Introd,ucti.on Introduction

March 21 and May 4,1857. This period corresponds not only with Searching for Hannah Crafts the Wheelers' recorded trip to the plantation from Washington t but with several other unique events and circumstances in their In the U.S. census of 1860 for Washington, D.C.,.[ohn Hill lives during this time, such as Wheeler's recent dismissal from his \Mheeler is listed as the head of household, occupation "clerk." government post. Negative evidence supporting the year 1857 for Wheeler has no slaves. What this means in our search for Hannah the escape is provided by the lack of known visits by the Wheelers (lrafts is that sometime between 1855, whenJaneJohnson liber- to the plantation during the years 1855, 1856 (only the first half rrted herself in Philadelphia, and the taking of this census in Wash- of the diary is extant, but Mr. Wheeler was still in Nicaragua until ington in 1860, the slave the Wheelers purchased after Jane November of that year), and 1858 (only the last half of his diary cscaped, like Jane, escaped to the North and wrote an autobio. survives). Trips were made by the Wheelers to in graphical novel about her bondage and her freedom. Judging 1859 (with PresidentJames Buchanan in earlyJune), 1860 (in the liom evidence in \,tr/heeler's diary, it seems reasonable to conclude latter half of December), and 1861 (aboutJuly, from which point llrat her escape occurred between March 2l and May 4,1857. If Wheeler stayed in North Carolina). But Mr. \Arheeler's continual lhese assumptions are correct, as I believe the manuscript and employment as clerk of the Interior Department in Washington

lvi lvii Introduction Introduction by the notes left by the scholar and librarian Dorothy Porter con- Tb rny ast.onishmcnt, one llannah F'rafi (spelled rvith a A) was cerning her belief that crafts was both a black woman and a fugi- listcd as living in Baltimore Counry , in 1880. She was tive slave, all of which made me want to learn more' Although rnarried to Wesley lfuaft. (t{ow clever, I thought, to have rendered Porter purchased the manuscript in 1948 from a rare-book dealer lrer husband, Wesley, metaphorically as a Methodist minister- in New York City, the manuscript had been located by a "book rrfterJohn Wesley-in her novel!) Both Wesley and Hannah were scout" in NewJersey. Since Crafts claims at the end of the tale to listed as black. \Mhat's more, Hannah claimed to have been born be living in a free colored community in NewJersey, it seemed rea- irr Virginia, just as the author oI The Bondwoman's Narratiue had, sonable to continue my search for her there. lrccn! This had to be Hannah Crafts herself, at last. I was so ec- The obvious name for which to search, as you might expect, slatic that I took rny wif'e, Sharon Adams, ancl my best friend ancl was Hannah crafts. But no Hannah craftses are listed in the en- r olleagrre, Anthony Appiah, out to celebrate over a bit too much tire U.S. federal census berween 1860 and lBB0. Several women t lrnnrpagne shortly after ordering a copy of'the actual census 1860 census named Hannah Craft, however, are listed in the r t'r'ord for this lone-lost author. We had a glorious celebration. to my index. As I would learn as my research progressed, much 'l'hree days later, the photocopy of the page in the 1BB0 census the chagrin, Hannah Craft was a remarkably popular name by :rrrir,ed from the Morrnon Family History Library in Salt Lake these Hannah crafts middle of the nineteenth century. All of { )ity. I stared at the document in disbelief: not only was Hannah South. But one Hannah were white, and none had lived in the s:rirl to be thirty years of age-born in 1850, while the novel had New.]ersey in 1860. I eagerly searched craft was indeed living in lrt't^n written between 1855 and 1B6l-but the record noted that records. She was living in the town of Hills- for her in the censlrs tlris Hannah Kraft could neither read nor write! Despite all of the in Somerset County. She was thirty-four years of age and borough, r('1rs()ns that census data were chclck {ull of errors, there were far was married to Richard Craft. Both were white. This Hannah Craft tr)() rn2lny discrepancies to explain away to be able to salvage this was not living in New.fersey before 1860. And her entry listed no Il;rrrrrah Kraft as the possible author of T'he Bonclutom,nn's Nrtrratiue. birthplace, the sole entry on this page of the census in which this \ lv lrangover returned. information was lacking. I could not help but wonder if this Han- Irr thr: miclst of rny urowing frustration, I examined the Freed- nah Craft could be passing for white, "incognegro," as it were, nr;rn s Bank records, made newly available or-r CD-ROM by the given her imperilecl and r,'ulnerable status as a fugitive slave' \lor rnon Family History Librari,. 'fhe Freedman's Bank tvas chal- vvhile I was trying to derermine if the Hannah craft living irr rcr < rI by C)ongress on Marctr 3, 1865. Founded by white abolition- NewJersey in 1860 could be passing, it suddenly occurred to m(: rrls;uld businessmen, it atrsorbecl black ntilitary banks ancl to broaden my search to 1880. After all, if Hannah crafts had sought r,, a mlltual savinss bank firr fieecl people. By 1874 there been in her mid to late twenties when she wrote her novel (Fred- l)r()vide rt'72,000 dcpositors i,vith over erick Douglass was twenty-seven when he published his 1845 slavt' '', $3 nrillion. The bank's white narrative), then she would be between fifty-five or so and sixty irt rrust('es arnended the charter to specuiate in stocks, bonds, real 1880, assuming that she had survived. Perhaps I would find her' r st.rtt', zrnd unsecured loans. ln the fin:rncial panic of 1873, the there, living openly under her own name, now that -anrl lr,rrrk struggled to survive, and Frederick Douelass was named the Fugitir,e Slave Act-was long clead. prcsirlent in a futile attempt to maintain confidence. The bank

lviii lix Introduction Introduction collapsed onJune 2,lB74,with most depositors losing their entire be our author.) And in the case of Mary H. Crafts we have no savings. record of what the initial ,Ilstands for. Still, the handwriting simi- \{hile no Hannah Craft or Crafts appears in the index of the larities are intriguing, as is the fact that this Maria H. Crafts was a bank's depositors, a Maria H. Crafts does. Her application, dated schoolteacher, and hence a potential author. March 30,l\74,lists her as opening an account in a bank in New I now decided to return to an early lead that had once seemed Orleans. Her birthplace is listed as either Massachusetts or Missis- t'xtremely promising. While typing the manuscript, my research sippi (the handwriting is not clear), and she identified herself as rtssistant, Nina Kollars, suggested that I look for I{annah under a schoolteacher. Her complexion is listed as "white," a designation the name of Vincent, since she was a slave of the Vincents' in Vir- meaning, as an official at the Mormon Library explained to me, ginia, and could have taken Vincent as her surname. (My sur- that she could possibly have been white, but this was unlikely, rrame is Gates, I happen to know, because a farmer named Brady eiven the fact that Freedman's was a bank for blacks.27 A far more living in western Maryland purchased a small group of slaves from likely possibility is that she could have been a mulatto, perhaps an Iloratio Gates in Berkeley Springs, Virginia, now West Virginia.) especially fair mulatto. Most interesting of all, she has signed the So I began to search for Hannah Vincent in the 1850 and 1860 document herself. ( ('nsuses. To my great pleasure, I found Hannah Ann Vincent, age I immediately sent a copy of this document to Dr. lwenty-two, single, living in Burlington, NewJersey, in lB50 in a for a comparison with the handwriting of the author of The Bond- lrousehold that included another woman, named Mary Roberts. woman's Narrat'iae. Dr. Nickell reported that the results were in- \/incent was twenty-two; Roberts, forty-seven. Roberts was black; conclusive. According to Nickell, "the handwriting is a similar Vincent was a mulatto, birthplace unknown. I was convinced that type, with some specific differences, notably the lack of the hook tlris Hannah Vincent was the author of The Bondwoman's Netrra- on the ending of the q and a missing up-stroke on the capital c. tittc-that is, until I received Dr. Nickell's conclusive report. I But the matter is complicated by the fact that we don't actually 'lrclved this theory, since the author of the novel was a slave of the have a signature for Hannah Crafts, we only have an instance ol' Wheelers' who had been purchased in 1855 or so because Jane her name written in her handwriting on the novel's title page." lolrnson had run away. Besides, no Hannah Vincent appears in "For some people," Nickell continued, "there is a marked differ- tlrc 1860 NewJersey census. ence. Because of the lapse of twenty years, during which time her Because Hannah Crafts claims to be livirrg in at handwriting may have changed, and because we are not compar- novel's end, in a community of free blacks, married to a Methodist ing signature to signature, we cannot rule out the possibility that r lcrgyman, teaching schoolchildren, I decided in a lastditch ef- this is the handwriting of the same person." lort to research the history of black Methodists in NewJersey, With this cautiously promising assessment, I returned to tht' t:rking Crafts at her word. (The obvious problem with an census records in search of Maria H. Crafts. Although twenty- ,rrrtobiographical novel is determining where fact stops and fic- three Mary H. Craftses are listed as "black" in the lBB0 national tion starts. Still, the NewJersey provenance of the manuscript in index to the federal census, and six Mary Craftses are listed as mrt- 11148 supported this line of inquiry.) What is especially curious latto, no Maria Craftses are listed. (Of these Mary Craftses, only .rlrout Crafts's selection of NewJersey as her home in the North is "was one, listed as having been born in Virginia in 1840, could possibly tlrrrt New.Jersev the site of several tlnderground Railroad

lx lxi Introduction lntroduction routes" and that "the region became a haven for slaves escaping lrousehold of.'fhornas Vincent, age firrty-eight. He was listed as the south," as Giles R. Wright puts it in his Afro-Americnns in Nat lrlack, she as a mulatto. He rvas a porter in a liquor store, she was several all-black "kr:eping house." Both were said to have been born irr Pennsylvania. Jersey.28 Moreover "by 1870, New Jersey had communities," including Skunk Hollow in Bergen County; Since the Hannah Vincent I had founcl in 1850 had been listed as Guineatown, l,awnside, and Saddlerstown in Camden County; lwenty-two, single, and a mulatto, I presumed this Hannah Vincent Timbuctoo in Burlington County; and Gouldtown and Springton (age forty-six) to be the same person, livins with her brotheq tweng/ in Cumberland County. In addition, Camden, Newton, Center, vcars later. But in the 1880 census, Hannah-now clairning that her Burlington, Deptford, Mannington, Pilesgrove, and Fairfield also :rqc was still forty-eight!-is listed as Thomas's wife, both now iden- "had a sizeable number of Afro-Americans." (p. 38) It is, there- tified as having been born in New.|ersey. Unless the 1850 Hannah fore, quite possible that crafts was familiar with these communi- \lirtcent had married a man also narned Vincent, this Nlethodist ties and that she either lived in one or chose to end her novel Srrnday school teacher was a diflbrent person fiom her lB50 name- there because of NewJersey's curious attraction for fugitive slaves. s:rkc. 'fo adcl to the confusion, a birth record for a Sarnuel Vin- Yet, feq if any, authors of the slave narratives end their flight to r <'rrt, dated 1850, lists his parents as one Thomas and Hannah, freeclom in NewJersey, making it difficult to imagine how Crafts rlt'spite the fact that our Hannah Vincent was single according to knew about these free black communities as a safe haven from tlrc 1850 census. Samuel Vincent's race is not identified. Only her slavery if she did not indeed live in or near one. She did not, in rrurrriage certificate could reveal her maiden name. But a search of other worcls, select NewJersey from a reading of slave narratives tlrt: NewJersey marriage licenses stored in Trenton failed to un- or abolitionist novels. Slave narrators such as Douglass, Brown, ( ( )ver a record of Thomas's marriage to Hannah. Neither did a and Jacobs end their flight to the North in places such as '.':rrch of the tombstones at Bethel A.M.E. Clhurch in Burlington Rochester, New Bedford, Boston, or New York. lor rn

lxiv lxv Introduction Introduction being so rare in the literature. Whereas Crafts clings to her class irrg, education, morals, manners, hygiene-these are the values orientation as an educated mulatto, as a literate , she that Hannah Crafts embraces consistently throughout the novel, does not, on the other hand, reject intimate relationships with li'om her life as a slave to freedom within the colored middle class black people tout court. She is a snob, in other words, but she is not r rl'NewJersey. In a sense Crafts seems determined to unsanitize de- a racist. pictions of the horrible conditions the slaves experienced, reveal- Hannah decides to run away to protect herself from rape by a irrg the debilitating effects this brutal institution had upon the black rnan she finds loathsome and reprehensible, uneducated, victims-the slaves-much as Richard Wright would later, in Na- uncouth, and unwashed and, as she freely admits, to avoid the live Son (1940), attempt to reveal the brutal eff'ects of racism and squalor of life in the slave quarters. But throughout the novel, she crpitalism on Bigger Thomas. That she makes no apologies for bonds with a variety of black characters, starting with her unveiled tlrese attitudes is one of the most fascinating aspects of her narra- mulatto mistress on the Lindendale plantation: tive strategy, as if class trumps race when a choice is demanded. lltrt class and race combined compose the ideal that Crafts val- "And will you go with me?" she inquired. , rrizes throughout her text. That combination is the basis of the "I will, my dear mistress." lrlissful life that she finds at the conclusion of her tale. Hannah ( "Call me mistress no longer. Henceforth you shall be to me as I afts can be thought of as the figurative grandmother of W. E. B. a very dear sister" she said embracing me again. "Oh: to be free, I)rr Bois's "talented tenth." Though other mixed-race narrators, to tre free." srr<:h as Harriet Wilson or HarrietJacobs, stress industry and hard rvork, none makes it a fetish in the way that Crafts does. 'fhroughout Crafts clearly admires her fellow slave Lizzy, "a Quadroon" who, the novel, Crafts underscores the fact that the in- she tells us, "had passed through many hands, and experienced all stitrrtion of slavery does not respect distinctions among the slaves. ( the vicissitudes attendant on the life of a slave," from suffering ll;rss distinctions are irrelevant. "the extremes of a master's fondness" to his wife's "jealousy and their daughter's hate." (Crafts repeatedly stresses the sexual vul- He recklonled not that she was a woman of delicate sensibili- nerability of all female slaves, but especially that of house servants lies and fine perfecti6ns-shs was a slave, and that was all to him. and mulattos.) Later, Crafts bonds withJacob, a "black man" and Ip.82; see also pp.33 and 761 a fugitive slave fleeing *ith his sister, as Crafts herself is fleeing near the end of the novel. Ald most important of all, she ends the lrlsewhere, Crafts rails against an irrational system that privi- "mere novel by willingly selecting an identity as a black person, married lcgcs accident of birth, and what persons were the least ca- to a free-born black Methodist ministeq keeping "a school for col- ;,;rlrle of changing or modi$ing" over their capacity to "improve" ored children." This is all the more remarkable given the fact thal tlrcrnselves. lpp.76-771 It is native intelligence, diligence, and lr.rrd she makes the final leg of her escape route in the disguise of a work that should be the ultimate measures of individual white woman, having been persuaded by Aunt Hetty to abandotl rvorth and success in a truly democratic society, she argues im- her disguise as a white male. Crafts chooses her blackness will- l,licitly throughout her novel. 'l'here (lrafts ingly, in other words, just as she chooses her class identity. Breed- can be little doubt that is intimately familiar with

lxvi lxvii Introduction Introduction U slavery, just as she is intimately familiar with the Wheeler family. other's will; . . . and then might be decreed without a moment's Again and again she makes telling observations about the mind of warning to never meet again[?] [p. 120] both slaves and slave owners that are astonishingly perceptive, novel, and counterintuitive. For example, she writes that No, she concludes with the greatest finality, "The slave, if he or she desires to be content, should always remain in celibacy." "If it But those who think that the greatest evils of slavery are con- was my purpose," she continues, "I could bring many reasons to nected with physical suffering posses [sic] no just or rational ideas substantiate this view, but plain, practical common sense must of human nature. The soul, the immortal soul must ever long and tcach every observer of mankind that any situation involving such yearn for a thousand things inseperable [sic] to liberty. Then, too, r esponsibilities as marriage can only be filled with profit, and the fear, the apprehension, the dread, and deep anxiety always at- Ironoq and advantage by the free." [p. l3l1 tending that condition in a greater or less degree. There can be In her own case, it is Mrs. \Alheeler's attempt to force her to "rTrarry" no certainty, no abiding confidence in the possession of any good a field slave-that is, to allow Bill to rape her and to force ("most thing. [p.94] lrcr to live in the squalor of the cabins horrible of all r loomed to association with the vile, foul, filthy inhabitants of the Crafts repeatedly objects to slaves getting married, because their lrrrts, and condemned to receive one of them for my husband")- masters were not bound to honor the sanctity of this institution tlrat forces her to run away. As Crafts puts it, combining her con- and because children of slaves were, by definition, slaves as well: r crns about the violation of her virtue and the integrity and s:rnctity of her sexuality with the violation of her sensibilities: Marriage like many other blessings I considered to be especially designed for the fiee, and something that all the victims of slavery And now when I had voluntarily renounced the society of those should avoid as tending essentially to perpetuate that system. Hence I might have learned to love[,] should I be compelled to accept to all overtures of that kind from whatever quarter they might come one, whose person, and speech, and manner could not fail to be I had inr,ariably turned a deaf ear. I had spurned domestic ties not cver regarded by me with loathing and disgust. Then to be driven because my heart was hard, but because it was my unalterable resc> irr to the fields beneath the eye and lash of the brutal overseer, and lution never to entail slavery on any human being. [pP' 206-2071 those miserable huts, with their promiscuous crowds of dirry, ob- scene and degraded objects, for my home[,] I could not, I would True marriage, she tells us earlier in the text, was an incon- not bear it. [p. ZttZ] ceivable idea for a slave: ( )nly this double violation-"a compulsory union with a man

. . . vows and responsibilities [were] strangely fearful when rllrorn I could only hate and despise" (p. 206)-could force Han- taken in connection with their servile condition. Did the future rr.rlr to flee: "it seemed that rebellion would be a virtue, that duty spread before them bright and cloudless? Did they anticipate do- t, r rrryself and my God actually required" her to run away, she con- mestic felicity, and long years of weclded love: when their lives, , lrr<[cs. Rarely, if ever, in the literature created by ex-slaves has the thcil limbs. tht'ir vt'rv souls wt'rt' sublt'< t to the c()rltr()l of an- prospect of rape, and the gap in living conditions between house

Ixviii lxix Introduction Introduction and field, been put more explicitly and squarely. Obviously, Han- Andrews continues his fascinating line of reasoning as follows: nah Crafts had no fear about offending the sensibilities of rrorth- ern abolitionists nor the tastes of her putative middle-class Of course, Mrs. Wheeler doesn't think highly of Hannah, but readership, or other black people. One is forced to wonder if her the fact that the narrator of that story is at pains to point out to treat their female slaves with a bluntness about these matters stood as an obstacle to her ability to her reader that female slaveholders great deal more intimacy than standard abolitionist propaganda publish her tale. acknowledges allies the Crafts narrative to that of Keckley, who A final example of Crafts's intimate knowledge of slavery is a also insists to her northern white friends, equally convinced by an- sutrtle one. It involves the degree of intimacy possible between a tislavery propaganda that black women and white women couldn't mistress and a female slave. Crafts's account reads as follows: possibly have any basis for communication after the war, that there was an intimate connection between her and her former mistress. Those who suppose that southern ladies keep their attendants In Keckley that intimacy is based on genuine mutual concern-at at a distance, scarcely speaking to them, or only to give commands least that's the way she portrays it-whereas in Crafts's, Mrs. have a very erroneous impression. Bettveen the mistress and her \Alheeler cares nothing for Hannah as a person. The key similarity, slave a freedom exists probably not to be found elsewhere. A however, is that in both texts, a black woman is trying to get her northern woman would have recoiled at the idea of communicat- white readers to realize that the relationship between white and a private history to one of my race, and in my condition, ing black women in slavery was not one of mere dictation, white to was near whereas such a thought never occurred to Mrs Wheeler. I black, or mere subjugation of the black woman by the white her. [p. 150] woman. A white woman in the North in the antebellum era who wanted to preserve her antislavery credentials would have found it slave William Andrews (the author of the definitive study of the hard to make such a characterization of intimacy between women narratives) analyzes this passage as follows, relating it directly to a slaveholders and their female slaves. A white southern woman similar observation made in the written by Eliza- syrnpathetic to slavery might make such a claim, but she wouldn't Lreth Keckley, titled Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Sktae, and sllggest that Mrs. Wheeler is as shallow and self-interested in culti- Four Years in the White House ( 1868): vating Hannah as Crafts makes her out to be. Thus only a black woman who had herself been a slave would be in a position of au- In chapter 14 of Behind the Scmes Keckley notes that soon after thority to make such a claim about this kind of intimacy between the war is over, her former mistress, Ann Garland, asks her to r,vtrite and black women in slavery. come back to see the family in Virginia. The idea that such a re- union would appeal to her former owners is incredible to Keck- Andrews's observation convincingly reinforces Crafts's authen- ley's northern friends, who think that since Keckley was a slave she rrr ity both as a black woman and a former slave. couldn't possibly care about the Garlands or they about her. Keck- ( liven the extent of the circumstantial evidence, it seems rea- .,,,rnble ley goes on to recount her reunion with the Garlands to show that to conclude that Dorothy Porter's intuition was correct. they think very highly of her even after the war.32 \\'lrilc we mav not vet be certain of her name, we do know who

lxx lxxi Introduction Introduction

Hannah Crafts is, that is, we know the central and defining facts Notes about her life: that she was female, mulatto, a slave ofJohn Hill Wheeler's, an autodidact, and a keen observer of the dynamics of' 1. Joe Lockard, "Afterword," Autobiography of a Female Slaueby Mattie slave life. Hannah Crafts has given us a black sentimental novel, t;r i(Iith (fackson: University of Mississippi, 1998), pp. a07-08. The novel one based closely on her experiences as a slave, but one at times n',rs lirst published in ]856. On Stowe's sales, see Richard Newman, llitrd.s Like Freedorz (Westport, Conn.: Locust Hill Press, 1996), p. 20. written in a most unsentimental manner. As scholar Rudolph Byrd 2. See William L. Andrews, Tb 'fell a Free Story: The l'irst Cmturl of Afro- puts it, "The Bondwoman's Narratiae is a text in which we have f

I t t r ti.can Literature, I 7 7 5- 1 8 53 (New lbrk New York University Press, 1 992) . .G, It. Although Hildreth published his novel anonymously, it was copy- r rl,lrled under the name of the printer and publisher,John Eastburn. Hil- ,lrcllr's name, however, appears on the copyright page of the second Did Hannah pass for white? Did she open a bank account at tht' ,,lrlion (Boston, 1840), and on the title page as editor in the expanded Bank in New Orleans in 1874, under the name ol Freedman's lr{rr? (,dition, titled The White Slaae: or, Memoirs of a l'ugitiue (London: In- Maria H. Crafts? Or did Hannah marry Thomas Vincent, teat'lt 1,,,rrrr, Oooke and Company, 1852). The review in The Liberaror (March 31, Sunday school in a black Methodist church in NewJersey, and trsr' ttt lT) clefends the novel against those who doubted its authenticity, ar- (plural) as an homage to Ellen arrrl # l,rrrrrg that "it purports to have been written by a slave, and it is no more the unusual name of Crafts I William Craft, to whose cross-dressing disguise Hannah refi:ts ,lrllrr rrlt to imagine this to be the case, than to imagine who could wrire ,r rl r slave did not." But reviews such as that publishedin'l-he Christian twice in her novel? Only further research can determine the itrt' I ',ttttirr.e'rin 1839 were far more typical: "We read, in what professes to be swer to these questions. To facilitate that process and to rest()l'(' rl,, l.rrrguage of a slave, that which we feel a slave could not have written" as author of the first n

lxxii Ixxiii Introduction t 14. Letter from Leslie A. Morris to Henry Louis Gates,Jr., April 5, 2001. A Note on Punctuarion and Spellinq 15. Letter Iiom Craigen W. Bowen to Henry Louis Gates,.fr., April 5, 2001. 16. Letter from \4'yatt Houston Day to Henry Louis Gates,Jr., April 6, 2001. 'fhroughout the text, every effort was made ro prinr the novel as it 17. Letter from Kenneth Rendell to Laurence Kirshbaum, April 26, 2001. 18. Nickell's report, pp. 13-14. appeared in the original holograph. Hannah Crafts's spelling has 19.Ibid., pp. l2-13. been retained, though, on occasion, a bracketed insertion has been 20.lbid', p.27. rdded to aid readability (e.g., "to[o]"); rhe use of [sic] has been re- Letter to Henry Louis Gates,Jr., December 13, 2001. See also Robert 21. stricted to syntacrical matters. E. May, T'he Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1851 (Gainesville: Periods at the end ofsentences have been inserted globally; University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 96-98 and 107. ques- 22. On \Arheeler, see S. Austin Allibone, editor, Critical Dictionary of Eng- tion marks after interrogatory sentences appear only where Hannah lish l-iterature and British and American Authors (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin- (.rafts put them; crossed-out words indicate Crafts's own revisions. cott, 1897), p. 1511; "Sally's Family Place" website (www2.txcyber.corn/ llracketed quorarion marks have been added around dialogue where smkoestl/; E. Findling, editor, Dictionary of American DiPlomatic His- John rheir absence would impede the readability of the narrative. tory,2d ed., rev. and expanded (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), pp. 543-44; Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Americon Biography, ed. byJames Grant Wil- son andJohn Fiske (New York: Appleton, 1888), p. 453:' Dictionary oJ Amer- ican Biography (NewYork: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928-58), vol. 22, p. 50; see also p. 139 of vol. 23 of the 1999 edition of the ANR. 23. Letter from Tom Parramore to Henry Louis Gates,Jr., November 16, 2001. 24. Bryan Sinche pointed this out to me. 25. See The Case of Passmore Wilkamson (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Anti- Slavery Society, 1855), and Still, pp. 86-97. Two versions of.|aneJohnson's testimony appear in Appendix B. See Still, pp. 94-95. 26. David Brion Davis, "The Enduring Legacy of the South's Civil War Victory," New York Times, Alugttst 26, 2001, section 4, p. 6. 27. Conversation with Tim Bingaman, Mormon Family History Library, May 15, 2001. 28. Giles R. Wright, Afro-Americans in, NeuJersq (Trenton: NewJersey His- torical Commission, 1988), p. 39. 29. This book is reprinted in 'l'he Bh,ck Biographical Dictionary Index, ed. by Randall and Nancy Burkett and Henry Louis Gates,Jr. (Alexandria, Va.: Chadwyck Healy, 1985). 30. Elizabeth M. Perinchiet, History o.f the Cemeleries in Burlington Oou,nty, New.lersq, 1587-1975 (n.p. 1978), p. 30. 31. Letter from Nina Baym to Henry Louis Gates,Jr., May 9, 2001. 32. Letter to Henry Louis Gates,.|r., October 26, 2001. 33. Letter to Henrv Louis ()ates,.|r-., Novernber 2,2001.

lxxiv