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NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. UMI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN FICTION" A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL of the UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI in candidacy for THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHT by THOMAS WARRINGTON GOSLING ?0. |CM April, 1911 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: DP16691 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI Microform DP16691 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE The purpose of. this study is to explain the use which American writers of fiction have madd of the negro. Whether their portrayal of him is true or false, it is not the province of a purely literary study to determine. Nor is it necessary to consider the so-called race problem except as that problem is discussed in these -works of fiction. Consequently the aim has been to arrange and classify the material which many writers have presented, rather than to establish with regard to it any theory or thesis. To be sure, in the process of classification some sequence has been discovered out of which a theory natural ly grows. Hypothesis, however, has been the result of the work and not its aim. Since free quotation appeared to be the most, effective means of accomplishing the purpose of exposition, wherever it was possible;authors have been permitted to speak for themselves. Finally, this study, it should be understood, is concerned primarily with the negro himself a3 represented in American fic tion and not with the literary value of individual works that exhibit him. No attempt, therefore, has here been made to write a history or a criticism of the fiction devoted to this character, Thomas Warrington Gosling, April 13, 1911. „ f ? n 1 7 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter I. The Negro in America. "L .2 In 1619 a Dutch man-of-war that was out of provisions sailed into the James River, Virginia, to replenish its Btores. As the captain had no other way of paying for the supplies which he secured from the settlers, he offered twenty negro slaves, who were unwillingly accepted. The captain of that vessel did not regard himself as a maker of history. He was merely engaged in a plain business transaction, and doubtless like many others befors and since hs thought that the demands of trade were of more importance than the claims of humanity. Slavery itself'is of great antiquity. Every age and almost every nation have known its curse; and even in America, negro slaves had been found before 1619. The records of the early Spanish explorers show that some of the great Spanish commanders had carried such slaves on their voyages of dis covery. As an institution, however, slavery in America dates from the year 1619. The landing.of that band of twenty in 1. George Bancroft: Hist of U.S. 1874, Vol. 1, pp. 176-7. Bancroft gives the date as August, 1620. Some other authorities give the date as 1618, 2. Some authorities think the slaves were brought by a trading vessel, "The Treasurer." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Virginia occurred but twelve years after the settlement of Jamestown and but one year before the coming of the Pilgrims to Plymouth. The growth of slavery wa3 not rapid at first. The earliest American 3lave-ship, The Desire, was fitted out at Salem, Massachusetts, in 16136. Thus, by the irony of fate this town, the home of freedom, became a sharer in the in- quity of human bondage. By the year 1649 there were only three hundred slaves in Virginia; in 1714 these had increased to but twenty-three thousand. In 1756, however, there were one hundredi and twenty-thousand in Virginia and fifty-two thousand 1 • more in the other colonies including Hew England. At the open ing of the Revolutionary Nar it was estimated that there 'were approximately five hundred thousand negroes in the colonies. Some of them were free. From the first, the laws governing the conduct of slaves were severe. No slave could bear arms without a special license. No slave' could leave hi3 master’s plantation without a permit, and then only -for a short time. A slave wtio resisted hi3 master might be hilled with impunity. The laws against intermarriage of the races were of the most rigorous nature. It is said in defense of the early colonists that their practise was not so harsh as their laws might imply. The indentured white ser vants — many of them debtors or criminals from England — were subjected to severe treatment, also, and in many respite* TT Thomas Nelson ?agT: The Old South, pp. 103-1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. slaves. The negroes and the white indentured servants were distinguished in the conventional description as "slaves for life, and servants for a time." The lot of both classes was undoubtedly a hard one. Beverley^'however, in his History of Virginia say3:- "I can assure you with great Truth, that gen erally their Slaves are not worked near so hard, nor so many Hours in a Day, a3 the Husbandmen, and Day-labourers in England." After Virginia the various colonies in turn recognised the ownership of slaves. The first to follow the example of Vir ginia was the Hew Netherlands (Hew York), where "as early a3 1628 the irascible 3lavs3 from Angola, Africa, were the fruitful 3. source of widespread public alarm." 1 Under the Dutch rule the slaves of New Netherlands were treated quite mildly and many were set free. ’ When the English assumed the government in 1664, the law3 against slaves began to take on greater severity. The i records 3how various enactments which indicate a growing fear of the negro and a strengthening resolve to protect white society from the dangers of an uprising of the slaves. In 1741 by an unhappy coincidence of circumstances and by the criminal purposes of conniving whites, the people of New York were led to believe that the negroes had formed a plot to destroy the city. In the course of the excitement several lT" Robert Beverley: The History of Virginia; 2nd edition,- 1722, p. 236. j ^ 2. G. W. Williams: History of the Negro Race in America; 1883, Vol. 1, p. 134. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. innocent negroes were condemned to death and were burned at 1 .. the stake, Thu3 the "Negro Plot of 1741" has gone down 'into history a3 another example of a nervous public imagination which creates- conditions that do not exist and which vents, itself upon innocent victims. A3 early as 1G33- there were negroes in Massachusetts, and presumably they were slaves. In 1637, the first 3rear of the Pequod War, the colonists began to import slaves from Barbadoes in exchange for Indian captives* because it was found the Indians would not endure servitude. From this time forward the number of slaves began to increase, tho there were never so many in Massa chusetts as in the Southern colonies. The 3oil and climate j' of Massachusetts were not of a nature to make slavery as an ■ institution very profitable. As in New York, so in Massachusetts the laws governing slaves were numerous and severe. The fight against slavery in the colony was long continued and bitter. In fact, in the middle of the eighteenth century there wa3 a well- defined abolition movement which doubtless- would have succeeded but for the opposition of Governor Gage and Governor Hutchinson. ’ The movement wa3 just about to accomplish its purpose when the Revolutionary War broke out and diverted the energies of all to other channels. It seems likely that negroes were held as slaves in 1. G. W. Williams: op cit. Vol. 1, p. 144. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 l. Maryland from the founding of the colony in 1630. In no otha: Southern colony except South Carolina were the laws governing 2. the slaves bo severe as in Maryland. The fact that many con victs, - perhaps as many as six hundred a year, - were imported into the colony, tended to break down conventional standards of conduct. Consequently there was a rather free mingling of the i negroes and the white indentured servants, or convicts, on terms * of social equality. Maryland, a3 a consequence, had a consider able population of raulattoes. / New Jersey stands conspicuous as the only colony which allowed negroes a trial by jury. An act of the legislature of East Jersey, passed in 1694, provided for the trial of "negroes and other slaves, for felonies punishable-with death, by a jury of twelve persons before three justices of the peace; for theft, 3.

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