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Slave Resistance and the Politics of Literary Geography Judith Louise Kemerait Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]

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Slave Resistance and the Politics of Literary Geography Judith Louise Kemerait Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Jkemer1@Lsu.Edu Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2004 Routes of freedom: slave resistance and the politics of literary geography Judith Louise Kemerait Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Kemerait, Judith Louise, "Routes of freedom: slave resistance and the politics of literary geography" (2004). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2410. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2410 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. ROUTES OF FREEDOM: SLAVE RESISTANCE AND THE POLITICS OF LITERARY GEOGRAPHY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Judith Louise Kemerait B.A., Davidson College, 1991 M.A., North Carolina State University, 1997 December 2004 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a daunting process to look back on the many years that went into this moment and try to name all the people who helped me get here. I cannot begin to do justice to everyone who deserves my thanks. I can only hope that you know who you are and that you know I am truly grateful. There are, of course, obvious names that stand out. First, I would like to thank my director, Ed White, for his careful readings of my work, his patience, and his good humor over the past three years. Without his challenging me to take ownership of this project, it would never have been completed. A sincere thank you also goes to Carol Mattingly and Pat McGee. The belief they have shown in me helped nurture me through many moments of self-doubt. I am also indebted to my committee members, Jerry Kennedy, John Lowe, and Gaines Foster, whose comments and advice managed that rare blend of rigorous critique and encouragement. I am especially grateful to my friends and classmates who ventured through graduate school with me. Ted Atkinson, Meg Watson, and Anne-Marie Thomas encouraged me to be a serious reader even as they refused to let me take myself too seriously. It is not their fault if I frequently failed in both regards. Kris Ross and Tena Helton have been invaluable sources of ideas and comfort throughout the writing period. I couldn’t have gotten here without the unfailing support of my family. Those who have been through this process themselves supported me by not asking when I was going to finish or how far along I was. Those who have not helped me by caring about my work and always letting me know they were proud of me. Mom, Dad, Bobby, Pam, Karen, Kathi, and Helen, I will always be grateful. ii Finally, my deepest thanks go to my children and my husband who endured all those long hours when I disappeared to the library or to a pine cabin in the woods. Katherine and Bobby have helped me to see the boundless joy and beauty that is beyond myself. And Jim has taught me that optimism coupled with patience leads to great things. This dissertation is as much his accomplishment as it is mine. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………………………..………………………………….....ii LIST OF TABLES ………………………………………………………………………...v LIST OF FIGURES ………………………………………………………………………vi ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: INSCRIBED IN SPACE, TRACES OF THE PAST ………1 Place and The Confessions of Nat Turner ……………………………….….17 2 DRED AND THE REBEL-FUGITIVE ………………………………………...50 Dred and the Problem of Diverging Chronotopes ………………………….78 3 THEORETICAL INTERLUDE, OR, OPENING THE DOOR AND POINTING THE WAY …………………………………………………..92 4 BLAKE AND THE POLITICS OF TRAVEL ………………………………113 Abolition and the Emigration Debate ………………………………………119 The Places of Delany’s Blake ………………………………………………137 Movement and the Pan-African Nation ………………………….................143 5 ROUTES OF FREEDOM AND “THE HEROIC SLAVE” ……………………150 6 MAPPING BENITO CERENO …………………………………………………185 7 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………210 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………...215 VITA ……………………………………………………………………………………224 iv LIST OF TABLES 2.1 Historical and Geographic Precedents for Plotlines in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred………………………………………………59 v LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Towns and Counties with Rumored Unrest in the Aftermath of the Southampton Rebellion ……………………………………..............36 2.1 Principal Geographic Locations in Dred …………………………………...….70 2.2 Geographic Convergence by Rebel Conspirators …………………………...…86 2.3 Concluding Flight North after Dred’s Death ……………………………...…..88 4.1 Blake’s Travels Through U.S. Slave Territories …………………………...…128 4.2 Blake’s Journey aboard the Slave Ship Vulture …………………………...…130 4.3 Rebels Converge in Cuba…………………………………………………......146 5.1 Madison Washington’s Movements ………………………………………...173 6.1 Historical Voyage of the U.S. Ship Perseverance ………………………...….199 6.2 Benito Cereno’s Invented Route for the San Dominick …………………...….204 6.3 Actual Route of the San Dominick………………………………………...….206 6.4 Geographic Symbolics for New World Slavery…………………………...….208 6.5 Geopolitical Landscape of New World Slavery…………………………...….209 vi ABSTRACT This dissertation integrates rhetorical, historical, and spatial analysis in an effort to expand our understanding of the cultural work performed by antebellum narratives that take slavery in the United States as their subject matter. Specifically, it focuses on the complicated relationship between place and human praxis as revealed in five texts: The Confessions of Nat Turner, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred, Martin R. Delany’s Blake, Frederick Douglass’s “The Heroic Slave,” and Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno. In my attention to literary geographies, I trace spatial patterns in which considerations of organized resistance and slave rebellion are repeatedly placed in “wild-spaces” such as the Great Dismal Swamp, the Red River region of Louisiana, and the open ocean. Exploring their strict alignment with considerations of violence, I argue that these wild- spaces do not function as passive settings, supporting and paralleling narrative events or themes. Instead they can be seen to drive narrative action as they carry with them powerful cultural associations that translate into plot momentum. My methodological approach employs two general steps. First I document how antislavery writers developed a historically resonant narrative landscape to defuse criticism and buttress their rhetorical indictments of slavery. Second, I investigate how these writers negotiated the complicated demands of such landscapes in order to supplement moral interpretations with creative imaginings of how alternative forms of slave resistance might play out. By isolating the ties between literary landscapes and the narratives’ imaginings of slave resistance, we are able to see the intensely pragmatic, real world problem-solving in which these writers were engaged. Such a methodology highlights the formative function of place in literary output, while also providing insight vii into obstacles to real-world reform. I conclude that the narratives I examine served as a forum for cultural experimentation as their writers attempted to work through social and political problems that had no easy or ready solutions. Considerations of place are shown to be essential to antislavery writers’ attempts to see through the shadow of slavery to its end, and, in doing so, point the way forward. viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION INSCRIBED IN SPACE, TRACES OF THE PAST On November 11, 1831, Nat Turner was hanged for his role in instigating and carrying out a rebellion of slaves in Southampton County, Virginia. His ostensible goal, in addition to enacting retributive violence against the whites of the region, was to attack the military arsenal in the nearby county seat of Jerusalem in an effort “to procure arms and ammunition” for the army of slaves and free blacks he hoped to recruit (Gray 52). Although exact numbers remain unknown, the rebel slaves succeeded in killing at least fifty-five whites before the rebellion collapsed in the face of growing resistance by white militia forces.1 On December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged for leading an attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. His goal was to distribute the arsenal’s weapons among neighboring slaves in order to build an army that would lead incursions throughout the South, while helping unprecedented numbers of runaway slaves escape to the northern states and to Canada. Brown’s band of nineteen men killed four and suffered ten deaths themselves before they were overwhelmed by troops led by Robert E. Lee and J. E. B. Stuart of the U. S. Calvary. More than a century and a half after the Southampton rebellion, resident and local historian James Magee conducts private tours of the area where the 1831 uprising occurred. In his interpretation of Southampton County’s historical significance, he notes, “I tell blacks, ‘[t]his is hallowed ground, this is where the emancipation of your people began. It’s a direct path from Nat Turner to John Brown to the Civil War’” (qtd. in Horwitz 85). With his emphasis on the famous rebel figures of Nat Turner and John Brown, it is possible to overlook Magee’s
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