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Review: Lawrence Fenton, Frederick Douglass in Ire- Land: the Black O’Connell

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Review: Lawrence Fenton, Frederick Douglass in Ire- Land: the Black O’Connell Review: Lawrence Fenton, Frederick Douglass in Ire- land: The Black O'Connell Conor Kennelly Maryland sometime in February 1818. He was never sure of the exact date as this information was withheld by slave masters from their slaves. Douglass barely knew his mother as slave owners would often split up slave families so as to break any familial bonds. Douglass's father was more than likely his owner, Aaron Anthony. Such non-consensual relationships between slave owners and slave women were very com- mon. Douglass was raised by his grand- mother until the age of six in a tiny win- dowless hovel where his bed consisted of planks thrown over the rafters. His food consisted mainly of a cornmeal mush con- sumed with an oyster shell as a spoon. Lawrence Fenton, Frederick Douglass in Ireland: The Douglass's grandmother had to deliver him Black O'Connell 2014 The Collins Press, e10.39 to Anthony's house and left before Dou- glass was aware of his new predicament. Slaves who attempted to make contact Frederick Douglass, the great African- with their children or engage in any other American Abolitionist, visited Ireland in human relationship not sanctioned by their 1845. Douglass, an ex slave himself, who master were severely punished. Douglass had experienced all the brutality of chat- saw his own 15 year old Aunt Hester's tel slavery, described his experiences in naked back being bloodily whipped by his two autobiographies and lectured widely master Aaron Anthony. Hester's crime was to mass Abolitionist audiences throughout to reject Anthony's unwelcome advances the Northern States of the US. In August and sneak out at night to meet up with 1845, Douglass travelled to Ireland and a slave boy her own age. Douglass himself England on a speaking tour organised by was to receive several such whippings leav- Irish and English abolitionists. ing permanent scars on his back. Eventu- In a highly readable and engrossing ally he escaped to freedom and joined the account, Laurence Fenton describes Dou- Abolition movement in the North where he glass's experience in Ireland and the pro- became one of its most famous agitators. found affect that the poverty of the rural Fenton's book also poses questions and urban Irish he witnessed during his about Ireland's complex relationship with travels had on him. the Atlantic slave trade. It is true that Fenton provides a short account of thousands of the indigenous Catholic Irish Douglass's life based on his autobiography. were deported to the West Indies and Douglass was born in Talbot County, North America as slaves and indentured 71 labourers to work on sugar plantations weeks of the year was over 585,000, whose as their land was cleared for settlement dependents were estimated at a further 1.8 by English and Scottish colonists.1 It is million 3 a rather cruel and bitter irony that the There was occasional agrarian unrest in term lynching may originate from Charles the 18th and 19th centuries. Both Catholic Lynch. Lynch was a Virginia planter and and Protestant peasants were obliged to slave owner whose own father had come to pay tithes, a tax for the upkeep of the Es- America from Ireland as an indentured ser- tablished Church of Ireland. Secret soci- vant. Irish surnames are quite common on eties such as the Ribbonmen and White- the island of Montserrat as mixed relation- boys attacked property of the Protestant ships were frequent between African and clergy by night, setting fire to their houses Irish slaves. They are not usually remem- and leaving an unsubtle message about bered when the Irish Diaspora are men- their opposition to payment of an unjust tioned as they do not quite fit the rags to tax. Catholic clergy were also on occasion riches stereotype of the supposedly typi- targeted as the Catholic Church also de- cal emigrant. However, there were also manded tithes for its upkeep. These se- Irish merchant capitalists who benefited cret societies were mainly composed of the from the Slave Trade. In the 18th cen- poorer tenant farmers and farm labourers tury, Cork and Limerick emerged as major who were to be the main victims of the trading ports as Irish merchants exported Famine. salted Irish beef, ham and butter to the The population grew exponentially West Indies to feed both the slave owning during the 18th and early 19th centuries colonists and the slave population. The to 9 million by 1845. This was mainly due Cork traders became known as the Mer- to the successful cultivation of the potato chant Princes and built fine mansions on crop which could cheaply feed a large fam- Montenotte overlooking the city. Likewise, ily. The potato was brought to Europe the Catholic Roches of Limerick traded ex- from South America in the 17th century. tensively in the Caribbean2. Linen man- However, whereas native South Americans ufactured in Belfast was used as clothing cultivated a wide variety of potatoes, this and footwear for slaves. was not the case in Europe where a much Douglass was very much moved by the narrower range was planted. The cultiva- appalling poverty that he saw in both ru- tion of the potato was an early example ral and urban Ireland and provided vivid of capitalist monoculture with all its at- descriptions of it in his letters to American tendant pitfalls. Genetic uniformity meant friends. that disease could quickly spread and wipe The overwhelming majority of the pop- out a whole years' harvest. When potato ulation lived in the countryside as peas- blight affected the potato crop, it was to ant farmers and labourers, the former pay- have catastrophic effects. However, when ing rent to Anglo Irish or absentee En- Douglass visited in 1845, the worst effects glish landlords. A government report of of the Famine had still not been felt. A 1836 concluded that the number of labour- second crop failure the following Autumn ers who were unemployed for more than 30 transformed the situation from hunger to 1See Sean O'Callaghan, To Hell or Barbados, The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland, Brandon Books, 2001 2See Nini Rodger, `Ireland and the Black Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century', Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 32, No. 126 (Nov., 2000), pp. 174-192. 3Gear´oid O´ Tuathaigh, Ireland before the Famine 1798-1848. 72 starvation. British free market economic did not fundamentally question the sys- policy ensured that the wealthier farmers temic causes of poverty. Their patronage were able to export grain out of the coun- of Abolitionism and Douglass in particular try while the poor starved. also betrayed a paternalist condescension. Those worst affected were the poorer Hannah Webb for example described Dou- tenant farmers and labourers as the potato glass as `a child - a savage'. was their main diet. While Douglass did Curiously, one Irish politician that not witness the worst of the Famine, he emerges with some honour in the strug- did observe the conditions of the Irish poor gle against slavery is Daniel O'Connell. and remarked on some similarities with James Connolly quite rightly excoriated the conditions of African American slaves. O'Connell for his contempt for the Irish While these similarities should not be over- working class in Labour and Irish History. stated - chattel slavery probably has no Nevertheless, O'Connell was at least prin- equal in cruelty as a form of class domi- cipled in his opposition to slavery, so much nation - it is nevertheless telling the im- so that he was prepared to risk losing valu- pression that the squalor of the Irish poor able Irish American funding for the Repeal had on Douglass that he could draw such Movement. O'Connell's stance against comparisons. However, while having sym- slavery left a deep impression on Douglass pathy with the plight of the Irish poor, who would quote lines from O'Connell's Douglass also attributed their poverty to speeches in later life. O'Connell shared a weakness of character rather than ask- platforms with Douglass when the latter ing any questions about the consequences spoke in Dublin. of British colonial rule and the underlying Sadly, the same cannot be said of oth- class structures that caused that poverty. ers such as the Young Irelander, John Indeed, when the situation of the major- Mitchell, nor the Temperance leader, Fa- ity of ex slaves hadn't improved after the ther Theobald Mathew. Mitchell was a Civil War, Douglass similarly blamed it zealous advocate of slavery who wanted to on their moral character and a supposed own his own slave plantation and later sup- lack of willingness on their part to improve ported the South in the Civil War, losing their lot. Like other abolitionists such as two sons to the Confederate cause. William Garrison, his opposition was to a Father Mathew persuaded tens of thou- specific form of class domination, namely sands of Irish people to take the Tem- slavery, rather than to class society in all perance pledge to swear that they would its forms4. never touch a drop of alcohol again. Even Douglass's hosts in Ireland were mainly Douglass took the pledge when he met Protestant Quakers such as the Webbs Mathew in Ireland on his travels though and Shackletons who like their American he was already a non drinker. However, brethren were the backbone of the Aboli- Douglass would later break with Father tionist movement. Fenton provides an in- Mathew when the latter later toured the teresting account of the Quakers in Ireland US and refused to condemn slavery for fear and their prominent role the Abolitionist of alienating his Irish American support- movement.
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