Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race

the black hearts of men John Stauffer The Black Hearts of Men radical abolitionists and the transformation of race harvard university press cambridge, massachusetts and london, england Copyright © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2004 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stauffer, John. The black hearts of men : radical abolitionists and the transformation of race / John Stauffer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-00645-3 (cloth) ISBN 0-674-01367-0 (pbk.) 1. Abolitionists—United States—History—19th century. 2. Antislavery movements—United States—History—19th century. 3. Abolitionists—United States—Biography. 4. Smith, James McCune, 1813–1865. 5. Smith, Gerrit, 1797–1874. 6. Douglass, Frederick, 1817?–1895. 7. Brown, John, 1800–1859. 8. Radical- ism—United States—History—19th century. 9. Racism—United States—Psychological aspects—History—19th century. 10. United States—Race relations—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title. E449 .S813 2001 973.7Ј114Ј0922—dc21 2001039474 For David Brion Davis Contents A Introduction • 1 one The Radical Abolitionist Call to Arms • 8 two Creating an Image in Black • 45 three Glimpsing God’s World on Earth • 71 four The Panic and the Making of Abolitionists • 95 five Bible Politics and the Creation of the Alliance • 134 six Learning from Indians • 182 seven Man Is Woman and Woman Is Man • 208 eight The Alliance Ends and the War Begins • 236 Epilogue • 282 Abbreviations · 287 Notes · 289 Acknowledgments · 355 Index · 359 the black hearts of men Introductionthe black hearts of men Introduction A The white man’s unadmitted—and apparently, to him, unspeakable— private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro. The only way he can be released from the Negro’s tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black himself. —James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963) A few days after Christmas in 1846 the black physician James McCune Smith told his wealthy white friend Gerrit Smith what must be done to convince Americans of “the eternal equality of the Human race.” “Good Government” would help, he said, particularly “Bible Politics” and its “ªrst principle” of racial equality. But politics and government represented only the “outward sign” of “an inward and spirit-owned conviction.” Before equality could be attained, there had to be a pro- found shift in American consciousness: “The heart of the whites must be changed, thoroughly, entirely, permanently changed,” McCune Smith said. He went on to suggest that whites had to understand what it was like to be black. They had to learn how to view the world as if they were black, shed their “whiteness” as a sign of superiority, and re- nounce their belief in skin color as a marker of aptitude and social status. They had to acquire, in effect, a black heart.1 This book is about that moral shift. It focuses on James McCune Smith, Gerrit Smith, and their better-known comrades Frederick Douglass and John Brown, all of whom embraced an ethic of a black heart. Their story is remarkable. Together these four men, two black and two white, forged interracial bonds of friendship and alliance that were unprecedented in their own time and were probably not dupli- cated until well into the twentieth century. In a society pervaded by slavery and racism, they came together to seek equality for all people in their communities and throughout the country. They offered an alter- 1 2 the black hearts of men native to an American dream that privileged white men over almost everyone else. As they transformed themselves and overcame existing social barriers, they reimagined their country as a pluralist society in which the standard of excellence depended on righteousness and benevolence rather than on skin color, sex, or material wealth. In one sense they were exemplars of the notion, now quite fashionable in the academy, that race, class, and gender are social constructs. In their time this was a radically new concept.2 The rise and fall of these four men’s alliance occurred alongside the fragmentation of America from the panic of 1837 to Secession. While the nation virtually doubled in size and dramatically expanded its slave territory and slave population, these men experienced their own ex- traordinary self-transformations. They saw themselves as prophets preparing for a new and glorious age—a new America that would be free from sin and oppression. They embraced the idea of “sacred self- sovereignty,” believing that the kingdom of God was within them and potentially within all individuals. And at a time when the country’s two main political parties were fragmenting, they created their own political party. They became Radical Political Abolitionists, and viewed the government as sacred and the appropriate means for pursuing their millennium. But they were overcome by the lack of progress toward a just and moral society. The hearts of whites were not being changed, and they felt profoundly alienated from white laws and conventions that defended slavery and racial oppression. In their quest for a perfect society, they accepted righteous violence, which ªnally resulted in John Brown’s disastrous raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, as part of a scheme to liberate the slaves. The event produced Brown’s execution, sent Gerrit Smith to an insane asylum, and de- stroyed the very alliance that they had so courageously created. It also propelled the nation toward a brutal civil war that had been previewed in Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry and earlier in his efforts to keep Kansas safe from slavery. A number of other factors united these four men. They corre- sponded frequently and saw one another as often as possible. In fact they all lived in New York State during their alliance, three of them in upstate New York. They were more successful than any of their peers at collapsing racial barriers, as is revealed by their political and social alliance. And they were instrumental in shaping each other’s self- Introduction 3 deªnitions and reform visions. These lines of inºuence and intercon- nectedness are revealed in form as well as in content in the story line that unfolds in the following pages, which weaves together the four men’s lives by highlighting one at a time. The overall effect is a kind of collective biography, a braiding together of four lives. Only by chang- ing perspectives, listening to multiple voices from different social groups and vantage points, is it possible to understand how racial iden- tities get deªned, blurred, and remade.3 Gerrit Smith is the lead protagonist. He is the tragic ªgure who ulti- mately loses himself and his black heart. He is also the primary thread linking the other three characters. Without him, this biracial quartet could not have existed, for it was through his initiative and generosity that the four men ªrst came together. And without his penchant for saving the letters he received and making copies of those he wrote, their friendship would have been lost to posterity. Most of the letters among the four men run through Smith. The other three corre- sponded with him far more than they did among themselves. Gerrit Smith’s correspondence with Frederick Douglass and James McCune Smith represents the largest extant biracial correspondence in antebellum America, and possibly in the nineteenth century. There are hundreds of letters between them in the Gerrit Smith Papers and the Fred- erick Douglass Papers, and hundreds more in Douglass’ newspapers, providing the raw text of their friendship. As a land baron, Gerrit Smith was also the only character able to connect the world of wealth and power with that of Christian benevolence, militant abolitionism, and the marginalized status of the other three men. And his integrated village of Peterboro, in Madison County, New York, and the black set- tlement he helped establish at North Elba, New York (which consti- tuted John Brown’s permanent residence from 1854 until his death), offer manageable settings in which to view the dynamics of race, religion, class, and gender at the levels of both self and society. Gerrit Smith, James McCune Smith, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown were in no way “representative” men in antebellum America, even though they were often deªned as such by their admirers. They did, however, represent what was possible: they occupied an endpoint on the spectrum of “identity formation,” and their self-conceptions and hopes for America depended upon their success in blurring and breaking down distinctions of race, religion, class, and gender. Al- 4 the black hearts of men though they stood apart from their peers in their efforts to imagine and realize a new America, their reform rhetoric resembled the poetic rhetoric of a number of romantic writers. Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson describe a similar quest for self-transformation and liberation from existing social codes, and the four abolitionists were either inspired by or otherwise connected to these literary ªgures. Treating their reform work as “art” and comparing it to the work of these more “traditional” artists enhance our understanding of the broader culture of dissent in America by revealing what kinds of pro- test were permissible, possible, even thinkable. A The story of this interracial alliance offers a number of new insights and perspectives on antebellum reform and the Civil War era. It shows how Americans from different social groups interacted and shaped each other’s worldviews—something no other study of antebellum reform has done in depth.

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