Ed Rugemer on Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering The

Timothy Patrick McCarthy, John Stauffer, eds.. Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism. New York: The New Press, 2006. xxxiii + 382 pp. $22.95, paper, ISBN 978-1-56584-880-1. Reviewed by Ed Rugemer Published on H-SHEAR (June, 2008) Historians have developed a new narrative for change: newspapers, pamphlets, history, poet‐ for radical abolitionism over the past two decades ry, fction, scientific argument, the law, the mar‐ and it is thoroughly explored in the essays of this ket, violence, photography, and commemoration. book. During the years after the American Revolu‐ The essays in this book open a window into each tion when a free black community began to grow of these dimensions of radical abolitionism. in the northern United States, a "founding genera‐ Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer's tion" of African Americans came to realize that volume explicitly draws from, and is in dialogue white society would not apply the liberating with, the rich tradition of historical re-interpreta‐ rhetoric of the Revolution to Americans with tion charted by Martin Duberman's Antislavery African ancestors. In fact, slavery experienced Vanguard (1965) and Antislavery Reconsidered rapid expansion in the South with the indepen‐ (1979) edited by Lewis Perry and Michael Fell‐ dence of the United States, and northern whites man. Duberman's volume was deeply shaped by slowly but surely excluded African Americans the civil rights movement then underway, and the from the political life of the early republic. The essays announced the demise of the portrayal of first generation of black abolitionists understood the abolitionists as the "meddlesome fanatics" that if African Americans wanted to realize the as‐ who caused the Civil War. Fourteen years later, pirations of the Revolution, slavery would have to Perry and Fellman's volume sought to distance be abolished, white racism would have to be abolitionist historiography from the presentism of fought, and they would have to lead the effort the 1960s and treat abolitionism as "an historical themselves. The history of American abolitionism subject."[1] grew from this understanding of the political real‐ Duberman and Fellman have both written ities of the United States and throughout the ante‐ short pieces for the volume that situate Prophets bellum decades black abolitionists were at the of Protest in this decades-long conversation about forefront of radical abolitionism. They used every the place of radical abolitionism in U.S. history. tool in the arsenal of modern social movements H-Net Reviews Like the previous volumes, the contributors in‐ plore abolitionist historiography beginning with clude both young and established historians at the the works of movement participants. A section on cutting edge of the scholarship, and as with the "Origins" follows, with fve essays that explore the previous collections, Prophets of Protest chroni‐ origins debate. Two additional sections explore cles the most innovative shifts in abolitionist stud‐ the means and ends debate: "Revolutions," with ies over the past seventeen years, specifically, the two essays on Brown, and "Representations," emphasis on the centrality of black protest to which includes fve essays that examine the tools American abolitionism, and secondly, a fresh un‐ of protest and a retrospective essay that looks at derstanding of the violent abolitionism embodied the treatment of abolitionists in movies. by John Brown. Neither subject was ignored in the "Revisions" begins with a historiographical es‐ past two volumes, but both received slight atten‐ say by Robert Forbes, who traces some of the in‐ tion. Brown was only mentioned in passing in the tellectual shifts in the writings on abolitionism first volume, and in the second only Jim Stewart's from the eighteenth century through 1916 (al‐ essay on Wendell Phillips devoted any sustained though it is unclear to what the endpoint of 1916 attention to Brown. Assessments of black protest refers). Forbes identifies three intellectual stages, actually declined from 1965 to 1979, a shift that which he carefully explains are not to be miscon‐ was pointed out by reviewers. Antislavery Van‐ strued as either linear or self-contained. The frst guard contained two essays on the black aboli‐ generation of historians of abolitionism were ac‐ tionists, one by Benjamin Quarles on Frederick tors in the movement, most were Evangelicals, Douglass and an essay by Leon Litwack that ex‐ and all saw the movement as "Providential," the plored the relations between black and white abo‐ work of God in the world. The providentials were litionists, while Abolitionists Reconsidered includ‐ followed by the "racialist progressive" writers ed only one essay on African American churches who began to appear in the 1840s and 1850s and by Carol George. In stark contrast, an entire sec‐ saw the abolition of slavery as emblematic of the tion of Prophets of Protest is devoted to Brown, progress of humanity, but more specifically the and eight of the ffteen essays focus exclusively on progress of the "white race." This group included African American abolitionists. Neither of the pre‐ such nineteenth-century writers as Thomas Car‐ vious volumes had such a strong thematic concen‐ lyle, but it would also include such historians as tration as the present volume on black abolition‐ Reginald Coupland, writing in 1933, who saw ists, suggesting the most significant transforma‐ Britain's abolition of slavery one century earlier tion of abolitionist studies in the past forty years. as the quintessential example of British moral [2] achievement. The fnal intellectual transition has As the editors point out in their introduction, been to the "modern revisionists." This group was acknowledgement of the influence of black aboli‐ inaugurated by the West Indian writers Eric tionists stimulates a reconsideration of the three Williams and C. L. R. James and the black Ameri‐ debates that have shaped abolitionist historiogra‐ can W. E. B. Du Bois. These men were all material‐ phy, which Stauffer and McCarthy describe as the ist/Marxist historians as well as black activists "origins" debate, the debate over the "character" deeply involved with the racial politics of their of the movement, and the "means and ends" de‐ day. They distrusted the religious emphasis of the bate on abolitionist tactics. The essays are orga‐ providentials and had nothing but disdain for nized into four sections of unequal length that ex‐ racist notions of "progress." The modern revision‐ plore the role of black protest in these debates. ists put economic factors on the table as an expla‐ Prophets of Protest begins with a section entitled nation for abolition, and while historians now "Revisions," which includes two essays that ex‐ take religion far more seriously, we still work 2 H-Net Reviews from the suppositions of the modern revisionists. remind readers that black abolitionists had al‐ While Forbes's intellectual schema is invaluable, ways been involved. one wishes for more examples of writers whose With the exception of the frst essay by T. K. interpretations ft within the phases he so clearly Hunter, the fve articles in "Origins" examine the describes. first two generations of African American aboli‐ From this broad intellectual base Manisha tionists. Hunter's essay does not really align with Sinha moves to a focused investigation of histori‐ the themes of this section, but the essay itself is a ography on African American participation in the fascinating comparison of the Somerset Case of abolitionist movement. Like Forbes, Sinha begins 1772 in Great Britain with the case of the enslaved with those writers who were actors in the move‐ girl Med in Boston in 1836. Hunter shows that ment: William Cooper Nell, William Wells Brown, while these cases were separated by wide gulfs of Martin Delany, Hosea Easton, James W. C. Pen‐ time and space, they were both concerned with nington, Henry Highland Garnet, and Douglass, the same question: Where did the law enforcing among others. This group was followed by such slavery prevail? Hunter shows that while Judge amateur historians as Archibald Grimke and Mansfield's decision freeing James Somerset was George Washington Williams, who wrote in the extremely narrow, it made "liberty contingent late nineteenth century against professional white upon geography" (p. 50). Put differently, even historians who fashioned the portrait of the aboli‐ though Mansfield had no desire to threaten the le‐ tionists as unstable fanatics and completely ig‐ gitimacy of slavery in Great Britain or the nored African American contributions to Ameri‐ colonies, he did value Great Britain as a place can life. Grimke and Williams were followed by where liberty reigned, a value that could be ex‐ Du Bois, Carter Woodson, Charles Wesley, and panded to limit the power of slaveholders to Dorothy Porter, professional historians and ar‐ maintain their property. The case of the slave girl chivists who further developed a black abolition‐ Med was remarkably similar. Brought to Boston ist historiography that most white academics con‐ from Louisiana by her owner, Med was discov‐ tinued to ignore. Sinha draws careful attention to ered by members of the Boston Female Anti-Slav‐ the work of Quarles, who spent a long career at ery Society, who brought suit in a Massachusetts Morgan State University in Baltimore. Quarles's Court on the grounds that Med's enslavement dissertation was the frst modern biography of could not be enforced in Massachusetts, a place Douglass, which he later condensed into an essay that was "singularly conducive to liberty" (p. 50). that appeared in Duberman's Antislavery Van‐ Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw agreed and the Somer‐ guard. Quarles's Black Abolitionists (1969) was set case served as a precedent for his decision. the frst comprehensive study of African Ameri‐ Essays by Richard Newman, Julie Winch, San‐ can involvement in abolitionism, and despite the dra Sandiford Young, and McCarthy make excel‐ long tradition in which Quarles worked, most his‐ lent contributions to our understanding of the ori‐ torians of abolitionism at the time still wrote of gins of American abolitionism.

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