiator, the play flirted with blackness as a model for challenging (white) Romans, focusing particularly on the Carthaginians, the same people identified as a black ancestral group by David Walker‘s Appeal, a text with which many in Bird‘s audience would have been familiar.58 In his first battle in the arena, Spartacus was ordered to fight a Carthaginian slave and refused to do so. While Crassus also described him as a ―Spaniard,‖ perhaps in an effort to distance the association with the

Carthaginians of North Africa, Spartacus‘s response made the connection clear:

What, a Carthaginian? A relic of that noble tribe, that ne‘er Would call Rome friend, and perished rather than Become Rome‘s vassal? I could not fight him: We should drop swords, and recollect together, As brothers, how the Punic steel had smote, Of yore, to Rome‘s chill‘d heart; yea, how Rome quaked, How shook her proud sons, when the African

56 Dormon, Theater, 277-78, suggests that this kind of language was the reason why The Gladiator was not performed anywhere south of St. Louis after 1847, citing 1844 as the last date it played in New Orleans, and 1847 as the date of its last performance in Charleston. 57 Reed, Rogue Performances, 2009. 58 Walker, Appeal, 22.

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Burst from the sea, like to its mightiest surge, Swept your vain shores, and swallow‘d up your armies! How, when his weapons, gored with consular blood, Waved o‘er your towns, your bucklered boasters fled, Or shook, like aguish boys, and wept and prayed:— Yea, feared to die, and wept and prayed.59

In a country in which the modern ―sons of Africa‖ were subjected to daily humiliations, and had few allies among white Americans, Spartacus‘ defense of the life of this

Carthaginian slave, and respectful description of the abilities of his countrymen to overwhelm the armies of (white) Romans, sounded like nothing so much as the rhetoric of the abolitionists. While the Carthaginian gladiator never spoke in the play, he presumably at least appeared on stage—a white actor in blackface, bearing the weapons of a gladiator.

Spartacus and his brother, Phasarius, invoked the example of the ―proud sons of

Africa‖ in two other important scenes in the play. In the midst of the slave revolt in Scene

2 of Act III, when Phasarius urged Spartacus to lead his army to Rome, Spartacus pointed out that ―Even the fierce Hannibal‖ did not attack Rome directly. Phasarius replied:

Hope thou T‘excel the vaunted African, and dare Beyond his daring. Hast thou not a heart Bigger than his, that, with a herd of slaves, Hast wrought as much as all his veterans?

Spartacus‘ brother thus encouraged him by claiming he—who, as discussed above, was

―read‖ by American audiences as a white Roman—had already surpassed the presumably

59 Act II, Scene 3. This scene appears to have been entirely Bird‘s invention, as it did not feature in any of the major ancient sources for Spartacus‘ revolt. See the translations in Martin M. Winkler, ed., Spartacus: Film and History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 234-247. Its effectiveness in the American context, however, was reflected in the choice to keep the scene in Stanley Kubrick‘s film Spartacus (1960) (where the Carthaginian became the more clearly ―black‖ Numidian, played by Woody Strode), as well as the prominent friendship between Maximus (Russell Crowe) and Juba (Djimon Honsou) in Ridley Scott‘s film Gladiator (2000).

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black (or at the very least, racially suspect) Carthaginian Hannibal‘s achievements.

Perhaps, however, this still hit too close to American slavery for comfort—a manuscript of the play that was marked up by Edwin Forrest appears to indicate that he excluded this exchange from his performances.60

Later, when Spartacus outlined his plan to defeat the Romans, he said he would march:

To Sicily: There, by the ocean fenced, rouse up and gather The remnants of those tribes by Rome destroyed, Invited to their vengeance. Then will come, Arm‘d with retributive and murderous hate, The sons of fiery Afric,—Carthaginians Out of their caves, Numidians from their deserts; The Gaul, the Spaniard, the Sardinian; The hordes of Thessaly, Thrace, and Macedon, And swarming Asia61

That a white character could see the black—or at least, darker and non-white—people of

North Africa as allies against the Romans, who were presented as the ancestors of white

Americans, was an unusual suggestion in the antebellum United States.

These overt and subtle parallels with American slavery and abolitionism continued throughout the play—and were so obvious that even the play‘s author feared that it would not be well received in the South, writing that if ―the Gladiator were produced in a slave state, the managers, players, [and] perhaps myself in the bargain, would be rewarded with the Penitentiary!‖62 On the contrary, the play was popular with

60 Jeffrey Richards, introduction to Richards, Early American Drama, xliii; Robert Montgomery Bird, The Gladiator, in Richards, Early American Drama, 205. There were relatively few such cuts in the play, and this one seemed uniquely targeted at the ―African‖ material—only removing the 13 lines that discussed Hannibal, and keeping the rest of the scene. 61 Act IV, Scene 2. 62 Robert Montgomery Bird, ―Secret Record,‖ unnumbered page 2, Robert Montgomery Bird Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, quoted in Reed, Rogue Performances, 172. 186

audiences throughout the country. This reality can be best understood by comparison with the cathartic effect of Athenian tragedy, in which citizens watched the larger-than- life, but still entirely plausible, trials and tribulations of historical figures whom they regarded as their ethnic ancestors, and gained a sense of release from seeing justice served by the end of the play.63 Similarly, when Spartacus was grieving for his murdered wife and son, he ordered his enslaved army to take ―no prisoners,‖ becoming like the beast he once criticized his masters for treating him as:

Kill, kill kill all! There‘s nothing now but blood Can give me joy. Now can I tell you how gore Inspires the thirsty tiger, and gives strength Unto the fainting wolf.64

Shortly after the increasingly animalistic, bloodthirsty, and threatening slave uttered these words, he was himself ―wounded by several [soldiers]‖ as the Roman army restored order.

If white southern theatergoers were able to overlook the dangerous parallels between the play and their own unhappy slaves, northerners saw them quite clearly. The abolitionist paper The Liberator published an account of an 1841 anti-slavery society meeting in Hingham, Massachusetts, at which Frederick Douglass‘ telling of his escape from slavery was described as follows:

As Douglas stood there in manly attitude, with erect form, and glistening eye, and deep-toned voice, telling us that he had been secretly devising means to effect his release from bondage, we could not help thinking of Spartacus, the Gladiator; his

Despite his distaste for slavery, Bird very much embraced the racism of his time, writing in the same entry that ―I had sooner live among bedbugs than negroes‖ (―Secret Record,‖ page 3). 63 See Chapter 6 of Aristotle‘s Poetics for the first discussion of how Greek tragedy served to ―purge‖ pity and fear. 64 Act V, Scene 6. This violent outburst also appears to have been marked for deletion by Forrest (Bird, Gladiator, 240), leaving other bloody, but less animalistic, statements leading up to Spartacus‘ death.

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whole bearing reminded us of Forrest‘s noble personation of that daring insurgent.65

Even less-zealous abolitionists such as Walt Whitman saw the play, as ―full of abolitionism . . . . [and] calculated to make the hearts of the masses well responsively to all those nobler manlier aspirations in behalf of mortal freedom!‖66 And in the half-slave, half-free city of Washington, D.C., the National Theatre broke with its general policy of permitting black spectators in the gallery when Forrest performed as Spartacus in 1838, announcing prominently that ―On this occasion, Colored Persons cannot be admitted to the gallery.‖67

A similarly threatening, and more overtly ―African‖ character than Spartacus was also subdued after wreaking havoc throughout New Yorker Louisa Medina‘s The Last

Days of Pompeii, a theatrical adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton‘s best-selling 1834 novel of the same name.68 The play was first performed in New York‘s Bowery Theater in January 1835. By the end of the summer, it had brought in more than $10,000, a remarkable feat in an era where the base price of tickets was 25 cents, and few plays received multiple showings in a given month.

In contrast to the good-hearted blind slave-girl Nydia, the simple but honorable enslaved gladiators, and the beautiful and good Greek hero and heroine, Glaucus and

Ione, the Egyptian Arbaces, priest of the Egyptian goddess, Isis, was presented as a

65 ―Proceedings of the Plymouth Co. Anti-Slavery Society at Hingham,‖ The Liberator, August 28, 1841. 66 Brooklyn Eagle, December 26, 1846, quoted in Reed, Rogue Performances, 155 and 163. 67 The Madisonian, March 15, 1838. The same line did not appear in the ads from earlier in Forrest‘s run at the National Theatre; and the advertisement seems to suggest that this was the second performance of The Gladiator that week, which may point to concerns raised by that first performance. 68 There was at least one other theatrical adaptation of the novel on American stages in 1835—the version by W. Barrymore which played in Philadelphia (Wilson, Philadelphia Theatre, 602)—but Medina‘s appears to have been the one most regularly performed during the antebellum period.

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creature of pure evil—in his own words, ―supreme in villainy and power.‖69 The more traditional love story of Glaucus and Ione, and even the well-known threat and ultimate destruction of the city by Mt. Vesuvius, were both overshadowed by Arbaces‘ threatening presence. Despite the setting of the play in a Roman town with Greek roots, there was no ambiguity about Arbaces‘ status as the main character. Not only was the actor who played him given top billing in all ads and playbills, but Arbaces was also present in 12 of the play‘s 14 scenes—either in person, or as a subject of conversation.

The costumes that were recommended in the 1850s Samuel French edition of the play clearly set Arbaces and his acolytes apart from the rest of the residents of Pompeii; and also set Glaucus, Nydia, and Ione—the heroic trio of Greek foreigners, one enslaved and two free—apart from both groups. The gladiators wore ―shirt[s], with half body‖ and the noble Pompeians wore a fancier version of the same costume: ―Handsome trimmed shirt[s].‖ Arbaces‘s costume was elaborate and exotic: ―Dark Merino shirt (long,) trimmed with hieroglyphics; belt, &c., to correspond; robe; high Egyptian cap, with flaps each side‖—while his Greek and Roman acolytes‘ intermediate status was signaled by their costumes of ―Long white shirt[s] and robe[s], trimmed similar to Arbaces‘.‖ In contrast, the Athenian Glaucus wore ―Blue satin shirt, with rich Grecian trimming,‖ his beloved Ione—the pure, Greek virgin whose affections drove the nominal plot of the play—wore ―White satin, elegantly trimmed; loose half robe.‖ The blind slave-girl Nydia wore a simpler version of the noble Ione‘s outfit, marking her simultaneously as a slave and a fellow-Greek: ―White muslin dress trimmed with flowers; wreath on the head.‖

69 Act I, Scene 3. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations come from the undated Samuel French edition held by the John Hay Library.

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The power of Arbaces, and the fear he instilled in all the residents of Pompeii, was established before his name was even mentioned. In the first scene of Act I, Nydia was heard screaming offstage, and ran on begging Glaucus, ―Oh, save me! save me!‖ Her owner, Stratonice, made clear that Nydia was defying her orders, and Nydia‘s response introduced the name of the main character into the play:

Nydia. Oh, strike me! kill me, if you will! but do not send me to Arbaces. Omnes. Arbaces? Clodius [the Praetor]. Arbaces, the Egyptian?—him of the evil eye? Lepidus [a wealthy Roman]. Arbaces, the terrible magician? Glaucus. Arbaces, the princely guardian of Ione?

Soon, ―Arbaces’ march is heard in the distance,‖ and Arbaces entered with his entourage, consisting of several guards and the two young men he was training to be priests of Isis.

He made clear his disdain for all present:

Fools, dupes, madmen that you are, whether in business or in pleasure, you are equally the slaves of the passion ye should rule; plod on, plod on your petty thirst for power, your servile mummery all provoke alike my laughter and my scorn. […] I hold the mastery of the human heart—the master-key of knowledge! They are my tools—I read their passions, guide their wills, employ their services, and laugh them all to scorn!

Over the course of the following two acts, Arbaces showed that there was no action too low for him, as he tricked the Pompeians with a mechanical statue of the goddess Isis, which moved and spoke; threatened to rape the virgin Ione; attempted to poison Glaucus; sowed deceitful rumors in order to manipulate the people of Pompeii into carrying out his will; and murdered one and attempted to murder the other of his trainee priests. His dark clothing and the racial ambiguity attached to his ―Egyptian‖ ethnicity by antebellum white Americans further established him as a figure not to be trusted—and leant an

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additional sense of threat and horror to his intentions towards the fair Greek maiden,

Ione.

Despite the fear and deference that all other characters showed Arbaces, the play presented mixed messages about the power of ancient Egypt. Arbaces himself repeatedly reminded the audience of how his country had been brought low from its historical greatness, as, for example, in Scene 3 of Act I, he urged the Greek man who was training to be a priest of Isis:

Look around you; all mankind are gulls—cheated or cheating—the Romans stole from Egypt her dark lore, and term themselves our masters—our masters!—no, not mine! Empires may change—slaves become kings, and purple kiss the dust— my empire is unchanging: it is the mind! Thebes may fall, Egypt become a name, but while mankind lives, Arbaces is their lord!

Despite his insistence to the contrary, Arbaces thus came across as a sad survivor of a vanquished race, an anachronistic, and thus somewhat neutralized, villain.

While the title of the play declared the imminent end of the world inhabited by

Arbaces and the Pompeians, the threat of the volcano was relatively silent throughout the first two acts, with only occasional mentions of prophecies of the mountain‘s anger, and fears of approaching it at night. Instead, Arbaces became a kind of stand-in for the mountain—a mysterious, foreign figure whom all feared and respected, and whose threats were aimed at the destruction of all he encountered. The link between him and the mountain was cemented in the final scene of the play, when, as his villainy was revealed to all in the amphitheater, a haughty Arbaces drew his sword and taunted, ―What ho, my guards!—Pompeian nobles and Pompeian slaves, Arbaces does defy ye!‖ providing the cue for the final special effects, as ―fire breaks forth from the mountain, and the walls of the arena fall—everybody cries. The earthquake—the earthquake!‖ At last, the self-

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destructive Egyptian threat was defused: just before the curtain fell, ―Arbaces is killed by the falling of statue‖—that symbol of Greco-Roman perfection that was so important in the contemporary United States.

Black Bodies in the American Playhouse

The published scripts discussed above represent no more than general transcripts of what the playwright intended to be said and done on stage, and there is a limit to what they can tell us about the function of theaters as race-making places. Because plays are performed live, in front of an audience, they ―become live, embodied, symbolic transactions,‖ in which actors and spectators ―participated in mutual performative acts of self construction.‖70 As Jeffrey Richards puts it, ―[t]o be American and attend the theatre generated an identity that had, in essence, to be created on stage and reflected back to the spectators in order to validate the very action of watching.‖71

While the theater today carries an association with primarily upper-middle-class, white, educated audiences, its patronage in the pre-1840s United States was far less exclusive. The majority of each house was probably filled with white patrons, but black

Americans can be assumed to have been represented in theater audiences in a manner proportional to their percentage of the population of the city (with the exception of those cities where most black Americans were still enslaved).72 In many northern cities, the

70 Reed, Rogue Performances, 12, 155. Although Reed uses the latter phrase with specific reference to Forrest‘s performances in The Gladiator, the observation applies equally to other plays performed in the early United States. 71 Jeffrey H. Richards, Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 31. 72 One of the occasional, casual references which hinted at the popularity of the theater among black New Yorkers was the report of a December 1823 trial of three black men, who had been ―at the Theater‖ the previous week (Statements of Richard Brown, Harry Foster, and Bow Jackson, The People v. Harry Foster 192

accepted norm was that black Americans could purchase tickets only to the ―gallery,‖ or the upper-most balcony. However, this rule seems to have been so entirely taken for granted that it rarely was articulated on theater broadsides or newspaper advertisements

(see Figure 15, fourth line from the bottom for an unusual exception).

Figure 15: From a broadside from the Broadway Theatre, New York, 1852, America's Historical Imprints.

Nevertheless, their inclusion in the collective—and collectivizing—ritual of watching the history of the United States (including, of course, Greco-Roman antiquity) portrayed on

et al, Dec. 5, 1823, District Attorney‘s Indictment Papers, Municipal Archives of the City of New York, quoted in White, Stories of Freedom, 82).

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stage thus represented another de facto integration of free black Americans into the body of American citizens; and the spatial organization of the theater revealed and normalized the symbolic boundaries of class and race that shaped interactions in both public and private spaces.73 Out of necessity, the majority of the black Americans who attended the theater would have been city-dwellers, and many would likely have been free, although slaves were also known to attend plays.74

This practice of segregation within the auditorium was not exclusive to theaters run by white Americans. When they controlled the theatrical ―means of production,‖ as it were, the black American thespians of William Brown‘s African Company in 1820s New

York were reported to have ―graciously made a partition at the back of their house, for the accommodation of the whites.‖75 Sadly, though, this was probably not just a matter of mutual denigration—far more likely was that white theatergoers were more

73 This occurred in the slaveholding south, as well, where once again the utter unremarkability of this fact has left us very few traces in the documentary record. One exception is actor Harry Watkins‘ journal, in which he complained about an 1845 performance in Galveston, Texas, which was cancelled because only four people were in the audience, with a black woman as the sole occupant of the gallery (Skinner and Skinner, Adventures of H. Watkins, 12). 74 The presence of black bodies among the ―body politic‖ of the American theater audience was not always accepted without controversy. Black Bostonian William Cooper Nell attracted a good deal of attention when he attempted to sit in the second tier of seating at an 1853 performance at Boston‘s Howard Athenaeum. He and his two female companions were told they needed to sit in the gallery instead, despite the fact that they had purchased tickets for the second tier (Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 240). The Athenaeum‘s manager later claimed in court that ―the presence of a colored person [in a white seating area] would lead to confusion and riot‖ (The Liberator, June 10, 1853, quoted in Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 240), however one of the Athenaeum‘s ushers ―claimed that the city‘s theatres had no universal policy on segregation and that therefore the Athenaeum had no right to discriminate against blacks based on their skin color‖ (June 3, 1853, quoted in Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 241), and the court also heard from ―three black witnesses who testified that whenever they had attended the Athenaeum in the past, they had been able to sit where they pleased‖ (The Liberator, June 10, 1853, quoted in Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 240). Further support for this argument came from Moses Kimball, the white owner of the Boston Museum—which also functioned as a theater during this time—who stated ―that he allowed his black patrons to sit anywhere they liked in his theater, and that ‗He knew no distinction of color.‘‖ Ultimately, the judge sided with Nell and his companions against the manager, stating ―I think the witnesses [are] wrong in their estimate of [the] Boston character,‖ and ordered that Nell and his companions be given free tickets for the same seats, to the same show (The Liberator, June 3, 1853, quoted in Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 241, 241n86). 75 National Advocate, October 27, 1821, transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 72.

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uncomfortable with sitting in proximity to black theatergoers, than vice versa, making the building of a separate section for their comfort a clever business decision on the part of black theater managers. Indeed, a British visitor to a black performance of Shakespeare‘s

Julius Caesar wrote of experiencing ―that disagreeable feeling which comes over me and no doubt over every other White, who finds himself amidst a numerous assemblage of

Blacks before he is accustomed to the sight.‖76

People did not attend the theater solely to see the show that would take place onstage. Atlantic theater culture encouraged rowdiness among patrons, regardless of race or class background.77 Although this rarely escalated to the level of the ―Shakespeare

Riot,‖ discussed above, expressions of approval or disapproval by audiences sometimes interrupted performances. These disagreements often emerged along lines of class, with the ―gallery gods,‖ as they were mockingly called, supporting an actor from their position at the top of the auditorium, throwing projectiles of various kinds down onto the slightly wealthier patrons in the pit; while the respectable ladies and gentlemen in the boxes were shielded from it all. An eyewitness account of a performance by British actor Edmund

Kean in New York City—his first since he had publically insulted Boston theatergoers four years previously—demonstrated the permeability of the space of the theater so clearly as to be worthy of extended quotation:

The moment [Kean] appeared, however, he was assailed by such a powerful and unexpected burst of catcalls and shower of hisses that he for a moment quailed . . . An orange struck him and fell upon the stage. He picked it up and again came

76 ―The Negroes of New York,‖ Nottingham and Newark Mercury (UK), May 22, 1830 (repr. from The Family Magazine), transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 186-187. Indeed, such a performance would have presented a unique experience for white spectators—that of being in an enclosed space with a group of black people, which was furthermore controlled by black people. 77 On audience culture and behavior, see Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled, 46-75. Thompson argues that because of this general reality of theatre culture, the element of racial persecution involved in the ultimate demise of the African Company has consistently been exaggerated (Documentary History, 30-36).

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forward, holding it in his hand, and attempted to obtain a hearing. . . . [In the gallery] stood a mulatto, straining his voice to its utmost pitch, and bellowing ―Kean! Kean!‖ Beside him, in the ―slips,‖ was another conspicuous fellow in a conspicuous corner, crying out: ―Hurrah for the Seducer!‖ ―Hurrah for the Alderman!‖ says the mulatto. ―Boston!‖ cried the white-hatted fellow. ―New York!‖ responded the negro. ―Boston and Mrs. Cox!‖ exclaimed the white hat. ―Pork and molasses!‖ chimed the black. ―Put out that nigger!‖ ―Put out that white hat!‖ were heard in various places. ―Hurrah for Kean!‖ vociferated the black again, and the whole gallery instantly responded to their leader. The pit was, with one exception, in Kean‘s favor, and very soon entirely. The dress boxes were almost unanimously his friends. The principal opposition came from the ―slips‖ and second tier.78

The prominent position of the ―mulatto‖ within this altercation, and the fact that the elite in the boxes eventually took his side, hints at the extent to which the theater was a space in which the ―normal‖ rules of the hierarchical society could be stretched.

The segregation of black and white Americans within the auditorium was reflected in even more drastic form on stage. I have yet to recover a single example of black and white actors performing together on an American stage in this period—nor do I expect to.79 Regardless of the presumed racial identity of the characters in plays—and a single play would often present characters with different ―races‖—acting troupes were either all white or all black, reflecting, presumably, an awareness of the dangerous subversion that black and white social and sexual intercourse represented, even when only ―make believe.‖ Thus, white Desdemonas were only ever wooed by white actors playing the ―moor of Venice,‖ while black Othellos sought the affections only of black

Desdemonas.

Given the racial dynamics offstage, the defining expectation that theater was a place for performances of whiteness created an environment in which merely adding a

78 Quoted in Brown, New York Stage, I: 27. 79 In England, by contrast, black American expatriate Ira Aldridge regularly shared the stage with white actors, pointing to a very different set of cultural circumstances (McAllister, White People, 177-178; Thompson, Documentary History, 154, 211-212; White, Stories of Freedom, 159-165).

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black figure into the performance was an act that could produce great anxiety for those audience members invested in normative concepts of American whiteness. Decades before T.D. Rice launched the revolution of blackface minstrelsy, white actors painted their faces black to play people of African descent, and wore costumes that included stockings and sleeves of a dark brown color to enhance the illusion that a black man was in fact on stage.80 The characters they embodied often had some similarities to later minstrel characters, but the tone of these plays—such as Inkle and Yariko (1791),

Jonathan Postfree (1807), or Native Land (1829)—was often far more sympathetic, and even laudatory, towards the black characters.

The care that was taken with racially differentiating the bodies and characters on stage reflected an underlying assumption that a character‘s race told an audience about certain aspects of their personality, lending credibility and authenticity to their declarations, as well as allowing that figure to show the appropriate behavior of a given race. Within the increasingly racialized society of the early United States, the racial marking of bodies on stage lent additional weight to the issue of what character said which lines. Therefore, when a white American spoke the words that Shakespeare wrote for Julius Caesar, it reinforced his ownership of an ethnic history that was understood as extending backwards in time to Shakespeare himself, and beyond that, to the citizens of

Caesar‘s Rome. By contrast, when a black American spoke those same words on stage, in front of an audience of black and white Americans, it represented a subversive appropriation of white ethnic history, and an assertion of membership within the

American nation that was built on that history. The threat represented by this act of

80 See Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, for a discussion of the impact of these early blackface portrayals on the debate over slavery.

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appropriation of the imagined past of white Americans was made clear in an anecdote shared by newspaper editor Mordecai Noah, who reported that a group of black actors who were arrested during a January 1822 performance in New York were released only after they ―promised never to act Shakespeare again.‖81

Black Americans‘ onstage performances in the dress of the ancient Greeks and

Romans represented powerful assertions of membership in the glorious pasts that white

Americans claimed as their exclusive right. Not only did these performances ―provide the

‗ocular proof‘ that men and women of African descent could plausibly perform the role of citizen,‖82 they suggested that they always had performed such a role—that the history of ―their people‖ was not one of savagery and enslavement, but rather one of dignity and civilization. This vision would have been extraordinarily powerful for the black audience members, who faced everyday discriminations designed to continually remind both them and white Americans that they were not fully equal as citizens. For a few brief hours within the playhouse, black Americans could watch a fantasy of equality become a reality, one which they and the white audience members silently witnessed and tacitly affirmed through their collective presence and applause.

The only extant description of a black performance of a classical play comes from a British tourist‘s review of a production of Julius Caesar that he saw in 1829—right in the middle of a six-year period in which the play was featured annually at one or more of

New York‘s white theaters. In an article published in 1830, the anonymous writer wrote with double-edged approval of how ―the acting was such as to show that the performers

81 ―Hung be the Heavens with Black,‖ National Advocate, January 9, 1822, transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 85. 82 Nathans, Slavery and Sentiment, 61.

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did at least here and there catch the spirit of the poet.‖83 Echoing earlier portrayals of the lack of professionalism of black American actors, this author claimed that the actor who played Brutus, ―after delivering long speeches, asked me twice, in an under-tone, how I liked his acting.‖84 Throughout his review, he praised both male and female actors in terms that suggested both their acting talent, and their unsuitability for their roles: ―No sooner had I ceased smiling at the charming Portia, than I was almost thrilled with horror at the dark visages of the conspirators, with their white rolling eyes; and I began positively to shudder at all this Rome in black.‖

One can imagine similar feelings of being ―thrilled with horror‖ were part of what attracted white audiences to James Hewlett‘s performances in the 1820s, in which he regularly embodied Roman characters, including imitations of the performances of contemporary British and American actors Edward Kean and William Macready as

Brutus in the popular play Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin, Thomas Cooper and Robert

Maywood as Virginius from the play of the same name, William Macready as

Coriolanus, and William Conway‘s portrayal of Marc Antony from Julius Caesar. Since each characterization was explicitly presented as being an impersonation of a different well-known (white) actor, Hewlett thus demonstrated not only his ability to play a (white)

Roman, but to play him in a number of different ways, and in precisely the same ways that his famous white contemporaries played Romans. In other words, Hewlett‘s performances proved that he could literally ―act white.‖

83 This piece was originally published in Family Magazine, and was reprinted in the Nottingham and Newark Mercury on May 22, 1830 (transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 186-87). 84 Oddly, both Thompson and White accept this statement at face value, and suggest that this kind of behavior points to James Hewlett having been the man who performed in such a flippant manner.

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As uncanny as Hewlett‘s performances were, their success likely owed much to the fact that white Americans generally accepted, and even expected mimetic practices of black Americans. As commonly played upon in blackface minstrelsy, one of the contemporary stereotypes about black Americans was that they were particularly talented mimics, but were incapable of coming up with their own ideas.85 For example, commenting on the opening of the African Grove tea garden in New York, which later hosted the first theatrical performances of the African Company, Noah wrote that it clearly resembled the function and form of whites-only tea gardens, which he saw as further evidence of how ―People of colour generally are very imitative, quick in their conceptions and rapid in execution.‖86 This idea functioned to counteract, at least in part, the incongruity of the same Africans who were supposedly incapable of intelligent thought, showing time and again that they could learn to read, speak with the diction of an orator, and even write poetry and books.

That said, a black man who dressed in classical costumes and performed the same lines, in the same voice, with same gestures as respected white actors, did represent a real challenge to the idea of a fundamental difference between the races. In other words, if

Hewlett could act like Marc Antony, the image of the bumbling and absurdly gauche free black men and women popularized by the ―bobalition‖ prints and later blackface minstrelsy was revealed as inaccurate. Even in two-dimensional engravings the contrast was clear, as we can see by comparing an engraving of Hewlett as Richard III—another

85 For a discussion of this racialized rhetoric in connection with the development of elite culture in the United States, more broadly, see Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Knopf, 1992), 434-440. 86 ―Africans,‖ August 3, 1821, National Advocate, transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 88-89.

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figure from what was understood to be the ―white past‖—with a typical caricature of free black Americans (Figure 16).

Figure 16: (left) James Hewlett as Richard III, c. 1827, Harvard Theatre Collection; (right) George Washington Dixon as Zip Coon, 1834, Library of Congress

Perhaps the most powerful—and to some, upsetting—choice of the black actors who performed in and beyond New York City in the 1820s was that, unlike white actors who played ―black‖ roles, they did not generally ―white-up‖ to play historical and contemporary characters who were traditionally understood to be white. Thus, not only were Othello and his nemesis Iago both black in the all-black productions of

Shakespeare‘s Othello, but so were both Damon and Pythias in John Banim‘s play about the legendary ancient Greek friends, and both the tyrant and his assassin in John Howard

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Payne‘s Brutus. This unconventional choice may have met with confusion and resistance, resulting in the note on a playbill from an 1823 performance of the African Company, which prominently warned ―Please to observe that all these characters will be personated by People of Color.‖87

The expectation of whiteness when white American ancestral heroes were embodied on stage helps us understand how radical were James Hewlett‘s 1826 performances, in which he imitated English-American actor Thomas Abthorpe Cooper‘s performance in Damon and Pythias. Cooper had toured the United States in the role of

Damon in 1825, so many in Hewlett‘s audience were well equipped to judge the accuracy of his imitation. According to the records compiled by George Thompson, Hewlett and his company of supporting actors regularly performed the last scene of the play88—an excellent choice, as it was the one in which Damon‘s selfless loyalty and fervent dedication to his friend were demonstrated most clearly. After rushing back to ransom

Pythias and take his death sentence for himself, Damon ―falls with an hysterical laugh upon the scaffold,‖ relieved that he had arrived in time to save Pythias. Damon called out the tyrant who had ordered his death, declaring:

I am here upon the scaffold! Look at me; I am standing on my throne; as proud a one As yon illumin‘d mountain, where the sun Makes his last stand; let him look on me too; He never did behold a spectacle More full of natural glory. Death is—Ha!

87 Playbill from the papers of Stratford Canning, Public Records Office, London, transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 140. 88 Hewlett seems to have performed this scene in most of his shows following the 1826 Philadelphia performance advertised in the playbill that was quoted at the start of this chapter (e.g., Thompson, Documentary History, 172, 180).

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These stirring words, delivered from the mouth of a black American, before an audience of black and white Americans, could not have failed to inspire some doubt as to the

―inherent‖ incapacity of the black race, and their distance from all the good qualities held by the ancestral ―white‖ Greeks.

The African Company apparently only performed in New York City and Albany, and Hewlett primarily performed in New York City, but he also gave shows throughout

New York State, and as far afield as London, England, and Alexandria, Virginia.89 Thus, black and white audiences throughout the North—and in the Upper South—would have been exposed to the phenomenon of watching black men and women perform the roles of real and fictional characters from the revered white past; while elsewhere in the country the reputation of these black actors spread in newspaper articles, such that Hewlett became a shorthand for black actors in 1830s New Orleans.90

Blackface Minstrels in Ancient Drag

While every audience member at the performances described above understood that the ancient figures they saw on stage were embodied by modern black and white Americans

(and at times, European performers on tour), the birth of blackface minstrelsy produced another subset of plays with ―ancient‖ characters that made the act of masking and impersonation more obvious. These plays are of interest both for reasons internal to their performance contexts, and for how they served as a commentary on the broader phenomenon of modern Americans ―playing at‖ being ancient people, in such a way as to

89 White, Stories of Freedom, 133-145. 90 ―The Legitimate Ethiopian Drama,‖ New Orleans Times-Picayune, unknown month and day, 1838, transcribed in Thompson, Documentary History, 209.

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highlight the racialized assumptions about who could and could not represent certain ancient characters on stage.

Before the full-fledged development of the ―Minstrel Show‖ in the early 1840s, blackface performers such as Thomas Dartmouth Rice and George Washington Dixon often presented degrading impersonations of contemporary black Americans as part of plays in which ―black‖ and white characters might appear together on stage in scenes set in the United States.91 In this context, Rice developed his famous character Jim Crow as a stereotype of the lazy, ignorant southern slave, while Dixon created his Zip Coon character (Figure 16, right), who mocked the pretentions of the free northern ―black dandy,‖ who endeavored to dress, speak, and behave like wealthy white Americans (see

Figure 1, for another example of this stereotype in American visual culture).

One of the most popular of the plays Rice wrote in this early period was The

Virginia Mummy (1835), a play that was explicitly based on the popular British farce,

William Bayle Bernard‘s The Mummy, or the Liquor of Life (1834).92 Whereas The

91 On blackface performance generally in the antebellum United States, see Annemarie Bean, James V. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara, eds., Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth-Century Blackface Minstrelsy (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1996); Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Lott, Love and Theft. On the mature forms of antebellum blackface minstrelsy, and how it incorporated such earlier forms as the minstrel plays discussed here, see Mahar, Burnt Cork Mask. As is evident throughout this section, I disagree with Lhamon‘s reading of these early minstrel plays as ―the earliest American written portraits of blacks by whites that center blacks positively‖ (Jump Jim Crow, ix); the attribution of intelligence and craftiness to black Americans—even to the extent that they may outwit white Americans— is not the same thing as portraying them positively. 92 The rapidity with which The Mummy was adapted into an American play more overtly concerned with race is quite striking, and reminds us of the extent to which Egyptian mummies—real or fake—were implicated in the racialized anxiety of the United States (see Chapter 2). Lhamon dismisses The Mummy as ―a soon forgotten play for the Falstaffian actor John Reeve in London‘s Adelphi company‖ (Jump Jim Crow, 47), but my research suggests that, in the antebellum period, it was possibly the more widely performed play of the two. For example, The Mummy received more than 80 performances in Philadelphia between 1835-1855, compared to only 41 recorded performances of Virginia Mummy in the same period (James, Old Drury of Philadelphia, 664; Wilson, Philadelphia Theatre, 619-620, 662); and was performed as far afield as the frontier theaters of 1830s St. Louis and 1850s San Francisco (Carson, Theatre on the Frontier, 235, 255, 327; Gaer, Gold Rush Decade, 43, 70 [which lists a blackface ballet based on the play]).

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Mummy was about an English actor who pretended he was a mummy, The Virginia

Mummy was about a black American who pretended he was a mummy. The performance of the two plays in the same theaters throughout the antebellum period—one with a white mummy, the other with a ―black‖ mummy—brought to the fore the issue of which kinds of modern Americans could appropriately and successfully pass themselves off as ancient

Egyptians—either on stage or in ―real life.‖ Particularly with the farce created for an

American audience, The Virginia Mummy, the slapstick comedy allowed exploration of a set of very serious social questions about race, belonging, and most importantly, history and ancestry. While Scott Trafton analyzes the play‘s interventions in a discourse about scientific study of ancient Egypt,93 I focus here on the politics of race and ancestry that were raised through performances of The Virginia Mummy in the playhouses of the early

United States. In this regard, it is crucial to remember that early performances of blackface minstrelsy took place in the same theaters, before the same mixed-race audiences, and alongside the same ―legitimate‖ theater discussed elsewhere in the chapter.94

In a version of The Virginia Mummy reconstructed by W.T. Lhamon,95 we find a complex one-act play in which, although the ultimate goal was to mock the black character, Ginger Blue, the figure of the Egyptian mummy was introduced as something

93 Trafton, Egypt Land, 121-123. 94 We know that African Americans attended minstrel plays only from occasional references in the archive, including the playbill from a Cincinnati performance of the T.D. Rice‘s Otello, which listed a special price for ―Boxes for Persons of Color‖ (Cincinnati National Theatre, 9 May 1846, Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library, pictured in Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 82); and the diary of free black Mississippian William Johnson, who recorded seeing Rice perform in 1836 (Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 420n139). 95 Lhamon‘s critical edition was based on the prompt script that T.D. Rice submitted for review by the censor in London (now in the British Library, dated 1837), supplemented by a version of the play published by Charles White in the 1860s, and a manuscript of the Christy Minstrels version of the play, housed in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 425-426n1).

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neither fully dead nor fully alive, neither properly black nor properly white, and as such an object suited to and even requiring medical experimentation.96 The central plot of the play involved the attempts of Captain Rifle to woo his beloved Lucy, over the objections of her guardian, Dr. Galen. Newly arrived in town, Rifle found the excuse he needed to get into Lucy‘s house when he read a newspaper advertisement from Dr. Galen, seeking an ancient Egyptian or Chinese mummy to test his ―new invented Compound Extract of

Live-Forever.‖97 Although Rifle of course did not have a mummy, he decided to find one.

After musing aloud that he could ―have a dead body dug up; then smoke it and roll it up in several old sheets, put it into a box stained with a few hieroglyphics,‖98 the threatened desecration of the dead body of a white person was diffused when Rifle alighted on a better plan. He called over Ginger Blue, an apparently free black man whom he had just paid to bring him the newspaper, and offered him a silver dollar to play the mummy. The characteristics of a mummy that he emphasized in his description of the job are quite interesting: the first thing he asked Ginger Blue was whether he could keep from speaking for a long time. In other words, the most important difference between him and a mummy was that the mummy could not speak. When Rifle was satisfied of this answer, he revealed his plan:

Rifle. I want you now to make folks believe you are a mummy. Ginger. Who am dem? Rifle. You don‘t understand me. A mummy is a dead man preserved in spices, and put into a coffin, deposited in a tomb, and never moulders away.

96 See Chapter 2 for a discussion of the role of mummies and of black bodies within medical science. 97 Scene 1. The quack doctor here was named after a famous 2nd century CE Roman doctor. 98 Scene 3.

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Ginger Blue was clearly left out of a circle of knowledge that included both Rifle and the audience, who all knew what a mummy was.99 Even after Rifle explained, Ginger Blue‘s response suggested that he still did not understand the plan:

Ginger. And do you want to pickle me up dat way? Child, de wedder is too hot! Dis ole nigger wouldn‘t keep from now ‘til Sunday. Rifle. I only want you to have the appearance of it, to make people think you are a mummy, when you are only Ginger Blue.

The subordinate position and inferior intellect of Ginger Blue was emphasized here in his mistaken understanding of which aspects of the mummy masquerade were actually going to be required of him; while Rifle‘s response suggested that being alive was not the only barrier to Ginger Blue‘s being a mummy—he would have the appearance of a mummy, but would still be ―only Ginger Blue‖ (emphasis mine). Aside from the racist subtext, these lines also served as a reminder of the superior and admirable technology of the ancient Egyptians—their climate was nothing if not hot, but through mummification they found a way to overcome the decay inevitable for unembalmed corpses in the American

South. By contrast, Ginger Blue‘s lack of intellect was recognized even by himself, in the next line: ―Well, did you eber hear de like? You is too debbily for de nigger.‖ Rifle‘s response returned to the specifics of how Ginger Blue would be able to pass as a mummy:

Rifle. Come along after me to my room, where I will dress and paint you, and give you a lesson to show you how to keep still. Ginger. How, is you gwan to paint me, Master, like a sign? Rifle. No, like a mummy—white, black, green, blue, and a variety of colors. Ginger. Massa, put plenty of turpentine wid de white paint so it won‘t rub off. I like to make ‘em believe I‘m a white man, too.100

99 In Charles White‘s version of the play, Ginger‘s ignorance was amplified when he asked, ―Whose mommy?‖ The Virginia Mummy: A Negro Farce (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, c.1860s), 11. 100 Interestingly, this last sentence was omitted from White‘s version of the play (Virginia Mummy, 8).

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As Trafton has noted, the reference to painting recalled the practice of ―blacking up‖ by minstrel performers—an action that the audience was well-aware had just been performed by the white man playing Ginger Blue, before he came on stage.101

Nevertheless, the color jokes developed the idea of blackness as the irreconcilable opposite of whiteness—the white actor playing Ginger Blue had been painted to be so black that there was be a danger of losing the white paint; and he was as excited about masquerading as a white man as he was about pretending to be a mummy.

Ginger Blue‘s foolishness and lack of understanding of what a mummy was continued to be emphasized in the next few lines:

Rifle. Above all, don‘t breathe loud. Ginger. I mind dat, for ebery time I gwan to breath, I put my hand right up to my mouth. Rifle. Then they will be sure to find out. Ginger. Nebber mind dat, I‘ll swear I‘m a mummy!102

The subtext of this last line was drawn out more clearly in a version of the play published by Charles White, another star of blackface minstrelsy, who had Ginger Blue say ―I‘ll swear black is white, I is a mummy.‖103 Although he may have been so stupid as to think breathing and speaking were okay while pretending to be a mummy, his example of the most absurd thing to swear, that ―black is white,‖ highlighted the ultimate arguments of the racist ideology of which minstrelsy was a part. The parallelism here was even more interesting: equally as ridiculous as the idea that black is white, was the idea that ―I is a

101 Trafton, Egypt Land, 123. The association of mummies with blacked-up minstrels came out elsewhere, in an 1835 article that suspected a mummy as a fake, ―formed by burnt cork, and filled with sand to give them weight‖ (Hagerstown Mail, April 27, 1838, quoted in Wolfe, Mummies, 88). 102 Exchanges like this raised the question of whether Ginger Blue‘s apparent stupidity was just his tactic to play with a stupid white man who could not relate to him as an intelligent person. Such a reading, however, did not make this a ―positive‖ or ―sympathetic‖ portrait of a black American. 103 White, Virginia Mummy, 8.

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mummy.‖ In other words, the black American errand-boy was about as far removed from being an Egyptian mummy as imaginable.

In Scene 4, Dr. Galen received a letter from ―a gentleman just-arrived from Grand

Cairo in Upper Egypt that has a mummy taken from the Pyramids 3000 years old.‖ This was, of course, Captain Rifle, and the comedy was in the contrast between what Ginger

Blue actually was, and what Rifle claimed him to be. Dr. Galen‘s belief that the mummy would have a noble tale to tell came out in his order to his assistant, Charles: ―I want you, as soon as I restore its life, to be ready with pen, ink, and paper, to write his history, which I intend to have translated into French, German, Latin, Greek and Choctaw.‖

Although the last language here was clearly thrown in for laughs, the first four languages were the languages of scholarship at the time—languages that the utterances of the black man Ginger Blue would never have been considered worthy of. Indeed, the contrast was even stronger when we remember that in this era, black American men and women were rarely even allowed to learn these languages.

The connection to classical antiquity of this supposedly Egyptian mummy was strengthened when Galen mused that ―This is the elixir, to make a marble statue speak.‖

As Savage has shown, there was scarcely a more diametrical opposite to the body of a black man in antebellum America, than a white marble statue,104 so the choice here was not a casual one, but rather one that was intended to highlight again the absurdity that a black man could be mistaken for a mummy. Nevertheless, mistaken he was, and the events that followed showed the amusing reversals that resulted.

104 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 5-20.

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The Irish servant, O‘Leary, was the only person in the doctor‘s household who reacted to the mummy in a way that suggested that he saw through the proverbial emperor‘s new clothes. When he saw Ginger Blue presented as a mummy he exclaimed,

―And is that what you call a mummy? It looks for all the world like a smok‘d hog!‖ From marble statue to animal—the contrast could hardly be made more explicit. When he was left alone with the mummy for the first time, O‘Leary‘s reactions again revealed that he saw Ginger Blue for what he was: ―Don‘t leave me alone with this black looking mummy!‖

Charles, however, seemed to trust that the mummy was indeed genuine, and desired to paint his image. When he arrived with his sketch materials, he said aloud to himself, ―I‘m afraid I won‘t be able to hit the dark shades of the face,‖ reminding the audience that he had probably never attempted to draw a black man before, likely considering the subject beneath the dignity of his art. There followed a scene in which

Charles contemplated aloud the mummy and its life, and Ginger Blue responded (unheard by Charles), along these lines:

Charles. But I can scarcely realize that it lived 3000 years ago. Ginger. Eh! eh! Honey, you‘re right only half of it. Charles. No doubt it was some great personage, and stood very high in his native country. Ginger. When I was up de tree—arter de ‗possum. Charles. Probably a King— Ginger. Yes, wid a -dom come to it. Charles. That has led triumphant armies across the plains of Egypt after the retreating enemy. Ginger. As rader a pack of dogs troo de canebrake arter de bear. Charles. Now contrast his situation: from a splendid palace to a domicile of drugs and medicines. Ginger. So I see by dat bottle dar. 210

Charles. He might have been an artist, and handled the brush. Ginger. ‘Twas a white-wash brush den. Charles. Or an astronomer, and read the stars. Ginger. Well, if I did, I guess de book was upside down. Charles. Or had an ear for music. Ginger. Jus gin me de banjo—dat‘s all. Charles. Oh! What a field imagination may trace, to find out what it is. Ginger. You put me in a corn field, I show what it is.

Ginger Blue‘s responses revealed the great distance between his status as a black man in the South, and the noble background imagined for him by Charles. Charles‘ invocation of contrast, imagining the mummy going ―from a splendid palace, to a domicile of drugs and medicines,‖ further heightened the contrast that the audience knew to exist between the mummy persona and Ginger Blue. As presented in the play, Ginger Blue was not of high standing in his community, a leader of armies, an artist, an astronomer, or even a musician (the banjo here was invoked as a joke against the type of music Charles imagined). Indeed, antebellum American audience would have known well that, as a free black man in the South, Ginger Blue was about as low in standing as possible.

Charles continued his vocal musings, directly addressing Ginger Blue‘s physical appearance:

Charles. I wonder if his race were all that color? Ginger. I guess you find me a pretty fair sample.

Although Charles‘ question was about the ancient Egyptian race, Ginger Blue read it as about his race—and for an antebellum audience, the reference here to the ongoing debate about the race of the ancient Egyptians would have been clear. The play itself seemed not to take a position on whether or not the Egyptians were black. Nevertheless, it was clearly engaging in the debate, first by suggesting the plausibility of the Egyptians being

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black by having a black man stand in for the Egyptian, while on the other hand continuously emphasizing the wide gap between Egyptian kings and contemporary

American black men.

After each white character had had a chance to explore the body of the ―mummy‖ on their own, all assembled again onstage for Dr. Galen to perform his experiment. Just as he was about to start, a second salesman, Patent, brought Dr. Galen another mummy, which was stood upright alongside Ginger Blue. Immediately contrasts became clear:

Galen. It has a much older appearance than the first one. Patent. It has been roughly handled by the sailors on board the ship.

Despite the absurdity of the suggestion that Ginger Blue was a mummy, Patent defended the state of his mummy by blaming it on the way it was handled by sailors. However, there was no concern about the appearance of Ginger Blue in contrast to the real mummy, presumably since his black skin matched that of the mummy.

After a flurry of action, all white characters exited the stage, leaving Ginger Blue alone with the ―real‖ mummy. Turning to him, he spoke, excitedly: ―How do you do?

Oh! You don‘t talk like a Virginny Mummy. I wonder whar dey git him. He look like a burnt [wood]chuck. I spect dey git him out of de bee-gum,‖105 then went on to offer the mummy some alcohol. Ginger Blue‘s lack of reverence for the real mummy revealed his ignorance. He was entirely unfazed by the lack of response to his queries, attributing it to the place of origin—he, as a Virginny mummy, was blessed with speech.

When Galen returned and administered his potion to both the real mummy and to

Ginger Blue, not surprisingly, the first did nothing, and the latter began to move,

105 Lhamon explained that ―bee-gum‖ was a reference to a hollow black gum tree in which bees made their hive (Jump Jim Crow, 428n31).

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prompting the general cry of ―Tis brought to life—it lives! It lives!‖ Thoroughly convinced, Dr. Galen offered the disguised Captain Rifle his ward Lucy‘s hand in marriage, wrapping up the basic plot of this play.

Galen then turned and exclaimed: ―The world shall now acknowledge me! Most reverend mummy, what shall I order for your dinner?‖ These lines were pregnant with meaning regarding race relations in the antebellum South. On the surface level, there was the laugh line of asking a mummy what he would like for dinner, as if he were any other distinguished guest, who just happened to drop by. Beneath this, there was the theme, running throughout the play, of the absurdity that white men could be fooled into giving respect to a black man. Dr. Galen‘s impulse to cater to Ginger Blue‘s desires was an exact reversal of the proper order of decorum between them. Finally, Dr. Galen‘s delight at the fame he had earned was double-edged—even though Ginger Blue was not, strictly speaking, a slave, Galen was, as Walter Johnson terms it, a man ―made out of slaves.‖106

That is, his status within the world was not derived from his own merits, but rather through his possession of a black person, and through the actions that he took upon that black person‘s body.

But just as Galen‘s imagined fame was made by a black man, his hopes were destroyed by that same black man. Galen‘s dinner invitation served as the high point of the respect and reverence given to Ginger Blue in the play, as he replied, ―I isn‘t hungry

‘case I eat up all de breakfast,‖ and Charles grabbed him and exclaimed, ―Curse me, if it isn‘t Ginger Blue, the nigger that lives at the hotel.‖ From mummy to nigger—the shocking ―truth‖ took a while to sink in, as the following exchange showed:

106 Johnson, Soul by Soul, 83.

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Galen. Old Ginger Blue—and are you no mummy? Ginger. Not myself, Sar, damn if I am. […] Galen. Get me a gun, I will shoot him. Ginger. What? After bowing before me, as King Solomon did before de She nigga?

After realizing that Ginger Blue was not only a black man that he knew, but also not a mummy, Galen‘s anger turned violent, and he demonstrated the stereotypical reaction of a white man to the realization that he had been deceived by his property. Even for Ginger

Blue this was a shock, given the deference shown to him minutes earlier. His choice of analogy raised the mid-nineteenth century opinion that King Solomon was white, and the

Queen of Sheba was black.

Ultimately, however, Dr. Galen was appeased, and Ginger Blue got the last line:

―And should any ob de faculty hab occasion for a libe mummy again, dey hab only to call on Ginger Blue; when dey‘ll find him ready dried, smoked, and painted, to sarbe himself up at de shortest notice.‖ The link between black men and mummies was thus left intact—if he had not been discovered, Ginger Blue could actually have passed for a mummy.

The theatrical exploration of the intersections between American blackness—in however pejorative a form—and ancient Egypt, leant an enticing air of subversiveness to

The Virginia Mummy. This effect would have been heightened when the play was presented in places like Mobile (where it premiered in April 1835)107 and Philadelphia, both of which were centers for the debate about the race of the ancient Egyptians, and hosted lectures and exhibitions designed to ―prove‖ the whiteness of the builders of the

107 Lhamon, Jump Jim Crow, 425.

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pyramids.108 The ancestral implications of the blackface mummy would also have been particularly striking when the play was performed on the same evening as plays that offered a vision of a classical antiquity populated by white Americans, as occurred when it was presented as an afterpiece to Damon and Pythias, at Philadelphia‘s Walnut Street

Theatre in September 1835.109

While The Virginia Mummy was an unusually elaborate example of its type, blackface minstrelsy frequently played with the idea of black Americans ―being‖ ancient

Greeks, Romans, or Egyptians. In another one-act minstrel play performed by Charles

White, The Black Statue, the black servant, Jake, similarly supported the quest of a young white man who was trying to run away with a jealously guarded daughter, by assuming the character of an ancient ―white‖ man.110 Wearing a white mask, standing on a

―pedestal‖ that he noted was ―nuffin‘ but an old shoe box covered ober wid whitewash,‖

Jake moved, at the turn of a crank, into the positions of ―all the ancient statuary, such as

Ajax defying the lightning,‖ ―Hercules, Cain killing his brother Abel, &c,‖ delivering physical blows to the white observers as he shifted from position to position.111

Within ―straight‖ plays, white actors playing black characters frequently answered to classical names, but in a very different way: for example, in Lazarus Beach‘s 1807 play Jonathan Postfree, or The Honest Yankee, the enslaved black man‘s name was

―Cesar;‖ and the lead character in William Dimon‘s 1829 play Native Land, or Return from Slavery, was called ―Aurelio.‖ If attached to a white character, these names would

108 See Chapter 2. 109 Wilson, Philadelphia Theatre, 140. 110 Mahar suggests that White‘s The Black Statue was based on T.D. Rice‘s 1837 Black or White; or, The Protean Statue (Burnt Cork Mask, 181), for which I have been unable to locate a script. 111 Charles White, The Black Statue: A Negro Farce, in One Act and One Scene (New York: Happy Hours Company, 1874), American Drama Full-Text Database.

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have suggested that the men were ancient Romans, but antebellum American audiences easily comprehended the ancient names here as the kind of names commonly given to black slaves.112 Thus, the same stage on successive nights might host both black and white characters bearing the same names.

Such coincidences appeared most dramatically in cities where slavery remained legal throughout the antebellum period. Ads announcing performances of classical plays in the South frequently ran alongside ads for runaways or for slaves up for auction who bore similarly classical names. For example, an 1808 performance of a scene from

Shakespeare‘s Julius Caesar, featuring ―Mssrs. MORSE & HUNTINGTON‖ as

―BRUTUS and CASSIUS,‖ was advertised in a Charleston newspaper one column away from an ad for the ―private (bona fida) sale‖ of ―Five Valuable NEGROES,‖ including

―SCIPIO, a Mulatto, a Coach and House Painter; sober and industrious, and pays his wages punctually.‖113 In time, the practice of naming slaves after classical figures gave birth to one of the enduring stereotypes of blackface minstrelsy: Scipio Africanus, a

Roman general whose name carried within it a contradiction to white American ears that was simply too good for George Washington Dixon to pass up when he created his character of the similarly contradictory northern black dandy—better known by the shortened version of his name, ―Zip Coon.‖

112 See Chapter 4 for more on slave naming practices. 113 City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, SC), April 21, 1808.

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CHAPTER 4: TEMPLES TO WHITE MASTERY: CLASSICAL PLANTATION LANDSCAPES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF WHITENESS

Figure 17: Milford Plantation, Pinewood, South Carolina, photo by author

In 1839, a young John Lawrence Manning—future governor of South Carolina, and prominent member of the secession convention—began the construction of a grand new mansion on his Milford Plantation (Figure 17). The location, outside of the town of

Pinewood, South Carolina, was so remote that some contemporaries would call the project ―Manning‘s Folly,‖ but this did not deter Manning from creating a house that employed the highest fashions of the day. The contract for the house, between Manning and Nathaniel F. Potter, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, who is best known for his work in South Carolina, specified that the house was to have:

Collonade to be composed of six Corinthian columns, the style to be used is that from the monument of Lysicratus [in Athens], the Bases of the columns to be of

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granite, the shafts of bricks & the capitals of Wood. . . . The whole exterior of the house to be plastered, all the collums & mouldings with cement, & the balance with rough cast, the whole body of the House to be straw colored and all the trimmings white. . . . The drawing room to be finished with sliding and folding doors (as per plate No. 7 in Lafevers modern Architecture 1835). . . . All the doors and window in the hall and dining room & Library to be finished as per plate 19 in Lafever. . . . All the doors of the second story to be finished as pr plate 14 with no 19 cornice. . . . Front entrance to be as p/ plate no 13. . . . All the above plates refered to are from Lafever‘s Modern Architecture of 1835.1

The details of this description tell us immediately of the inspirations and context for the design of the house. The ―Greek Revival‖ style of the mansion was reminiscent of the houses and public buildings around the country that were built, beginning in the early

1800s, with an effort to use details derived from actual classical buildings, rather than a more generic classicism derived from later sources. The mention of a specific ancient

Greek monument, the choregic monument of Lysicrates in Athens, highlighted this trend towards ―archaeological revivalism.‖2 At the same time that it consciously looked to the past, however, this type of architecture was understood to be purely ―modern‖—the style guide for the project, Beauties of Modern Architecture by New York-based architect

Minard Lafever, shifted effortlessly between claims to be ―cutting-edge,‖ and precise drawings of Greek monuments, collapsing the time frame of their development.3 In the creation of Milford, appearances were crucial: the brick column shafts and the walls of the house needed to be plastered over to create the illusion of stone masonry—strong, white, and permanent.

1 May 7, 1839, quoted in Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: South Carolina (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1984), 200-203. 2 Martin D. Snyder, ―Icon of Antiquity,‖ in Wiltshire, Usefulness of Classical Learning, 34. 3 Compare, for example, Plate 1 of ―A Modern Front Door‖, with Plates 34 and 35, which presented details ―From the Erectheion Temple,‖ a structure on the Athenian Acropolis. Minard Lafever, The Beauties of Modern Architecture, rev. ed. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1855), 82, 148-150.

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Manning was certainly aware of the prestige of this architectural style, which would have influenced his choice of Potter as architect, a man who had recently finished the reconstruction of the grandest Greek Revival building in South Carolina: the

Charleston Hotel.4 The description in the contract gave priority to the forty-foot columns on the front porch of the house, singling out the elements that would later dominate encounters with the house by both visitors and residents. Tall, white, and beautiful, they symbolized the power of the white slaveowner, and expressed an invented architectural tradition that linked the modern American South to ancient Greece. Classicizing5 architectural styles were not unique to the southern United States—Manning‘s use of

Rhode Island architects reminds us that Greek Revival style was developed in the North, and only later spread to the South. In this chapter, however, I focus on southern plantation6 houses built in this tradition because, while classicizing architecture operated in a similar way in the United States as a whole, it found its most extreme expression in the rural temples of the southern slaveowners, which were built and inhabited in an environment of increasing southern nationalism.

4 Lane, South Carolina, 194-199. Manning‘s taste for Greek Revival architecture also came through later in his plans for the South Carolina State House, when he was governor in the early 1850s. John M. Bryan. Creating the South Carolina State House (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999). Another Rhode Island architect, Russell Warren, had some involvement in the creation of this building, but his precise role is unclear (Lane, South Carolina, 200). 5 Unless the distinction is important for a specific conversation, I use ―classicizing‖ as a catch-all term for the various architectural and decorative arts styles, retrospectively defined as Palladian, Roman Revival, Greek Revival, etc. Although these distinctions did, at times, matter to those creating, commissioning, using, viewing, and encountering classicizing objects, in general all symbolized a general concept of classical-ness (for the distinctions made between these styles in the mid-1800s, see the lectures of architect Thomas U. Walter. Thomas U. Walter: The Lectures on Architecture, 1841-53, ed. Jhennifer Amundson (Philadelphia: Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 2006). 6 I adopt John Michael Vlach‘s definition of a plantation as an agricultural operation that employed the labor of at least twenty slaves, which he notes yields approximately 46,274 plantations in the South in 1860, only about 2,300 of which were occupied by a hundred or more slaves. Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 7-8. While only 12% of all slaveowning families reached the threshold of ―plantation‖ (Vlach, Big House, 7) the majority of antebellum slaves lived on plantations—51.6% in 1850, according to John Boles. Black Southerners, 1619- 1869 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 107.

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The audiences for these displays of classical heritage were varied, and each would have received different messages from the landscape.7 The most direct audiences were those who lived on the plantation—the male and female plantation owners and their families,8 the overseer and other white employees, and the black slaves. Indeed, the institution of slavery cannot ―be fully understood without reference to and understanding of the spatial circumstances of [. . .] enslavement‖9—which was, for the majority of antebellum slaves, the environment of the southern plantation.10 At the same time, the plantation landscape was both permeable and public, and was designed as a

―processional‖ landscape, which communicated its meaning to those who moved through it in four dimensions, and whose builders ―worked to create a landscape meant to be experienced dynamically.‖11 Aside from the white and black individuals who lived on the plantation itself, other important audiences included local slaveowners, non-slaveowning

7 I borrow Rhys Isaac‘s definition of ―landscape‖ as ―any terrain or living space that has been subjected to the requirements of a conscious or unconscious design,‖ as well as Isaac‘s assumption that ―[a] society necessarily leaves marks of use upon the terrain it occupies. These marks are meaningful signs not only of the particular relations of a people to environment but also of the distribution and control of access to essential resources.‖ The Transformation of Virginia: 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 19. 8 While male slaveholders were most often the original creators of plantation mansion houses, their wives had a clear role in designing the houses at places such as Berry Hill. Clifton Ellis, ―Building Berry Hill: Plantation Houses and Landscapes in Antebellum Virginia‖ (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2000); Ellis, ―The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation: Architecture and the Changing Nature of Slavery in Antebellum Virginia,‖ Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 13, no. 1 (2006). Widows and female heirs often ran plantation households on their own. For example, Rachel O‘Connor of Evergreen Plantation in Louisiana (Allie B.W. Webb, Mistress of Evergreen: Rachel O’Connor’s Legacy of Letters [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983]), and Eliza Lucas Pinckney and her daughter Harriott Pinckney Horry of South Carolina (Mary Bray Wheeler and Genon Hickerson Neblett. Hidden Glory: The Life and Times of Hampton Plantation, Legend of the South Santee [Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1983], 12, 42). 9 Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, introduction to Cabin, Quarter, Plantation: Architecture and Landscapes of North American Slavery, eds. Ellis and Ginsburg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 5. 10 For the relative distribution of slaves on large and small plantations, and in urban settings, see Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 12. 11 Dell Upton, ―White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia‖ Places 2, no.2 (1984): 59 (quotation), 66-69; Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 71.

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white southerners, free black laborers, and visitors from Europe and the North.12 The classical plantation landscape was designed to transmit the same basic message to each of these audiences—one that asserted the plantation owner‘s power and wealth—but that message was received in different ways by different individuals, depending on their own contextual understanding of the plantation environment.

This chapter will explore some of the ways in which the bodies of white and black

Americans moved within the classical landscape of the southern slave plantation, in such a way as to reinforce ethnic histories of the whiteness of the southern elite. The southern plantation landscape allows us to interrogate how the use of classical architectural styles quite literally served as a supporting structure of white supremacy and a material manifestation of slaveowners‘ aspirations to racial domination. Although the classicizing architectural styles of the plantation houses were found in other settings in the early

United States—from the public architecture of the United States Capitol and the Second

Bank of the United States, to the domestic architecture of the northern and western

United States—this analysis will focus on the slave plantations of the South as a distinct subcategory of classical American landscapes. The primary characteristics of this landscape that set it apart were the power and racial divisions that defined it. In no other setting did the will of one or two white individuals dictate the shape of the built environment in which dozens or hundreds of free white, and free and enslaved black individuals would live and work, while those same white individuals who held the power were so thoroughly overwhelmed numerically by the black men, women, and children they considered to be their property. These circumstances make the slave plantation an

12 Northern visitors could be distinguished from southerners even before the abolition of slavery in the North, due to the very different racial dynamics of large-scale plantation slavery, which was in operation at each of the sites in this study.

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especially fruitful case study for understanding the racialized significance of classical landscapes in the early United States.

Southern Classicism and Southern Nationalism

As discussed in Chapter 1, the white American elite appealed to classical antiquity as a glorious white ancestor culture in a variety of contexts between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. However, due to their enormous wealth, the unique racial context of their lives, and the developing sense of the South as a different nation than the rest of the

United States, the classicism of elite southern slaveholders was most pronounced.

Although the general veneration of the classical past in the early United States was not restricted to southern slaveowners, the ideological significance of classical antiquity was given verbal articulation in the southern nationalist movement that developed as sectional tensions over slavery increased. White southern slaveowners derived proof for their arguments about the ―positive good‖ of slavery from the existence of the institution in the revered cultures of Greece and Rome, while at the same time reinforcing the status of Greco-Roman antiquity as the ancestral culture of the modern

American South.13

The American South started to identify itself as a distinct entity, set apart from the

North, shortly after the Revolutionary War.14 By the 1830s, both southern and northern writers discussed the distinction as one of race, traceable back to the English Civil War, with the idea being that the northern population descended from the Puritan

13 The nullification crisis of the early 1830s is often cited as a major catalyst in the development of southern nationalism. See, for example, Rollin G. Osterweis, Romanticism and Nationalism in the Old South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), 54-55. 14 James C. Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 9-22.

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―Roundheads,‖ while the southern population—or rather, the elite southerners who wrote as if no other nonblack southerners existed—descended from the Norman ―Cavaliers.‖15

Several southern writers credited the ―Cavalier element‖ with ―predominating in southern civilization and giving tone to southern society and character to southern politics.‖16 As

Edward Baptist observes, this combined with a mythologization of ―old Virginia,‖ to support ―the compensatory idea that the South was ‗Old,‘ a society stabilized by lower- class deference and ruled by the benevolent descendants of the cavaliers.‖17 In turn, southerners understood the medieval European cavaliers as the descendants of the same

Greco-Roman civilization that was claimed by white America more generally.18 This helps us understand such otherwise incongruous events as the joust that took place in

Virginia in 1845, on the grounds of the Greek Revival Fauquier White Sulpher Springs spa.19 Thus, while James McPherson argues that by the 1850s, the connection to the

Norman cavaliers became ―the central myth of southern ethnic nationalism,‖20 we must also recognize that this myth was itself based on a myth of classical ancestry.

As national ancestors for white southerners, the Greeks and Romans offered something that the Normans did not: testimony to the centrality of slavery as a

15 On the ―Cavalier Myth‖ and the concept of southern distinctiveness, see Edward E. Baptist, Creating the Old South: Middle Florida’s Plantation Frontier Before the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 7, 255, 275; Cobb, Away Down South, 22; Farnham, Southern Belle, 28-32; Fox- Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 92-95; Peter Kolchin, A Sphinx on the American Land: The Nineteenth-Century South in Comparative Perspective (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003): 7-38; O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order, II: 647-650; Osterweis, Romanticism and Nationalism; Ritchie D. Watson, Normans and Saxons: Southern Race Mythology and the Intellectual History of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2008); Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press), 179-181. 16 Cobb, Away Down South, 22. 17 Baptist, Creating the Old South, 9. 18 See the writings of George Fitzhugh on southern race, particularly his 1861 articles, which are quoted at length in Chapter 1. 19 Osterweis, Romanticism and Classicism, 3-5. 20 James M. McPherson, Is Blood Thicker Than Water? Crises of Nationalism in the Modern World (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 45.

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fundamental part of a glorious white civilization. Whereas some northerners placed slavery alongside paganism as a cause of the downfall of the ancient Roman and Greek civilizations,21 southern slaveowners saw slavery as instead facilitating their greatness, by freeing citizens from the toils of menial labor, allowing them to live as equals, and to be leaders.22 In a lengthy appendix to his 1854 book, Sociology of the South, George

Fitzhugh summed up this widely discussed perspective:

[Ancient Greece and Rome‘s] high civilization and domestic slavery did not merely co-exist, they were cause and effect. Every scholar whose mind is at all imbued with ancient history and literature, sees that Greece and Rome were indebted to this institution alone for the taste, the leisure and the means to cultivate their heads and their hearts; had they been tied down to Yankee notions of thrift, they might have produced a Franklin, with his ―penny saved is a penny gained;‖ they might have had utilitarian philosophers and invented the spinning jenny, but they never would have produced a poet, an orator, a sculptor or an architect; they would never have uttered a lofty sentiment, achieved a glorious feat in war, or created a single work of art.23

Similarly, J.D. Orr argued, in an 1855 article in De Bow’s Review, that only when the

Greeks and Romans were freed from basic labor could they cultivate ―philosophy, poetry, letters, and eloquence;‖24 while Representative E. Carrington Cabell of Florida argued that the decline of slavery had lead to the loss of Roman liberty.25 As a fellow

21 Miles quotes a number of examples gleaned from the Congressional Globe, including the 1848 statement that slavery was ―among the causes of the corruption which overthrew those Republics‖ (Thirtieth Congress, First Session, Appendix, 1200, 26 July 1848, quoted in Miles, ―Old South,‖ 267n48). See also Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 287. 22 See the examples in Osterweis, Romanticism and Nationalism, 55, 94. 23 George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society (Richmond, VA: A. Morris, 1854), 242-43. 24 ―Development of Southern Industry‖ De Bow’s Review, XIX (July 1855), 18-19, quoted in Miles, ―Old South,‖ 267. 25 For a similar perspective on slavery in ancient Greece, put forward by Thomas Dew in his lectures at William and Mary, later published as A Digest of the Laws, Customs, Manners, and Institutions of the Ancient and Modern Nations, 1853, see O‘Brien, Conjectures of Order, 609; and an extended discussion of these kinds of arguments in Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Master Class, 69, 266-382.

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slaveholding nation—and as some even stressed, fellow ―Southern slave states,‖26 when the geographical location of Greece and Rome was considered relative to the rest of

Europe—the white American South asserted that it had a stronger claim to the legacy of

Greece and Rome than did those Americans who toiled in and owned northern factories.27

The southern elite enacted their fictive descent from the Greeks and Romans in a variety of ways, many of which appeared as more intense manifestations of the broader classicism of the United States. For example, elite white southerners were the first to establish academies for girls to learn classical languages, and they also embarked on the

Grand Tour earlier and in greater proportion than other residents of the United States. For both white and black, free and enslaved Americans, perhaps one of the most lasting and profound impressions of the Grand Tour would have been their encounters with the classical ruins upon which the elite houses and government buildings of their own world were increasingly based. The columns fronting the Pantheon, the ruins of the Colosseum, and the Greek temples of Paestum and Athens, offered architectural testimony to the continuity between ancient Greece and Rome, and the modern United States.

Architecture and Ideology

While the classicizing architecture of southern plantation has received a substantial amount of attention from previous scholars, the majority of this work has taken a descriptive approach, or has focused on tracing the stylistic influences on the houses. To

26 J.D.B. De Bow, ―Editorial and Literary Department,‖ De Bow’s Review XI (1851), 681, quoted in Miles, ―Old South,‖ 258. 27 North Carolina Senator Thomas L. Clingman asserted an additional level of similarity, stating that ―Greece and Rome, too, were lands of the olive, the vine, and the fig tree, and possessed temperatures as high as our own.‖ ―North Carolina—Her Wealth, Resources, and History‖ in De Bow’s Review XXV (1858): 669, quoted in Miles, ―Old South,‖ 263. For more on the trope of the South as Athens and Rome, see Malamud, Ancient Rome, 80-89.

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the extent that the broader cultural functions of classicizing architecture are explored, these tend to be fairly generically tied in with democratic ideals, and with the vogue for classicism in Europe.28 By contrast, I join Henry Glassie in taking as my starting assumption that ―[s]aying that a building is an expression of some fashion may indicate a relationship between the design of different localities, but it explains nothing. What needs an explanation is why that particular fashion was accepted.‖29 Furthermore, the architectural forms used in the plantation South were never adopted unaltered from other contexts; instead, ―[s]laveholders adapted old building types and developed new ones with the purpose of employing architecture to subjugate and control their human chattel.‖30 My goals in this chapter are thus to build upon the body of research on classicizing plantation mansions to explore how they fit into the broader American culture of classicism, and in turn how they reinforced the racial divisions between white

American slaveowners and their black slaves—how they quite literally constructed race.31

28 For example, Mills Lane‘s series of books on the Architecture of the Old South, (Savannah and New York: Beehive Press, 1984-1993). Exceptions to the general pattern, all of which do address the question of the cultural function of the Greek Revival more directly, include Ellis, ―Building Berry Hill‖; Roger G. Kennedy, Greek Revival America (New York: Stewart Tabori & Chang, 1989); and McInnis, Politics of Taste. 29 Henry Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975), 188. See Upton, ―White and Black Landscapes,‖ 59, for a similar perspective. 30 Ellis and Ginsburg, introduction to Cabin, Quarter, Plantation, 3. 31 The prominence of building-related metaphors within modern theoretical analysis of society (―construction,‖ ―foundation,‖ ―support,‖ ―structure,‖ etc.) is echoed in the language used to describe the early United States (―framers,‖ ―builders of the republic,‖ etc.), hinting at the extent to which architecture carries important meanings within society (Ellis and Ginsburg, introduction to Cabin, Quarter, Plantation, 1). For instance, Alexander Stephens, in a March 21, 1861 speech in Savannah, Georgia, regarding the new Confederate nation, said that ―Its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.‖ ―Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861,‖ in The Rebellion Record, ed. Frank Moore, vol. 1 (1862): 44-46, quoted in Ellis and Ginsburg, introduction to Cabin, Quarter, Plantation, 1.

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My methodology for reading the classical plantation landscape is based on a body of work within cultural geography, archaeology, and architecture, sometimes described as

―the new architectural history.‖ This work builds upon the observation that, in the words of Amos Rapoport,

By making visible the distinctions among places, built environments communicate information about the spatial, temporal, social and other forms of the ordering of society. Such settings communicate preferences, hierarchies and lifestyles; they also communicate the nature of the domains into which the environment is organized.32

The many levels on which architecture can communicate meaning to those who inhabit and move within it opens up a range of interpretive possibilities for the classical plantation landscapes at places such as John Manning‘s Milford, both in terms of the symbolic messages they transmitted, and in terms of the patterns of thought and behavior they encouraged. This allows us to tease apart the meanings of classical plantations despite the fact that direct, contemporary commentary on the architecture of plantations was extremely limited.33 Instead, I will lay out a theoretical approach to the interpretation of architecture, which will be elaborated in conjunction with the broader social and cultural practices of classicism within the white plantation elite.34

32 Amos Rapoport, ―Vernacular Architecture and the Cultural Determinants of Form,‖ in Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of the Built Environment, ed. Anthony D. King (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 299-300. Rapoport‘s perspective derives from a broader movement in the study of material culture that recognizes how, in Ian Hodder‘s words, ―[i]tems of material culture can be seen as a medium of communication between individuals and groups. . . . Artifacts can express underlying needs and symbolize and support social relations.‖ ―Economic and Social Stress and Material Culture Patterning‖ American Antiquity 44, no.3 (1979): 449-50. 33 Despite the massive resources devoted to the creation of classicizing mansions, scholars have noted the general absence of discussion of architectural details in the writings of antebellum southerners. See, for example, Michael W. Fazio and Patrick A. Snadon, ―Greek Revival Architecture,‖ in Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, eds. Charles R. Wilson and William Ferris (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 78. 34 The specific classical and neoclassical texts and buildings that inspired American architects have been explored at length elsewhere. See, for example, Talbot Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture in America: Being an Account of Important Trends In American Architecture and American Life Prior to the War 227

Architecture represents an ever-present way in which the past influences the present. The built environment figures heavily in discussions of ―social memory‖ in a variety of contexts around the world—generally in the context of buildings that continued to exist centuries after they were created.35 However, my analysis of classical slave plantation landscapes suggests that landscapes that were consciously created to evoke an ancient past can have an equally powerful role in shaping social memory. Furthermore, the ―past‖ in question need not even be one that played out on the same soil—take the gothic power of St. John‘s Cathedral in New York City, which, although it was built thousands of miles away from, and hundreds of years after the original context in which similar structures were built, has the ability to evoke the memory of medieval Europe.

Similarly, I suggest that the classicizing structures of the eighteenth- and nineteenth- century South came to represent what Eleni Bastéa calls an ―architectural heritage,‖ which, ―woven into our lives through personal and collective memory, becomes a testimony to the past—a past, however, that reflects current theories of history and culture.‖36 The idea of inheritance that is contained within Bastéa‘s term ―architectural heritage‖ (my italics) is critical here. In many places, such as the Greek and Turkish contexts that are the subject of Bastéa‘s work, this is a fairly straightforward concept, reflecting the survival of old buildings in the present. But in the early United States, there were few buildings from the local past that were regarded as part of an inspirational, national architectural heritage. Instead, the white elite looked to the ancient cultures with which they identified most—those of ancient Greece and Rome—and imitated their

Between the States (London: Oxford University Press, 1944); Kennedy, Greek Revival America; and Lane‘s series of books on Architecture of the Old South. 35 e.g. Alcock, Greek Past; Brown and Hamilakis, Usable Past. 36 Eleni Bastéa, ―Dimitris Pikionis and Sedad Eldem: Parallel Reflections of Vernacular and National Architecture,‖ in Brown and Hamilakis, Usable Past, 147.

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structures to create a classical landscape in their new country. Over time, the buildings they created came themselves to form a local architectural heritage, as the leaders of the antebellum South played as children among the columns of grand porticos that were already beginning to crumble with age.37 Thus, despite the differences in how the

―ancient‖ buildings came to exist in the first place, the architectural landscape of the

United States functioned in similar ways to that of Turkey and Greece, which, as Bastéa argues, supports ―a national image that paid homage to the ancestors, [and] underscored racial and cultural continuity of the population.‖38 The classicizing architecture of the

American South—with its profusion of white columns, pediments, and faux-marble walls—thus came to represent a concrete metaphor for group identity, a recurring physical cue that served as a mnemonic both for appropriate behavior within the plantation environment, and for the links that white slaveowners repeatedly asserted between themselves and ancient Greeks and Romans.

At the same time that we should be aware of the ways in which the perceived longevity of architecture could be employed rhetorically by its designers and users to suggest a false antiquity, I join Henry Glassie in the belief that ―[a]rchitecture studied as an expression of personality and culture may provide us with the best means available for comprehending an authentic history.‖39 As Glassie argued in his pioneering study of vernacular architecture in Virginia, architecture may be thought of as ―the most efficient guide to past culture because of its universality, tenacity, complexity, and fixedness.‖40

37 For instance, Hill Carter had to replace the columns in the 1770s portico of his family home on Shirley Plantation in the 1830s. Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: Virginia (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1987), 45-46. 38 Bastéa, ―Vernacular and National Architecture,‖ 165. 39 Glassie, Folk Housing, vii. 40 Glassie, Folk Housing, 14.

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Or, in the words of Edward Chappell, ―[b]uildings provide a tangible link to lives of real people in the past. Read critically, they offer clear testimony about the material conditions of their lives.‖41

Following the suggestion of Michael Fazio and Patrick Snadon, we can understand the plantation environment as providing ―stages for human action,‖42 on which contemporary ideas about race and ancestry were reinforced through quotidian performances. As they lived out their modern American lives in spaces resembling ancient Greece and Rome, surrounded by objects that were similarly evocative—such as the Grecian gowns so popular in the early nineteenth century, and the Grecian lamps and sofas that decorated sitting rooms43—the white southern elite enacted their imagined descent from the ancient people of Greece and Rome on a daily basis. The different ways in which the black and white inhabitants of plantations interacted with this classical material world—creating versus using, serving versus consuming—furthered the division between the two groups, affirming the legitimacy of the connection between white

American slaveowners and ancient Greek and Roman slaveowners. These functional distinctions were often reinforced by the patterns of distribution of classical and nonclassical architecture across the plantation landscape.

Because of the power architecture had, in these and other ways, those who planned buildings and landscapes worked with an ―awareness of the forms of action a building is meant to contain or segregate,‖ ensuring that ―the organization of space in a

41 Edward A. Chappell, ―Accommodating Slavery in Bermuda.‖ In Ellis and Ginsburg, Cabin, Quarter, Plantation, 89. 42 Fazio and Snadon, ―Greek Revival Architecture,‖ 78. 43 Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 117-131; Cooper, Classical Taste in America.

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building will, in turn, help mold social conduct.‖44 For the scholar, this perspective requires us to read ―landscapes as efforts at three-dimensional control, not merely as two- dimensional plans for traffic, trade, and efficiency.‖45 As such, plantation ―[a]rchitecture provides a potent medium for elaborately coded nonverbal statement [sic],‖46 and represents the attempts of white slaveowners to shape landscapes ―into illusions intended to establish their power.‖47 Thus, we can study these landscapes to try to ―see the efforts of pro-slavery agents to shape environments that facilitated control and surveillance of slaves‘ activities, and [to] see the material responses of enslaved workers to the impositions and indignities of slavery.‖48 By combining these analyses by previous scholars of plantation landscapes with an interrogation of the meanings of the classicism of these landscapes, we can gain a better understanding of the ways in which they functioned to support the racialized power structure of the antebellum South.

Regardless of the conscious intentions of those who commissioned and designed the buildings, plantation architecture had impacts that they may not necessarily have anticipated—for instance, how the white columns of plantation mansions familiarized all

Americans with the form as a symbol of white power. The repetitive encounters with white columns across the rural landscape, in the decorative arts, and in banks, churches, and local and national capitols, reinforced their association with the white elite.49

44 Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 305. 45 Mark Leone, ―A Historical Archaeology of Capitalism,‖ American Anthropologist 97, no.2 (1995): 255. 46 Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 351. 47 Leone, ―Historical Archaeology of Capitalism,‖ 255. 48 Ellis and Ginsburg, introduction to Cabin, Quarter, Plantation, 2. 49 For a discussion of how these interconnected landscapes functioned for wealthy planters, see Upton, ―White and Black Landscapes,‖ 66.

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Our interrogation of the significance of the classical plantation landscape ought not to ignore the extent to which the rigidly divided social system of agricultural slavery created a situation in which different people had very different understandings of the landscape.50 Indeed, the importance of certain specific cultural features in shaping group identity varied so much for white and black populations that Dell Upton talks about the different ―white and black landscapes‖ that existed in the plantation South.51 White columns, plaster busts, and marble mantelpieces supported a narrative of classical white identity, and thus this chapter is largely concerned with whiteness.52 However, despite the coercive nature of the institution of slavery, black Americans also would have formed their own ideas about and associations with these same objects and spaces, which demand consideration.53 In emphasizing the role of enslaved and free black Americans in creating and later serving in these temples to white mastery, I draw attention, for the first time, to the ways in which these spaces served the dual function of linking white Americans to

―their‖ classical past, while also reaffirming the racial hierarchies of their American present.

In this project, I am returning the focus to precisely those mansions of the elite that more recent, culturally grounded studies of the landscapes of the antebellum South

50 On the different meanings architecture holds for people occupying different subject positions, see Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1987), 106-107. 51 Upton, ―White and Black Landscapes.‖ 52 Our understanding of the meaning of classical plantation mansions to the enslaved people who built them is limited by our sources; Bradford Grant suggests that ―[r]esistance came in many forms, ranging from subtle African details and dimensions applied to building to planned construction flaws and the outright systematic burning of the plantation buildings that slaves had designed and built.‖ ―Accommodation, Resistance, and Appropriation in African-American Building,‖ in Barton, Sites of Memory, 109. The irrecoverable intentions behind such acts certainly reflected a broader antipathy towards the injustice of the slaveholders‘ control, and an awareness of the symbolic importance of these structures within the plantation ecosystem. 53 For the development of distinctive methods of understanding the landscape on the part of the enslaved, see Upton, ―White and Black Landscapes,‖ 71.

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have sought to downplay.54 While I fully support endeavors to study and even foreground the ways in which the majority of people lived in the antebellum South—which, as has been rightly pointed out by several scholars, was most definitely not in white-columned mansions on vast estates worked by hundreds of slaves—the classical mansions of that narrow elite carried great symbolic value, both within southern society, and in representations of that society to northerners and foreigners. Thus, the impact that these mansions had cannot be measured by the demographic minority that commissioned and lived in them—and that broader impact was, in fact, the point of building them in the first place.

In order to explore the classical landscapes of the antebellum South, I focus on slave plantations from across the region, drawing on information from architectural and archival sources, as well as site visits. The mansions on these plantations were originally built between the early eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and represented different levels of wealth, as well as a range of different classicizing styles. Some of the houses were designed by their original owners, some went through several renovations over the course of a century and a half; but what all had in common was their location on productive agricultural estates that were sustained by the labor of dozens or hundreds of enslaved black people—some of whom provided the labor of actually building these houses and other buildings on the plantation.

54 See, for example, the essays in Ellis and Ginsburg, Cabin, Quarter, Plantation.

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White Columns

Classicizing architecture, and the Greek Revival in particular, obviously did appear in various contexts outside of the plantation South,55 but the slave estates of the early United

States offer us a unique setting in which to explore the resonances of these Greco-Roman echoes. While the mansions are often approached as stand-alone architectural achievements, it is crucial that we recall, as John Michael Vlach puts it, that

How slaveholders laid out their estates, where they placed their homes, what types of buildings they chose to erect, and many other matters that determined the look of the landscape were all contingent to some degree on their involvement with 56 chattel slavery and thus ultimately were affected by the slaves themselves.

Thus, we must interrogate the ways in which even aspects of the plantation landscape that might appear to be non-racial in their function—including classicizing architecture—did in fact support the institution of racial slavery. Such an analysis requires that, as Trafton did in his perceptive study of Egyptian Revival architecture in the United States, we

―emphasize those aspects of the style that are all too often underplayed in architectural histories: those which arose from the politics of race,‖ in order to explore ―the extent to which nineteenth-century anxieties over race, racial origin, and racial identity were carved in stone.‖57

Trafton‘s analysis of revivalist architecture emphasizes the extent to which

58 American revivalism was structured as ―a mode of historiographic visuality.‖ Buildings that were meant to represent one past or another declared a particular kind of relationship with that past, and an ownership over it. At the same time, they illustrated a real deference to that past, as noted by Philip Hone in his diary in 1838, who marveled at

55 Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture; Kennedy, Greek Revival America. 56 Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, x. 57 Trafton, Egypt Land, 145-146. 58 Trafton, Egypt Land, 142.

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how, despite the innovations of his own age, ―every departure from the classical models of antiquity in [architecture] is a departure from grace and beauty.‖59 Architectural revivalism can be understood as ―the very model of national anxiety; of the anxieties of national identity in general and of national historiographic anxiety in particular.‖60

On their rural estates, slave plantation owners deployed architectural classicism as a performance of mastery and an articulation of white supremacy. Wherever it was invoked, the pastness of the classical world opened up a different set of meanings to those of other foreign cultural forms in the United States. When elements from Chinese61 or Native American62 architecture were used in the plantation setting, they invoked an exotic present, one that existed concurrently elsewhere. On the other hand, classicizing architecture actively recalled cultures that no longer existed, raising the question of who their descendants were.63 Thus, their use on plantations represented the ―past-claims‖ of the white elite, who asserted their descent from those historical cultures.64

59 February 14, 1838, in regards to the portico of the Branch Bank of the United States in Philadelphia. Quoted in Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture, 78n19. 60 Trafton, Egypt Land, 147. 61 See, for instance, the Chinese Lattice stairs in several Virginian plantation mansions (Lane, Virginia, 81- 82), including Shirley. Catherine Lynn, Shirley Plantation: A History (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1967), 159. 62 For Margaret Manigault‘s description of her brother Henry Izard‘s plan to build a wigwam dwelling on his Catawba River farm in South Carolina, see Lane, South Carolina, 109-110. 63 The same phenomenon was at work in the use of Gothic and Italianate architectural styles in plantation mansions, which invoked the medieval and renaissance periods of Europe that were also part of the ethnic history of American whiteness. In public settings, the white elite often used Egyptian architecture in a similar way; however, it was not used on slave plantations, perhaps due in part to the greater ambiguity about the racial identity of the ancient Egyptians. See Trafton, Egypt Land, 140-161, including his discussion of how Egyptian architecture was linked to both the ancient world and the contemporary Middle East, granting it a status more akin to that I argue existed for Chinese architecture, as a representative of the exotic present (143). On the Egyptian Revival more generally, including the scarcity of domestic structures which employed it, see Richard G. Carrott, The Egyptian Revival: Its Sources, Monuments, and Meanings (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 64 As Winterer notes, the affinity thus invoked, between ancient Greeks and Romans, and the modern white slaveowners who lived in classicizing mansions, was extended through the dependence of both cultures on slave labor (Culture of Classicism, 32).

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Although, revivalist architects ―took great pride in establishing the authenticity of their designs‖65—often pointing to specific monuments and drawings as the source of their choice of detailing and proportions—plantation houses were never direct copies of

Roman and Greek houses, which were themselves increasingly well known from archaeological investigations of the towns and villas buried by the eruption of Mount

Vesuvius in 79 C.E.66 Instead, classical elements—primarily columns and triangular pediments—were adhered to the façades of two- or three-story Anglo-American or

French Creole houses, and decorated the interiors of rooms otherwise laid out according to Anglo or French vernacular traditions.67 The resulting tension between archaeological precision—the ―game of citation‖ that Trafton observes is prevalent in revivalist architecture68—and the retention of contemporary Euro-American vernacular forms, created a style of architecture that was uniquely American.

At the same time, the white columns that supported ancient Greek and Roman buildings in neoclassical paintings, theater sets, as well as engravings in history and travel books—and, for those who traveled on the Grand Tour, in person—provided a sense of continuity between the white American present and the classical past. Several slaveowning families had their houses built or rebuilt following trips to Europe in ways that reflected their increased sense of connection to classical antiquity. For example,

65 Trafton, Egypt Land, 143. 66 On American knowledge of these archaeological discoveries, see Dyson, Ancient Marbles, 117-18; Rolf Winkes, ―The Influence of Herculaneum and Pompeii on American Art of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,‖ in Ercolano 1738-1988: 250 anni di ricerca archeologica, ed. Luisa Franchi dell‘Orto (Roma: L‘Erma di Bretschneider, 1993). 67 Glassie, Folk Housing, 158; John B. Rehder, Delta Sugar: Louisiana’s Vanishing Plantation Landscape (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 64-89. 68 Trafton, Egypt Land, 144.

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Daniel and Martha Turnbull had their slaves build their classicizing mansion at

Rosedown in 1835, following a Grand Tour honeymoon (Figure 18).69

Figure 18: Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana, photo by author

Similarly, when The Elms, the South Carolina home of Grand Tourists Ralph and Alice

Izard, burned in the early 1800s, their son, Henry Izard, supervised the rebuilding of the structure in grand classical style, including a two-story columned portico.70 Other members of this well-traveled family also employed classicizing architecture when building their houses. Henry Izard‘s nephew, Charles Izard Manigault, made not one but five trips to Europe with his family between 1828 and 1855, and had a mansion built at his Gowrie plantation near Savannah, Georgia, in 1834, complete with four Tuscan

71 columns supporting the roof of the front porch. The Gowrie house was built when

69 Henry Wiencek, Plantations of the Old South (Des Moines: Oxmoor House, 1988), 156-170; Diane K. McGuire, ―Early Gardens Along the Atlantic Coast,‖ in Punch, Keeping Eden, 27-28. 70 Lane 1984: 107-109. See the description of the house in John H. Moore, ―The Abiel Abbot Journals, 1818-1827 (continued),‖ South Carolina Historical Magazine 68, no.3 (1967): 135-36. 71 See image in Louis Manigault, Plantation Journal, p. 41, Manigault Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library. (online at http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/plantation,639, accessed 5/14/2012).

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Charles‘ son Louis—who was actually born while his parents were on the Grand Tour, and visited Rome before his first birthday—was only six years old. Together with the classicizing architecture that dominated the landscape of Charleston—the city where the

Manigaults spent much of their time—the mansion at Gowrie would have provided an early sense of connection to the columned architecture that Louis would later encounter on his many trips to Europe, both with his parents, and on his own.72 Thus, over the course of multiple generations of elite white slaveholders, classical education, Grand

Tour pilgrimages, and the white columns of classicizing plantation architecture functioned in an iterative manner to naturalize their privilege within the United States.

The Manigaults‘ house at Gowrie was burned by Union forces during the Civil

War, a fate that met many of the neoclassical mansions that dotted the southern landscape. Some, like Wade Hampton II‘s mansion at Millwood, were left in a state that recalled most distinctly the Greek and Roman ruins of the Grand Tour (Figure 19).

Figure 19: Millwood Plantation ruins in 1960, Historical American Buildings Survey

72 On Louis Manigault‘s travels, see McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 243. The similarities between the architecture of the United States and of Europe—both ancient and contemporary—would have been contrasted with the other architectural traditions Louis encountered in his trips to Asia.

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But even before their destruction, Millwood and other classical structures in the United

States could act as classical ruins did in the Old World: as sites of memory, providing a sense of connection to the peoples of the past, reminding those who encountered them of the greatness of the builder and owner of the house, and also, at the same time, of the ancient culture whose heritage the white slaveowners claimed.73

Even those southerners who did not journey to Europe manifested the influences of the culture of the Grand Tour on their architectural and decorative taste. One of the most popular classical elements was a monumental portico, sometimes called a ―piazza,‖ on the front or back of a house, supported by massive white columns. As this form became associated with the young American nation, newly built plantation houses frequently featured such porticos, while older plantation houses were remodeled to include large porches supported by classical columns.74 James Cathcart Johnston never saw an original classical building, but had his slaves build one of the most impressively classical plantation houses in North Carolina, at Hayes Plantation, completed in 1817

(Figure 20).

73 On the significance of architecture and place in collective memory, see Alcock, Greek Past; Bastéa ―Vernacular and National Architecture‖; Nora, ―Between History and Memory.‖ 74 Dozens of examples of this can be found in Lane‘s series of books on the Architecture of the Old South.

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Figure 20: Hayes Plantation, Edenton, North Carolina, photo by author

At Shirley, one of the plantations of the wealthy Carter family of Virginia, a two-story portico replaced the earlier, smaller classical porch in the late 1770s;75 while at Hampton in South Carolina, a grand portico, with a triangular pediment, was added to the existing house in 1790-1791—in preparation for a visit from George Washington, according to tradition.76

Plantation owners and architects who did not travel to Europe encountered the classical architecture of Greece and Rome through a variety of means, including illustrations in their history books, where columned and pedimented architecture framed the tales of the great deeds of ancient men. But most influential for the actual shapes of

75 Lane, Virginia, 46; Lynn, Shirley Plantation, 116, 135-150; Theodore R. Reinhart, ed., The Archaeology of Shirley Plantation (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984), 74. 76 Lane, South Carolina, 34-38. At the time the portico was added at Hampton, it was the center of a 5000- acre rice and indigo plantation.

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the mansion houses that were built in the early United States were the architectural pattern books of Asher Benjamin, Peter Nicholson, and other contemporary builders, which were frequently found in the libraries of elite southerners, as well as in the collections of architects and builders.77

But what of the slaves themselves? While the Greco-Roman resonances of classicizing architecture would not, of course, have been apparent to those who lacked a classical education, this in no way diminished the effectiveness of this architecture as a symbol of white elite power. The built environment communicates both by means of style, and through the delimitation of different kinds of spaces for different kinds of people and activities. The details that former slaves used to describe the homes of their masters revealed the impressions these structures made. Martha Colquitt of Lexington,

Georgia, recalled that the ―Big House‖ of the plantation on which she was a slave ―was painted white with green blinds and had a big old high porch dat went nigh all ‘round de

78 house.‖ With language that reflected his level of education, Frederick Douglass described the Maryland plantation where he was enslaved as a child:

The great house itself was a large, white, wooden building, with wings on three sides of it. In front, a large portico, extending the entire length of the building, and supported by a large range of columns, gave the whole establishment an air of

77 Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: North Carolina (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1985), 133; Lane, Architecture of the Old South (New York: The Beehive Press, 1993), 242-253; Trafton, Egypt Land, 143. 78 Interviewed at age 85 by Sarah H. Hall, quoted in Norman R. Yetman, ed., Life Under the “Peculiar Institution‖: Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970), 61. I have elected not to alter the grammar or spelling of quotations of the enslaved and formerly enslaved, even though their speech was originally transcribed in non-standard English in order to emphasize their racial inferiority. In this, I follow Lawrence Levine, who states that ―[a]ny attempt to standardize it into some ideal form of Afro-American dialect would have the effect of distorting it even more, since there was no standard black dialect covering all sections of the country and all periods from the antebellum South through the 1940s.‖ Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), xv-xvi.

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solemn grandeur: it was a treat to my young and gradually opening mind, to 79 behold this elaborate exhibition of wealth, power and vanity.

Fazio and Snadon connect the popularity of Greek Revival architecture to the growth of southern nationalism, describing the style itself as a ―nationalist architecture‖ designed to make ―virile collective statements about southern cultural and economic attainment.‖80 Furthermore, Bridget Heneghan links the whiteness that prevailed in the architecture of the early United States with a broader racialized emphasis on ―white things‖ in the antebellum period.81 In the context of the broader deployment of classicism as an ethnic history of American whiteness, the choice of these Greco-Roman elements in architecture was far from a neutral one. When we add in this dimension of architectural classicism, it is evident that the white-columned mansions of southern slave plantations were rhetorically powerful symbolic elements in the supporting structures of race, class, and nation.82

The slave plantation mansions that used this racial-nationalist architectural style in the 1830s and 1840s joined a built environment that was already filled with the white columns that were a characteristic part of the various classicizing styles that predominated in southern architecture over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Georgian, Palladian, Roman Revival, Greek Revival, etc., and to a certain

79 Douglass, My Bondage, 67. 80 Fazio and Snadon, ―Greek Revival Architecture,‖ 77. 81 Heneghan, Whitewashing America, 9. 82 For people on the margins of the white elite, classical architecture thus functioned much as did the ownership of black slaves, in helping to ―whiten‖ them. The grandest early Greek Revival structure in Charleston, for example, was the home of the Hibernian association, which was created to aid in the assimilation of Irish immigrants (McInnis, Politics of Taste, 104-108). Similarly, the Hazel Street Synagogue in Charleston, built in 1838, adopted a temple-form design (Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture, 200 and plate LIV), and half-Indian slaveowner James Vann built one of the first classicizing houses in Georgia in 1803-1804, complete with large white exterior columns, and a complex neoclassical interior. Lane, Old South, 90-91; Tiya Miles, House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

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extent even the Italianate and Gothic Revival). For all of the variations that were introduced to classicizing building styles, the purely decorative element of the white column, painted to look like marble, and carved in one of the classical orders, was a constant feature that visually linked the buildings to one another.

While the enslaved population may not have been aware of the classical origins of these architectural forms, the significance of the column as an emblem of power was have been unmistakable. For slaves as much as for their masters, encounters with white columns, such as those fronting John L. Manning‘s mansion at Milford (Figure 17), reinforced their association with the white elite. As the moved across the rural landscape, both black and white Americans encountered the façades of other grand seats of powerful slaveholders, near and far—from the nearby Millwood plantation of Wade Hampton II

(Figure 19), which was also designed by Nathaniel Potter, to the Custis-Lee mansion at

Arlington in Virginia; to the prestigious Charleston Hotel and the many other classical

83 buildings in Charleston; and ultimately, to the Roman Forum and the Athenian

Parthenon—or more generically, the columns that represented classical ruins in so many contemporary paintings and engravings. The repetitive deployment of the architectural element of the classical column demarcated the boundaries of the domain of the elite slaveholders who controlled the style—and literally inhabited it. Ultimately, ―the column became a device of exhibitionism, a sectional emblem, and a symbol of paternalistic and chivalrous society, aristocratic rule, and hierarchical rigidity.‖84

83 Lane, South Carolina, 185-213. 84 Fazio and Snadon, ―Greek Revival Architecture,‖ 77.

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Representations of the Plantation

The importance of the classical column in symbolizing the identity of the slaveowner, and also the racial relations on the southern plantation, was particularly clear in the realm of representation. Plantation owners often commissioned paintings of their homes, to serve as ―documentary celebrations of what was owned.‖85 These paintings highlighted specific details of plantation layout and architecture that spoke to the qualities of the owners—the sophistication and costliness of their mansion house, and elaborate gardens—while ignoring the role of black men and women in creating and sustaining the plantation—as well as the threat represented by that enslaved and mistreated population.86 For instance, South Carolinian Charles Fraser, who himself grew up on his family‘s slave plantations, placed emphasis on the mansion houses within their landscapes, but actively eliminated black people from his paintings, ―situating the institution [of slavery] essentially beyond the edges of his pictures.‖87 The enslaved were

―painted out of the picture‖88 in other ways as well, as Fraser tended to focus on showing the gardens rather than the productive fields in which the majority of slaves labored.89 In such paintings ―[t]he connections planters sensed between their personal identities and their houses effectively transformed a painting of one‘s house into something like a surrogate portrait.‖90

85 John Michael Vlach, The Planter’s Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 3. 86 Vlach, Planter’s Prospect, 2. 87 Vlach, Planter’s Prospect, 67-70, 87-89 (quotation on p. 89). 88 Vlach, Planter’s Prospect, 180. 89 Vlach, Planter’s Prospect, 181. 90 Vlach, Planter’s Prospect, 7. For more on the representation of plantations, see the essays in Angela D. Mack and Stephen G. Hoffius, eds., Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation of American Art (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008).

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While such works, either commissioned by the plantation owners themselves, or made by their peers, reflected most the slaveowners‘ own vision of their houses, the significance of the columned plantation house as a symbol of the white slaveholding

South was embraced by others as well.91 The images of plantation life that appeared on a series of bank notes created by printers in New York and Philadelphia for distribution by southern banks, revealed northern perceptions of how the slaveholding South saw itself.92

Prior to the creation of national currencies during the Civil War, individual banks were responsible for issuing their own paper money, and a variety of designs were created that served both as anti-counterfeiting measures, while also contributing to the visual appeal of the notes.93 Scenes that showed enslaved men and women engaged in productive labor appeared frequently on these notes, in which slaves were usually supervised by a white character, to remind the viewers of the enslaved status of the workers. Where that figure was absent, however, a plantation mansion often appeared as a proxy for white authority—a representational practice Vlach also discerns in paintings of the plantation

South, such as the idyllic scene of Thomas Addison Richards‘ 1855-1860 painting River

Plantation, in which, ―[d]eep in the shadows one can just make out the suggestion of the columned façade of a planter‘s house, an indication that the unsupervised black figures in

91 This tradition lives on in the popular ―Gone With the Wind‖ image of the antebellum South. 92 Unless otherwise noted, all images and data related to southern bank notes come from a database I created, based on my research on these notes at the American Numismatics Society (ANS), as a participant in their Summer Seminar in 2007. This database includes 780 individual bank notes that have slavery- related vignettes, comprised of all those in the collections of the ANS, James Haxby‘s catalogs (Standard Catalog of United States Obsolete Bank Notes, 1782-1866, 4 vols. [Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1988]), and Pierre Fricke‘s catalog (Collecting Confederate Paper Money: A Comprehensive and Fully Illustrated Guide to Collecting All Confederate Note Types and Varieties [New York: R.M. Smythe & Co., 2005]), as well as those in various Smythe auction catalogs, including the entire Herb and Martha Schingoethe Obsolete Currency Collection. 93 For more on paper money in this era, see the U.S. Civil War Center‘s ―Beyond Face Value: Depictions of Slavery in Confederate Currency‖ exhibition, online at www.cwc.lsu.edu/beyondfacevalue (accessed 5/14/2012); and Richard G. Doty, America’s Money, America’s Story (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1998).

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the painting are, in fact, slaves.‖94 Ultimately, it was the vertical white columns—the architectural symbol of ancient Greece and Rome in America—that stood in for the white owners, watching their slaves. On a basic representational level, white, columned classical architecture, plus black bodies, equaled plantation slavery.

This formula was deployed on southern bank notes in images such as the one shown in Figure 21, which was used by banks in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia in the late 1850s and early 1860s.95

Figure 21: Detail from $2 banknote, the Timber Cutter's Bank, Savannah, Georgia, 1857, American Numismatic Society

94 Vlach, Planter’s Prospect, 28. 95 Specifically, this image was used on $2 bills from Georgia‘s Timber Cutter‘s Bank in the late 1850s (Haxby GA-335-G4a) and early 1860s (Haxby GA-335-G4b, shown in Figure 21), $4 bills from North Carolina‘s Bank of Wadesborough in the early 1860s (Haxby NC-80-G8a), and two slightly different $50 bill designs from Virginia‘s Bank of the Commonwealth from 1858-1861 (Haxby VA-170-G8a and G18a).

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Here, the mother and her child were defined as part of the classical plantation landscape by the columned plantation house visible at the back right. The image was originated by

Philadelphia-based printers Bald, Cousland, & Co in the late 1850s. Although the printers were based in a Free State, they would have chosen an image they thought would appeal to southern banks and their slaveholding customers.96 As the image was read from left to right, it both pointed to the importance of black bodies and the crops they cultivated in creating the actual money symbolized by the bank note, and highlighted the role of white columns in representing the power of the absent white master. Similarly, the men and women at work in the field, and transporting cotton in the image shown in Figure 22, which was widely used in Tennessee and South Carolina in the 1850s and early 1860s, were again symbolically overseen by the columned mansion in the back right-hand corner.97

Figure 22: Detail from $5 banknote, Farmers & Exchange Bank of Charleston, South Carolina, 1861, American Numismatic Society

96 It was later also printed on notes from the American Bank Note Company. 97 This image was used on $5 bills from South Carolina‘s Farmers & Exchange Bank in the 1850s-60s (Haxby SC-15-G2a, shown in Figure 22), $50 bills from Tennessee‘s Bank of Chattanooga in 1859-60 (Haxby TN-10-G58a), and five different $2 bill designs from Tennessee‘s Citizens Bank of Nashville & Memphis in the 1850s (Haxby TN-145-G4, G20, G52, G68, G68a).

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This image was first used by Philadelphia and New York-based printers Toppan,

Carpenter, Casilear & Co. in the early 1850s, and remained popular for nearly a decade among southern banks.98

The power of this symbolic language was such that one of the final banknote designs to depict slavery showed three slaves at work in the shadow of the columned plantation house (Figure 23).

Figure 23: Detail from $50 banknote, Confederate States of America, 1861, American Numismatic Society

This vignette, which was originally created for a Georgia bank in the early 1860s, was later featured on the centralized currency of the Confederate States of America.99 Despite the fact that this note was produced during the Civil War, it was originally printed by the

New York-based National Bank Note Company.100 In the midst of sectional conflict, these northern banknote designers saw the white plantation mansion as a symbol of white

98 The image was also later used by the American Bank Note Company. 99 This image was first used on $2 bills from the Bank of Savannah (Haxby GA-325-G8a), and later used by the CSA on $50 bills from April 1861-June 1861 (Fricke Type 4, shown in Figure 23), and $100 bills from August 1862-January 1863 (Fricke type 41). 100 The same banknote design was later printed by Keatinge & Ball of Columbia, South Carolina.

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slaveholding power; and the governments and citizens of the Confederacy accepted and embraced that imagery.

Classical Chattel

Just as the exterior of the plantation mansions conveyed important messages about power and identity, the possessions that filled the interior offered another important setting for the display of the classical affiliation of the white slaveowners. Although they were less visible to the outside observer, these interior spaces were in many ways more important in defining the differences between black and white, slave and slaveowner. Here, the boundary-drawing function of classicism gained importance from the proximity between owners and slaves, which constantly challenged the spatial, and hence racial/power distinctions, between them.101 The role of dozens—sometimes hundreds—of black bodies in bringing the plantation mansion into existence also demanded a certain ―whitening‖ of the mansion house, to make it suitable for, and secure in the ownership of, the white inhabitants. These concerns with defining boundaries, and claiming the space for elite white plantation owners, help us understand the profusion of classicizing decoration that filled the interiors of plantation mansions.

Just as it played an important role in inspiring and contextualizing the columned porticos on the outside of houses, the Grand Tour was the source of many of the furnishings that classicized the interiors of plantation mansions. Artifacts and artwork that were brought back from Europe made it possible for those who did not travel

101 See Craig E. Barton, ―Duality and Invisibility: Race and Memory in the Urbanism of the American South,‖ in Barton, Sites of Memory, 3-5.

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themselves to obtain a visceral connection to classical antiquity.102 Whereas the possession and transfer of authentic artifacts to the United States powerfully symbolized white American ownership over the classical past, copies of classical sculptures also served to provide a physicalized experience of classical antiquity in an American context.

Copies of ancient masterpieces featured prominently in the collections of southern slaveowners, including William Aiken, Governor of South Carolina, who purchased numerous sculptures during his 1858 trip to Europe.103

Americans on the Grand Tour regularly commissioned images of themselves and their friends and heroes in classical garb—white marble or plaster busts depicting men in togas, and women in soft folds of classical garments, or costly oil paintings that showed southern women wearing ―Grecian‖ gowns, or simply surrounded by the accoutrements of classicism—at the very least a column and some classical drapery. When Charles Izard

Manigault traveled to Europe in the late 1820s, he was fortunate to find such a work ready-made for him: the portrait John Singleton Copley had painted of his grandparents,

Ralph and Alice Delancey Izard, six decades earlier (Figure 24).104

102 The range of objects, both ancient and classically inspired, brought back from Europe is portrayed in the catalog of the Gibbes Museum of Art‘s exhibition ―In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740- 1860‖ (McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 91-334). Many of the artworks included in the exhibition ―Classical Art from Carolina Collections‖ might be traced back to this period as well, although the exhibition catalog does not offer such specific provenance. Charles R. Mack, Classical Art from Carolina Collections: An Exhibition of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art from Public and Private Collections in North and South Carolina (Columbia, SC: Vogue Press, 1974). 103 Maurie D. McInnis, ―Picture Mania‘: Collectors and Collecting in Charleston,‖ in McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 49-50. Similarly, when planning his house at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson envisioned a sculpture gallery in the central hall, in which he would display casts of the Apollo Belvedere, the Farnese Hercules, and the Medici Venus, among other classical sculptures. William H. Adams, introduction to The Eye of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adams (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1976), xxxv. See also Richard, Founders and the Classics, 48. 104 McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 138-139. Manigault commissioned a new portrait of his own family in Rome in a similar style, and displayed it proudly alongside that of his grandparents, in his mansion in Charleston.

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Figure 24: Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard, John Singleton Copley, 1775, Museum of Fine Arts, ARTstor

Copley‘s painting captured the wealthy slave plantation owners in Rome, with the ruins of the Colosseum in the background, framed by a classical column and drapery. Around them were arranged what were presumably new acquisitions from their journey, including a Greek vase and a marble sculpture—a sketch of which Alice was shown handing to her husband, across a table festooned with classical motifs. Although, due to the escalating hostilities between the American colonies and England, the Izards were

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unable to pay for the painting in the end,105 their grandson, Charles Izard Manigault, purchased the painting and brought it back to South Carolina.

Manigault‘s cousin, John Izard Middleton, also found a ready-made memento of

American classicism in a larger-than-life-size marble bust of George Washington, in classical garb, created by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi, and later used by Antonio

Canova as a model for his own sculpture of George Washington (Figure 25).

Figure 25: George Washington, Giuseppe Ceracchi, c. 1790s, Gibbes Museum of Art, image from Maurie McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 224.

105 Anne Izard Deas, Correspondence of Mr. Ralph Izard of South Carolina, From the Year 1774 to 1804, With a Short Memoir (New York: Charles S. Francis & Co, 1844), 42-43.

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Middleton may have purchased the bust from the estate of Canova in 1822, and it was later displayed in his family‘s plantation mansion at Middleton Place.106 Together with other artwork brought back by various members of the Middleton family, this bust contributed to a collection that Richard Yeadon, the editor of the Charleston Daily

Courier, described in 1857 as ―the richest productions of the painter‘s and sculptor‘s arts, with gallery [sic] of fine family portraits, by artists of high fame.‖107 Such portraits of

American slaveowners—often created in Italy, using marble from the same sources that were used in antiquity—testified to their imagined descent from the ancient Greeks and

Romans.108

The appeal of classical portraits was such that they were also commissioned at home in the United States. When South Carolinian Sarah Middleton married Charles

Cotesworth Pinckney—a man whose first visit to Europe was in 1753, as a child109—she was painted as a ―Roman matron‖ by Henry Benbridge (Figure 26). 110

106 McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 223-24. 107 Quoted in N. Jane Iseley, Middleton Place (Charleston: Middleton Place National Historic Landmark, Inc. and The Middleton Place Foundation, 1976), 8. 108 On the broader use of neoclassical sculpture to link modern Americans to ancient Greeks and Romans, see John S. Crawford, ―The Classical Orator in Nineteenth Century American Sculpture‖ American Art Journal 6, no.2 (1974); Savage, Standing Soldiers, 1-51. 109 Leath and McInnis, ―Cultural Odyssey,‖ 9-10. 110 Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 61.

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Figure 26: Mrs. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Henry Benbridge, c. 1774, Gibbes Museum of Art

While Caroline Winterer links the ―pastiche of ancient Roman details and elite southern political and cultural aspirations‖ in this portrait to the fact that Sarah‘s new husband was

―deeply embroiled in the patriotic cause,‖ we ought not to overlook the racialized nature of this image, which dressed the white slaveowning woman—her father held over 800 slaves, and she married into a similarly wealthy slaveowning family111—in the garb of the ancient Romans. The image solidified her links to classical antiquity through the

111 Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 59; Frances L. Williams, A Founding Family: The Pinckneys of South Carolina (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978).

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depiction of a circular Roman temple in the background, perhaps intended to invoke the

―Temple of Liberty‖ or ―Temple of Virtue‖ at Tivoli, a common stop on the Grand

Tour.112 Although Sarah Middleton never went on the Grand Tour herself, the painting allowed her to figuratively occupy the space of classical antiquity, which other members of her family had and would continue to do in person.113

Whether commissioned while on the Grand Tour, or created in the United States by European-trained artists such as Benbridge,114 these artworks situated the image of the white American slaveowner within the ancient Greco-Roman world. However, it was the actual decorations of the interior of the plantation mansion, including its furnishings, that provided a classical context for the everyday lives of white southerners. Ironically, however, the prevalence of classical motifs in interior decoration actually hinders the ability of modern scholars to recovery documentary evidence for it. Greco-Roman columns, floral wreaths, and Greek key designs were so widely used that those who sold, bought, and inventoried the furnishings of the elite rarely described them as in any way

―classical.‖ Peter Gaillard‘s daybook provides a good example of this. In the surviving documentation related to the building of his classicizing South Carolina plantation house,

The Rocks, in 1803-05, Gaillard never characterized the decorative elements he purchased as classical. For example, his commission for two chimneypieces from Rhode

112 Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 62. Winterer also suggests that it may be intended to represent the temple in the garden of the slave plantation of the Middleton family‘s Crowfield plantation, but this seems unlikely as the house was sold out of her family‘s possession in 1754, when William Middleton returned to England, and not acquired by them again until March 1784, when Williams‘ youngest son John purchased it back. Michael Trinkley, Natalie Adams, and Debi Hacker, Landscape and Garden Archaeology at Crowfield Plantation: A Preliminary Examination (Columbia, SC: Chicora Foundation, 1992), 17-19. 113 On the popularity of portraits of men and women in classical garb, with classical background imagery, see Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 52-64. 114 For more on Benbridge‘s work, which included several portraits of South Carolina women in classical garb, see Angela D. Mack and J. Thomas Savage, ―Reflections of Refinement: Portraits of Charlestonians at Home and Abroad,‖ in McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 29-32; Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 59-62.

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Island specified that they ―be done in a genteel but plain style;‖ but when we look at the actual chimneypieces (Figure 27), it is clear that the style was meant to be classical— something so obvious it did not need to be said.115

Figure 27: Neoclassical Mantelpieces, The Rocks Plantation, Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, c. 1805, image from Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: South Carolina (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1984), 141.

Whether the object was a clock, a mirror, a table, or a chair, American artisans always found space to fit a cornucopia or a few pilasters, even though the name of the object in an estate inventory or catalog might not acknowledge its classicizing

115 Lane, South Carolina, 139.

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appearance.116 There were a handful of exceptions to this, when classical adjectives were sometimes applied to particular items of furniture, in order to strongly emphasize the classical associations of a particular piece. For example, James Cathcart Johnston specified in an 1817 letter that he wanted a ―Grecian Sopha‖ to be purchased for his mansion at Hayes.117 Such couches were very popular in the 1810s and 1820s—earlier in the same year, South Carolinians had access to a pair from a British manufacturer, which the Charleston Auction Establishment advertised as ―2 handsome Rosewood Grecian

Couches, neatly carved and moulded, shaped feet and brass castors, cane backs and seats,

2 back cushions, round bolster and feather pillows, with handsome blue ground chintz cases, trimed and lined,‖ accompanied by sixteen chairs of various types, all ―with scroll elbows . . . to match.‖118 Another popular item was the ―Grecian Lamp,‖ defined as such by its column-shaped base, and the presence of any number of classicizing motifs (Figure

28, left), which represented an oil-burning update of the column-shaped candlesticks brought back by many early Grand Tourists (see Figure 28, right, for a set purchased in

London by Arthur and Mary Izard Middleton of The Elms, in the early 1770s).119

116 For the overwhelmingly classical style of elite furniture during this era, see the discussion and images in Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 211-226. 117 Joseph Blount to James Cathcart Johnston, 2 December 1817, Hayes Collection, quoted in Catherine W. Bishir, Southern Built: American Architecture, Regional Practice (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 147. 118 Charleston Times, June 19, 1817, and other papers, quoted in McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 255 (which also suggests this set was originally purchased by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and that it did not sell but remained in the family‘s hands). 119 Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 204-206; McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 271-274.

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Figure 28: (left) Grecian Lamp, c. 1825-1850, New England Glass Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Winterthur Museum, image from Wendy Cooper, Classical Taste in America (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art and Abbeville Press, 1993), 206; (right) Candlesticks made by John Carter, London, c. 1771-2, Middleton Place, image from McInnis, In Pursuit of Refinement, 272.

What is even more interesting about the prevalence of classical motifs in early

American furniture design is that they were perceived as being distinctively American.

Nationalist calls for Americans to ―disdain the fashions of foreign climes; . . . let your dress be national; let your ornaments be of your country‘s fabric, and exercise your independent taste in suiting the array of your toilet to your own climate and your own seasons,‖120 were understood to be answered by these strongly classical consumer

120 Address to the American Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Manufacturers, December 31, 1816, quoted in Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 210.

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goods—just as the Greek Revival architectural style was seen as appropriately

―American,‖ despite the debt it owed to historical and contemporary styles from

Europe.121

Classical furnishings were framed by the decorative woodwork of the interiors of plantation mansions. In less-wealthy homes, or in lower-status rooms, curtains and wallpapers might represent the pilasters and columns that were otherwise lacking from the room.122 The repetitive effect of classical furnishings and decorations was to provide a classical stage set, complete with props, on which white slaveowners could perform their ownership of and superiority over their black slaves, in conjunction with and buttressed by their own descent from ancient Greeks and Romans.

A special subset of the furnishings of these houses was constituted by images of

American neoclassical architecture. Baltimore furniture makers John and Hugh Finlay made a series of furniture in the early 1800s, which featured miniature paintings of plantation houses, including a 13-piece suite of furniture John B. Morris of Baltimore commissioned (see Figure 29 for the settee from this suite).

121 For additional images of classicizing furniture in the South, see William V. Elder and Jayne E. Stokes, eds., American Furniture 1680-1800, From the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1987); Bradford L. Rauschenberg and John Bivins, Jr., The Furniture of Charleston, 1680-1820 (Winston-Salem: Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 2003) II; Kentucky Furniture: An Exhibition (Louisville, KY: J.B. Speed Art Museum, 1974). 122 Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 198; Winterer, Mirror of Antiquity, 38.

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Figure 29: Settee, made by John and Hugh Finlay with paintings by Francis Guy, c. 1800-1810, Baltimore Museum of Art, image from William Elder and Jayne Stokes, American Furniture (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1987), 60.

Morris‘ set featured images of 17 different private and public buildings, including his own mansion at Clermont.123 The small, house-portrait-style vignettes, painted by Francis

Guy, provided slaveowners such Morris with images of their classicizing mansions on the backs of classicizing furniture,124 enhancing their own association with the ancient world through these multiple levels of self-representation. Such pieces also defined their owners as participants in a broader practice of the architecture of power.

123 Elder and Stokes, American Furniture, 45-47, 59-60. The images on this settee show Walter Dorsey House (thought to be near present-day Lanvale Street and Fremont Avenue in Baltimore); Montebello, c.1797, built by General Samuel Smith (designed by William Birch of Philadelphia, located near present- day 33rd Street, east of Alameda, in Baltimore); and Vineyard, built c.1800, the country seat of William Gilmor, Sr. (near present-day 29th Street and Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore). 124 Vlach, Planter’s Prospect, 64; Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: Maryland (New York: The Beehive Press, 1991), 95-98.

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Classicizing architecture also featured heavily on another commodity that was an important element in the environment of the plantation elite: white dishes that were intended for use or display.125 As Heneghan argues, these and other literally white goods

―contributed to the upper and middle classes‘ attempt to deny its dependence on labor, to expel the ‗blackness‘ of slavery and servitude and impose an imaginary segregation even were [sic] integration was absolute‖ 126—as, for example, in the plantation household, where these white dishes were handled daily by enslaved black servants. Primarily made in England for the American market, the white dishes used in the United States abounded in images of classicizing American architecture, reflecting ―a specifically American passion for Roman and Greek revival styles.‖127 More than 100 scenes from the United

States are known to have been produced by potters in Staffordshire, England, many of them featuring classicizing structures such as Philadelphia‘s Waterworks and the Insane

Hospital in Boston.128 Scenes on china could also reinforce the classical taste in furniture, as in a tea set discussed by Wendy Cooper, which featured scenes that not only ―applaud maternal virtues, like teaching your child to write and play the piano or harp, but they also endorse classically inspired furniture forms like Grecian couches, scroll back chairs with Grecian legs, and lyre-form music stands.‖129 When used within a plantation mansion, such images of white people interacting with classical objects served to

125 On the progressive whitening of the dishes of the American elite, and the contrast with the dishes provided to the enslaved and used by less wealthy white Americans, see Heneghan, Whitewashing America, xi-xv (which also discusses the ―whitening of America‖ trend noted by James Deetz, beginning in the late eighteenth century), and 9-17. 126 Heneghan, Whitewashing America, xiii. 127 Heneghan, Whitewashing America, 13. 128 Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 199. 129 Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 198.

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illustrate the proper relationship between people and objects that shared these appearances.

The classical naming of white elite possessions was also applied to those that lived and breathed. In a pattern that extended throughout Euro-American culture, horses, cattle, and other livestock were often given classical names. For instance, pedigreed racing horses in the antebellum South frequently bore classical names such as Venus,

Cicero, and Priam130—the same names that were given to another form of living chattel: the black slaves who labored on plantations. In some cases, a single plantation might be home to both animals and humans with the same classical names,131 marking both as property, as effectively as a physical brand.132

The practice of assigning a new name to a slave appears to have been fairly universal among slaveholding societies, and represented one of many ways in which masters attempted to remove the social identity of their new property.133 In the case of

African slavery in the New World, the first generation was usually named on the boat that bore them away from Africa, or by their first owners.134 Many slaves resisted these new

130 Letitia D. Allen ―Wade Hampton II‘s Patronage of Edward Troye,‖ in Moltke-Hansen, Art in the Lives, LA-1-LA-27. 131 For example, at the Spring Garden Estate in Jamaica, there were both a mule and a slave named Pompey. Trevor Burnard, ―Slave Naming Patterns: Onomastics and the Taxonomy of Race in Eighteenth- Century Jamaica,‖ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31, no.3 (2001): 334. 132 While there were the occasional white men named ―Marcellus‖ and ―Hector,‖ the only classical names that were regularly given to white children were Alexander and Philip (Burnard, ―Slave Naming Patterns,‖ 335). 133 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 54-58. 134 Wesley F. Craven, White, Red, and Black: The Seventeenth-Century Virginian (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1971), 84; John C. Inscoe, ―Carolina Slave Names: An Index to Acculturation,‖ The Journal of Southern History 49, no.4 (1983): 527, 543. The major studies on slave onomastics in the Americas include Cheryll Ann Cody, ―There Was No ‗Absolom‘ on the Ball Family Plantations: Slave-Naming Practices in the South Carolina Low Country, 1720-1865‖ American Historical Review 92 (1987); Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976; Inscoe, ―Carolina Slave Names‖; Charles W. Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984); Philip D. Morgan, ―Slaves 262

names, and retained another name that even their masters sometimes acknowledged.135

The impact of such practices was poignantly recounted by former enslaved field-hand

David Holmes, who was interviewed in London in 1852, and explained that

slaves never have any name. I‘m called David, now; I used to be called Tom, sometimes; but I‘m not; I‘m Jack. It didn‘t much matter what name I was called by. If master was looking at any one of us, and call us, Tom, or Jack, or anything else, whoever he looked at was forced to answer.136

After the naming of the first generation of individuals brought from Africa, the ways in which children born into slavery were named became more complex, as ―the slaves and the masters vied with one another for the right to name the children.‖137 On some plantations, enslaved parents chose the names for their children, often employing

West African naming patterns, but generally using standard slave names.138 Classical slave names thus were, somewhat paradoxically, passed from one generation to the next to honor kinship ties according to West African traditions. At other times, newborn slave children were named by an overseer, the slaveowner, or sometimes even the slaveowner‘s child—much as children might today select the name of a family dog. and Livestock in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: Vineyard Pen, 1750-1751,‖ The William and Mary Quarterly 52 (1995); Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975). 135 Burnard, ―Slave Naming Patterns,‖ 329; Inscoe, ―Carolina Slave Names,‖ 533-34; Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 217. 136 David Holmes interviewed by L.A. Chamerovzow, 1852, quoted in Blassingame, Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 297. 137 Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 217. Most studies of slave onomastics make explicit assumptions about whether names were primarily assigned by slaveowners (e.g. Burnard, ―Slave Naming Patterns‖; Morgan, ―Slaves and Livestock‖; Orville V. Burton, In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985]), or by enslaved parents (e.g. Cody, ―Ball Family Plantations‖; Gutman, Black Family; Inscoe, ―Carolina Slave Names‖). Anecdotal evidence definitely supports both assumptions, as overseers, slaveowners, and former slaves all recounted a range of different ways in which enslaved children acquired their names. 138 Cody, ―Ball Family Plantations,‖ 579; Gutman, Black Family, 186-201. African names such as Mimba and Juba were often given to children born into slavery in the United States, either by their parents or their owners. However, these names seem to have lost their original meaning as anything other than ―slave‖ or ―African‖—for instance, ―Cuffee‖ meant born on a Friday, but only one out of the eight men given that name on the Ball plantation after 1800, was born on that day (Cody, ―Ball Family Plantations,‖ 581).

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Newly purchased or inherited slaves were generally allowed to keep the names their previous masters had given them, but there was a remarkable consistency in the sources and types of names given to slaves by different masters. One of the main sources of slave names, along with the Bible and traditional English names, were names from classical antiquity.139 As a result, nearly every slave inventory recorded in the United

States contained classical names—in his study of slave names in North and South

Carolina, John Inscoe finds that, after the Bible and traditional English names, classical antiquity represented the third most common source of slave names, and accounted for roughly a fifth of all names given to the children of slaves prior to 1750.140 Among the most common names given to enslaved men were Bacchus, Virgil, Hannibal, Jupiter,

Titus, Cato, Cicero, Hector, Cupid, Primus, Augustus, Scipio, Nero, Hercules, and

Caesar; and for enslaved women, Venus, Diana, Phoebe, Juno, Daphne, Dido, Flora,

Thisbe, Sappho, Cleopatra, and Minerva.141

However, in contrast to classical names given to animals and objects, when classical labels were attached to people they acquired meanings that could be in conflict with other meanings of American blackness, whiteness, and classicism. While a historical figure in a book or a play named ―Cicero‖ or ―Caesar‖ was understood to be white, any

139 The standard explanation for classical slave names is that they were meant to be ―ironic,‖ and reflected an intent to mock their lowly bearers (e.g., Craven, White, Red, and Black, 84; Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 56-57). 140 Inscoe, ―Carolina Slave Names,‖ 542, Table 2. Cody finds a similar result for the Ball plantations in South Carolina, where classical names accounted for no more than a quarter of all names given to the children of slaves in any given decade; and between 1720-1865, accounted for less than 12% of all the names given to new slaves (―Ball Family Plantations,‖ 582, Table 5). Gutman finds the smallest percentage of classical names recorded anywhere (1%), but his sources are entirely post-emancipation, which suggests that classical names had come to be viewed as a badge of slavery, and were rejected by newly free men and women (Black Family, 187). 141 Inscoe, ―Carolina Slave Names,‖ 541. While Inscoe‘s list is derived from his study region of North and South Carolina, it seems to be fairly applicable to other regions as well. Inscoe also notes that several of these names faded in popularity by the mid-nineteenth century.

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living American with those names was understood to be black. Similarly, slaves in the

South were regularly given names like Venus and Apollo—recalling the same sculptures that racial scientists used to represent epitome of a white beauty that was inaccessible to black Americans (Figure 3). And on all of those classically built plantations where the master‘s children were tutored in Latin and Greek, and read with care the writings of the

Roman Cato and Vergil‘s Aeneid, they might be dressed each morning by an enslaved black woman named Dido after Vergil‘s North African heroine, and watch their parents give orders to an enslaved black blacksmith named Cato. In other words, while these white children were urged to emulate classical figures like Cicero and Julius Caesar, it was their black slaves, not the white scholars, who actually bore their names.142

Hardest to access are the meanings these names held for those who were assigned them by their owners or parents. Were the Middletons‘ two enslaved carpenters named

―Caesar‖ aware of the powerful Roman whose name they shared? House servants certainly encountered the classical antecedents of classical slave names, when they overheard either their masters‘ children being tutored in Cicero‘s letters or a dinner party discussing Joseph Addison‘s play Cato, and were charged with cleaning the plaster casts of Greco-Roman sculptures of Venus and Hercules. The encounter with the classical origins of slave names would also have been inevitable for those who accompanied their masters on the Grand Tour, where they would have heard the classical names of themselves or their fellow slaves repeated again and again as their excited owners visited the museums of Florence and Rome, and wandered through the ruined towns of the Bay of Naples. What would they have made of the reverence accorded the statues of Caesars

142 A similar phenomenon can be seen in the use of names like ―George Washington‖ and ―Napoleon‖ for slaves (see Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 220).

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and Venuses, and of the whiteness of those sculptures? That the same names that universally denoted slave status in the United States could belong to powerful and revered white men, women, and even gods in the European world must have been a matter of some puzzlement.

Although classical names for slaves made a certain amount of sense within the logic of the southern slave plantation, they stood out as highly unusual to outsiders.

Northern and European visitors to the South frequently mentioned slaves with classical names, and the names ―Cato‖ and ―Pompey‖ and ―Caesar‖ come to represent the generic slave—alongside the African names ―Cuffee‖ and ―Sambo.‖143 Indeed, Inscoe suggests that ―[c]ontemporary observers often exaggerated the use of classical names by slaves to the point of making them stereotypes.‖144 It would have been highly unlikely that those nonslaveholders who wrote about their southern travels would have only, or even primarily, encountered slaves with these names. Instead, we can understand the prevalence of classical slave names in their accounts as an indication of the cognitive dissonance caused by the names.

The Classical Plantation Landscape

The white-columned mansions were but one element in the broader classical landscape of the southern slave plantation. Both the exterior and interior decorations and furnishings of the mansions, gardens, outbuildings, and slave quarters of the plantation extended the expression of classicism. Even those mansions that were less exuberantly classical in their shapes tended to feature classical elements elsewhere in the plantation landscape,

143 e.g. Eugene L. Schwab, Travels in the Old South: Selected from Periodicals of the Times (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973), II: 295, 324, 564. 144 Inscoe, ―Carolina Slave Names,‖ 541.

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which tied them back into the Greco-Roman world. In addition to the exterior qualities, less visible patterns of design, construction, and prescribed usage and movement within and around the buildings also contributed to the racialized messages of these spaces.

One of the most powerful rhetorical aspects of the built environment of the plantation South was the relationship it presented between the house of the slaveowner, and those of his slaves. These two types of domestic structures gained their meaning only from their juxtaposition—a cabin was legible as a slave cabin only in the context of the master‘s house, while ―[a] master‘s house was ‗big‘ only if it had smaller buildings nearby.‖145 In addition to this crucial difference of size, the architectural style and the spatial relationships between these two kinds of living spaces combined to send important messages about status to those who lived on and visited plantations (see Figure 30, for an illustration of this contrast, at Gaineswood plantation in Alabama, with one of the only surviving service buildings visible behind the mansion on the right).

Figure 30: Gaineswood Plantation, Demopolis, Alabama, photo by author

145 Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, xiv.

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Together, these elements rendered slave cabins as ―spaces of constructed invisibility‖146 within the plantation landscape. By contrast, the classicizing architecture of plantation mansions marked them as spaces that were meant to be looked at, and from which one could see. From their locations, often on the tops of hills, plantation mansions drew the attention of spectators, and provided slaveowners with the best available vistas, symbolizing their control over everything that happened within their land.147 This symbolic control revealed the power underlying the role of the slaveowner, in keeping with Craig Evan Barton‘s argument that the ability to make the world visible and invisible is a privilege of power, and a crucial part of the social construction of race.148

This power was frequently represented by the collection of buildings on a plantation—as in Fredrick Law Olmstead‘s description, in his account of his travels in

Virginia in 1853:

A good many substantial old plantation mansions are to be seen; generally standing in a grove of white oaks, upon some hill-top. Most of them are constructed of wood, of two stories, painted white, and have, perhaps, a dozen rude-looking little log-cabins scattered around them, for the slaves. Now and then, there is one of more pretension, with a large porch or gallery in front, like that of Mount Vernon.149

The contrast between the two kinds of houses—the two-story, white ―big house,‖

sometimes with a portico, versus the ―rude-looking little log-cabins‖—held a

146 Terrence Epperson, ―Panoptic Plantation: The Garden Sights of Thomas Jefferson and George Mason,‖ in Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender, ed. James A. Delle et al. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 70, quoted in Heneghan, Whitewashing America, 114. 147 On the care and attention put towards selecting locations for plantation mansions, see Ellis, ―Berry Hill Plantation,‖ 38; Ellis, ―Space and Place within Plantation Quarters in Virginia, 1700-1825,‖ in Ellis and Ginsburg, Cabin, Quarter, Plantation, 144; Barbara W. Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 32; Upton, ―White and Black Landscapes,‖ 64-69. The layout of the Middleton family‘s Crowfield Plantation presents an unusual contrast to this pattern. Michael Trinkley and Debi Hacker, Archaeology at an Eighteenth Century Slave Settlement in Goose Creek, South Carolina (Columbia, SC: Chicora Foundation, 2003), 76. 148 Barton, ―Duality and Invisibility,‖ 1. 149 Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, with Remarks on their Economy (New York: Dix & Edwards, 1856), 17.

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message about status that enslaved people did not fail to recognize.150 But other

important concerns mediated the contrast between the housing of slaves and their

masters, particularly those related to the ideals of paternalism, and the

practicalities of profit. The paternalistic argument was laid out by John Stainbach

Wilson, a physician in Georgia, writing in 1860, who directly linked this

obligation to the role of the enslaved in providing for the houses of the master:

Our slave labor is the source of all our wealth and prosperity; from this we enjoy all the necessaries and luxuries of life, and it is the basis of the most desirable social and political system the world has ever seen. The appeals of self-interest, then, are supported by those of gratitude and humanity; and these loudly proclaim that ―the laborer is worthy of his hire‖; that the slave, who builds our mansions, buys our find clothes, and supplies our tables with delicacies, has a right to a comfortable house and sufficient food and clothing.151

As to what constituted a ―comfortable house,‖ contemporary essays on ―slave management‖ reveal a remarkable consistency in the suggested methods of laying out one‘s slave cabins, and in the reasoning behind these choices. Common recommendations were that cabins should be raised a couple of feet off the ground to allow them to be cleaned out easily, and that it was important to keep the cabins well heated so that slaves would not cover their heads as they slept, and thus breathe in poor air.152

Of particular interest here are the suggestions made regarding the appearance of slave cabins. Many slaveowners argued that cabins should be whitewashed at least once a year, on the basis that it ―adds very much to the neat and comfortable appearance of the

150 See Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 13. 151 ―The Peculiarities & Diseases of Negroes,‖ American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South, quoted in Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 136. 152 These and other ideas are repeated frequently in the writings on slave housing excerpted in Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 19, 114-39, 179-81, 200-203, 214-16, 307, 318-19.

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buildings, and is also, by its cleansing and purifying effect, conducive to health.‖153 One

Virginia slaveowner directly linked the aesthetics of the slave cabin to its proximity to the big house:

If the builder chooses to incur a slight additional expense and should dress the outer course and give it a coat of paint, this, with a projective eave and some cheap ornamental cornice, makes a very pretty house and obviates the necessity for sticking the negro cabin out of sight of the mansion.154

In other words, the trick for incorporating black residences into the tableaux of white power was to decorate them with markers of classical architecture, such as with whitewash, projecting eaves, and cornices.155

Wherever slave cabins were symbolically incorporated into the classical world of the owner, they became highly visible parts of the plantation landscape, contributing to a sense of orderly possession on the part of the slaveowner. For example, a journalist who encountered Henry McAlpin‘s plantation ―The Hermitage,‖ located just outside of

Savannah, wrote, ―There are about 70 or 80 Negro houses, all built of brick and white- washed so they look very neat, and rows of live oaks between, making it the handsomest plantation in Georgia.‖156 Even in their run-down state, an image from c.1900 showed

153 Advice from a planter who owned 150 slaves, in 1850 (Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 121). Regular whitewashing was also advocated by a Mississippi planter who owned 150 slaves in 1851 (Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 122), South Carolina‘s large plantation owner Benjamin Allston, writing in De Bow’s Review in 1858 (Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 134), a minister and editor in Tennessee writing in De Bow’s Review in 1859 (Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 59), and P.C. Weston, owner of a large South Carolina plantation, in De Bow’s Review in 1857 (Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 201). 154 R.W.N.N. ―Negro Cabins,‖ Southern Planter 16 (1856): 121-22, quoted in Breeden, Advice Among Masters, 130. 155 At least some slave cabins seem to have had porticos (see Schwab, Travels, II: 506; Upton, ―White and Black Landscapes,‖ 61), but their presence on those cabins that have survived to the present can be deceptive, as Upton notes that adding a porch was one of the most common later adaptations of low-status houses (61, where he also lists the addition of weatherboards to the exteriors, the building of kitchen- bedroom sheds, finished floors, and glazed windows as common alterations of slave cabins at later dates). Of course, this practice ultimately underscored the symbolic importance of a portico as a status marker. See Glassie, who cites the absence of a porch as a marker of low status in buildings in middle Virginia (Folk Housing, 137). 156 1864, quoted in Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 158.

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how the rigid rows of identical white slave cabins were visually linked to the white mansion of the owner, the columns of which were visible at the end of the tree-lined drive (Figure 31).

Figure 31: Hermitage Plantation, Savannah, Georgia, polychrome print by the Detroit Photographic Company, Library of Congress

The slave quarters at places such as the Hermitage represented an alternate approach to the same goal of marking out the classical territory of the white master. But although— and, in many ways, because—materials and motifs were shared between the houses of the master and the slaves, a clear hierarchy still existed between the small, identical houses of

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the 172 slaves, and the grand classicizing mansion of McAlpin, which ―served to underscore McAlpin‘s obvious authority.‖157

Classical details were also used to highlight the hierarchy that existed within the slave population itself. Those slaves who worked in the mansion, and were thus closest to the master and his family, often lived within the mansion as well, sleeping in attics or other improvised spaces around the house. At mansions such as Milford (Figure 17) and

Hayes (Figure 20), white, porticoed, and sometimes even columned kitchens and laundries were physically attached to the plantation mansion, and served as places of both work and residence for cooks, laundresses, and other household servants.158 Discussing similarly distinguished buildings elsewhere, Vlach writes that ―the building‘s size, superior construction materials, and degree of finish all combined to mark its occupants as members of [the plantation‘s] slave ‗aristocracy.‘‖159 The privilege of these slaves was thus indicated by the same classicism that marked the privilege of their owners.

Even on those plantations where classical details were used to distinguish the mansion house from those of the slaves, rather than to connect them, the appearance of slave houses was still of great ideological importance. This comes out clearly in the story of an enslaved man named Okra, who lived on James Couper‘s plantation Hopeton, near

Darien, Georgia. As recalled by former slave Ben Sullivan in the 1930s:

157 Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 21. The intermediary between the two extremes of the master and the slaves was also represented architecturally at places such as McAlpin‘s Hermitage, where a two- story overseer‘s house stood at the end of the long row of one-story slave cabins, between them and the mansion. Marc R. Matrana, Lost Plantations of the South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 99. 158 At the Custis-Lee mansion at Arlington, the ―Summer Kitchen‖ was a separate structure close to the mansion, which stood apart from the other slave quarters and was ―[d]ecorated with features intended to match the classical motifs employed by architect George Hadfield on the façade of the mansion‖ (Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 45). Another instance of classical designs applied to slave quarters comes from Riversdale in Prince George‘s County, Maryland (Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening, 60-61). 159 Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 46.

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[The three African slaves belonging to Couper] say day buil deah own camp deah an lib in it. Ole man Okra he say he wahn a place lak he hab in Africa so he buil im a hut. I membuh it well. It wuz bout twelve by foeteen feet an it hab dut flo an he buil duh side lak basket weave wid clay plastuh on it. It hab a flat roof wut he make from bush an palmettuh an it hab one doe an no winduhs. But Massuh make im pull it down. He say he ain wahn no African hut on he place.160

It certainly seems credible that Okra would have had the time to build the house without

Couper‘s knowledge—Hopeton plantation was 4,500 acres, and was worked by 600 slaves who lived in five distinct settlements.161 Couper‘s lack of tolerance for an

―African‖ house on his plantation revealed that slave housing had importance to him beyond the mere requirements of shelter for his property. Indeed, Couper‘s concern supports Vlach‘s suggestion that ―[u]sing houses as one of the primary means by which they marked their slaves as captive people, planters managed to leave a broad signature of their intentions on the southern landscape.‖162

Non-residential structures on plantations could also be marked with the classical stamp of the owner‘s authority. The spaces in which the productive labor of the plantation was carried out, and where the goods that represented its wealth were stored,

160 Savannah Unit, Georgia Writers‘ Project, Works Progress Administration, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1940), 179 (which records the Works Project Administration interview with an 88-year-old Sullivan, at his home a few miles away from the plantation where he was once enslaved); Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 165. The extremity of this racist ―transcription‖ of black dialect is such to impede comprehension (see footnote 78 for a brief discussion of this issue more broadly). Sullivan‘s statement can be read thus: ―said they would build their own camp there and live in it. Old man Okra said he wanted a place like he had in Africa, so he built a hut for himself. I remember it well. It was about twelve by fourteen feet and it had a dirt floor and he built the sides of the house in the same way you weave a basket, with clay plastered on it. It had a flat roof that he made from bush and palmetto fronds, and it had one door and no windows. But Master made him pull it down. He said he didn‘t want an African hut on his place.‖ For an image of a house built by a man named Tahro/Romeo, who was brought from central Congo to Edgefield, South Carolina, and stated that the house was ―African,‖ see Peter H. Wood, ―Whetting, Setting and Laying Timbers: Black Builders in the Early South‖ Southern Exposure 8, no.1 (1980): 7. 161 Bagwell, Rice Gold, xi; map of plantation in 1830, indicating locations of settlements, in William A. Noble, ―Sequent Occupance of Hopeton-Altamaha, 1816-1956‖ (MA thesis, University of Georgia, 1956), 33. 162 Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 164-65.

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were sometimes highlighted with classical details that linked them to the master‘s classical whiteness. At Bremo in Fluvanna County, Virginia, John Hartwell Cocke undertook a massive building project in the 1810s, which included both a new mansion, and several outbuildings. The mansion itself was designed in consultation with Thomas

Jefferson and other friends,163 and featured a dramatic pedimented portico, supported by four massive, white columns (Figure 32, left).

Figure 32: Bremo Plantation, Fluvanna, Virginia, Mansion (left) and Barn (right), Historical American Buildings Survey.

Behind the mansion, the barn (Figure 32, right) visually echoed this structure, with its own pedimented portico, supported with four Tuscan columns (which were probably originally covered in white plaster, and appeared like those on the mansion itself).164

Thus, the barn—half of which contained a threshing room, the other half a stable165—was marked as part of the apparatus that both belonged to the master, and provided the wealth that sustained his lifestyle. A key figure in building both the house and the barn was

163 Peter Hodson, ―The Design and Building of Bremo: 1815-1820‖ (MA thesis, University of Virginia, 1967) 6-12; Muriel B. Rogers, ―John Hartwell Cocke (1780-1866): From Jeffersonian Palladianism to Romantic Colonial Revivalism in Antebellum Virginia‖ (PhD diss., Virginia Commonwealth University, 2003) 59-66. 164 Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 107. 165 Rogers, ―John Hartwell Cocke,‖ 27.

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Cocke‘s slave Cato, who was responsible for cutting the capitals that topped the classical columns both in the barn and the main house.166

Cocke‘s classical barn was not as unusual as has often been suggested—both

Middleton place and Milford plantations had similarly classical decorations on the stables

(Figure 33).

Figure 33: Milford Plantation, Pinewood, South Carolina, Barn, photo by author

The highly valued horses and cattle who lived in these structures—many of whom bore the same classical names given to slaves on the same plantations—were thus housed in buildings that elevated not them, but their masters.

While a classical barn represented the high status of the slaveowner via his property, a classical schoolhouse marked the privileged knowledge imparted to the owner‘s children. Cocke had a schoolroom built into one of the wings of his classical plantation house at Bremo, which held an academy for both his own children and those from neighboring plantations.167 Similarly, Colonel James Thornton and his wife Ann

166 Documents 34, 44, 73, 102, and 160 in Hodson, ―Design and Building,‖ Appendix. 167 Hodson, ―Design and Building,‖ 20.

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had a schoolhouse built with a columned porch (Figure 34), which stood at the top of a hill alongside their 1833 Greek Revival mansion, overlooking the fields of their Thornhill plantation.

Figure 34: Schoolhouse, Thornhill Plantation, Greene County, Alabama, Library of Congress.

The architecture of such buildings symbolized the classical knowledge that would be imparted inside to white children, while reaffirming the more general classical identities of the Cockes, the Thorntons, and their white, slaveowning neighbors. Such structures stood in dramatic contrast to the quarters for slaves on the same plantations, as a 1934 image from Thornhill reveals (Figure 35).

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Figure 35: Slave Cabin, c.1934, Thornhill Plantation, Greene County, Alabama, Historical American Buildings Survey.

Aside from the absence of a portico, the construction technique and the use of the ―dog- trot‖ building type that was widely associated with the non-elite, marked the black inhabitants of these quarters as far inferior to the white children who learned their Latin grammar inside the schoolhouse.168

Classicizing structures within the plantation landscape were not always functional. More than three decades after building his classical mansion and barn at

Bremo (Figure 32), Cocke added a more decorative classical building, creating a

―Temperance Temple‖ that stood over a spring of fresh water (Figure 36).

168 Classical designs were also used for a variety of other structures on plantations, including the dairy at Folly Plantation in Virginia (Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 92), and the porter‘s lodge at Milford (Richard H. Jenrette, Adventures with Old Houses, [Charleston: Wyrick & Company, 2000], 205), both of which had temple-form designs.

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Figure 36: Temperance Temple, Bremo Plantation, Fluvanna County, Virginia, image from image from Nancy Solomon, “A Revered Jeffersonian Landmark Renewed,” 2007 (ceu.construction.com/article.php?L=5&C=209&P=4, accessed 5/15/2012)

While the earlier buildings reflected the looser classicism of the era in which they were built, in the 1840s Cocke was caught up in the general obsession with archaeological correctness, and consulted the architect Alexander Jackson Davis to be sure he had the appropriate dimensions to reflect the classical orders.169

Cocke‘s temple joined the many ―follies‖ built in the shape of Greek and Roman temples, which had occupied the gardens of slave plantations across the South since the middle of the eighteenth century—when she visited William Middleton‘s Crowfield plantation in 1743, Eliza Lucas remarked upon a ―roman temple‖ that stood on an island in an artificial pond in the garden.170 Such miniature buildings maintained the

169 K. Brooke Whiting, ―Gen. J.H. Cocke‘s Vanishing Legacy: The Gardens and Landscape of Bremo‖ (Rudy J. Favretti Fellowship report, Garden Club of Virginia, 2000), 25. 170 Eliza Lucas to Miss Bartlett, c. May 1743, The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739-1762, ed. Elise Pinckney (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 61. William Paca had a ―temple‖ in his garden in Annapolis (Mac Griswold, ―American Artists, American Gardens,‖ in Punch, Keeping Eden, 171); while a ―garden pavilion,‖ that consisted of a four-way classical arch, stood at Monticello. Peter 278

prominence of the white columns of classicizing architecture even as visitors moved away from the mansion house itself, situating the assertions of classical identity within the American landscape—and most crucially, within the landscape of the slave plantation. Other follies more overtly referenced the ―pastness‖ of old architectural forms, such as the ―rockery‖ that was nestled in the manicured gardens at Rosedown

Plantation, which was designed to recall the experience of walking through European ruins (Figure 37).

Figure 37: Rockery, Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana, photo by author

Essentially a pile of broken concrete surrounding a rudimentary arch, it was meant to invoke nostalgia for a decaying past—and create the illusion that a Roman building had

Martin, The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 155.

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once stood on the land of Louisiana, which had only recently been settled by people who thought of themselves as the descendants of the Romans.

Such ―follies‖ were often placed within extensive decorative gardens, modeled on contemporary European gardens. At places such as Rosedown and Middleton Place, these manicured spaces, with carefully laid-out paths, and classicizing sculptures, fountains, and miniature temples dotted throughout, stood in great contrast to the productive fields in which the enslaved labored. As depicted in a lithograph General Nathan Whitfield commissioned of his mansion at Gaineswood Plantation, which he and his wife Elizabeth had built in the 1840s-1850s, the garden was a place for white slaveowners to relax in beautiful surroundings under the protective gaze of such classical markers as the plantation mansion and a miniature temple (Figure 38).

Figure 38: Engraving of Gaineswood Plantation, John Sartain, 1861, Historical American Buildings Survey

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This image was completed by both the visible and invisible service of slaves, including the nurse, Ann, pushing the white baby girl; the houseboy Moso, fetching an umbrella; and an unidentified man rowing the older white children in the boat.171 Slave labor had also shaped the landscape on which the white family strolled, by digging out the artificial lake, building the garden temple, and constructing the classical mansion itself—as well as providing continual maintenance for the 15-acre garden.172

The phenomenon of the decorative plantation garden represented perhaps the most conspicuous consumption of the entire plantation complex. Despite their direct visual and functional contrast to the working fields filled with crops of cotton, tobacco, indigo, sugarcane, and rice, acres of manicured outdoor space placed similar demands on the labor of enslaved people in both their creation and maintenance.173 The beautifully manicured spaces of the plantation garden thus served to highlight the wealth that white owners held in the bodies of enslaved workers, much as did the plantation mansions themselves.174

In addition to the varieties of biological features that decorated these spaces— ranging from exotic flowers and trees to small herds of unusual animals—carefully selected manmade features continued the rhetorical program of classicism established by

171 These identifications are provided by Ralph Hammond, Ante-Bellum Mansions of Alabama (New York: Bonanza Books, 1951), 119. 172 Wiencek, Plantations, 55. 173 At least one plantation owner made the conscious choice to forgo maintaining an elaborate garden in favor of employing his slaves‘ labor elsewhere: Abiel Abbot described Henry Izard‘s choice to let the gardens his father established at The Elms fall into disrepair: ―It has been the plan of the present proprietor to cultivate the more profitable field with his laborers & to expend less money & sweat on the ornaments of a garden, which ‗wastes its sweetness on a desert air—‘ from which indeed he is obliged to flee for his life by the first of June, while it is in all its splendor & beauty‖ (Moore, ―Abiel Abbot Journals,‖ 138). The suggestion that the time when the white family was away from the plantation was ―desert air‖ emphasized that the garden existed for the pleasure of white rather than black residents of the plantation. 174 Perhaps this also helps to explain why the South did not follow the English trend in garden design, which moved towards more ―natural‖ and less manicured spaces in the nineteenth century. For a discussion of this trend, see Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening, 45.

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the plantation mansion itself.175 Some of these were fairly subtle, including the terraces and artificial water features that were inspired by descriptions of ancient gardens by such authors as Pliny and Varro, and the practice of planting trees in the ―quincunx‖ pattern described by Vergil (with one at the center and at each of the four corners of a square).176

Additionally, classical or neoclassical sculptures were scattered throughout gardens, placing the ancestral white form as a constant presence within the plantation landscape.177

The subjects of these sculptures varied—examples included the gods Venus, Apollo, and

Bacchus that graced John Custis‘ Virginia plantation in the early 1770s,178 and the allegorical representations of the seasons and the continents at the Turnbull‘s antebellum

Rosedown plantation in Louisiana (Figure 39).

175 For lists of the plants commonly grown in southern plantation gardens, see Kinloch Bull, Jr., The Oligarchs in Colonial and Revolutionary Charleston: Lieutenant Governor William Bull II and His Family (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 231; Catherine M. Howett, ―Graces and Modest Majesties: Landscape and Garden Traditions of the American South,‖ in Punch, Keeping Eden, 89; McGuire, ―Early Gardens,‖ 22, 28; Peggy C. Newcomb, ―Plants of American Gardens,‖ in Punch, Keeping Eden. Middleton Place‘s garden was home to a herd of Indian water buffalo (Edward T.H. Shaffer, Carolina Gardens, 3rd ed. [New York: Devin-Adair Company, 1963], 73); while Blemont had a zoo in the garden. Joseph F. Smith, White Pillars: Early Life and Architecture of the Lower Mississippi Valley Country (New York: W. Helburn, Inc., 1941), 45. 176 Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening, 52-53. 177 Plantation gardens with classical sculptures in them included the Virginia gardens of William Byrd II at Westover, Tayloe‘s Mount Airy, Lewis Burwell‘s at Kingsmill; the Mississippi garden of Klein House; the Maryland garden of Gerard and Margaret Baker Briscoe at Clover Dale in Frederick County; the South Carolina gardens at Milford, Middleton Place, and that of William Bull at Ashley Hall; the Tennessee garden of Belmont; and the Alabama garden at Gaineswood. Bull, Oligarchs, 231; Hammond, Mansions of Alabama, 116; Jenrette, Adventures with Old Houses, 17, 204; Martin, Pleasure Gardens, 73-74, 107, 120- 121; Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening, 45; Smith, White Pillars, 45, 183; Susan Sully, Charleston Style: Past and Present (New York: Rizzoli, 1999), 156, 165. 178 Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening, 42-44.

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Figure 39: Neoclassical Garden Sculptures, Rosedown Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana, photo by author

All of these classical sculptures conformed to contemporary ideals about white beauty.

When a visitor came around a corner to find one of the sculptures, or viewed them from a distance at the end of a carefully framed vista, they served as reminders of the classical whiteness that was so central to the identity of the plantation owner—despite the fact that the majority of the people living on the plantation, including those who planted and cared for the gardens, were black.

The classical landscape of elite white life also extended into the spaces of their eternal rest. Slaveowning families often created cemeteries on their estates, generally

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incorporated as part of their gardens.179 At Middleton Place, for example, the family rested in a vault on the plantation‘s grounds, surrounded by laurels180—the plant that represented ancient Greek glory. The counterpoint to this vault lay on the opposite side of the main house, adjacent to the slave‘s work areas, where the Middletons‘ slaves maintained a separate cemetery.181 Similarly, at Hayes plantation, members of James

Cathcart Johnston‘s white extended family, as well as honored white friends, were interred in graves marked with classicizing marble stones or obelisks, within view of the main mansion (Figure 40).182

Figure 40: Hayes Plantation, Edenton, North Carolina, White Cemetery, photo by author

179 On burials of white plantation residents in gardens, see Bull, Oligarchs, 232; Jennifer Hale, Historic Plantations of Alabama’s Black Belt (Charleston: The History Press, 2009), 30; McGuire, ―Early Gardens,‖ 21; Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening, 114, 152-153. 180 Middleton, Life in Carolina, 67. 181 Barbara Doyle, Beyond the Fields: Slavery at Middleton Place (Middleton Place Foundation, 2008), 28. 182 The types of grave markers employed in the white cemeteries at Hayes and elsewhere conformed to broader memorial traditions in the early United States.

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The House that Caesar Built

Creating a plantation was a process by which slaveowners ―mark[ed] their dominance over both nature and other men.‖183 From laying out the fields, to supervising the building of houses for themselves and their human property, slaveowners had the power to design a landscape specially suited to their needs and desires. But in order to build a classical mansion to serve as the central symbol of their mastery over their black slaves, white plantation owners had to contract with a wide range of individuals, both black and white.

Accounts of the histories of southern plantations repeatedly make statements about who ―built‖ the mansions, attributing the act to the owner of the plantation, or at most, to a hired (usually white) architect or builder who oversaw the process.184 Such statements obscure the crucial role that enslaved and free black labor played in erecting the classical buildings that served as symbols of white power and nobility. Like all other work performed in the antebellum South, the majority of the labor of building plantation mansions was provided by enslaved black men and women. However, the range of specialized skills required for building houses meant that free black and white artisans worked alongside slaves on most construction sites. From the field slaves brought in to help raise the frame, to the highly skilled free black plasterers who covered the wooden exteriors to make them look like stone, to the hired enslaved bricklayers who constructed the columns, black Americans played a central role in the creation of the classical mansions of white slaveholders. Inevitably, many of the enslaved men and women who

183 Vlach, Architecture of Plantation Slavery, 1. 184 e.g. Hammond, Mansions of Alabama, 116.

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built the classicizing mansions of the Old South had classical names themselves— including the plasterer Ulysses and the brick-maker Caesar who were active in North

Carolina in the 1810s.185

As crucial as it was, the work of enslaved builders—as with that of all enslaved laborers—often went undocumented. Nevertheless, as Mari-Jose Amerlinck observes, the builders of houses that we term ―anonymous‖ today were never unknown at the time the

186 buildings were constructed. Receipts from the payment of wage laborers have been preserved, as have the contracts for skilled slaves who were hired from their master to work on a specific project,187 but with very few exceptions, it is hard to reconstruct the labor contributed to building the mansion by slaves who already lived on the plantation.188 Nevertheless, behind each contract with a white artisan lay a number of enslaved laborers who would actually do the work—as observed by a Scottish visitor to the South in 1809, who noted how ―The carpenter, bricklayer, and even the blacksmith,

189 stand with their hands in their pockets, over looking their negroes.‖ Carpentry was a

185 Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 431, 433. 186 Mari-Jose Amerlinck, ―The Meaning and Scope of Architectural Anthropology,‖ in Architectural Anthropology, ed. Amerlinck (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2001), 8. 187 For example, the receipt for the hire of a carpenter named Robert on January 2, 1858, probably to work on the construction of James H. Hammond‘s classicizing mansion at Redcliffe, James H. Hammond Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution to the Civil War (microfilm), ser. A, part 1, reel 12; and the correspondence between W.W. Wilkins and James Cathcart Johnston regarding Wilkins‘ sawyers Moses, Stephen, Gilbert, and Robert, who were hired from there to work on the construction of Johnston‘s Hayes Plantation mansion in North Carolina, in 1814 (Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 430). 188 We do occasionally find oblique references to the labor of a plantation‘s own slaves, such as when John Burgwin of North Carolina sought someone to supervise 12-18 brick makers and 6-8 carpenters, all of whom were presumably already his slaves; and builder Jacob Holt‘s statement that he accepted the labor of his clients‘ slaves as partial payment of his fee (Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 434-45, 441). 189 Alexander Wilson (while in Savannah, having recently left Charleston) to Samuel F. Bradford, March 8, 1809. The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson, ed. Clark Hunter (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983), 310. There are several receipts and other accounts of slaves owned or hired by artisans. For example, Collin and Henry Rogers, who were contracted to build several plantation mansions in Georgia in the 1830s, including Joel Dortch Newson‘s Nutwood, Nathan van Boddie‘s house, and Joseph McFarland‘s Magnolias, employed approximately 60 slaves. Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: Georgia 286

popular trade for free black youth, as well as for slaves, who were often apprenticed to

190 free black or white builders. By 1860, North Carolina alone was home to hundreds of free black builders, including 257 carpenters, 120 masons, 25 plasterers, 66 painters, as well as stonecutters, brick makers, and mechanics.191 Ironically, then, the same plantation mansions that served as powerful symbols of white superiority were also sources of income to the many free black artisans who helped to build them.

Some enslaved builders also gained advantages from their role in creating these symbols of white power. Enslaved carpenters often had more education than other slaves, and many knew how to read and write.192 Because their skills were in demand in a variety of locations, they also had the opportunity to travel more frequently than other slaves, and

193 were sometimes unsupervised on their journeys. Together, these circumstances made it easier for them to run away—and judging from anecdotal evidence, and the frequency with which the profession of ―carpenter‖ was listed in runaway ads, they often took

194 advantage of these opportunities. One particularly enterprising enslaved carpenter at

(Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1986): 95, 106, 109. Similarly, Catherine Bishir identified a number of North Carolina builders who owned skilled slaves, including John Berry of Hillsborough, who owned several enslaved bricklayers, as well as a carpenter and tinner; and brick builder Dabney Cosby of Raleigh, who owned more than 20 slaves, including two plasterers (Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 437, 445). Both slaveowning and nonslaveowning artisans hired slaves on a yearly basis to supplement their workforce, as for instance Jacob Holt, a Warrenton builder, who hired ―negro man Hillard‖ from his owner M.K. Williams, for the year beginning January 1, 1858, to supplement the work of his two dozen enslaved black and free white carpenters (Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 440-41). Black builders also employed enslaved workers—Donum Montfort (also spelled Montford and Mumford) was a free black builder in New Bern, North Carolina, who employed a large workforce made up of his own slaves, and those he hired (Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 450-451). 190 Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 426-429. 191 Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 477. For details of the carpentry listings from city directories, see Lane, South Carolina, 193; Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 424. 192 The Georgia Mechanics‘ Convention of 1851 specifically argued that black mechanics were a menace to the stability of slavery because they were taught to read and write, which promoted ―mental development‖ (Atlanta Intelligencer, July 10, 1851, quoted in Gillespie, Free Labor, 159. 193 William A. Byrne, ―The Hiring of Woodson, Slave Carpenter of Savannah,‖ Georgia Historical Quarterly 77, no.2 (1993). 194 See, for example, the runaway ads mentioned in Bishir, ―Black Builders.‖

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Oakley Plantation in Louisiana forged passes that allowed several local slaves to escape,

195 and when he was found out, ran away himself. The skills these men possessed made them particularly valuable to their owners—one runaway, Jacob, a house carpenter from

Craven County, North Carolina, was ―esteemed to be a most valuable negro, having sold some years since for 800 dollars,‖ at a time when unskilled, able-bodied field hands were valued at less than half that amount.196

Overall, the prevalence of black men and women among the labor force generally, and in the building professions specifically, was such that we can justifiably assume that any building built in the South during the period of slavery used the labor of both the plantation‘s own slaves, and those hired from elsewhere. These black laborers literally shaped the classicizing environments that served as an expression of the classical ancestry of the South‘s white elite. In other words, the columned temples that slaveowners desired and deployed as symbols of their mastery also represented the dependence of American whiteness upon the system of racially defined slavery.

Knowledge of the massive number of enslaved and free black men who built the classical mansions of the white plantation elite would have affected the owners‘ experience of living in them, as well as the slaves‘ experience of working in them.

Although they were designed and owned by a handful of elite white Americans, the classical plantation landscapes of the antebellum South were locations of complex racial confrontations. In a world in which they were outnumbered by their human

195 Webb, Mistress of Evergreen, 99; Laurie A. Wilkie, Creating Freedom: Material Culture and African American Identity at Oakley Plantation, Louisiana, 1840-1950 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 65. 196 Norfolk Herald, July 1, 1814, quoted in Bishir, ―Black Builders,‖ 429. The value of a field hand is derived from the 1815 inventory of the South Carolina estate of Mary Izard Middleton (Doyle, Beyond the Fields, 50).

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property, whose labor produced the wealth that made their lifestyles possible, and who both constructed and maintained its most visible symbols, slaveholders needed these symbols of their authority, and the ethnic histories of the classical world manifested in plantation landscapes, in order to sustain the fiction of their own superiority.

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EPILOGUE

Building on the meanings of antiquity within the elite European culture brought by some colonists to the New World, and constantly reinforced through encounters with Europe via travel, books, and interpersonal interactions, classicism had a crucial role within the culture of the early United States. The ancient world upon whose ideal of republicanism the country was founded, also provided an origins myth for the white race that dominated the new United States.

During decades between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, slavery coexisted with egalitarian ideals—the ―American paradox‖ identified by Edmund

Morgan1—and American society struggled to reconcile this fundamental contradiction.

While black and white abolitionists sought to do away with the paradox by ending slavery, many convoluted cultural solutions emerged to support the status quo, most of which were ultimately founded upon the premise of white supremacy.

Within this racialized context, stories about the past were never neutral in their meaning. The Greeks and the Romans became much more than simply ―spiritual‖ or

―intellectual‖ ancestors when their sculptures were examined by racial scientists and displayed in the public and private spaces controlled by the white elite; when white

American actors embodied them on stage; and when white slaveowners used classical architectural styles to shape the worlds of the plantations on which their black slaves

1 ―Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,‖ Journal of American History 59, no. 1 (1972); and American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975).

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were compelled to labor. For the slaveholding American republic of the 1770s through the 1850s, the slaveholding republics of the ancient Mediterranean represented the ideal ancestors. Thus, although the importance of classical languages and literature within the education system did decline over the course of the nineteenth century, the ancient world remained a crucial source of ―facts‖ that were treated as both historical and universal, and recruited as proof of the inherent superiority of the dominant white race.

The three case-studies in this dissertation have revealed many of the ways in which objects and ideas associated with the ancient Mediterranean were deployed either to support this system of white supremacy, or to challenge it. This cultural contest coincided with the sectional tension over the continuation and growth of slavery in the southern United States. By the early 1830s, the expansion of cotton and sugar plantations into what became the states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, on lands from which

Native Americans had been forcibly removed, made clear that slavery was not dying out, as abolitionists had hoped it would following the end of the transatlantic slave trade in

1808. Responding to the bloody slave revolt lead by Nat Turner in 1831, the Virginia legislature seriously considered the possibility of abolishing slavery in the state; the defeat of this proposal, in early 1832, marked the end of any sustained discussion of abolition in the South, and the entrenchment of the ideal of paternalistic slavery. And the

Nullification Crisis of 1832-33, brought on by South Carolina‘s declaration that certain federal tariffs did not apply to their state, was a crucial stage in the development of the secessionist ideas that would lead to the Civil War.

Between this pivotal moment in the early 1830s and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, we find some of the strongest representations of a racialized discourse about

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Greece, Rome, and Egypt. George Gliddon began his egyptological lecture tours of the

United States in 1842, while copies of Hiram Power‘s The Greek Slave toured the United

States beginning in 1847. After Edwin Forrest debuted the role of the rebellious (white) slave in The Gladiator in 1831, he continued to feature the play as he toured over the next several decade; while the black American mummy in T.D. Rice‘s The Virginia Mummy first danced across American stages in 1835, and was adopted by later minstrel troupes.

And the Greek Revival style, although it was already used in civic structures throughout the country, and occasionally adopted by elite northerners, exploded across the plantation

South in the 1830s, and remained the dominant style for plantation mansions throughout the antebellum period.

But the significance of the ancient Mediterranean past in the construction of

American identities did not disappear after the period of this study. Despite the ultimate incongruity of a nation in which all men were purportedly equal, yet white men were

―more equal‖ than black, the practice of grounding American identity in a classical antiquity that was understood to be white continued during and beyond the Civil War. In the less well known address given at Gettysburg, Harvard President and former U.S.

Senator Edward Everett opened his two-hour-long speech with an elaborate description of Athenian funeral rites for war dead, and closed it with an invocation of the famous

Peloponnesian War between Athenians and Spartans: ―‗The whole earth,‘ said Pericles, as he stood over the remains of his fellow-citizens, who had fallen in the first year of the

Peloponnesian War, ‗the whole early is the sepulcher of illustrious men.‘ All time, he might have added, is the millennium of their glory,‖ and expressed his conviction that the fallen at Gettysburg would join the Peloponnesian war dead in historical memory:

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as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates THE BATTLES OF GETTYSBURG.2

A famous moment from classical antiquity was also invoked by actor John Wilkes

Booth—a man who was more invested in white supremacy than in black slavery, per se—after he assassinated President Lincoln: he leapt from Lincoln‘s box to the stage of the Ford Theatre, and shouted ―Sic simper tyrannis‖—the same words supposedly said by

Brutus when Julius Caesar was assassinated, meaning ―thus always to tyrants.‖3 In other words, the actor who had himself frequently played Brutus and other classical heroes on stage seemed to have imagined himself as acting in continuity with the conspirators against the Roman dictator—to be living in a modern-day Rome. And, as we have seen throughout this dissertation, that new Rome was dependent upon an idea of racial exclusivity, an idea to which Lincoln‘s war represented a potentially fatal challenge.

Nevertheless, white American classicism survived the demise of slavery, and in some ways took on an even greater importance in the post-Civil War era. As Kirk Savage has explored, the classically inspired form of a solitary standing white soldier was among the symbols that helped the white nation knit itself back together.4 As the same figure was found throughout the former Union and Confederate states, it came to represent the courage of white men who fought for their country—eliding the basic cause of the war, and making it possible for both sides to emphasize the dignity and honor of defending their homeland. And the president whose election precipitated the war, and whose death

2 Address of the Hon. Edward Everett, at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 19th November, 1863 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1864), 82. 3 Albert Furtwangler, Assassin on Stage: Brutus, Hamlet, and the Death of Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 95-116. 4 Savage, Standing Soldiers, 162-208.

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swiftly followed its conclusion, was converted into a national hero on the level of

Thomas Jefferson, through the creation of the classically inspired Lincoln Memorial.5 In a pose reminiscent of Phidias‘ 5th century BCE sculpture of Olympian Zeus, with the suggestion of a toga draped over the back of his chair, a white marble Lincoln forever watches over the National Mall from within a classical temple.

American public histories of the ancient Mediterranean past—as with all narrations of ―the past‖ in any context—have always carried myriad meanings for groups and individuals of various kinds. Although many of these meanings can be forces for good—inspiring new ideas and new ways of living, offering insight into universals connecting humanity across time and space, and so forth—the past has also frequently been employed in the support of destructive ideas like ethnic chauvinism and patriarchy.

The actions of individuals in the past—both remembered and forgotten—undeniably shape the present; in the words of Golda Meir, ―One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.‖6 At the same time, we must also be wary of accepting the legitimacy of statements about ―the past‖ that attempt to shape our future, and attuned to the implications of past-claims in prolonging injustice and inequality in the present.

5 Char Roone Miller, ―‗Neither Palace Nor Temple Nor Tomb‘: The Lincoln Memorial in the Age of Commercial Reappropriation,‖ in National Symbols, Fractured Identities: Contesting the National Narrative, ed. Michael E. Glazer (Lebanon, NH: Middlebury College Press, 2005). 6 My Life (New York: Putnam, 1975), 231.

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