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© 2017 Christopher A. Howard ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2017 Christopher A. Howard ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BLACK INSURGENCY: THE BLACK CONVENTION MOVEMENT IN THE ANTEBELLUM UNITED STATES, 1830 – 1865 A Dissertation Presented to The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Christopher A. Howard August 2017 BLACK INSURGENCY: THE BLACK CONVENTION MOVEMENT IN THE ANTEBELLUM UNITED STATES, 1830 – 1865 Christopher A. Howard Dissertation Approved: Accepted: _________________________________ _________________________________ Advisor Department Chair Dr. Walter Hixson Dr. Martin Wainwright _________________________________ _________________________________ Committee Member Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Dr. Elizabeth Mancke Dr. John C. Green _________________________________ _________________________________ Committee Member Executive Dean of the Graduate School Dr. Zachery Williams Dr. Chand Midha _________________________________ _________________________________ Committee Member Date Dr. Kevin Kern _________________________________ Committee Member Dr. Daniel Coffey ii ABSTRACT During the antebellum era, black activists organized themselves into insurgent networks, with the goal of achieving political and racial equality for all black inhabitants of the United States. The Negro Convention Movement, herein referred to as the Black Convention Movement, functioned on state and national levels, as the chief black insurgent network. As radical black rights groups continue to rise in the contemporary era, it is necessary to mine the historical origins that influence these bodies, and provide contexts for understanding their social critiques. This dissertation centers on the agency of the participants, and reveals a black insurgent network seeking its own narrative of liberation through tactics and rhetorical weapons. This study follows in the footing of Dr. Howard Holman Bell, who produced bodies of work detailing the antebellum Negro conventions published in the 1950s and 1960s. Additionally, this work inserts itself into the historiography of black radicals, protest movements, and racial debates of antebellum America, arguing for a successful interpretation of black insurgent action. Class, race, gender, religion, and politics, all combine within this study as potent framing devices. Together, the elements within this effort, illustrates the Black Convention Movement as the era’s premier activist organization that inadvertently pushed the American nation toward civil war, and the destruction of institutionalized slavery. iii DEDICATION For my beloved father, Charles Howard. His unconditional love eased the darkness in my life. I miss him and I pray that he is at peace, and sleeping among our ancestors. I love you, Pop. My cousin, Kamau Sababu Kambui, taught me about Black History and slavery at a tender age. He always asked me what I wanted to be, and I would reply “An English professor!” I guess History is close enough. He has been gone for many years, but remains a constant memory for those that still love him. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Producing a dissertation is only possible with the support of family, friends, and kind strangers. I can never express the fullness of my gratitude, but I can at least acknowledge those that helped me, and show that I appreciate them. To my immediate family: Aggie Howard, Carolyn Granger, Jeffrey and Lisa Howard, Alex and Tonya Howard, and Lisa Williams. Thank you for putting up with my academic adventures. I also owe unpayable debts of love to the Rodger and Rebecca Smith family, the Perry and Amy Ruth Jeffries II family, the Bill and Loretta McBride family, the Chi Merritt family, and the Dr. Reginald and Bobbie Baugh family. To my boon companions: Bryan Gladden, John DeWalt, George Wenzel, and Derek Foster – Thank you lads for always being sources of support, mischief, and motivation. To my trusted confidants past and present: Ryan and Davina Bixby, Dawn Brown, Sevin Gallo, Ben and Jon Haber, John Henris, Brian Kane, Wendy Morrow, Tamara Rand, Kym Rohrbach, Michelle Stone, Kristy Wawryk, and Kathy Zucker – Thank you all. My deepest gratitude to my advisor Dr. Walter Hixson for coaxing me to the finish line. I also owe Dr. Elizabeth Mancke a debt for her key insights. I thank Dr. Kevin Kern, Dr. Zachery Williams, and Dr. Daniel Coffey for helping me find my academic voice. A special thanks to my heroes, Donald Appleby and Wade Wilcox. v In part, this dissertation validates the faith placed in me by the History Departments of The Ohio State University at Mansfield and Main Campus, the Youngstown State University, and the University of Akron. I have endeavored to do them all proud; however, all errors within these pages are mine alone. Thank you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1 II. THE BLACK PRESS: INSURGENCY IN PRINT .............................................. 24 III. OLD TESTAMENT SOLIDERS: BLACK CHURCH FOUNDATIONS, POLITICAL LIBERATION ................................................................................. 65 IV. SISTER INSURGENTS: THE RISE OF BLACK WOMANHOOD IN THE BLACK INSURGENCY .................................................................................... 115 V. THE OHIO COMPROMISE OF 1849: FLASHPOINT OF REBELLION ....... 145 VI. THE BLACK INSURGENCY CONTINUES .................................................... 187 VII. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 200 VIII. BIBILOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 210 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the antebellum United States, the Black Convention Movement functioned as the chief black insurgent network that inadvertently pushed the nation toward civil war. Here, insurgency, more specifically the black insurgent network, refers to interconnected, organized state and national black activists who engaged in a concerted effort to confront and dismantle the American system of racial discrimination and enslavement. This study’s core focus is to reclaim agency and liberate antebellum Black Americans as actors essential to their own attempts to achieve abolition and political equality.1 The overwhelming majority of antebellum era blacks were loyal to the founding principles of the United States. The United States built a narrative that presented itself to the world as a standard-bearer of freedom of religion, free speech, assembly and association, in addition to suffrage, and a host of positive rights. However, accessing these rights required that blacks be insurgents against the noxious racism embedded in the American system. Blacks needed to insert themselves into the national narrative that largely ignored them as free-willed beings. To this end, the black insurgent network utilized persuasion and coercion to deploy an array of tools against racism.2 Tensions 1 John Ernest, Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794- 1861 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 18. 2 James L. Golden and Richard D. Rieke, The Rhetoric of Black Americans (Columbus: Charles E. Merrill Publishing, Co., 1971), 16. 1 within the movement existed pitting moderates against radicals in debates on how to mobilize public opinion. However, these camps “shared fundamental goals and values.”1 Debates on using rhetoric publicly that promoted Christian coexistence or threatened civil disorder, characterized some of the issues delineating both factions. It is fair to question the necessity of studying antebellum black activism; much less, any perceived successes of a black insurgency, given the dire conditions of Reconstruction and Jim Crow for black people. This study argues that it is not constructive or useful to paint the black insurgent network in terms of ‘powerless failures’ given that their strategies of resistance in class, race, gender, and legal arenas yielded tangible returns still felt in the contemporary era. The actors in this study were not powerless individuals, but active participants in an insurgent agenda of equality and racial liberation. The Black Convention provides a credible venue for studying the activist lives of black Americans as insurgent reactions to United States history. Subsequent periods of black activism owe much to the individuals that labored for liberation in the antebellum period. The insurgents functioned on state and national levels by networking and organizing activists through annual conventions. At these conventions, they agitated for federal and state policies compatible with an agenda of abolition and suffrage. This energy represented a strong black cultural response, driven by opposition to slavery and oppression, which functioned in the United States with the intent of dismantling the racism of the white majority status quo. Changing this status quo called for tactics designed to acquire full political citizenship (gain suffrage, property, civic accessibility 1 Ibid., 23. 2 for northern blacks) and freedom from slavery for southern backs. In the antebellum era, debates on various issues advanced. The national conversation questioned the place of women, blacks, Native Americans, and non- Protestant religious groups: should these groups “have unrestricted access to [the dominant white Protestant] society’s rewards?”2 In a nation still relatively young, the
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