Freedom Dues: Negotiating Race, Servitude, and Freedom in Early American Law and Literature

Marci Prescott-Brown

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto

Marci Prescott-Brown

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of English University of Toronto

2019 Abstract

Freedom dues were typically payments of money, land, or clothing that masters gave to servants upon completion of servitude. Using case studies, this thesis captures the arc of a historic transformation in how freedom dues were perceived between the mid- seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries; it illuminates how these dues became a humanitarian symbol and the narrative of self-actualization that arose about them. The narrative focus on freedom dues was generated through tracts advocating immigration to colonial America and was integral to early understandings of the promise of New World prosperity. The texts I address use this narrative to critique a society failing to live up to its implied ideal: enfranchisement through hard work. My thesis reveals that often relations of servitude morph into something that looks dangerously akin to chattel slavery.

In Chapter One, I contrast the Lawes and Libertyes (1648), where servants were to be prevented from “be[ing] sent away emptie,” to the revisioning of this framework in the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), which enshrined slaves’ perpetual indebtedness. In

Chapter Two, I use the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (1692-93) to examine how

Tituba’s claim that the devil offered her an indenture followed by many “fine things” came to influence other testimonies. I argue that the narrative Tituba and others craft regarding the Devil's promise of servitude properly rewarded but not supplied by

Massachusetts’s governors would have been shocking in New England at the time.

Chapter Three analyses The Scarlet Letter (1850) and reveals that, by presenting Hester

Prynne as a branded, lifelong indentured servant, Hawthorne effectively portrays a variety of servitude that appears similar to black slavery. Hester and Pearl have their customary white privileges undermined, I argue, and Hawthorne’s novel reveals abolitionist leanings. In Chapter Four, I consider Harriet Wilson’s autobiographical text,

Our Nig (1859). The Bellmonts’ refusal to provide proper freedom dues to the novel’s protagonist highlights the degree to which her servitude has been slavish, and Wilson’s plea for support to remedy this wrong provides a final critique of "free" New England.

iii

Acknowledgments

This dissertation was generously supported by University of Toronto Fellowships and a Doctoral Completion Award, as well as by Ontario Graduate Scholarships, including The Thomas and Beverley Simpson OGS at the Faculty of Arts and Science.

I am deeply grateful to my supervisory committee. The attention each member gave my chapters, reading them and making numerous comments and suggestions over all these years greatly strengthened my work. My supervisor, Mary Nyquist, was my chief inspiration for this project and she has supported me through every challenge I faced. Her listening ear, extensive knowledge, and insightful, well-timed comments throughout the years made this dissertation what it is. George Elliott Clarke’s willingness to be on my committee proved fortuitous, as he often considered wider contexts of applications for the texts I was analysing that stretched into both Canadian and European sources, which undoubtedly enriched my work. I aspire to have his kindness and generosity as an academic. Jeannine De Lombard’s razor-sharp and intuitive feedback contributed to my knowledge and this thesis benefited from her critical assessment.

Thanks also to my examining committee for taking the time to read my work and provide so many interesting paths for future thought. Andrea Stone’s thorough and meticulous report helped me to see my thesis through fresh eyes. Her provocative questions before and during the examination will continue to bear fruit in the years to come as I revise these materials for publication. Thanks also to Paul Downes, whose questions during the exam I have noted. I know they will be very useful as I work in this field.

Everyone needs a village, and I, too, am fortunate to have one that sustained me in numerous ways while writing. Laurel Ryan, Kailin Wright, Jenny O’Kell, Alisha Walters, and Melanie East have supported me unconditionally since I started the program. Their intelligence and compassion have encouraged me greatly and I’m so blessed to have them as friends. Christine Choi’s timely encouragement as I finished up writing, submitting, and defending the dissertation helped me to maintain a positive outlook on what can be a daunting process. Her encouraging text messages just when I seemed awash in discouragement would pull me out of the pits in seconds, and remind me that not everything was in my control but it would all be okay. Pauline Beange, Kristen Schranz, and Joy Fitzgibbon are all from other departments at the University of Toronto but provided so much cheer, good food, advice, and laughter during all the seasons of this process – I could not have finished without their constant support.

Other parts of my village are directly connected to my becoming a mother during the program. Special thanks Brenda Lynham, Childhood Dreams Daycare (Bradford),

YMCA childcare (Bradford), and Shining Faces Daycare (Bradford) as well as my parents, Carrol and Valton Prescott, and my sister, Yolanda Prescott-Lewis, and my in- laws, Marie and Oral Brown, Rachel Brown, and Leah Brown, who all provided excellent childcare to my children while I was madly trying to write up, submit, and defend my dissertation. I also want to thank some wonderful television shows – Bo on the Go!, Dora the Explorer, and Doc McStuffins especially – for sometimes allowing me a couple more hours of writing time in a pinch when there was no other childcare available.

And there are still other parts of my village that have meant the world to me.

Special thanks also to all the staff at Sunset Grill (Bradford) who knew my work hours

v and would always keep the coffee coming and start my order as soon as I walked in. The laughter and conversation you provided as I crunched many deadlines to get this project done meant a lot to me. Thanks to Kate Epstein at EpsteinWords, who lent me her critical eye and provided many helpful recommendations on my writing as I tried to get everything submission-ready. And to Simonne Jones, my best friend since Junior

Kindergarten, who always reminded me that she’d never known me to quit anything in my life; that others could look at my challenges and think the end was nigh but she knew better (she’d say – with that silvery laugh of hers) and remind me that I knew where I came from and I could do this, no matter the hardships. Simonne, I am so grateful for you unending support and I am forever in your debt.

My family is a very special part of my village. My parents, Valton and Carrol

Prescott, have always encouraged me to strive for the best and put my all into everything

I do. Their love and support have been transformative for me in all the best ways. My sister and brother, Yolanda Prescott-Lewis and Nathan Prescott, always supported me with love, fun movie hours, popcorn, and a listening ear. I cannot express enough how thankful I am for the love and support of my husband and two children. My husband,

Orett Brown, continually sacrificed so that I could finish this dissertation; his unflagging support and outrageously amazing sense of humour in many ways empowered me to make the most of my thesis-writing experience. Lastly, my children, Annalise and Cayla, are the source of so much love and laughter for me outside of my writing-life. Annalise’s favourite question since she was about five years old - whenever she would see me writing – was, “Mommy, are you done the dissertation yet?” to which I’d reply: “No, it’s not done yet.” Annalise and Cayla – mommy is finally done!

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Introduction ...... 1 “The best poor Man’s Country in the World”: Reasons Why Many People Came to Colonial America ...... 3 The Master Class: Of Dreams and Reality ...... 10 The Scholarly Context...... 16 Chapter Overview ...... 21 Conclusions: Towards the Dream ...... 28

Chapter One - The White Master Class and the Law: The Rise of Freedom Dues in American Law and Literature ...... 30 The Nature of Indentured Servitude in Colonial America ...... 32 The Early Features of Freedom Dues and their Subsequent Transformation ...... 39 New England and the Rise of the Freedom Dues as Humanitarian in Symbol and Praxis...... 46 Slavery and Freedom in the Massachusetts Context ...... 56 International and Interstate Threats to Comity...... 59 White Slavery in the American Psyche ...... 67 The Porous Boundary between Nineteenth Century Indentured Servitude and Slavery ...... 70 Excavating Obligations of the White Master Class: A History ...... 73

Chapter Two - Deafening Silence and Empowered Tongues: Tituba, the Salem Witch Trials, and the New England Dream...... 84 The Puritan Project: New England Dream ...... 87 Witch Trials History ...... 94 Of Witchcraft, Pacts, and Freedom Dues ...... 95 Tituba: Of Diaspora and Reinvention in New England’s Promised Land ...... 104 Listening and Tellin’: The Examination of Martha Cory ...... 116 Freedom Dues Bound: Conventional Statements, Un-conventional Beliefs ...... 121 Dissenting Voices: Resisting the Siren’s Call; or, Crushing the Serpent’s Head? ...... 134 To “be well”: Dreams of a Different Life and a “New” New England...... 137 The Examination of Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Procter: “Wellness” as Freedom Dues ...... 139 The Unmentionables: Devilish Indentured Servitude, the Seduction of Freedom Dues, and the Puritan New England Dream ...... 147

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Chapter Three - “None but negers are sarvants”: Comity, Freedom Dues, and Hawthorne’s Abolitionist Leanings in The Scarlet Letter ...... 151 Key Historical and Legal Context for The Scarlet Letter ...... 154 The Scarlet Letter’s Engagement with Enslavement ...... 168 Hawthorne and The Cenci ...... 169 Hester’s Branded Body ...... 173 Hester’s Indenture ...... 177 The Salem Witch Trials and the Pliability of Race ...... 184 The Parallels between Hester’s Case and Commonwealth vs. Aves...... 188 Pearl on the Auction Block ...... 194 The Novel’s Invocation of Mosaic Law...... 197 The Eroded State of Hester’s Soul ...... 204 Pearl’s Inheritance ...... 211 Was Hawthorne an Abolitionist? ...... 213 Critics Who Disagree ...... 220 Conclusion...... 233

Chapter Four - The “Bind” in Binding Out: Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig and the Challenge of New England Expectations ...... 237 The Practice of Binding Out ...... 243 Imbued with Southern Principles ...... 252 The Failure of Frado’s Binding Out ...... 262 The “Spirit of Adoption”: Religious Rhetoric and Wilson’s Appeal for Belonging ...... 266 Religious Instruction and Frado’s Conversion ...... 266 The Question of Audience ...... 285 Martialing Literary Genres to Make Her Case ...... 292 The Final Indictment – Milford’s Failure ...... 303

Afterthoughts...... 310

Bibliography ...... 313

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Introduction

The election of Donald Trump to the office of President of the United States of

America has been, to say the least, contentious. The brand of Trumpism that has been on display since he began campaigning for office – the “America First” foreign policy, calls to secure the border against refugees and immigrants alike, and widespread economic nationalism – has garnered both celebration and derision across the United States and mostly derision abroad. While some argue that his administration will make the

American Dream more achievable for the average American, the majority argue his exclusionary policies are contributing to the Dream’s demise.

But what is the American Dream? According to historian James Truslow

Adams’s oft-quoted 1931 book, The Epic of America, it is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability of achievement”; it is a dream “of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognised by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”1 I contend that the “dream” Adams referenced came into existence earlier than most people are aware. Certainly most individuals believe that the Declaration of Independence plays a key role in defending key components of the

American Dream, as it begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that

1 James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1931), 404.

1 2 among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”2 Although it is clear that the writers had white property owners in mind, its application has now been extended to apply to Americans of diverse backgrounds and life experiences. The U.S. Constitution, written eleven years after the Declaration of Independence, and signed on September

17th, 1787, has also played a key role in legally protecting many of the ideals encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence.

While most scholars acknowledge these earlier documents as key purveyors of the framework that protects the American Dream,3 it is worth considering the range of historical moments much earlier than either of these which demonstrate the dream’s force. As I suggest in this dissertation, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

America was being settled and there was much propagandistic literature inviting people to migrate to the New World of opportunity and wealth. Much later, this was termed the

American Dream; however, for the purposes of this dissertation, I will refer to earlier notions of opportunity in colonial America as the promise of New World prosperity. The

2 The Declaration of Independence.

3 It is useful to consider the American Dream, not only in its 20th century manifestations, but also the ways in which the narratives proposed by others such as Martin Luther King became a lens through which this dream was understood. While it is correct to note that King’s dream was focused on racial equality and may not have encapsulated everything understood by the term “American Dream,” Eric Sundquist points out rightly that King’s dream has been so powerful at least in part because of the ways in which his speech urged people to “retur[n] to the nations founding ideals” (Eric J. Sundquist, King’s Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech [London: Yale University Press, 2008], 1). Indeed, the opening lines of King’s speech are more recognised today than those of the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence (Sundquist, 2). The connection of King’s riveting speech to founding ideals has been noted by others such as Representative Thomas P. (“Tip”) O’Neill, who said that King’s speech demanded that America be “as good as its Declaration of Independence, as good as its Bill of Rights” (Sundquist, 2). It is not a stretch, then, to acknowledge that the American Dream’s light has now been refracted through the prism of King’s particular dream. Certainly today this refraction gains even more significance as we consider the plight of “Dreamers” – the foreign-born but raised in-the-U.S.-kids who are seeking citizenship and dreading deportation.

3 earliest immigrants who came to the colonies for a better life recognised as important a period of indentured service followed by the receipt of freedom dues sufficient to become prosperous. “Freedom dues” – payments of money, land, tools, and/or clothing made upon completion of servitude – provided considerable benefits to their recipients, including the ability to purchase land and move into a higher class.4 While researchers generally recognise the seventeenth-century use of indentured servants who hailed from

Europe as a historical practice bolstered by propaganda, freedom dues have not been understood as germane to settlers seeking to realize the overarching, robust ideals of this promise of New World prosperity. This view obscures the contribution that practices related to indentured servitude had on the literature of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.

“The best poor Man’s Country in the World”5: Reasons Why Many People Came to Colonial America

Much of this dissertation finds its grounding in the reasons that people came to colonial America from England, reasons that were at times social, economic, or religious.

4 I discuss freedom dues at length in chapter one.

5 Qtd. on Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of The American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 172. Hereafter abbreviated American Revolution. This phrase was often used to refer to colonial America. One of its earliest uses is seen in 1705 where it was used in reference to Virginia. It was also used by William Smith, Jr., in reference to New York. The phrase was most often used regarding Pennsylvania. Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia, ed. Louis B. Wright (North Carolina: Chapel Hill, 1947), 275; Patricia U. Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (New York: Cornell University Press, 1971), 196; James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972).

In the seventeenth century many sought to improve their social standing, although the clear understandings of class that were evidenced two hundred years later did not yet exist in England.6 Social differences and economic lack were generally seen as the result of abuses by the government.7 As Gordon S. Wood writes, colonists who left England considered social mobility “possible” for people who “possess[ed] and demonstrate[d] the qualifications of the [higher] rank”8.

Colonial America evidenced a number of British categorizations for social standing; indeed, colonists in America generally spoke of “gentlemen of the first rank”, those of “middling circumstances”, and those of “the meaner sort”.9 Even wealthy artisans were considered “only middling” in rank – a designation given to most people in society – and those of the “meaner sort” were those who had no land, goods to trade, or important skills.10 There was a clear understanding that there were vast differences between gentlemen and commoners.11 But most individuals who traveled to colonial

America had a keen awareness of who they were superior or subordinate to (or not)12 and

6 Wood, American Revolution, 23.

7 Wood, American Revolution, 5.

8 Wood, American Revolution, 19.

9 Wood, American Revolution, 21.

10 Wood, American Revolution, 23.

11 Wood, American Revolution, 24.

12 Wood, American Revolution, 24.

5 could accordingly consider what colonial America had to offer them in the way of increased social standing.

For instance, it was easier to become a gentleman in colonial America than in

England. While the term “Gentleman” originally “meant noble by birth and applied to all of the aristocracy, even the king”,13 in colonial America many who would never be deemed a gentleman in England could gain entry to that rank.14 Indeed, rich merchants, clergymen, lawyers, physicians, and naval officers were deemed part of the gentry.15

Attaining wealth could gain one entry to the gentry – as one Virginian in the 1760s put it, any male who possessed “Money, Negroes and Land enough” was considered a

“compleat gentleman”, although some people might disagree, and express anxiety at the widening of the definition.16 Gentlemen in England did not work themselves, but in the colonies they might.17 While only born gentleman in England might have political power, men who attained the status in colonial America might as well.18

13 Wood, American Revolution, 25.

14 Wood, American Revolution, 30.

15 Wood, American Revolution, 31.

16 Qtd. on Wood, American Revolution, 32.

17 Wood, American Revolution, 36.

18 Wood, American Revolution, 120-121.

Because the uppermost tiers of English society –dukes, barons, marquesses, members of court, et cetera – did not exist in colonial America19, less wealth could go quite far to achieving higher social standing in the colonies. Even access to the ranks of merchants was easier in colonial America than England. In England a man typically needed approximately £3,000 in seed money to become a merchant; by comparison, in

Philadelphia he would need about £400. Similarly, a man worth £25,000 might be considered a major merchant in the colonies, whereas and in England he would need almost ten times the wealth to achieve such status.20 Many young Englishmen set out for the colonies because of this difference, in spite of higher risk of failure.21 Even the lot of the poor was worse in England, as colonial America did not have the slums of the variety

England possessed.22

This relative ease of social climbing made it appealing to many to set sail for colonial America as indentured servants. Being such a servant did not convey an

“unrespectable status” and people of any rank in England might use this means to pay for passage.23 Colonial servitude, Wood writes, was considerably “harsher, more brutal, and more humiliating” than indentured servitude in England; indentured servants experienced

19 Wood, American Revolution, 112.

20 Wood describes an upper limit of the requisite wealth in America as £50,000 in some colonies and £800,000 in some places in England. American Revolution, 112.

21 Wood, American Revolution, 119, 120.

22 Wood, American Revolution, 122.

23 Wood, American Revolution, 51.

7 more of the abuses visited on chattel slaves, who were prevalent in the colonies, in

America.24 Still, unlike chattel slaves, white indentured slaves at least could not be slaves for life, and their children would not follow their state, and passage to America and freedom dues meant entrée into the colonies’ flatter social structure.

In the 1640s and 1650s English colonists had five main areas they might journey to in the colonies: Irish plantations (Ulster and Munster); the Chesapeake colonies

(Virginia and Maryland); Bermuda; the New England colonies (Plymouth, Massachusetts

Bay, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Haven); and the West Indian colonies

(Barbados and the Leeward Islands).25 Those who chose the Chesapeake colonies or

New England typically hoped to make a fortune, once they completed their term of service, by acquiring valuable commodities which could easily yield high profits26; the

British popular press carried tales of “instant riches” and “fame” as well as “national wealth and power”—the political power they could not obtain in England.27 Many colonists were open to creating commercial centers with factories of the variety that were set up by the East India, Levant, and Muscovy companies, which could fuel trade and profit through the natives.28

24 Wood, American Revolution, 53.

25 Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), loc. 233 of 7078. Hereafter abbreviated Pursuits of Happiness. 26 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 244 of 7078.

27 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 250 of 7078.

28 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 252 of 7078.

The Virginia Company pioneered the indentured servitude model in colonial

America. Like most other colonists, they had come to colonial America to obtain wealth29, and they were willing to take significant risks to get it.30 But they found a shortage of labor to work on tobacco plantations and natives unwilling to perform the hard labor involved31. Consequently they promised immigrants to Virginia both land and freedom in exchange for a number of years of labor as servants.32 Freedom dues of land were considered enormously valuable at the time, and a particular draw to those who did not have land in England.33 The servants who came consisted of unskilled laborers and youth, agricultural workers, and tradesmen. Most hailed from within a forty-mile radius of London, Bristol, or Liverpool.34 The Virginia Company, Jack P. Greene writes, was determined that those who embarked on servitude to obtain a better life “should not be disappointed”.35 In the mid-1630s the young sons of gentry, some of them with their wives and children, journeyed to the Chesapeake colonies, spurred on by tales of great wealth.36 Prior to 1660, servants who arrived with these dreams seldom failed to achieve

29 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 266 of 7078.

30 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 272 of 7078.

31 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 277 of 7078.

32 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 278 of 7078.

33 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 282 of 7078.

34 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 282 of 7078.

35 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 287 of 7078.

36 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 340 of 7078.

9 these ends37 – if they survived their term of servitude, which, due to the harshness of it, many did not.38 Furthermore, those who immigrated from England with higher social status and modest capital to purchase servants were even more successful in colonial

America in terms of achieving great wealth and social standing in public office.39

Beyond the profit motive, the Virginia Company saw the colony as a special part of a divine plan in which “English Protestants chosen by God would carry out the redemptive mission of reclaiming Virginia and its heathen inhabitants for His true church”.40 Virginia was therefore more secular in composition and focus than Plymouth,

New England.

The colony of Plymouth, New England, which was settled in 1620, also adopted the indentured servants model, but it never promised as much wealth as the Chesapeake colonies did.41 Plymouth was more deeply religious as a society than Virginia42; colonists viewed themselves as specially chosen by God to reform the New World.43 In

Plymouth, the focus was creating a community of “Christian love” where all were

37 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 347 of 7078.

38 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 320 of 7078.

39 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 350 of 7078.

40 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 293 of 7078.

41 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 448 and 450 of 7078.

42 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 450 of 7078.

43 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 497 of 7078.

10 likeminded on religious matters and devoted to the community;44 those who were

“contentious” or “deviant” were swiftly excluded.45 Perhaps as a consequence, Plymouth attracted more families than Virginia46 Yet New England still held out the promise of greater social standing and financial security as well as, for Puritans, religious independence. Whether bound for Virginia or New England, many who came to these regions, whether indentured or not, wished to improve themselves in some way. And one of the most coveted ways to improve one’s life was to gain entry to the master class; those who came as indentured servants, then, held out hope that their desires in this regard would be fulfilled.

The Master Class: Of Dreams and Reality

Dominant understandings of the master class shaped the dream of obtaining prosperity through indentured servitude in the New World, as the specific objective was to move into the master class – that is, to have the status to own chattel slaves.

Members of this class were typically male and white, forty-four years old, and by around 1850, he was likely “native-born, and more than nine times out of ten he was born

44 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 527 of 7078.

45 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 527 of 7078.

46 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, loc. 462 of 7078.

11 in the South”.47 The majority of slaveholders owned five slaves or fewer.48 The master class was paternalistic; thus it relied upon the belief that each individual person had a varied position in the social hierarchy.49 In fact, there was a robust belief that such a hierarchy was “divinely inspired”.50 Indentured servitude was a vital part of launching the

Virginia colony, but coerced labour remained the preferred choice of masters well into the nineteenth century.51 Even in Britain there was “deep disappointment with the rapid transition from slavery to freedom in the…colonies”.52 Americans who heard countless pleas for emancipation noticed this disappointment but knew that such transitions would upend the current stratified social order. Certainly Protestant evangelicals, who

“converted – and reconverted – the South to Christianity during and after the 1790s[,] rested their defense of slavery on biblical sanction and spurned crass economic rationales for slavery”.53 But while a number of slaveholders accepted paternalism as a way to understand the order of the world which best supported upward social mobility, most slaveholders also found it quite challenging to disparage promotional literature created to woo European immigrants to America; this literature suggested that settlers could achieve

47 James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 51.

48 Oakes, x.

49 Oakes, xi.

50 Oakes, 3-4.

51 Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 271.

52 Drescher, 389.

53 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholder’s Worldview (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 77.

12 material success regardless of their background or resources.54 Promotional literature focused on cheap land – plentiful and there for the taking. John Brickell in 1737 hailed the prosperity North Carolina offered, and there was much cheap land and opportunity for advancement for white newcomers to the colony. An individual released from indenture after three or four years could easily have enough money to purchase a plantation and thus become, as Brickell wrote, a “wealthy and substantial Plante[r]”.55 Given that plantations required human chattel to function economically, the promise of New World prosperity was linked quite closely to moving up through the classes during this time by obtaining both land and enslaved Africans.56

In reality, only one in five indentured servants in America lived to see the conclusion of their indenture and also became prosperous.57 The lucky few would generally become slaveholders; thus, formerly indentured servants became the backbone of the slaveholding class.58 This background presented a tension: it made it harder for this class to eschew support for the upward mobility of those in servitude (the very system that had supported their own initial success) even though it clearly contradicted the paternalism integral to the slave-based economic system which servants-turned- slaveholders relied on to maintain their position.59 While it is not necessarily clear what

54 Oakes, Ruling Race, 7.

55 Qtd. in Oakes, 7.

56 Oakes, 7.

57 Oakes, 15.

58 Oakes, 8.

59 Oakes, 8.

“progress” was for the average slaveholder,60 scholars agree that slaveholders generally believed that “genuine progress would have to proceed within a stratified order that dispensed rewards unequally”.61 The average slaveholder, Genovese notes, did not see any contradiction in his “ideas of progress, freedom, and slavery”.62 While the indentured class had come to America on the basis of a strong belief in the ability to move up the ranks socially, the later slaveholding class that it seeded wished to maintain the status quo and not extend liberty to those blacks who served them.

Because there was so much cheap land and thousands of slaves, seventeenth- century colonists in America could rapidly establish large and prosperous plantations alongside small-scale slaveholders and yeomen farmers.63 It was uncommon for the owners of huge plantations and properties to be people who had finished their indenture and then jumped classes: this was the purview of those who already had established wealth, a “generous patron”, and education.64 A strong predictor of becoming a prosperous member of the slaveholding class was being educated in law, the ministry, or medicine.65

60 Eugene Genovese, The Slaveholders’ Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860 (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), 3.

61 Genovese, 7.

62 Genovese, 13.

63 Oakes, Ruling Race, 9.

64 Oakes, 10.

65 Oakes, 11.

As a preacher’s sermon given to the Charleston Planter’s Society in 1769 suggests, members of the master class were expected to assume certain duties.66 As

Oakes explains, some of these duties concerned “patriotic devotion to constitutional liberties”.67 Despite these noble ideals, it became increasingly hard for masters to “sustain their devotion to the traditional rules of reciprocal obligation”.68 In order to obtain wealth, even immigrant masters had to consider whether or not they were willing to hold slaves in order to ascend socially. In 1848 Henry Augustine Washington, who was a lawyer in Richmond,69 published an essay about “The Social System of Virginia” that won him a professorship. While he acknowledged the terrible economic results of slavery, he still celebrated southern civilization: “Observe for a moment, if you please, the social position of the Virginia farmer. He was the head of a family, a landed proprietor, the master of indentured servants and the lord of slaves”. Moreover, such a man was subject to “no rule of conduct but his own good will and pleasure, [and] he lived in his forest home like a feudal baron in his lonely castle”. And it was to this man,

Washington believed, that the task of “solv[ing] the great social problem by which individual liberty shall be reconciled with social order” should fall.70 Southerners in particular believed that understanding social history of “common people” would reinforce

66 Oakes, 29.

67 Oakes, 29.

68 Oakes, 29.

69 Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Mind of the Master Class, 170.

70 Henry Augustine Washington, “The Social System of Virginia,” in All Clever Men, Who Make Their Way: Critical Discourse in the Old South, ed. Michael O’Brien (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1982), 236-38.

15 a “conservative slaveholding worldview.”71 In most cases, masters chose their own prosperity over the liberty and enfranchisement of slaves.72 As Thomas Roderick Dew of

Virginia had realized, slavery – or at least servitude – was required to guarantee the variety of “republican liberties” desired by property owners. To guarantee progress for this upper crust of society required the subjection of a serving class which would, in turn, preserve social order and promote stability.73 Liberty depended on holding others in bondage. This is especially significant because the master class was not uniformly wealthy – those who did not have education or patronage faced numerous economic challenges in trying to establish themselves.74

The white servants of yesterday aspired to be the masters of tomorrow; they strategized accordingly, even if such strategizing betrayed some of the American values they believed would make them prosperous after servitude. In this context, the receipt of freedom dues was a clear signifier of the potential to access a higher class. It is the narrative that was created around the giving and receiving of such dues that my dissertation illuminates.

71 Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Mind of the Master Class, 173.

72 Oakes, Ruling Race, 32.

73 Genovese, Slaveholders’ Dilemma, 18.

74 Oakes, Ruling Race, 40.

The Scholarly Context

A number of historians discuss indentured servitude and the receipt of freedom dues.75 Their research is the basis of my case-study-based discussion of the representation of freedom dues in documents that range from legal, such as the Records of the Salem

Witch-Hunt (1692-93), The Lawes and Libertyes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1648) and the Fugitive Slave Law (1850),76 to literary, The Scarlet Letter (1850), and literary- historical, Our Nig (1859).

My work engages key areas of historical and literary scholarly inquiry. For example, Freedom Bound, Tomlins’s ground-breaking historical study, argues that servitude was not as important to the “performance of work” in colonial America because waged labour was more prevalent at the time. According to John Donoghue, the result of

Tomlins’s argument is to “ineluctably reduc[e] the economic and cultural import of servant labor”.77 In contrast to this view, my project is deeply invested in how literature manifests dominant understandings of beneficial servitude by focusing on payment of

75 Central scholars who do this are Lawrence William Towner (A Good Master Well Served: Masters and Servants in Colonial Massachusetts, 1620-1750 [New York: Routledge, 1998), Christopher Tomlins (Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010], among other work), Michael L. Bush (Servitude in Modern Times [Cambridge: Polity, 2000]), David W. Galenson (White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), Warren B. Smith (White Servitude in Colonial South Carolina [Columbia; University of South Carolina Press, 1961), Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray, eds. (Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).

76 The latter legal text here is one in which freedom dues are conspicuous by their absence.

77 John Donoghue, “Indentured Servitude in the 17th Century English Atlantic: A Brief Survey of the Literature,” History Compass 11, no .10 (2013): 894.

17 freedom dues or lack thereof as a signifier for whether an individual was experiencing unjust treatment.

This project also responds to the work of a number of literary scholars who write on servitude. In contrast to the work of Barbara Ryan, who elucidates the dominant sentimental notion of servitude in literature – that non-kin servitude should be “family- like”, a state that was “ambigu[ous]” and thus enjoyed “widespread and long-lived appeal”78 – I consider how the very real needs of servants to be independent after their service, and the benefits that freedom dues could offer when starting a new life, highlight the importance of servants being viewed as separate from the family they served.

Enfranchisement comes from being perceived as a separate, autonomous person, not from being viewed as ‘one of the family.’ Being “like” family, despite the love and care it implies, is not the same as being family.

In discussing “family-like” servitude, we must also consider the nature of bondage itself. Keith Michael Green uses the term bondage particularly to encompass a range of experiences of unfreedom apparent in New World literatures.79 My own work is invested in exploring bondage and how authors wield this notion as they try to articulate the individuals’/characters’ struggles for independence. What I add to this discussion is a

78 Barbara Ryan, Love, Wages, Slavery: The Literature of Servitude in the United States (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 20.

79 Keith Michael Green, Bound to Respect: Antebellum Narratives of Black Imprisonment, Servitude, and Bondage, 1816-1861 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015).

18 focus on how the representation or absence of freedom dues can help us understand the critiques of labour conditions presented by various authors.

Leonore Davidoff’s study of the Victorian servant reveals that women, children, servants, those in the working class, and Natives - as well as non-whites - were typically characterized using animal-related representations.80 Animal portrayals are often used to dehumanize the representation of an individual, for animals are not believed to be capable of full independence; freedom dues were a specific way of humanizing the individual by recognizing his or her potential to become autonomous once servitude ended. My work demonstrates how the absence of freedom dues can shore up such perceived dehumanization; on the other hand, the records of the Salem Witch Trials reveal that failing to received promised freedom dues can be used to critique a lack of social mobility. Freedom dues, then, emerge as a multifaceted signifier in literature.

To this end, it is worth considering Mathew Mason’s work, which points out that many travel and adventure narratives followed a similar formula. Typically, one sees a voyage to America after a “misspent or misfortunate youth” in England.81 Such characters often “redeemed” themselves in America, but “reverse emigration” was needed to complete the redemption process.82 In the texts I consider, this formulaic servitude does not appear. These narratives do not begin in Europe. Rather, they are

80 Leonore Davidoff, “Class and Gender in Victorian England,” in Sex and Class in Women’s History, ed. Judith L. Newton. (London: Routledge, 1983), 20.

81 Matthew Mason, “Slavery, Servitude, and British Representations of Colonial North America,” Southern Quarterly 43, no. 4 (2006): 110.

82 Mason, 110.

19 grounded in the commencement of servitude in America. Despite eschewing this formula, each text I use considers the bounds of service and demonstrates that the rewards of indenture – freedom dues – are necessary in some way for characters to make good on their ultimate potential. Full redemption hinges on receipt of freedom dues; transformation of the individual is, in fact, impossible without it. As I discuss at length in chapter one, freedom dues were a symbol of humanitarian enfranchisement from their inception because of the betterment of self they allowed.

The arc of my argument depends on the literary model that Dennis Todd provides in his book Defoe’s America.83 Todd discusses the portrayal of indentured servitude that

Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Robinson Crusoe experienced and the significance of their respective journeys from servitude and bondage to their own “irrational drives” to masterdom84 in Defoe’s texts and imagination. Early on in this text, Todd establishes the legal scaffolding for understanding the argument he later mounts, pointing out that the

Transportation Act of 1718 gave “new urgency to the belief that America offered indentured servants and transported criminals extraordinary opportunities for personal transformation, moral renovation, and economic advancement”.85 Todd argues that such beliefs reveal an intimate relationship between “colonial policy, spiritual conversion,

83 Dennis Todd, Defoe’s America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. My extensive search of scholarly monographs and literary articles turned up Defoe’s America as the only text that discusses freedom dues for the purpose of scholarly analysis of Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe, Colonel Jack, and Moll Flanders, all take place in “the extended Caribbean” which is considered colonial America. This is what Todd references in using the word America in the title of his book (viii).

84 Todd, ix.

85 Todd, ix.

20 moral reform, and economic advancement” generally unintelligible to contemporary readers.86

In one example, Todd discusses Robinson Crusoe’s movement from bondage to masterdom, mentioning the role of freedom dues as a signifier in Crusoe’s case:

after Crusoe serves several years in this desperate condition, he begins to achieve the status which the promotional literature of America promised freed indentured servants. His life becomes less a “Captivity” and more a “Reign” (RC, P.158). He becomes a master of a plantation, with Friday as his bound servant and the Spaniard his overseer. He is so successful that he parlayed his original single holding into several “Plantations” (RC, P. 168). And he is successful in the way those who were indentured servants were reputed to be successful, building their new lives on the basis of hard work and their freedom dues, that stock of tools, clothing, seed, tobacco, and a parcel of land given to servants at the end of their terms.… Crusoe finds his freedom dues in the wreckage of the ship.87

Todd’s argument is that the stock of goods that Crusoe finds in the ship is tantamount to freedom dues. Todd uses the expectation that indentured servants receive freedom dues after the successful completion of their service to suggest that Defoe intends the fortuitous discovery of the goods from the wreckage of the ship as Crusoe’s freedom dues. Todd’s assessment seems reasonable. Todd also locates in the lives of

Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack

the pattern that writers of colonial promotional literature claimed was the pattern of the lives of indentured servants who came to the New World. America was a place where the poor, the idle, and the criminal began as servants and ended up as Masters, a transformation that was not only economic but also moral.88

86 Todd, ix.

87 Todd, 12.

88 Todd, 9.

Thus, Todd references the transformative potential of the experience of indenture and particularly what occurs when characters are able to ascend to a higher class.

I will be arguing that literary and legal presentations of freedom dues are often more complex than those Todd describes in Defoe’s literature. The works I address not only recognise the point of the freedom dues but also critique abusive social conditions and/or servitude that does not give their victims the ability to use the freedom dues as law makers intended. Thus I bring together a body of literature that captures the arc of a historic transformation in how freedom dues were perceived in the centuries after they were first instituted in America. In a time when the dream of prosperity seems more remote than ever and when political candidates in the United States continue to promise to increase opportunities for it, this discussion can stimulate reflection and debate highly relevant to our current moment.

Chapter Overview

My dissertation utilizes a case-study approach to explore the ways in which various texts written between the mid seventeenth-century and the mid nineteenth- century use freedom dues as a symbol of humanitarian values in order to critique poor treatment of servants and/or a seeming lack of social mobility, and, thus, to reveal the need to imbue settlers both with and without servitude, with opportunities for enfranchisement. Each chapter addresses literature, history, and law in order to contextualize the numerous manifestations of the freedom dues narrative for our understanding of American literature.

In chapter one – “The White Master Class and the Law: The Rise of Freedom

Dues in American Law and Literature” – I discuss indentured servitude and the receipt of freedom dues using the Lawes and Libertyes (1648) and its implications for our understanding of the much later Fugitive Slave Law (1850). I explain how the Fugitive

Slave Law (1850) makes the shift from indentured servitude and the attendant freedom dues to slavery appear stark in that it focuses on limiting masters’ obligations to servants portraying them as perpetually indebted and undeserving of paternalistic charity. Where once servants could purchase land following their indenture or receive land and thus move into a higher class, those in servitude were now portrayed as perpetually owing their masters labour, their bodies effectively rendered commodities. This chapter lays considerable groundwork for understanding my argument that, by 1850, the entire legal framework and narrative of the promise of New World prosperity had shifted: no longer was the humble servant eligible for class ascension, no longer was the master to ensure that the servant was prevented from “be[ing]sent away emptie”,89 as the Lawes and

Libertyes had specified in language that invokes expectations for the completion of a

Hebrew’s servitude. Now, in fact, the law was being used to enshrine servants’ perpetual indebtedness, and ultimately, their commodification.

In chapter two – “Deafening Silence and Empowered Tongues: Tituba, the Salem

Witch Trials, and the New England Dream” – I examine the testimony of Tituba, a

89 The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts 1648. California; San Marino: The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1998:39.

23 slave90 woman who was accused of witchcraft in 1692. The testimonies and examinations associated with the Salem Witch Trials have long captivated scholars of law, history, religion, and literature. Much scholarship reflects a current interest among historians in political change and gender conflict. While rich and illuminating, these approaches do not address the significance of freedom dues, even though Tituba implies promised freedom dues in her testimony. In an examination prior to the Salem Witch Trials themselves on

March 2nd, 1691/2, Tituba describes a dream of a “god” who offered her “many fine things” in return for her “Serv[ing] him Six years.” The hearers, who identify the “god” as the Devil, would have understood the six years as a term of indenture,91 and the “fine things” payable upon completion as freedom dues. While Tituba claimed she resisted the man’s offer, and later said she had made up the dream, her testimony suggests her own desire for freedom and enfranchisement, which implicitly arises from the guarantee of freedom dues in the Lawes and Libertyes (1648). Tituba was doubtless illiterate, but she was born in Barbados, which, like New England, had a law enforcing the freedom dues and limited indenture: the Masters and Servants Act of 1661. Tituba would have recognised the difference between the difficulties procuring freedom dues back home and the opportunities for attaining freedom dues in New England. That she dreams of exchanging her slavery for a limited indenture and freedom dues is therefore significant.

90 Although Tituba is referred to as an “Indian servant” in the court records, in the “General Introduction” to the Records of the Salem Witch Hunt, Bernard Rosenthal clearly indicates that Tituba was in fact a slave, including the term in brackets directly after the phrase the court records use for Tituba. Bernard Rosenthal, general ed., Records of the Salem Witch Hunt (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 18. Hereafter abbreviated RSWH.

91 Six years was a common duration for an indenture, both in Hebrew servitude (six years’ service and release and freedom dues in the seventh year) as well as in white American servitude from the seventeenth century onward.

By conjuring up a dream of a limited indenture and freedom dues and by claiming that a black man made the offer (whom she knew her New England examiners would take for the Devil), Tituba mounts an argument that would have shocked her hearers – that the

Devil would be a more ready source of humanitarian concern, freedom dues, and real liberty than were Massachusetts’s governors. The implied criticism of her perpetual bondage at the hands of Reverend Samuel Parris referenced the New England that had instituted laws that were supposed to limit servitude and provide freedom dues. Her longing for something she clearly believed would not be hers as a slave in “free” New England is disturbing. Tituba’s examination and her testimony helped to precipitate the Salem Witch

Trials because she implicated others the court would later call to account. I argue that her specific, clear desire for the freedom dues promised by the Lawes and Libertyes reveals that the trials were rooted in New England’s vexed relationship to freedom and slavery, not to the desire to banish spiritual bondage manifested physically and diagnosed medically.

This chapter will contribute to scholarly conceptualizations of New England’s problematical relationship to “freedom” and the ways in which the inaccessibility of, but desire for, a variety of white English freedom and challenges to lifetime slavery characterized Tituba’s testimony. The historic Salem Witch Trials and the subsequent cultural imaginary and memory of Tituba remains etched in the literary landscape of New

England.

In chapter three – “‘None but negers are sarvants’: Comity, Freedom Dues, and

Hawthorne’s Abolitionist Leanings in The Scarlet Letter” – I discuss The Scarlet Letter in relation to events and discussions leading to the Compromise of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Here I concur with most Hawthorne scholars, who

25 generally agree that this is a significant context for understanding The Scarlet Letter, which was written in a time of social agitation expressed in speech and print that influenced the crafting of the Fugitive Slave Law. By presenting Hester to his reader as a branded, lifelong indentured servant, Hawthorne effectively sculpted a portrayal of

Hester which his nineteenth century white readers would “read” as experiencing a variety of servitude akin to black slavery. Whites could not legally serve as lifetime indentured servants at the time of the novel’s setting, this being the exclusive purview of black slave bodies, and New England courts actively sought to avoid circumstances in which whites became indentured for life for exactly this reason. Brands, to which Hawthorne explicitly compares Hester’s A, were highly associated with slavery, even if used to mark non- slaves.

Hawthorne’s portrayal exists in a particular historical context that posed a threat to white freedom and in which anxiety about comity, both that between the United States and other nations and among American states, was high. First, anyone who directly criticized slavery, could be sentenced to hard labour.92 Second, American rights were under threat, given white American slavery abroad, rehabilitative indenture at home, and comity violations at home and abroad. I argue that Hawthorne’s novel references a well-known case and significant legal precedent – Commonwealth vs. Aves (1836) – that invoked these tensions. As chapter three will detail, this case involves Med, who was brought to Boston as a slave at the age of six; the court freed her and provided her with an abolitionist guardian, even though her enslaved mother desired her return, and Louisiana law at the

92 Only five years after Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, the Kansas legislature passed a law that anyone directly criticizing slavery could be sentenced to two years hard labour.

26 time forbade the separation of a slave under the age of ten from her mother. In his novel, the magistrates threaten Hester’s parental rights, she becomes the stand-in for Med’s mother, and her daughter Pearl the stand-in for the slave whose judicial liberation created vast controversy. Invoking Med and her mother’s separation through the ruling in Aves,

Hawthorne demonstrates the threat to Hester and Pearl that he located in the Fugitive Slave

Law and other threats to comity.

The Lawes and Libertyes became law in New England a year before the action in

The Scarlet Letter concludes, and Hawthorne references freedom dues through repeated reference to the biblical principles surrounding it. By depicting Hester’s model life of penance, Hawthorne reveals that there was no legitimate reason for her indenture to continue, no reason for her not to “make satisfaction,” that is, to satisfy the terms of her indenture and receive in return freedom dues and liberty. Hawthorne thus demonstrates the new vulnerability white bodies were facing at law in 1850, presenting vividly his concern that black slavery was now undermining rights of the average white, propertied male.

Ultimately, I argue that Hawthorne was an abolitionist. His later actions – furnishing runaway slaves with food and wine in 186293 – strongly support this view.

In chapter four – The “Bind” in Binding Out: Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig and the

Challenge of New England Expectations – I read Harriet Wilson’s text in the light of child binding out. A thorough reading of the scholarship on Our Nig reveals that there are three central discussions: the multi-genre characterization of Harriet Wilson’s text (it can be

93 Larry J. Reynolds, Devils and Rebels: The Making of Hawthorne’s Damned Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 97.

27 classified as fiction, autobiography, and slave narrative), the “problem” of audience

(whether Wilson wrote for other blacks, whites, or no audience at all), and controversy as to whether Wilson converted to Christianity. Entering into these critical debates, this chapter argues that Wilson intentionally stresses the autobiographical dimensions of her text in order to mobilize productively the Christian discourse of the Spirit of Adoption.

Wilson’s use of theology is complex, involving – among other things – a case for her racial similarity to whites throughout her text. She extends her argument for candidacy in a presumed white “family of God” to imply that this community could remedy the injury the Bellmont family in her novel committed when they destroyed her health, denied her freedom dues, and otherwise failed to facilitate the circumstances needed for a “successful” indenture. If the Christian, white community recognises her as a member and purchases her book so that she can survive, she suggests, they will begin to remedy the ills she has suffered.

In short, Our Nig uses ideals of Christian charity to argue the Christian church community should give her what the Bellmonts, her masters, have failed to deliver.

Ultimately, Harriet Wilson sculpts a larger narrative which demonstrates that indentured servitude can all too easily become a variety of slavery. In particular, she demonstrates how whites (like the Bellmonts) can cost other whites (the members of her society and faith) money when they fail to uphold humane servitude. According to Wilson, stripping the humanity from servitude invariably hurts all members of society, thus undermining the social contract.

Conclusions: Towards the Dream

From the mid-seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, a dramatic transformation in America’s vision about the dream she offered her white inhabitants is manifest. Where she once enshrined the ability of servants to be upwardly mobile, she now sought to maintain servitude in perpetuity. I contend that the promise of New World prosperity thus powerfully shifted as the nation sought to stabilise exactly what freedoms should be on offer in her domains. In the face of challenges to America’s autonomy by

British patrol on the high seas,94 it seemed as if the old guarantees of American freedom were passé. Thus, concerned as some Americans were about government overreach in laws such as the Fugitive Slave Law (for instance, in its forcing northerners to take active measures to capture and return any “fugitives from labor” they found in their midst), the all-encompassing fear that America was not inherently safe bolstered the willingness to acquiesce to a course of action that would institute solidarity across America. After all, as

Daniel Webster charged, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable” was surely the way forward. Disputes about comity and the sovereignty of individual states eventually led to the Civil War, revealing that the goals of the Fugitive Slave Law of

1850 were not enough. This tension was just as vexed as those indentured servants- turned-slave masters experienced who believed in the promise of New World prosperity for themselves but not for their slaves. In the course of this dissertation,95 I will carefully

94 I discuss this at length in the first chapter.

95 A note on what follows: I use the terms “black”, “white”, and “African-American” to denote people who are generally considered to be of the aforementioned categories. “Negro/negro” only appears where a source specifically used such terminology as this demarcation is not my preference.

29 trace this arc through the narrative of enfranchisement via freedom dues using one of the best barometers of all, literature. Through literature, people demonstrated their acceptance of the promise of New World prosperity, but also actively resisted the disempowerment that was servitude and, therefore, the limits on their self-actualization.

Chapter One The White Master Class and the Law: The Rise of Freedom Dues in American Law and Literature

In the mid-seventeenth century, a white master in the American colonies had many obligations to his servants; by the mid-nineteenth century he had few to none. I argue that this shift is integral to our understanding of the varieties of white mastership and (white) American freedom that existed in the mid-nineteenth century. Further, understanding the US white master class in the nineteenth century will elucidate the sometimes faint demarcations among slavery and indentured servitude, as well as varieties of white American freedom. These historical and legal transformations have significance for our understandings of how representations of freedom and bondage slowly change in literature between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries – a transformation which is crucial to my dissertation.

To illustrate the variety of obligations expected of white masters in the mid- seventeenth century, but later reversed by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), I focus on the function of freedom dues which masters provided to servants upon completion of indentured service in the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I also consider “bound out” child service from the mid-seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, as well as the diametric opposition between the narrative created around freedom dues about American freedom and the narrative encoded in the Fugitive Slave

Law (1850). Many Puritans emigrated to the New World as indentured servants during

30 31 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.96 Although freedom dues were clearly associated with enfranchisement and social mobility in early seventeenth century propaganda, scholarship has failed to grapple with the role of freedom dues in the narrative of enfranchisement and its implications, not only for American servants of all races but also for the white American master class. While many fine scholarly works on the master class are now available, speaking in strictly comparative terms, the literature of the American master class appears more limited than that devoted to American servants and slaves. Recognising that American masters existed in a space of privilege, historians have spent more time meticulously focusing their efforts on articulating black personhood.

Using sources that consider freedom dues across colonial America (with reference to Massachusetts, Plymouth, South Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia), as well as a limited number that reference them in other countries in the same period, this chapter will seek to elucidate how the narrative associated with freedom dues demonstrated masters’ obligations to recognise the humanity of their servants. Freedom dues were initially quite substantial and improved the fortunes of servants who would now expect to work for themselves. American propaganda used these payments to attract predominantly white Protestant Englishmen, as well as some Scottish and Irish men, to the American colonies. With the passing of the Lawes and Libertyes of the Massachusetts

96 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 28.

Bay Colony (1648), what gradually emerged was a narrative imbued with notions of humanitarian enfranchisement derived from the Hebrew Bible.

As I will explain, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which legally inscribed the indebtedness of servants, reversed the long-standing expectations of members of the white master class which were encoded through the freedom dues narrative. As I demonstrate, this shift was indicative of American fears regarding the ephemeral nature of freedoms based on race and country of origin and a desire to protect an elite variety of white American privilege.

The Nature of Indentured Servitude in Colonial America

In the early colonial period in America, indentured service afforded the poor passage from Europe to colonial America: the master covered the cost of passage in exchange for the indentured labourer’s service for guaranteed employment over a limited term, typically two to six years.97 Others secured such contracts on arrival, which would specify length of service, payment of wages where applicable, and the payment of freedom dues upon the completion of service.98 Thus, unlike white convict labour and the much-later, widespread move to chattel slavery in the eighteenth century, indentured service was a voluntary agreement between the indentured and the master. One of the

97 Lawrence William Towner, A Good Master Well Served: Masters and Servants in Colonial Massachusetts, 1620-1750 (New York: Routledge, 1998).

98 David W. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 102n.

33 masters’ obligations, to provide freedom dues, meant that he had to provide land, money, tools, and/or clothing at the end of the servant’s indentured service; servants anticipated their enhanced social mobility.99 As historian Edmund S. Morgan writes, “A man who came to Virginia with nothing but the shirt on his back [in the seventeenth century] expected several years of servitude, but after that he expected something more of life in the New World.”100 An element of social mobility was that the condition of servitude was not inherited; the children of indentured servants could not inherit their servitude, even if the servant failed to serve for the agreed upon term.101 The nature of indentured servitude thus created ongoing demand for servants; as terms ended, masters continued to need servants.102

Freedom dues at first included land for male servants, the richest route to social mobility103; many locales in New and Old World alike attached civil rights to land ownership.104 Perhaps recognizing the difficulty prospective servants might foresee in enforcing contracts and wishing to support economic growth, colonial governments in

99 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 34.

100 Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 227. Similarly Christopher Tomlins describes freedom dues as a way for servants to establish independent living and marriage, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 275-76.

101 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 36.

102 Bush, 36.

103 Bush, 59. As Bush explains, many had ancestors who had been peasants and they sought to regain or exceed that landed status.

104 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 275-76.

North America as well as the West Indies instituted laws and avenues that provided servants with legal means of redress to enforce freedom dues and, in some cases, also committed the colonies to issuing land. A Maryland statute of 1640 gave ex-servants fifty acres of land; a Barbados statute of 1647 promised ex-servants land in Nevis or Antigua; a 1661 statute in Jamaica promised servants thirty acres of land; Pennsylvania’s William

Penn promised former servants fifty acres of land in 1682; and the British Crown ordered

Virginia’s governor to put aside land for those whose service had expired in 1679.105 As

Michael L. Bush explains, these laws worked well to ensure that the expected freedom dues of land were received at the time.106

Terrifying lore of horrific working conditions and unpaid freedom dues was associated with servitude in the Caribbean generally and Barbados specifically, making these destinations less popular than America.107 No legislation specified when masters must pay freedom dues, and they undermined their ex-servants’ financial viability by

105 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 64.

106 Bush, 64.

107 Bush, 61. Barbados was a prime destination for indentured servants in the mid-seventeenth century (Bush, 59). Labour shortages were worse in the Caribbean than in the Americas; thus, masters had to provide better terms, which Barbados stipulated in law (Bush, 61). Such laws curtailed punishment of servants; guaranteed certain minimum food, clothing, and lodging; granted them immunity from gang work in the fields (which slaves performed); stipulated shorter terms of service than available in the Americas; and provided generous freedom dues and other forms of remuneration (Bush, 61). However, laws in Barbados and Nevis stipulated freedom dues in so many pounds of sugar (four hundred and eight hundred respectively, reflecting the fact that servants considered Nevis less appealing than Barbados) (Hilary McDonald Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989). 10). Jamaica was still granting thirty acres of land at the time (Beckles, 10). Further, enforcement of protections for servants was difficult, and potential indentured servants recognized the risk. For more on the fear of the Caribbean among British servants, see Abbott Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America 1607-1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), 57.

35 paying in sugar based on market fluctuation and by paying irregularly.108 Freemen described constant debts for subsistence items109 and frequently had to labour for wages on the plantations where they had once served in bondage.110 In the Caribbean, freedom dues thus transformed the master’s debt and the servant’s enfranchisement into the servant’s debt and continued reliance on the master.

As the seventeenth century wore on, the value and composition of freedom dues was transformed throughout North and South America (including the Caribbean), and social mobility achieved as a result of indentured servitude diminished.111 The land available to freedmen was increasingly perceived as “dangerous,” due to the proximity and threat of Native Americans, or as poorly situated for cash crops.112 As the availability of land decreased over the course of the 1600s, colonies began to reverse their promises of land and eventually to prohibit the giving of land for freedom dues.

Pennsylvania’s 1682 law and the Crown’s direction to Virginia in 1679 represented being behind the curve; Plymouth and Massachusetts113 were already feeling the pinch and they were curtailing land promises. Plymouth colony ceased to provide freedom dues in the mid-1630s. In Massachusetts a 1634 ruling stated that no one was to have plantation land

108 Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery, 142-43.

109 Beckles, 147.

110 Beckles, 142-43.

111 Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom, 227.

112 Morgan, 227.

113 In 1691, Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony were combined.

36 unless he had been faithful to his master while in service.114 Such laws at least limited fraud by masters. Colonies such as South Carolina recognised the potential for fraud when recruiters negotiated terms independently. South Carolinian legislators passed a law on April 9th, 1687, stipulating the terms of indenture for all servants, including the payment of freedom dues: “For the avoiding of all fraud or any other difference that may happen between masters and servants, when servants doe arrive in this Province without

Indentures or other contracts.”115

Colonial laws increasingly specified freedom dues and other terms over the course of indenture period, such that all servants in a given colony would therefore receive the same dues based on the length of service negotiated.116 Despite this general practice, to a certain extent, recruiters could compete with one another to make appealing offers as to length of service, amount of freedom dues, and guaranteed working conditions, which they codified in notarized agreements not subject to renegotiation during the term of service.117

Recruiters could offer distinct deals based on calculation of a servant’s net productivity such that workers with greater potential might obtain placement in colonies that offered

114 Towner argues that these laws responded to a labour shortage, which incentivized colonial governments to prevent ex-servants from becoming independent when they and other established colonists could want them in them in the labour force (Towner, Good Master, 7).

115 Warren B. Smith, White Servitude in Colonial South Carolina (Columbia; University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 72.

116 Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, 253.

117 Galenson, 98; Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 34. Evidence suggests that servants skilled in crafts might obtain much larger freedom dues; see for instance Anonymous, A Relation of Maryland, [London, 1635], 54).

37 more favourable terms with respect to working conditions, term of service, amount of payment, and form of payment. As promises of land became increasingly scarce, cash gained value over other alternatives.118

While some servants did work for themselves upon completion of their servitude, many of them had to rent land from their prior masters.119 Taxes and fees to the colony and, for those selling their crops abroad, to the English Crown, made financial success elusive for many indentured servants who had dreamt of independence and social mobility in the Americas.120 Despite this, the lot of such servants was generally better than that experienced by debt peons, who were often held to service indefinitely to pay their debts, or faced debts arbitrarily escalating over time, and were often abandoned by their masters once they became ill or too old to acheive the robust productivity of younger peons.121

As Marilyn C. Baseler122 and Michael L. Bush123 explain, convicts could not generally receive freedom dues. England viewed this as a strategy to keep the population

118 Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, 99.

119 Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom, 227.

120 Morgan, 227.

121 William S. Kiser, Borderlands of Slavery: The Struggle Over Captivity and Peonage in the American Southwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 91.

122 Marilyn C. Baseler, “The Best Poor Man’s Country,” in “Asylum for Mankind”: America, 1607-1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 83.

123 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 67.

38 of the colonies law abiding and Protestant.124 It also created meaningful distinctions that helped preserve the narrative of enfranchisement associated with freedom dues; as

Virginia’s 1753 decision states, “what honest Man would chuse to serve in a Country where no Distinction [between volunteer and convict servitude] is made?”125 By preserving this “Distinction” the colony hoped to draw voluntary indentured servants and maintain a narrative that the colonies would rehabilitate and enfranchise the law-abiding poor, whose Englishness had failed in the Old World but might, in Baseler’s term, be

“rehabilitated” in the new. Freedom dues were the appropriate purview of voluntary white English bodies. As Baseler puts it, the colonies sought to attract “industrious

Protestants” who could be easily “seduced by promises of bounties, transportation subsidies, free or cheap land, tax abatements, and unparalleled economic opportunity.”126

And in spite of their challenges, ex-servants did fare, on average, fare much better than they would have in England.127

124 Baseler, “Best Poor Man’s Country,” 83.

125 Qtd. in Baseler, 83; original source: William Waller Hening, ed., Statutes at Large of Virginia, vol. 6, 359 (Act of 1753, quotation).

126 Baseler, 71. 127 The literature on whether indentured servants fulfilled their expectations of economic advantage, access to land, and rise in social station suggests that location plays a key role in servant achievement. As James Horn explains, Maryland and Virginia historians have both addressed the issue, but the latter paint a more optimistic picture for indenture. Horn argues this may reflect genuine differences between the two colonies (James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake [Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 1996]. 152). He also emphasises that if the optimistic view is correct it reflects in large part servants’ dismal prospects in England (Horn, 154).

The Early Features of Freedom Dues and their Subsequent Transformation

The terms used to refer to freedom dues vary based on location and scholar. In

The History of Modern Servitude, M. L. Bush vacillates between referring to freedom dues as “freedom dues,” “reward,” and “a grant.”128 In contrast, when Hilary Beckles discusses the indenture of whites and blacks in Barbados and the convention of remitting freedom dues to servants upon completion of service, he claims that masters viewed freedom dues as “a form of deferred wage.”129 Galenson asserts that freedom dues

“constituted a nonvested pension.”130 While non-vested pensions are a type of deferred compensation for service rendered, they are not completely earned; Bush’s use of the terms “reward” or “grant” to describe freedom dues has similar implications. Galenson’s assessment is therefore a useful average of both Bush’s and Beckles’ renderings of seventeenth-century freedom dues: they were a sort of deferred wage that the servant had earned but also a grant partially unearned and thus a reward or grant. We might even say such dues functioned not unlike Canadian company-paid-into Registered Retirement

Savings Plans.

But while Galenson’s view of freedom dues as a non-vested pension is an accurate rendering of this payment’s function in the seventeenth century, I will demonstrate that – due to early seventeenth century propaganda which used freedom dues

128 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 29, 31.

129 Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery, 141-42.

130 Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America, 101.

40 to entice all those settlers desirous of upward economic mobility in society – the narrative associated freedom dues with enabling wealth accumulation. The invocation by New

England’s Body of Liberties in 1648 of humanitarian, Hebraic and Christian expectations, a departure from an economic understanding of freedom dues, suggests this competing narrative. The document, the Lawes and Libertyes (1648) of Massachusetts Bay, stipulated that “all servants that have served diligently and faithfully to the benefit of their Masters seven years shall not be sent away empty” (emphasis mine).131 Here colonial lawmakers directly invoked the Hebrew servitude described in the Old

Testament – as Deuteronomy 15:12 (KJV) states “And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.” Furthermore, the Bible admonished masters upon releasing such a servant:

And when though sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. (Deuteronomy 15:13-14; emphases mine)

The repetition of the phrase regarding not sending servants “away empty” in the Lawes and Libertyes is clearly deliberate. The Puritans who created these laws made ample use of the Hebrew Scriptures in daily living and governance. The invocation of the Hebrew

Bible in the Lawes and Libertyes was therefore a precursor to the use of this sacred text in the early 1700s “when it was argued that ‘casting [slavery] out of doors [would make]

131 Lawes and Libertyes (1648).

41 the sons and Daughters of New England . . . more like Jacob and Rachel.’”132 As David

A. Weir indicates, New England Puritans had an “affinity” for the Old Testament and

“drew upon Old Testament statutes for some of their legal codes” in the seventeenth century.133 New England’s legal codes even borrowed laws and criminal punishments specifically from the Bible.134 Similarly, laws “for the well ordering of this plantation”135 and also the “well ordering of its magistracy”136 reflected this influence.137

I speculate, based on strong evidence, that the Lawes and Libertyes stance first instituted in Massachusetts eventually spread across the colonies. The value and kind of freedom dues swiftly declined across the American colonies after 1660 for most workers.

However, those bound out as children—placed in homes without their parents, either by their parents or by the state, on the grounds that their own homes did not provide appropriate contexts—were still supposed to receive significant freedom dues until the mid-nineteenth century, when the practice finally ended. These dues or rewards, while

132 Qtd. in Ephraim Isaac, “Hebrew Scriptures,” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 97; original source: Samuel Sewall, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial (Massachusetts, 1700).

133 David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 7.

134 Weir, 7.

135 Qtd. in Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 252.

136 Tomlins, 252.

137 Puritan authorities created two key documents: Moses, his Judicialls, first introduced to the General Court in 1636 by Reverend John Cotton; and The Body of Liberties, created by Nathaniel Ward between 1636 and 1639. Both documents contain Old Testament influences, but Moses, his Judicialls was not officially used in the courts; rather, The Body of Liberties was used by “Authoritie” (Tomlins, 252).

42 not land-based, were substantial.138 Further, a robust discourse of freedom dues emerged in nineteenth century literature. In fact, both legal and literary texts reference the failure to give freedom dues to critique unfair treatment of servants. That freedom dues became imbued with the humanitarian foci of the Hebrew Bible and Puritan society, an extension of the hopefulness first generated about them in the propaganda about land-based freedom dues, fits these facts.

The public perception of freedom dues was that such dues were not only a civic, but a religious, obligation of masters; this view can be understood through the ability of custom to transform both social and legal realities. As Lawrence William Towner points out, a “major factor influencing the conditions of labor and the institution of servitude was custom”: customs in the minds of the colonizers and as well as those who chose to become indentured servants.139 As Christine Daniels explains, “custom and precedent, not statutes, established colonial institutions.”140 Furthermore, as both Daniels and

Towner indicate, custom was carried out via county and provincial law when servants brought complaints before the courts. As Daniels stresses, while historians and legal scholars have often taken common law to be the gold standard for understanding the settling of master-servant complaints before the law, the entrenchment of custom – as

138 Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray, eds., Children Bound To Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America (New York: Cornell University, 2009), 2.

139 Towner, Good Master, 8.

140 Christine Daniels, “‘Liberty to Complaine’: Servant Petitions in Maryland, 1652-1797,” in The Many Legalities of Early America, ed. Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 220.

43 seen through county and provincial law – is a more accurate representation of the pertinent legalities.

The importance of custom governed the shift from freedom dues as non-vested pension to freedom dues as a symbol of the importance of the humane treatment of servants. Servants frequently brought lawsuits asking the colonies to enforce freedom dues agreements, and the courts often found in their favour. From 1652 to 1797, between five and ten per cent of servants sought “redress of grievances”.141 As Christine Daniels lays out, servants – both youth and their parents – launched suits seeking redress for a master’s abuse or failure to educate them, and adult servants primarily sued their masters

(in civil court upon completion of indenture) for freedom dues owed.142 While servants had to pay court costs if they lost – as did masters if they lost – they pursued a number of such suits, particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in colonial

America.143 This history indicates support for viewing freedom dues as a significant payment which servants understood to be a means for enriching their lives after their terms of service were complete. As Daniels argues, historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have overlooked county and provincial cases, and by emphasizing

141 Daniels, 228.

142 Daniels, 226. As Russell R. Menard explains, “servants could not sue at common law, but they could protest ill-treatment and receive a hearing in the courts” (Menard, Migrants, Servants and Slaves, 48). Servants might petition for excessive punishment or failure to free them at the lawful end of their indenture (Daniels, “Liberty to Complaine,” 231, 238). When servants petitioned the courts due to masters seeking to illegally lengthen servitude, the courts found in favour of the servants 85 per cent of the time prior to 1671, but only 60 per cent of the time from 1671 to 1689 due to political instability in the Chesapeake Bay (Daniels, 233).

143 Daniels, 226.

44 statute, have “exaggerated the powerlessness of servants and their duties to their masters,” applying a nineteenth-century, master-slave framework to a relationship that differed drastically.144 As she points out, masters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had “responsibilities” to their servants that chattel slavery would dissolve.145

In a sign of their support for freedom dues and the rights of servants, the courts in

Maryland mitigated the barrier of the obligation to pay court fees for servants by at times permitting them to “Kneele in open Court and ask forgiveness,” instead of paying the cost of the trial, not least because servants were too poor to pay such debts.146 This practice became obsolete by 1700, but servants could still pay the attorneys’ fees by having additional time added to the original term of service.147 Further, justices frequently ruled in servants’ favour, according to Daniels, who puts judicial victories at

85–90 per cent in Maryland.148

144 Daniels, 221. She argues that many scholars have erroneously attributed the rights and obligations of colonial masters to “a Puritan religious construction,” ignoring the fact that the courts frequently enforced these obligations, giving them real practical force (Daniels, 225).

145 Daniels, 220.

146 Daniels, 226.

147 Daniels, 226.

148 Daniels acknowledges the existence of cases that never reached the court, including perhaps cases in which servants would have pursued action against a master, but did not, noting that grand jurymen may have “deliberately failed to present servants’ wrongs to the courts…to keep propertyless servants in their places,” but shows that the best evidence suggests they did not (Daniels, 228). Only between 1671 and 1689 did the court rulings in favour of servants drop below eighty-five per cent of petitions; even then, servants won sixty per cent of all cases (Daniels, 228).

Congruent with Daniels’s description of Maryland case law, Lawrence William

Towner finds that county and provincial courts throughout Massachusetts took servant complaint and master responsibility seriously, finding for approximately fifty-five per cent of servants (Towner 172). As in Maryland, servants themselves brought some suits in Massachusetts while intermediaries (such as family and friends) also brought them on servants’ behalf (Towner 172).149 Towner’s research also accords with Daniels’s in finding no bias among early county and provincial courts against the interests of the servant.150 Daniels and Towner thoroughly establish that the courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took servant complaint seriously throughout the colonies; this is further made evident in the increase of servant complaint in the county and provincial courts. Clearly, white servants rightly believed they could achieve redress via the law.

149 Towner’s assessments of servants include data on apprentices, indentured servants, and Indians and blacks in servitude. Towner indicates that apprentices petitioned the courts more frequently than indentured servants, likely due to having family nearby, better-defined rights, and a higher literacy rate (Towner, Good Master, 172-173).

150 Tomlins bolsters the assessment of Daniels and Towner, analyzing master-servant relationships before the law in Chester County, Pennsylvania (General and Quarter Sessions) from 1715 to 1774. In this dataset, the breakdown of masters and servants/their parents was 63-37 per cent. While the imbalance might seem to indicate a bias in favour of master’s rights, most masters who won were cases of runaways whose departure clearly violated the terms of indenture (Christopher Tomlins, “Early British America, 1585-1830: Freedom Bound,” in Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955, ed. Douglas Hay and Paul Craven [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004], 145). Further the lack of a determinable outcome in the record suggests informal settlements prevailed when servants brought suit (Tomlins, 145). Most persuasively, Tomlins points out that “the share of servant initiated cases in total master-servant filings increased steadily, from fewer than 19 percent in 1715-24 to more than 45 percent by 1765-74,” which makes it unlikely servants perceived a strong anti-servant bias in the courts (Tomlins, 145).

New England and the Rise of the Freedom Dues as Humanitarian in Symbol and Praxis

New England had a special role in establishing indentured servitude in America.

Initially, England expected the New England colonies to receive those utilizing poor relief in 1622 in order to decrease the burden of supporting the poor in England151; however, as the Minutes of the Council for New England lamented, many of the settlers from England were “the very scum of the earth sent over” rather than “skillful artificers.”152 Indeed, many convict labourers immigrated. Seventeenth century colonial legislators began to pass laws that would prevent the arrival of “undesirable immigrants” and to recruit indentured servants who could cultivate Englishness in the colony.153

Despite this challenging beginning, the English Crown was pleased later when Puritans came to predominate in New England.154

A few hundred enslaved Africans were present in Virginia as early as 1619, but as

Tomlins writes, Massachusetts in 1641 was the creative seat of “essential definitional key words for Anglo-American slavery.”155 Tomlins acknowledges that there were slaves in

151 Marilyn C. Baseler, “The Demographic Roots of Empire,” in “Asylum for Mankind”: America, 1607- 1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 32.

152 Qtd. in Baseler, 32; original source: Minutes of the Council for New England, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1660, 155.

153 Baseler, “Best Poor Man’s Country,” 71.

154 Baseler, “Demographic Roots of Empire,” 37.

155 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 425. This evidence convincingly refutes Bush’s claim that Massachusetts had enough free colonists to “satisfy” its own labour demands, rendering the search for servitude “unimportant” in this locale. Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 59.

Virginia “virtually from the beginnings of the colony,” but the “colonists [in Virginia] took no particular steps to ‘define’ who might be enslaved,” which was a key step in differentiating slavery from servitude.156 In the first forty years of slaveholding in

Virginia, the mechanisms that governed youthful migrant servants policed slaves as well, but occasional purchase was the order of the day and definitions remained loose.

Massachusetts was the epicenter of legal transformations to definitions of servitude and slavery that proved precedent-setting across America.

Custom, rather than law, was initially a key dimension of how settlers in New

Plymouth, Salem, and Boston conceptualized servitude.157 As Lawrence William Towner writes, indentured servitude was “essentially an innovation” tailored to the New World but drawing on the parameters of apprenticeship and indenture in England to establish customs until legislation began to stipulate terms.158 By 1638, Plymouth required that masters register all contracts for servants, while Massachusetts Bay stipulated freedom dues following the completion of seven years of service.159 Puritan colonists still invoked custom as a “guide” and treated custom as if imbued with “the force of law.”160 In

156 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 425.

157 Towner, Good Master, 24.

158 Towner, 31.

159 Towner, 25.

160 Towner, 25.

48 keeping with the language of the Lawes and Libertyes, the courts used the Bible to guide masters, especially in circumstances where custom and law seemed silent.161

The emphasis on freedom dues reflects the Puritan praxis that held sway in New

England, which demanded that courts uphold traditional, religious mores regarding the treatment of servants. Sermons and tracts by such writers as Cotton Mather, Benjamin

Wadsworth, and Samuel Willard were published in Massachusetts, highlighting the importance of fairness in punishment, and admonishing masters to “Correct with

Prudence and Humanity.”162 This literature protested masters’ failure to pay servants dues owed,163 “failure to Christianize” servants,164 failure to provide “adequate food and clothing,”165 failure to care for ill servants,166 and failure to give servants enough rest167

(Towner 165). Taken together, I suggest that this New England literature which stresses

161 Towner, 25.

162 Qtd in Towner, 165; original source: Samuel Willard, A Compleat Body of Divinity in Two Hundred and Fifty Expository Lectures on the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism: Wherein the Doctrines of the Christian Religion are Unfolded, Their Truth Confirm’d, Their Excellence Display’d, Their Usefulness Improv’d, Contrary Errors & Vices Refuted & Expos’d, Objections Answer’d. Controversies Settled, Cases of Conscience Resolv’d; and a Great Light Thereby Reflected on the Present Age (1726), 615 (second pagination).

163 Benjamin Wadsworth, The Well-Ordered Family (Andesite Press, 2015), 107-08.

164 Cotton Mather, Theopolis Americana: An Essay on the Golden Street of the Holy City (1710), 22-23; Cotton Mather, A Good Master Well Served: A Brief Discourse on the Necessary Properties & Practices of a Good Servant in Every-Kind of Servitude and of the Methods That Should be Taken By the Heads of a Family, to Obtain Such A Servant (Boston: B. Green & J. Allen, 1696), 16-18; Willard, A Compleat Body of Divinity, 16 (second pagination).

165 Mather, A Good Master Well Served, 13; Wadsworth, Well-Ordered Family, 104.

166 Wadsworth, Well-Ordered Family, 104.

167 Wadsworth, 105.

49 the importance of humanitarian treatment in servitude in a Puritan context – rather than complaining about poor conditions of servitude generally – derived from the humanitarian ideas of a master’s obligations first seeded via the Lawes and Liberties

(1648).

In fact, the Lawes and Libertyes (1648) transformed the narrative of freedom dues. While the Deuteronomy stipulations it invokes, ensuring that servants who had finished their domestic indenture did not “go away emptie,” do not call this payment to ex-servants “freedom dues,” it is clear that they functioned as such in that they were designed to make it possible for servants to establish independent lives. Moreover,

Massachusetts lawmakers readily recognised these payments as freedom dues, providing a new standard “exit” gift for colonial American servants. Essentially, to not send a servant “away emptie” was recognizable Puritan code in the seventeenth century for freedom dues. The Puritans did use the term freedom dues; accordingly, it was mentioned in wills and newspapers as well.

The use of the Old Testament in the Lawes and Libertyes is especially significant for understanding the humanitarian value that came to be placed on provision of freedom dues. Scholars have extensively noted the humane intent of the Hebrew Sabbatical and

Jubilee laws. For instance, Raymond Westbrook and Bruce Wells highlight the laws’ alleviation of debt-slaves’ lot and assurance that slavery would not be permanent.168 The

168 Westbrook and Wells, Everyday Law in Biblical Israel, 58.

Hebrew Bible also describes considerations of the appropriate time-span for labour contracts. For instance, as Westbrook and Wells explain it:

Longer terms of hire were also known, customarily year by year (Lev. 25:50, 53; Ia. 21:16) or a three-year term (Deut. 15: 18; Isa. 21:16). Indeed, the seven-year contracts that Laban made with Jacob may have been pointedly excessive (Gen. 29; 15; 30: 28-33; 31: 7-8).169

Restrictions to the length of labour contracts were instituted to prevent servants from ending up in perpetual debt-slavery. The Bible describes the computation of principle and interest and acknowledges that usury – charging large amounts of interest – leads to perpetual indebtedness,170 and thus, enslavement. Deuteronomy therefore highlights the regulation of servitude in order to prevent slippage into true slavery.

According to Jewish and Biblical law scholar Bernard S. Jackson, “Deuteronomy emphasizes the humanitarian aspect of seventh-year release, in requiring not only [the seventh year] be ‘free,’ but also that the former master not send out the debt-slave empty- handed and destitute.”171 The anonymous author of Bible Rights of The Slave, or Jewish

Servitude & American Slavery Compared, (a text read in New England in the early nineteenth century), also quoted Deuteronomy, requiring that Hebrew servants be

169 Westbrook and Wells, 110-11.

170 A number of scriptural passages stipulate either directly or indirectly that individuals should avoid usury. For example, Leviticus 25: 36-37 “Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase” (King James Version; hereafter KJV). See also Deuteronomy 23:19-20, Exodus 22: 25, Ezekiel 18:17, and Psalms 15:5.

171 Bernard S. Jackson, “Biblical Literature: An Overview,” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 90.

“furnished liberally.”172 Ephraim Isaac describes the gifts slaves receive upon completing their time as an affirmation of the “slave’s new status as an equally free person.”173

While Jackson uses the term “slave,” and this is a fair interpretation of how those perpetuating Hebrew bondage in ancient Israel viewed it, discussion in the seventeenth century and beyond established that the American enslavement of blacks differed starkly from Hebrew slavery. Indeed, as Mary Nyquist points out, “[John] Locke is not alone in rejecting the term slavery for the servitude undergone by individual Jews [in Biblical

Israel], nor in stressing biblical evidence of its impermanence and of strictures against disciplinary violence.”174 The payment of freedom dues to the person previously bound was one of the dividing lines between Hebrew “slavery” or what seventeenth century

Puritans viewed as indentured servitude and the chattel slavery perpetuated in their own time in the permanent and inherited nature of black slavery. As Nyquist indicates, John

Locke’s “Of Slavery” from The Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), a text lawmen and politicians would have known well, discusses the differences between

Hebrew servitude and despotic slavery.

In keeping with the compassionate emphasis established by the Lawes and

Libertyes, both masters and servants protested against abuse of a servants’ person and

172 Anonymous, Bible Rights of The Slave, or Jewish Servitude & American Slavery Compared, 6, http://dlxs.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer- idx?c=mayantislavery;idno=17865016;view=image;seq=1

173 Isaac, “Hebrew Scriptures,” 94.

174 Mary Nyquist, Arbitrary Rule: Slavery, Tyranny, and the Power of Life and Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 353. Hereafter abbreviated to Arbitrary Rule.

52 rights.175 Land grants fell away by the late 1630s176 and clothes began to dominate freedom dues across colonial America; two suits of clothing, one to be worn on Sunday for religious worship and another fit for daily work, were typical.177 Freedom dues in the seventeenth century also consisted of money, produce, books, instruments, guns,178 ewe goats, and cattle.179 Listings of these items in contracts were meticulously detailed, and payments of freedom dues in Massachusetts remained substantial throughout the seventeenth century.180 Servants could and did seek redress if denied.181

While scholars might query whether servants actually received freedom dues regularly182 – particularly the land-based freedom dues of the early seventeenth century –

175 Towner, Good Master, 180.

176 Towner, 6-7.

177 Towner, 29.

178 Towner, 29.

179 Towner, 41.

180 Towner, 29.

181 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 253. The payment of freedom dues was also reinforced in Chester County, Pennsylvania. As Tomlins indicates, the most frequent petition by servants of the Chester County courts related to the dues owed them upon their completion of service (Tomlins, “Early British America, 1585- 1830,” 145). Other servant complaints brought before the courts concerned masters’ failure to “provide promised instruction,” “to furnish appropriate food, clothing, and accommodation,” to avoid servants’ abuse or overwork, and occasionally the desire to obtain the “dissolution of indentures obtained deceptively or unfairly” (Tomlins, 145).

182 Enfranchisement through freedom dues was more than a powerful narrative: as lawmakers became privy to abuses preventing ex-servants from receiving their freedom dues, they acted quickly to remedy them. For instance, the assembly in Virginia created rules to prevent servants from being coerced into “giving up their freedom dues in exchange for early freedom,” recognizing that a master could abuse a servant into making such an exchange, even though foregoing the freedom dues almost invariably doomed him or her to servitude in another household (Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom, 223, 276). In Maryland, witnesses officially observed an informal but expected routine near the termination of a servant’s term in which the master would read the indenture agreement (which the servant had retained),

53 the analysis of central areas of servitude in America makes it clear that county and provincial courts generally ruled in favour of servants. Thus, by and large, the servant in

America who was deprived of freedom dues could expect legal redress and eventual receipt of payment.

Granted, servants faced many practical challenges at the completion of their service. Edmund S. Morgan explains that many servants ended up working for another master after the termination of their service, and many needed to rent land from their former masters to raise their own crops. He identifies a lack of tools, clothes, and provisions as barriers to independence that land-based freedom dues would not surmount.183 Moreover, servants had to find “vacant land and also pay surveyor’s and clerk’s fees,” despite being owed the land itself through freedom dues.184 Beyond this, the ex-servant who finally received his land would need to clear it and build a house. He would also need to find a way to support himself until his first crop was harvested.185 In short, beginning to live on one’s own land required capital that many servants simply would not have had. According to Menard, servants rarely took possession of freedom

aloud to ensure the mutual understanding of the freedom dues near the time of their payment (Daniels, “Liberty to Complaine,” 237-38). The servant provided a receipt for the freedom dues. While it is unclear if this informal process was used in other colonies central to our understanding of servitude, such as Virginia and Massachusetts, it is clear that courts upheld contract stipulations of freedom dues in all of these areas.

183 Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom, 223.

184 Menard, Migrants, Servants and Slaves, 49.

185 According to Menard, the three barrels of corn frequently given as part of freedom dues would be insufficient to sustain a man until the first harvest in mid to late seventeenth century Maryland (Menard, 50).

54 dues’ land until two years after servitude.186 And at this point former servants would work others’ land to earn money to make their own land livable and profitable.187

Freedom dues, in short, never guaranteed independence. However, their promise largely alleviated the stresses of indentured servitude in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they were generally paid. But Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray’s

(Eds.) groundbreaking book – Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America (2009) – discusses the use of freedom dues as a routine payment made by masters to poor children who had been “bound out.”

After the decline of land-based freedom dues in the late 1630s, the American public’s reinvigorated view of them (as a result of the Lawes and Libertyes [1648]), for example, its initial shift towards the belief that these payments symbolized humanitarian values, now moves the recipient away from the unfreedom associated with servitude into the autonomy, enfranchisement, and civic rebirth associated with freedom. The sense that freedom dues could allow the recipient to experience an embodied, humanized variety of civil stature gradually capitalized on – yet decidedly moved beyond – the enfranchisement the Lawes and Libertyes (1648) were intended to bequeath. This transformed understanding of the enfranchisement transferred by freedom dues was most apparent in locations such as Virginia, which lacked the Puritan focus on the religious need for preserving humanity.

186 Menard, 40.

187 Menard, 50-51.

In some cases, benefits that were funneled through freedom dues to servants who had just completed their indentures accrued due to the desire to reinforce the racial hierarchy of whiteness as superior to blackness. For instance, Virginia’s assembly in

1705 decided to ensure white servants received lucrative freedom dues to reinforce the impoverished inferiority of black labour.188 Other colonies began to follow Virginia’s lead, as a measure to further reinforce the inferiority of black men to white men through legislating such material markers of difference.189 At the same time, the ever-increasing numbers of slaves who came to the colony eroded freedom dues by alleviating the labour shortage.190 Thus, despite the attempt to use freedom dues to create clear lines of demarcation between blacks and whites, slavery itself eroded this form of privilege, especially throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

However, when the first phase of indentured servitude had ended in the eighteenth century due to increased use of slave labour, the transformation of freedom dues chiefly occurred as a result of the pauper apprentice system. More importantly, this later growth of the humanitarian narrative of freedom dues explains why the authors of some

188 Masters were required to give white male servants freedom dues that consisted of “ten bushels of Indian corn, thirty shillings in money” and “a well fixed musket or fuzee, of the value of twenty shillings, at least” (qtd. in Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom, 344) and white female servants fifteen bushels of corn and forty shillings in money, an upgrade from three barrels of corn and a suit of clothes that had previously prevailed (Morgan, 344). Better still, servants were to receive fifty acres of land on completion of indenture even if they had not been required to pay for their transportation. Because the custom of the county was to provide freedom dues of clothes, we might deduce that black servants received them. Ultimately, it is clear that whatever black servants received for freedom dues was far less than their white counterparts. (Morgan, 344).

189 Morgan, 344.

190 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 64.

56 seventeenth to nineteenth century legal and literary texts adopted it to challenge the poor treatment of servants.

Race and sex precipitated some differences in the freedom dues that were remitted upon the conclusion of bound out children’s indenture, but these payments virtually always included clothing, money, land, furniture, and tools of the trade for which they had been trained, and the provision of livestock.191 The use of freedom dues in the context of child binding out from colonial settlement through the mid-nineteenth century

– even as indenture of adults, and thus such dues for them, had become largely a memory

– likely accounts for the persistence of the powerful narrative of the positive humanitarianism of freedom dues in the American psyche. As my dissertation will demonstrate, signs of this persistence are available in literature up to and including the mid-nineteenth century.

Slavery and Freedom in the Massachusetts Context

The customs and rules governing indentured servitude in Massachusetts necessarily took place in the context of the colony-and-state’s evolving relationship to slavery. Slave emancipation in Massachusetts began in 1780, but it was gradual, occurring “by effect”

191 Talbot County, Maryland is the only jurisdiction where binding out agreements did not have a standard clause that specified precise amount and terms of remittance for rendering freedom dues, but freedom dues were given there as well (Herndon and Murray, Children Bound to Labor, 16).

57 rather than “post nati statute.”192 A number of legal precedents discouraged slaveholding, but Massachusetts never specifically outlawed it.193

The resulting liminal space between freedom and unfreedom was a relentless source of anxiety. A 1788 law even acknowledged that “evil-minded persons” sometimes “carried off by force, or decoyed away under various pretences” freemen and women in

Massachusetts to sell them as slaves.194 A ship from Gloucester, Massachusetts, had been among the thirteen captured in Algeria, and Boston and Norfolk, Massachusetts, were centers of fundraising for ransom payments; thus the fear of white slavery was acute in the state.195

The racialized anxiety this consciousness raised was highly compatible with the growing abolitionist movement, which had its epicenter in Massachusetts. Anti-slavery

American pamphlets, newspapers, books, and narratives created a mythos of a uniquely

“northern” brand of freedom as a political tool. New England politicians, orators, and anti-

192 Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 1.

193 The “free and equal” clause in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 was applied to all men, even those enslaved (Melish, 41); historians typically date the end of slavery in Massachusetts to a 1783 ruling that removed a black man named Quok Walker from the control of a white man named Nathaniel Jamison (Melish, 64), although as Melish points out some retained their slaves or sold them south.

194 “An Act to prevent the Slave-Trade, and for granting Relief to the Families of such unhappy Persons as may be kidnapped or decoyed away from this Commonwealth,” February 27th, 1788, in “Acts and Laws … of Massachusetts,” Early American Imprints, 1639-1800, ed. Clifford K. Shipton (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1956), hereafter cited as Early American Imprints (this is the Readex Microprint reproduction), 672-73.

195 As Melish says, such fundraising was likely to fail to provide deliverance (Melish, Disowning Slavery, 152).

58 slavery activists would reconstruct their history as one untainted by slavery’s smear. This historical revisionism became the foundation for the assertions of many mid-nineteenth century anti-slavery writers and speakers who argued the Fugitive Slave Law presented a threat to the character of the North.196 New Englanders of all ranks and stations of society consistently underscored this powerful reconstruction of New England as the American bastion of boundless freedom. These narratives typically begin with Lord Mansfield’s ruling in Somerset v. Stewart, in 1772, which American abolitionists viewed as proof of the inherent freedom of English soil and air.197

The vagueness of slave emancipation in Massachusetts law – and the ways that it precipitated white management of interactions with blacks – encouraged New Englanders to take liberties with New England history. As Melish points out, white New Englanders sought to erase blacks from “their” history. They re-scripted black presence in New

England as “a triumphant narrative of a historically free, white New England, in which a few people of color were unaccountably marooned, a class of permanently ‘debased’ strangers.”198 Edlie L. Wong dates the rapid rise of this narrative of a “historically” free, white New England to freedom suits – cases abolitionists brought in the late eighteenth

196 Indeed, this prompted numerous suggestions that blacks would now have to venture even further “North” – crossing over into British North America – to find true freedom.

197 A number of cases emerged soon after Mansfield’s ruling, restricting the boundless freedoms slaves believed they had gained. See for example Williams v. Brown (1802), in which the court ruled with Williams that he had become free on contact with English soil, but that in journeying to Grenada on the Holderness ship as a seaman he had become again a slave and therefore not entitled to the wages Captain Brown had promised him (Edlie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel [New York: New York University Press, 2009], 38).

198 Melish, Disowning Slavery, 3.

59 through nineteenth centuries in New England states on behalf of individuals they claimed were enslaved in violation of the law.199

International and Interstate Threats to Comity

Thomas D. Morris explains that comity is the understanding between different jurisdictions that they will “respect” each other’s laws and claims (259).200 As Finkelman explains, comity principles in the United States were inherently ambiguous in that they might require a free state to recognise the slave state’s establishment of a master-slave relationship while requiring a slave state to recognise that a free state’s laws conferred freedom on a slave. Holding an enslaved person in a jurisdiction that prohibits slavery might constitute a comity violation, but enforcing a law against slavery by emancipating a person considered property in another jurisdiction would as well. Thus respecting each other’s laws and claims when they differ radically may be impossible, but it is a central principle of the coexistence between nations and between the individual states comprising the United States. In order to make an effective comparison between the narrative created by freedom dues and the narrative created by the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), in this section,

I will discuss the role of comity in the tensions that culminated in the law’s passage.

199 Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 5.

200 Thomas D. Morris, “United States Law” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, eds. Seymour Drescher & Stanley L. Engerman. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 250.

Americans’ consciousness of the concept of comity began with the British disregard of it. As Mary Nyquist explains, abolitionists mounted arguments against chattel slavery based on violations of America’s sovereignty visá-vis its colonial “master,” England.201

While these arguments had little to do with the plight of chattel slaves and less efficacy, they reflect the connection between comity and feelings about chattel slavery.

International comity tensions created direct threats to the freedom of white

Americans in the form of the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy on the high seas, which played a role, most historians agree, in the instigation of the War of

1812.202 The British claimed impressment was necessary to prevent seamen from deserting the Royal Navy.203 They described incidents of American impressment as errors.204 British ships also blockaded American waters and otherwise violated US sovereignty.205 In the

Chesapeake – Leopard Affair (1807), members of the crew on the British Leopard boarded the American Chesapeake looking for anyone who might have deserted the Royal Navy.

This unsanctioned boarding of the Chesapeake resulted in a battle. Perhaps prematurely,

James Barron, who was in command of the American vessel, surrendered to the British,

201 Nyquist, Arbitrary Rule, 1.

202 Impressment was the practice often used by the British – forcibly taking seamen off of American ships on the high seas. Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, Kindle ed. (University of Illinois Press, 2012), Loc 428 of 12784. More on the impressment suffered by Americans in Loc 446 of 12784.

203 Hickey, Loc 495 of 12784.

204 Hickey, Loc 495 of 12784.

205 Hickey, Loc 485 of 12784.

61 who tried four sailors for desertion and hung one.206 The British Navy actively policed the seas between Africa and the Americas from 1776 to 1812. For the first time in Western history, international courts tried individuals for acts committed on the high seas instead of turning them over to be tried under their own states’ laws.207

As much as its tendency to force Americans into servitude, British resolutions for gradual emancipation in 1823 and British case law stoked Americans’ fears that Britain threatened the rights of slaveholders. In 1772 Somerset v. Stewart denied Stewart, a

Virginian, the ability to send his slave,208 Somerset, back to America from England. The court’s declaration that the law barred slavery if there was no law positively permitting it enraged Americans.209 Michael Guasco points out history did not support Lord Mansfield’s ruling: early English settlers in America, for example, used blacks for bound labour in the absence of positive law sanctioning slavery, but even after independence the US system was based on English common law.210

206 Hickey, Loc 540-559 of 12784.

207 Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 237.

208 George H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York: Appleton, 1866), 117. Moore indicates that Somerset lived in Massachusetts even though more recent sources, such as Seymour Drescher’s (2009) Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti Slavery (99) and Sue Peabody and Keila Grinberg’s Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2007, 68), have not mentioned it.

209 As Seymour Drescher points out, prior to Mansfield’s ruling, Mansfield expressed a personal preference that the relationships between masters and slaves would no longer be governed by law. According to Drescher, Mansfield’s view was that “masters believed their black servants were free, and that servants believed that they [themselves] were slaves” (Drescher, History of Slavery and Antislavery, 271). Thus his ruling was based on his interpretation of the law, not abolitionist sentiments.

210 Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2014). An 1827 case limited the impact of the Somerset

The American government negotiated an agreement in 1837 that the British Crown would compensate American slave owners who had slaves taken from them after arriving in British territory, but this likely did not satisfy slaveholders, who would have wished to retain their slaves.211 Further, Commonwealth v. Aves in 1836 had drawn on the Somerset case in violating inter-US state comity. The sensational case in which the Massachusetts

Supreme Judicial Court freed a six-year-old slave named Med who had been brought to

Boston, citing the Somerset precedent, stoked slaveholders’ fears: I will discuss the significance of this case in greater detail in chapter three.

The US Senate adopted the Enterprise Resolutions in 1840, attempting to defend the right of American masters to property in persons under international law. These resolutions stated that Somerset applied only to the British and was not enforceable via international law.212 But British capture of slaves increased nonetheless. British agents actively collaborated in the slave revolt in 1841 aboard the brig Creole, and 135 slaves traveling from Virginia to Louisiana were diverted to Nassau and freed213; Don

Fehrenbacher calls it “the most successful slave rebellion in American history.”214 John

precedent by denying the claim of a slave who had lived for some time in England, on the logic that she had renewed her slave status by returning to the West Indies with her master instead of suing for freedom before leaving England. Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 16.

211 Drescher, History of Slavery and Antislavery, 313.

212 Drescher, 313.

213 Drescher, 314.

214 Don. E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 108.

Calhoun, who had drafted the Enterprise Resolutions, denounced the event as the “most atrocious outrage ever perpetrated on the American people.”215 However, Ohio

Congressman Joshua Giddings defended the use of the Somerset principle in the case and created counter resolutions to those stated in the Enterprise Resolutions, which Congress vehemently rejected as supporting a direct challenge to American sovereignty.216 Giddings fell from favour over the incident, and later resigned.217

England and the United States agreed to “joint patrols” in 1842, effectively preventing further seizure of slaves, but comity remained contentious. The American government at times ignored the freedom claims and personhood rights recognised under the laws of France as well as Britain when it sold free blacks from abroad who arrived in

American waters or on American soil.218 South Carolina, for example, enacted the Negro

Seamen Acts (hereafter referred to as NSAs) beginning in 1822, threatening black mariners of every national allegiance with enslavement.219 A reaction to the Denmark Vesey slave revolt in Charleston of the same year, the NSAs composed part of the “quarantine laws” that governed waterways. They declared that, legally, black sailors were either prisoners or slaves, and they incarcerated black seamen found aboard British or French vessels if

215 Drescher, History of Slavery and Antislavery, 314.

216 Drescher, 314-15.

217 Drescher, 315.

218 Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 15.

219 Wong, 15.

64 they arrived in American waters.220 While Great Britain sought to enforce comity and secure the release of these men,221 South Carolina forced many into unwaged labour under the thirteenth amendment of the US Constitution, which allowed “involuntary servitude for those convicted of crimes,” on the grounds that they had committed a crime by entering the waterways.222

British and American mariners sought to challenge the constitutionality of the

NSAs through legal action, but these cases failed to reach the US Supreme Court. As Wong demonstrates, complainants sought redress in the court of public opinion, making the case that America was violating international comity by enslaving those deemed free elsewhere.

Ultimately, this endangered the rights of Americans in relation to other sovereign states.

As the NSAs’ inability to reach the Supreme Court suggests, the willingness of the

American government to undermine comity – both at home and abroad – was one of the first signs that it would refuse to acknowledge the rights of some whites in order to reinforce slavery. As the terms of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 suggest, through the enforcement of southern slaveholder’s desire to protect their human property at the expense of northerners’ desire to maintain the sovereignty and freedom of their states, later versions of these violations of white privileges merely continue a trend that earlier international comity violations perpetrated by the American government had established.

220 Wong, 184.

221 Wong, 199.

222 Wong, 200.

In theory, the constitutional mandate in Article IV of the US Constitution that “Full

Faith and Credit shall be given each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial

Proceedings of every other State,”223 and that “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States,”224 implied that each state could decide its own affairs.225 The Constitution left decisions about how to live up to

Article IV to the states, but the Courts expected that fugitives from justice would be immediately “delivered up” and fugitives from service were to be returned to their owners

- even if the location of refuge was a free state. In practice, though, prior to the Fugitive

Slave Law, many Northern abolitionists had sought to usurp comity to divest slave-owners of their property as there was little reason to fear prosecution, and southerners often violated comity to capture free blacks from the north and sell them into slavery. As

Finkelman explains, comity violations ultimately challenged “a basic reason for union and nationhood.”226

Comity tensions between states also illuminate the challenges of legally regulating relations of servitude. Some states permitted masters to bring slaves to their jurisdiction so long as they reclassified them as indentured servants. In such cases, masters often forced their slaves to assume indenture under threat of forcible return to enslavement, negating

223 United States Constitution, art. IV.

224 United States Constitution, art. IV.

225 United States Constitution, art. IV.

226 Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 8.

66 the (eventual) freedom indenture was intended to embody. Thus, while indentured servitude and chattel slavery are two separate entities, masters sought to stretch the limits of the law by making one blend into the other.227 This practice went beyond America, as well; West Indian slaveholders embraced the porous boundary between indentured servitude and slavery by forcing slaves to indicate agreement to indenture (via sign or mark) prior to leaving the British-controlled West Indies for England. Such indentures achieved a key legal fiction that made the slave an indentured servant while on British soil.

Planters could therefore compel the slave to return to the British colonies with them under the designation of indenture and resume slave status upon return.228 Within the United

States, such subterfuge only served to heighten tensions between northern and southern states. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 sought to resolve these tensions by effectively making slavery the law of all of the United States; while it did not make trading slaves legal in free states, it obligated citizens of free states to respect slave-state laws and the property rights of the slaveholders while nullifying some of the antislavery practices of free states.

227 See for example, Matson v. Ashmore et al. for the use of Bryant (1847) in which Abraham Lincoln unsuccessfully represented the slaveholder, Matson, who was systematically cycling slaves from his native Kentucky, holding them for a year nominally as indentured slaves in Illinois before returning them. For more on this influential case, see Charles R. McKirdy, Lincoln Apostate: The Matson Slave Case (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011).

228 James Walvin, England, Slaves, and Freedom, 1776-1838 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986).

White Slavery in the American Psyche

Stories of white slavery had a powerful hold on the American imagination and gave comity disputes particular weight. Guasco documents that English slave narratives, which centered on the capture, sale, enslavement, labour, and the return to liberty of Englishmen had an enormous place in public discourse in England.229 These narratives sometimes equated physical liberty with spiritual liberty, and featured captors who forced conversion to the Muslim faith or forced Protestants to become Catholic, or vice versa.230 While

England’s primary response was to seek treaties that would protect Englishmen abroad the issue was kept in the public eye, due to the popularity of published slave narratives and regular pleas to the English public to contribute money for ransom for English prisoners of the Barbary States.231

What Americans termed “the Algerine captivity” had as strong a place in the

American mind as the English Slave narrative had in the English mind. The Algerine captivity took place in the midst of treaty negotiations between the United States and the

Barbary States, when Barbary pirates began to capture American ships, imprisoning

American crews and holding them for years. Algerian corsairs captured thirteen American ships, imprisoning about 130 American crew members between 1785 and 1795; approximately forty-five lost their lives in captivity before Algiers agreed to a treaty that

229 Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen, 126.

230 Guasco, 126-27.

231 Guasco, 140.

68 secured the crewmen’s release in 1795. Britain had secured treaties protecting their seamen, and London newspapers took note of the ransoms corsairs demanded for

Americans.232 The tone of smugness likely furthered tensions between England and the

United States over comity.233

White American slavery narratives, particularly those published between 1794 and

1820, stirred the popular imagination and reached a wide audience.234 Their central place in English conceptions of freedom gave them significant influence on American culture as well. The palpable terror white Americans felt of becoming enslaved was discussed in newspapers and popular lore in America;235 certainly, Americans at home wondered about what their own fates might be in similar circumstances.

Concern about the fate of white American privilege was evident in key lectures of the day such as Charles Sumner’s 1847 lecture on white slavery, White Slavery in the

Barbary States: A Lecture before the Boston Mercantile Library Association. In this lecture, Sumner used slavery in the Algiers to construct an argument for the abolition of chattel slavery throughout the United States.

232 Drescher, History of Slavery and Antislavery, 213.

233 Britons seem to have been immune to American experiences in Algiers but fears of potential French invasion swept the nation in 1803 and 1804, reigniting fears of white slavery (Drescher, 225).

234 Melish, Disowning Slavery, 152.

235 Melish, 157-60.

According to Joanne Pope Melish, subsistence levels of food and clothing, heavy physical labour, violent beatings, being bound by chains, and slave markets were features of European and American captivity in North Africa.236 Narratives of such captivity diverged noticeably from those of whites held in captivity to Native Americans, even though these narratives predominantly discussed physical labour.237 As Melish describes,

“a great nervousness about the stability of social identity” arose in America in response to these events, as well as post-Revolutionary War social change and emancipation, even though it did not involve heritable slavery.238 Indeed, white Americans started to wonder:

“Could freedom, and perhaps citizenship, turn people of color ‘white’? Could enslavement transform republican citizens into slaves?”239 In response to these fears, a number of

Algerian captivity narratives framed their descriptions of liberation as a triumph of republican whiteness,240 relieving Americans of the burden of believing that Algerian captivity could negate essential white, American freedom.

236 Melish, 152.

237 Melish, 152.

238 Melish also points out how cases of albinism and vitiglio (patches of skin which lose their conventional pigmentation) aggravated concerns about the stability of white freedoms and black servitude (Melish, 2).

239 Melish, 2.

240 Melish, 150.

The Porous Boundary between Nineteenth Century Indentured Servitude and Slavery

By mid nineteenth century, the term “indentured servitude” had become very slippery on both sides of the Atlantic. Freedom dues were eroded from their earlier status as tracts of land often allowing the recipient to jump classes; still, they were considered valuable despite the corruption of their components. The Emancipation Act of 1833 in

Britain stipulated that on August 1st, 1834, slavery would cease in Britain’s colonies.

However, the bondsmen’s toil would not end on that date; the act instituted working relationships between slaves and former owners in exchange for freedom as well as food and clothes and imposed apprenticeships for 4–6 additional years.241 The state compensated the planters with twenty million pounds for fulfilling the terms of this agreement, which did not require them to pay wages.242 Slaves could not depart their masters’ control prior to paying this “debt” of service. While apprenticeship could involve learning a trade and therefore differ starkly from indenture, in this case it did not, and because abolitionists began to decry the apprenticeship system as merely slavery “by another name,”243 and because these issues were covered at length in newspapers of the day, readers of the literature this dissertation addresses would have been aware of the slim boundary between the two.

241 Domestic slaves served four and agricultural slaves six.

242 Howard Temperley, “Abolition and Anti-Slavery: Britain,” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 13.

243 All references to this quotation in this chapter invoke Edlie L. Wong’s interpretation of the “legal tautology” which explains that slavery was transmuted into servitude but remained slavery “by another name” (Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 41).

Blackstone’s eighteenth-century publication Commentaries on the Laws of

England, a celebrated treatise on English common law, deals with the plight of those bound to perpetual service:

[W]ith regard to any right which the master may have acquired, by contract or the like, to the perpetual service of John or Thomas, this will remain exactly in the same state as before: for this is no more than the same state of subjection for life, which every apprentice submits to for the space of seven years, or sometimes for a longer term.244

Thus, Blackstone suggests that, as sub-forms of the same category, slavery and apprenticeship are homologous, indicating that slavery is simply of longer duration than apprenticeship. The passage explained that English law continued to protect masters’ rights to the service of any “slave or negro”; that Somerset left these rights “exactly in the same state as before.” Indeed, as F.O. Shyllon indicates in Black Slaves in Britain, the second, third, and subsequent editions of Blackstone’s commentary speak back to the assertion made in the first – that a slave “‘becomes eo instanti a freeman’ the moment he lands in

England” – by adding the phrase “though the master’s right to his service may...still continue.”245 Wong suggests that Blackstone thus engages in “a kind of legal tautology: he redefines the slave as a free servant irrevocably contracted to lifetime servitude, which is merely a slave by another name.”246 Because West Indian planters were determined to

244 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765- 1769, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 412-13.

245 Qtd. in Folarin Olawale Shyllon, Black Slaves in Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 60.

246 Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 41.

72 continue to hold their slaves and maintain the institution of slavery, abolitionists created the Society for the Amelioration and Gradual Abolition of Slavery (1823-1839), commonly referred to as the Anti-Slavery Society or ASS.247 Under the leadership of their parliamentary spokesman Thomas Fowell Buxton (after William Wilberforce’s tenure), they sought to pressure the planters into better treatment of their “apprentices.” But the planters continued to resist the suggested reforms; in response to this, some of the members of the ASS left, creating the Agency Committee (1831-1834), which demanded immediate emancipation.248 By and large, blurred lines between indentured servitude and slavery continued to be an area of tension.

In America, as Francis S. Philbrick reveals, petitioners challenged the 1807 law passed in Indiana Territory, which claimed that indenture enacted slavery in disguise,249 since masters imposed the term, hired out unspent time at will, and frequently sold indentured servants back into slave states.250 The Indiana legislature moved to close the loophole in 1810 so that only fugitive slaves could be forced to cross state lines, and then the Indiana Constitution in 1816 invalidated indentures “of any negro or mulatto hereafter made and executed out of the bounds of this State.”251 Other cases generally established

247 Temperley, “Abolition and Anti-Slavery: Britain,” 12.

248 Temperley, 12.

249 Francis S. Philbrick, Law, Courts, and Litigation of Indiana Territory (Springfield, IL: Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library, 1930), 12-13.

250 Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 92.

251 Indiana Constitution (1816), art. XI

73 that lifetime servitude was slavery, even if masters used the fig leaf of indenture terminology. For instance, in Fish v. Fisher (1800) the courts held that selling an indentured black of twenty years old into an additional twenty years of service made a mockery of the indenture, since this was effectively a sale for “the expected lifetime of the slave.”252

Similarly, the 1680 New Jersey census noted eighteen slaves within the state, but their actual legal designations were “apprentices for life.”253 Apparently, those compiling the census clearly understood that lifetime service was slavery. This ready slippage between indenture and slavery presented an ongoing problem for the adjudication of cases in favorem vitae et libertatis.254 It was also an increasing source of tension and fear as the nineteenth century wore on.

Excavating Obligations of the White Master Class: A History

The idea that freedom dues allowed recipients to be fully enfranchised humans is an integral part of understanding how freedom dues shifted in social perspective.

However, it is important to note, as many scholars have not, that the social gap between masters and servants in the seventeenth century was narrow. As Daniels points out, “rich

252 Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 74. Fish had fled slavery to New York only to be recaptured there by his master; his master swiftly sold him to Fisher for a twenty-year indenture. The courts ruled the indenture violated New York’s laws.

253 Finkelman, 76.

254 In 1818 Mississippi’s highest court claimed that slavery could “only exist through municipal regulations, and “in matters of doubt […] courts must lean in favorem vitae et libertatis” (in favour of life and liberty) Harry v. Decker & Hopkins, Walker (Miss.) 36, 42 (1818).

74 people owned the same goods poor people did”—they just “owned more of them.”255

Goods, therefore, did not “illuminate a social hierarchy.”256 The courts’ general failure to show bias in favour of masters over servants in the matter of suits related to freedom dues reflects this flat society. Seventeenth century justices did not, as Daniels writes, “identify reflexively with the interests of elite people to defraud servants and condone their abuse.”257 According to Daniels, “the political and social rebellions of the late seventeenth century caused a decided though temporary swing away from ideals of masters’ care and towards ideals of masters’ control.”258

My dissertation reveals that this trajectory is far more complex than Daniels claims: the texts I analyze demonstrate that earlier notions of a master’s obligation towards his servants substantively and uniquely changed with the passing of the Fugitive

Slave Law of 1850. As a result of this change, authors continued to interrogate this pendulum swing towards master empowerment and away from master obligation in the nineteenth century. Using the narrative that emerged around freedom dues was a key way that authors mounted this challenge against masters’s lack of care. As Daniels acknowledges, “common…English social and political thought” during seventeenth and eighteenth-century indentures limited masters’ authority.259

255 Daniels, “Liberty to Complaine,” 224.

256 Daniels, 224.

257 Daniels, 248.

258 Daniels, 172.

259 Daniels, 225.

Unlike Daniels, who believes that the notion of master’s duties was more prevalent in English social and political thought than in New England,260 my analysis posits that the Lawes and Libertyes (1648) demonstrated expectations that masters exercise care towards their servants. As I will demonstrate, the narrative associating freedom dues with humanitarian considerations proves clearly that seventeenth-century masters did, indeed, owe their servants a certain level of care, and – most importantly – that this was a widely understood conceptualization of mastership in seventeenth-century

America. Therefore, when county and provincial cases ruled in favour of servants, they participated in a long-established narrative of a clear degree of master indebtedness towards servants.

Only the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 could finally expunge this notion of indebtedness. As I argue, the law inscribed slave and servant indebtedness, reversing the traditional notion of master obligation to servants. This law required that

“fugitives from labor” who “owed labor” to their masters be apprehended and that anyone assisting fugitives be fined $1,000 or jailed for up to six months. Thus, the Fugitive Slave

Law of 1850 extended and inscribed the fugitive’s indebtedness more stringently than did the constitution and other existing laws at the time. While the wording of the law did not invoke race, and white servants might “owe” labour, in practice, the law was used solely to capture and return black slaves and (very occasionally) to apprehend whites who had assisted them. Indenture and chattel slavery were different in the United States; to yoke

260 Daniels, 225.

76 them via the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) was a shocking move. By consenting to terms that permitted white servants to be viewed in essentially the same light as blacks in the Fugitive

Slave Law of 1850, the US Congress crushed the last bastion and illusion of supposedly humane servitude that existed in America. As I will explain, this firm negation of long- cherished values regarding master indebtedness was the result of terror regarding the ways in which the privileges of race and country no longer seemed protected: freedom as most white masters knew, it was now at risk.

Discussions of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 by literary and cultural historians have extended scholars’ focus on “the fugitive’s clandestine movements.”261 Among these,

Stephen M. Best’s work The Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession has broken new ground. Best suggests that the Fugitive Slave Law did more than increase the probability that black fugitive slaves would use the Underground Railroad to come to

British North America. The Bill of Rights, he argues, had made “citizens,” but the Fugitive

Slave Law of 1850 turned magistrates, police, and other agents of Northern states “into commensurate ‘interests.’”262 Accordingly, it “recast political relations between citizen and state as economic relations between creditors and debtors.”263 He argues that in light

261 Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 2.

262 Stephen Best, The Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 18. Best’s reference here, which explains the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, adopts some theoretical understandings from the work of Isaac D. Balbus, who explains the “homolog[ous]” relationship between the autonomy of the law’s form and commodity form. As well, Best is invoking the work of Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg who explain this dynamic in detail. See Isaac D. Balbus, “Commodity Form and Legal Form: An Essay on the ‘Relative Autonomy’ of the Law,” Law and Society Review 11 (1977): 571 ff; see Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg, Literary Criticisms of the Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 527.

263 Best, Fugitive’s Properties, 18.

77 of the new law, the fugitive “played a pivotal role in the rise of commercial formalism in

American law.”264 While twentieth and twenty-first century notions of American chattel slavery reflect an assumption that masters owned slaves as chattel, Francis Lieber, nineteenth century political scientist, frames it somewhat differently: “Properly speaking...the slave himself is not property but his labour is.... We own the labour of the slave and this cannot be done without keeping the person performing the labour, thus owned, in bondage.”265 Best notes that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 reflects this preoccupation with “market logics and the conception of property as relations of equity, credit extension, indebtedness, and contractual obligation.”266 In particular, he argues that

“this shift of the law’s gaze toward duties, obligations, and burdens – this vision of property as a matter of conduct, as a variable of personhood – comes into focus in nineteenth-century courts prima facie as the law of chattel slavery, specifically the law pertaining to fugitive slave persons.”267

Best’s work, as well as Edlie L. Wong’s, strongly influence my study. Wong argues that long before the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), “traveling slaves challenged, even more profoundly than did the fugitive, the cultural logic of slavery and freedom”268 and that

264 Best, 18.

265 Qtd. in Best, 8. Original source quoted by Best is Francis Lieber, handwritten piece entitled “Is There Any Insult to the South in Slavery Being Excluded from California,” 1849, Lieber Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

266 Best, 15.

267 Best, 15.

268 Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 2.

“The shift in northern legal culture from guarding slaveholders’ property rights to enforcing the traveling slave’s right to liberty provoked vehement responses from the slave states.”269

Both Wong and Best focus their analyses of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) on transformations to the slave’s status – the former, on increased opportunities for liberty for slaves in transit to free states; the latter, on increased indebtedness for the fugitive.

Responding to Wong’s insight that the fugitive’s personhood at law and role in literature has led researchers to “overlook” other relevant contexts, my analysis addresses changes to white master personhood, which others have typically relegated to an afterthought. I argue these changes were vast. While I agree with Best’s claims that it was the Fugitive

Slave Law of 1850 that transformed slaves into indebted bodies, I move beyond this assertion to argue that this law was, in fact, a reversal of an earlier movement in mid- seventeenth century New England law inscribed through the institution of humanely oriented, master-payable freedom dues.

As I will illustrate in my dissertation, freedom dues became a powerful master narrative in literary texts, with novelists wresting it to critique American slavery while simultaneously challenging conventional notions of the duties and obligations of masters in a climate which increasingly placed the onus for obligations on slaves/servants. By

“reading” the aims of freedom dues laws in conjunction with the Fugitive Slave Law of

1850, my analysis will reveal that the slave indebtedness the law ruthlessly inscribed

269 Wong, 6.

79 reversed an earlier legal representation of white master personhood as having obligations towards slaves. Section one of the Fugitive Slave Law mandated that commissioners who were given “power that any justice of the peace, or other magistrate of any of the United

States” possessed, be available to arrest fugitive slaves and white Americans who assisted their flight. Thus, whereas courts had reinforced white masters’ obligations towards servants in the past, the Fugitive Slave Law required the lawmakers to support efforts to return fugitive slaves, whatever their own convictions might have been. Whites were being forced to emblazon indebtedness onto black bodies: all blacks, whether slave or free, had to be viewed as potential “fugitives from labor” as a result of the Fugitive Slave Law.

Failure to apprehend a fugitive from labour was as good as aiding and abetting one in the eyes of the law. Thus, whites who did not own slaves could be – and were – fined, charged and/or jailed for violating the mandates of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Indeed, according to section five of the law, even marshals and deputies could be liable if a captured fugitive escaped their custody. Fines could also be levied.

This willingness to charge white marshals and deputies was no accident; indeed, it was a larger trend that was bolstered after the law’s passage. For example, in Oliver v.

Kauffman et al. (1850 -1853), the courts ruled that Daniel Kauffman had violated the

Fugitive Slave Law 1850 by assisting Mrs. Cecilia Oliver’s slaves’ escape to Pennsylvania while Oliver was bound for Maryland from Arkansas. He was fined $2,800 for breaking the law.270 Ironically, this infraction had occurred in 1847 and when Oliver brought the suit to court, she initially tried to charge him under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793; however,

270 Presumably he was fined this higher amount because he helped more than one slave escape.

80 because only ten of twelve jurors were persuaded that Kauffman had knowingly violated the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, the case was dismissed. Two years after the verdict was passed, Oliver again brought suit – this time, however, she had the force of the far more detailed and punitive Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 behind her – and she won.271 Judge Grier explicitly invoked his interpretation of comity in this ruling: in his view, the slave’s status

“depend[ed] on the law of Maryland, and not of Pennsylvania”272 and he convicted

Kauffman accordingly.

In a similar vein, Passmore Williamson’s case – which occurred five years after

Oliver v. Kauffman in July of 1855 – was also famous and illustrated comity issues as well as the undermining of white privileges due to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in

Pennsylvania. Passmore Williamson, a Quaker who was secretary of the Acting

Committee of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, helped three of John H. Wheeler’s slaves escape. When Wheeler attempted to serve Williamson with a writ of habeas corpus, he was not in town and did not return home until two days later, by which time the “rescue” of the slaves had already been effected. A second writ was served, ordering Williamson to bring the slaves to District Judge Kane. Rather cheekily, Williamson replied that the slaves

“are not now, nor was [sic] at the time of issuing of the said writ, or at any other time, in the custody, power of possession of, nor confined, nor restrained their [sic] liberty by him”;273 he also said that he had no authority over the slaves and requested a continuance

271 Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 251-54.

272 Qtd. in Finkelman, 254.

273 Qtd. in Finkelman, 256.

81 so he might “prepare testimony to prove the truth of the return,”274 a request the court denied. Judge Kane charged Williamson with contempt of court and found his actions in violation of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; thus, he had Williamson imprisoned in

Moyamensing Prison. The ruling divided public opinion throughout the country.275

In short, the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) completely transformed the personhood of white servants, white masters, and black slaves/servants, leaving them with less autonomy before government and far less obligation. This was a significant reversal, for the narrative of enfranchisement via freedom dues had persisted. This narrative could have died out in the 1630s, when land-based freedom dues, and the social mobility associated therewith, were dramatically reduced. However, championing humanitarian freedom dues in the

Lawes and Libertyes, combined with their increased use via child binding out, sustained it, rendering it a potent discourse that speakers and authors could use to challenge abuses in servitude. This is an overlooked aspect of why northerners deemed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 so shocking: it undermined a long-standing view – likely, first posited in the Lawes and Libertyes – of the relationships between masters and their servants or slaves whereby white masters did indeed owe their servants certain goods and aids, not the least of which was the ability to be fully functioning members of society upon cessation of service.

Moreover, to northerners, the sacrificing of long-standing white-servant privileges through the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) so as to enforce the apprehending of black slaves would have served as the ultimate symbol of just how fragile white American privileges could be.

274 Qtd. in Finkelman, 256.

275 Finkelman, 263.

The slippage between servant and slave that so often occupied comity disputes between the free and slave states was therefore horrifically manifested through this law. The Fugitive

Slave Law of 1850 placed all the burden of “owing,” all indebtedness, on “fugitives from labor” – black or white.

Although the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was likely never used to return a white servant to servitude, its blending of the categories was shocking. In a dramatic overturning of the historic practice of giving credence in the courts to servant complaint, section six of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 states:

In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence; and the certificates in this and the first [fourth] section mentioned, shall be conclusive of the right of the person or persons in whose favor granted, to remove such fugitive to the State or Territory from which he escaped, and shall prevent all molestation of such person or persons by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever. (Emphasis mine.)

A fugitive servant could be a servant of any race fleeing his or her master. Thus, the framers of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850) stripped white servants of long-enshrined rights by imbuing them with the fugitivity normally associated with nineteenth-century black slaves.

To reject the testimony of the black servant was not uncommon, but to reject the testimony of the white servant, and allow the servant to be taken “by any process,” to legally open the door for the suppression of servant complaint by any means necessary, was, I argue, a radical step. It stoked the fear that white American privilege was far too fragile in an era of comity violations abroad and comity violations at home. Through the Fugitive Slave Law,

Americans gave up the humanity they had long believed should be associated with white servitude, if not black, and in so doing, undermined the privilege that white servants had

83 enjoyed at law. The Fugitive Slave Law (1850) reveals how, under pressure, the states surrendered these values to preserve a variety of white American privilege: to the benefit of masters and the detriment of servants. Ultimately, my dissertation explicates how this powerful master-narrative created by the legal institution of the freedom dues both transformed white master personhood and raised humanitarian questions regarding appropriate regulations for freedom and bondage.

Chapter Two Deafening Silence and Empowered Tongues: Tituba, the Salem Witch Trials, and the New England Dream

The Salem Witch Trials have captured the imagination of popular media, generating a robust tourist industry in Salem, Massachusetts, where people can reflect on these trials and the ways in which they forever transformed New England. From the

1953 play The Crucible which dramatized the Salem Witch Trials to the TV show Sleepy

Hollow, which focused on the lore of witches in New England, and the Festival of the

Dead event in Salem, Massachusetts,276 which focusses on the same, the trials have been brought to life in many ways. These trials are the subject of vigorous scholarly debate as well. While there are many views on what caused the start and continuation of these seminal trials, most scholars agree that the accusers in the 152 arrests of witches in a scant seven months in Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1692 focused on the Devil’s obtaining spiritual dominion over the church.277 In Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt

Crisis of 1692, Benjamin C. Ray suggests that concerns about the Devil seeking control over the town was a central catalyst of the witch trials. Furthermore, Ray indicates that claims by the four girls in Salem Village that their “Christian faith” was being “attacked,”

276 See https://www.festivalofthedead.com/

277 See for example Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Elizabeth Reis, Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England [E-book] (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th Century Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984); John M. Murrin, “Coming to Terms with the Salem Witch Trials,” in The Enduring Fascination with Salem Witchcraft (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2003), 309-347; Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); Benjamin C. Ray, Satan & Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692 (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2015).

84 85 which subsequent accusers as well as confessing witches would take up and amplify by suggesting that the witches were “tormenting” them to make them “sign the Devil’s book” so that they, too, would be witches, is unique to the Salem crisis and drove it.278

For judges in the Salem Witch Trials, these alleged reported attempts by the Devil to wrest control were arguably a sign evil was threatening the cause that had brought them to the New World: freedom to practice their faith and the birth of a transformed England in Colonial America. I argue, however, that the testimony of Tituba, an Indian servant of

Samuel Parris, at the outset of the trials, transformed the course of the case against the additional 151 people. To be sure, the church in New England certainly had significant influence at the time and a strong interest in preserving the success of the Puritan project.

As I discuss at length elsewhere in this chapter, the church provided fertile conditions for the claims to be seen as true evidence of a crisis of faith and freedom. But I believe that

Ray rightly suggests that Tituba’s testimony was crucial in driving the chaos that ensued.279 The tacit narrative Tituba unfolded about the hardships of New England life prompted the magistrates to prosecute many others in a short period and shaped the progress of the trials.

Richard P. Gildrie, who writes about the sacred and the profane in the reformation of manners that occurred in New England, renders Tituba’s claims thus: a “theme of inversion in stark form: Satan, using a standard indenture and claiming to be God….

278 Ray, Satan & Salem, 4-5.

279 Ray, 6.

Seeking worshipers and servants through promises of material reward.”280 Gildrie has little more to say about this indenture, but I argue that it was primarily based on a strong belief in the personal transformation that people associated with the receipt of freedom dues after indenture. Tituba’s narrative exposes the shortcomings of New England life and its promise of financial prosperity. It presents the hardships of colonial American life as experienced by parishioners. It makes a tacit claim that Puritan values and faith do not offer enfranchisement, equality, or improved life circumstances. The Devil emerges as a master Tituba adopts when the magistrates and clergy could not provide the opportunities that Puritans had been told to expect. He is the purveyor of social justice and economic enfranchisement.

While the court may have deemed her an “ignoramus”281 and consequently acquitted her, many other individuals drew on Tituba’s narrative in their own confessions or defenses. They clearly found her claims compelling enough to mimic and develop.

This chapter will argue that this borrowed and developed narrative is a critical factor in the grim events of 1692. It made claims significantly at odds with normative views of

New England’s potential to transform the lives of its inhabitants. It presented the Puritan project as a failure, and this fact both frustrated and infuriated the magistrates.

280 Richard P. Gildrie, The Profane, the Civil, & the Godly: The Reformation of Manners in Orthodox New England, 1679-1749 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 169.

281 Bernard Rosenthal, general ed., Records of the Salem Witch Hunt (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 138. Hereafter abbreviated RSWH. Notes to the “Deposition of Samuel Parris, Thomas Putnam, & Ezekiel Cheever v. Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, &Tituba,” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol.1, no. 34, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

The Puritan Project: New England Dream

In 1630, John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, penned a sermon which he is believed to have preached on the passage from England to

North America. This sermon referred to New England as a city upon a hill,282 invoking

Matthew 5:14 – 16, wherein Jesus compares the lives of Christians to a city on a hill, which cannot be hidden but rather gives light to all. Winthrop thus posited New England as a literal city on a hill and an unflinching example shining forth for others. The

Puritan283 venture to New England as colonists was intimately connected to glorifying the

Christian God and fulfilling his mission in the new land. Winthrop envisioned a society that functioned along class lines that, he argued, were ordained by God, with

“some...rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission.” The sermon presented various ways in which, in this new land, true transformations of fortune and religion could occur. As he put it, God ordained that “as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, so this great king will have many stewards, counting himself more honored in dispensing his gifts to man by man, than if he did it by his own immediate hands.” Thus he proposed some in his audience would become like stewards to God, obligated to display the corporal works of mercy to those less fortunate.

282 Qtd. in Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2016), 13.

283 While a number of historians debate just how widely the mantle “Puritan” can be extended, this section focuses on the Puritanism that was apparent in old England between 1560 and 1640 and was most readily seen in various ideas and practices that influenced the development of Puritanism in New England. See David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 18.

After numerous achievements in their new land, he suggested, “men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the Lord make it like that of New England.’”284

David A. Weir lays out the key differences between the Church of England and

Puritanism between 1560 and 1640. In England, membership in the church was nearly automatic, and structured through the local parish. Heresy and criminal behaviours could lead to excommunication, but most people were considered Christians regardless of their behaviour, and the parochial system rarely disciplined bad behavior. While this was a holdover from England’s lengthy period as a Roman Catholic nation, it continued after

England became Protestant, and, according to Weir, it was among the reasons for

Puritans’ alienation.285 Many Cambridge-trained clerics who identified themselves as

Puritans in the 1590s came to believe that the vast majority of people residing in England thought they were Christians but were not. The clerics envisioned a church of voluntary members; they believed that this system would allow God to choose his elect.286

Members would be those who had “intense religious experience and a commitment to

Protestant doctrine.”287 The Crown, however, viewed this separatist movement as explicitly treasonous – an uprising against the divinely ordained Church of England.288

284 Governor John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630). https://www.winthropsociety.com/doc_charity.php (Accessed June 23rd, 2018.)

285 Disagreements over vestments in worship led to the foundation of the Puritan movement, and church government and membership were other points of contention (Weir, Early New England, 8, 19).

286 Weir, 8.

287 Weir, 19.

288 Weir, 19.

Thus Winthrop’s vision reflects the hope that brought Puritans – many of whom had faced persecution under the strictures of Christian praxis in Europe – to New

England.289 And, indeed, civil and ecclesiastical institutions were nonexistent in seventeenth-century New England, causing Puritans to believe in the potential for a new order that they could not achieve in England. While there were some groups which arrived with charters from the English government, the vast majority of settlements created their own ways of civil and religious structures.290 Where England had failed, the leaders of New England hoped to shine a light from their new, hill-top city which would reflect a scripturally-sound approach to social and spiritual living.

Because New England leaders were familiar with using church covenant as a way to create an established church, they chose to use the practice of “church covenanting” to create civil authority, too, in their newly settled land. Many of these civil covenants held strong similarities to church covenants.291 The official process through which various civil and ecclesiastical covenants were created and attested is referred to as

289 As John Milton is considered a puritan English poet, it is useful to consider some of his writings to illuminate why some Puritans decided to leave England for New England. In his “The Reason for Church Government Urg’d Against Prelaty”, he makes it clear that the Anglican church is in need of reform. He uses the Scriptures throughout his argument to challenge various aspects of the church which need to be changed (John Milton, The Reason of Church-Government Urg’d Against Prelaty [London: Printed by E.G. for Iohn Rathwell, 1641]). In his “A Treatise of Civil Power,” he again argues from Scripture that civil power should abstain from dictating in religious matters: to do so might violate the individual consciences of the individuals so subject (John Milton, A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes [London: Printed by Tho. Newcomb, 1659]). Finally, in “Areopagitica,” he argues that against censorship of printed materials (John Milton, Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicens’d Printing to the Parliament of England [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928]). All these works expose key areas where England was viewed by Puritans as deficient, leading many individuals to consider what their options might be should they relocate to New England.

290 Weir, Early New England, 8.

291 Weir, 8.

“covenanting.”292 Many modern societies create civil governance with more detail and authority than was evident in the seventeenth century and see religious governance as one category of the numerous ones ultimately governed by civil structures. In New England, it was the reverse, as their society lacked clear separations between church and state.293

This division and weighting of the religious and civil realms had key implications for how this proverbial “city on a hill” functioned or malfunctioned.

As various types of covenanting were created to run the religious and civil aspects of government, the blurring of boundaries between the realms became increasingly evident over the course of the seventeenth century. Weir writes that “New England began seeing itself as an extension of Old England; [just as] Old England was part of

Christendom, with an established state religion and state church…. So, therefore, was

New England.”294 However, the degree of blending that occurred in New England presented challenges. Weir points out that by 1650 the religious commitment in civil covenants was more implicit than explicit,295 but the habit of blending the religious and civil in covenants was still evident; as a result, a degree of flexibility between these two realms of governance in New England was apparent.296 Covenantal realities were integral to life in both Old and New England. In New England, however, some Puritans

292 Weir, 8.

293 Weir, 9.

294 Weir, 9.

295 Weir, 9.

296 Weir, 223.

91 used covenants to elevate individual freedom and subordinate community goals and values, and others did not, leading to power struggles as various metrics of effectively balancing community life versus personal desires came to the fore.297 As Weir points out, covenant was not only used to articulate views of marriage but also to describe the individual’s relationship to Satan.298 Indeed, people in New England used covenant as a governing way of thinking about the “relationship[s] between church, state, and religion.”299

The intersection of these three spheres in the court room is one that may cause a reader to ask what combination led to so many young girls acting as if bewitched in the courtroom and, in so doing, convincing the judges the Devil was operating in Salem.

Addressing this as a gendered question, Elizabeth Reis discusses the role of covenant in the testimony of accused witches in Salem. She explains that it is not coincidental that accusations of witchcraft disproportionately affected women. She points to Puritan theology’s notion of essential sinfulness, and argues that it convinced accused women who had meant to covenant with God that they had actually covenanted with Satan.300

But both Ray and Reis ignore the fact that the covenant they describe is one of indentured servitude, including the payment of freedom dues. Puritan magistrates and ministers

297 Weir, 223.

298 Weir, 223.

299 Weir, 223.

300 Reis, Damned Women, Loc. 213 of 4233. Reis further explains that “Women had to prove not only that they had not compacted with the devil but that they were blameless in every respect” (Loc. 222 of 4233) – a seemingly impossible task, given the deep-seated beliefs about women’s innate susceptibility to Devilish influences.

92 would have understood the nature of this servitude and the freedom dues to be paid via the lens of covenanting, and this representation of service to the Devil alarmed them.

Where the Puritan New Englanders believed they were servants of God, hearing that some were now servants of the Devil would have threatened their government and faith. I argue, however, that the testimony of Tituba and many who followed her articulate a unique way of understanding covenant realities and that the witch trials gave such realities voice. Many were compelled to give evidence. As this chapter will describe, when they finally had the ear of the courts, they took the opportunity to critique various dimensions of life in the supposedly idyllic New England of promise.

While scholars now know that Puritan New England at the time had little to offer materially,301 immigrants had arrived full of hope. As Wendy Warren points out, the area lacked precious metals, and the soil was not fit for cash crops. The inability to excel in the world market directly affected migrants’ fortunes in their new home. They would soon recognise the challenges of surviving in this land of promise.

A sermon that John Cotton, a well-known Puritan minister, delivered in Old

England in 1630 encouraging his congregants to move to New England, suggests what I mean when I say they had reasonable expectations of bettering themselves. As Warren points out, most migrants were not desperate.302 Recognizing this, Cotton provided a number of reasons why a Puritan might choose to go to America. These included

301 Warren, New England Bound, 22.

302 Warren, 23.

93 opportunities to gain knowledge, getting away from the “grevious sinnes…that threaten desolation” in Old England,303 “merchandize and gainesake,” and “to plant a colony because the overcrowding in England limited opportunities for prosperity.”304 On the whole, Cotton’s claims boiled down to “God and profit” (24).305 Although Winthrop’s sermon had alluded to the potential prosperity in New England given his belief that

Puritans there could be a “city upon a hill,” his attention was most engaged with living a revitalized Christian vision; Cotton’s focus, in contrast, was much more centered on economic prosperity. But there were other things the Puritans sought to accomplish as well. One of the central goals of Puritanism in both England and America was to create a

“Reformation of Manners”: “an effort to recast public and private conduct towards self – control, prudence, orderliness, diligence, and piety.”306 Thus Puritans sought to transform the whole person.

Beyond God, profit, and manners, migrants to New England expected to find freedom from the scrutiny and persecution for their religious beliefs they had experienced in Old England.307 I argue that the claims of accused witches and others who were

303 John Cotton, qtd. in Warren, 23.

304 Warren, 23.

305 Warren, 24.

306 Gildrie, The Profane, the Civil, & the Godly, 1. Gildrie explains that “Anglo – American Puritanism embodied a coherent but supple social ethic stressing communal order, the ‘spiritualized household,’ and personal sobriety” (Gildrie, 2). In the Puritan view, the evils that occurred when manners were not appropriately reformed were a direct result of “alternative modes of life and thought” (Gildrie, 2). Many Puritan thinkers would classify various “moral styles” as “profane,” “civil,” or “godly” (qtd. in Gildrie, 3; see note 6).

307 Weir, Early New England. Weir explains the intricacies of this consensus on pages 17-19; 22-23.

94 examined in 1692 express the numerous ways the dreams held for the New England project did not deliver. The magistrates who heard these claims reacted strongly not just because they invoked covenant theology and praxis in particular ways, but because the clear connection in their minds between covenanting and established law raised the

Devil’s alleged actions to constituting a literal threat to Puritan government and faith.

Although many of the court records reveal an emphasis by the magistrates on how frequently various individuals claimed that Satan was trying to set up his kingdom, the nature of the servitude relationships they describe gave the magistrates grounds for believing that this was not only a satanic takeover of Salem Village but also, of New

England law itself. This chapter will analyze this narrative of Devilish enfranchisement and the light it sheds on the Salem witch trials and New England’s society.

Witch Trials History

The Salem Witch Trials308 in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692309 is considered one of the last substantial witch trials in the West.310 It followed trials at Trier in the 1580s –

90s, the large-scale movement against witchcraft in Basque country in 1609-11, the witch-hunt led by Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne in England between 1645-46, and

308 The term “witch-hunting” was not created until the 1950s (Darren Oldridge, ed., The Witchcraft Reader [London; New York: Routledge, 2002], 2).

309 Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (Harlow, England; New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006), 175-76.

310 Oldridge, Witchcraft Reader, 4.

95 the Scottish witch-hunt in 1661-62. The Salem Witch Trials are quite possibly the most notorious.

As Levack311 points out, it is hard to claim that a “typical witch hunt” existed.

They have in common a sense of “anxiety” or “crisis mentality” in the period of the hunt, established laws in the locale with respect to how to address witchcraft, and a belief among local people that witches were active in their region.312 Beyond this, there were some commonalities in how witchcraft was viewed.

Of Witchcraft, Pacts, and Freedom Dues

The term” witchcraft” means many different things depending on who is using it.

Here I use it to refer to “harmful, black or a maleficent magic, the performance of harmful deeds by means of some extraordinary, mysterious, occult, preternatural or supernatural power.”313 Historically, this often included such acts as “the killing of a person by piercing a doll made in his or her image, inflicting sickness on a child by reciting a spell, bringing down hail on crops by burning enchanted substance.”314 The

Latin term for the source of such actions was maleficia, and male and female witches in late medieval to early modern times were referred to as malefici and maleficae

311 Levack, Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 176.

312 Levack, 176-78.

313 Levack, 4.

314 Levack, 4.

96 respectively.315 Maleficia was considered uniformly harmful for those who experienced it, causing “bodily injury, disease, death, poverty or some other misfortune.”316

More than the definition of maleficium, witchcraft involved a relationship with the

Devil, who was considered the embodiment of evil.317 Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) was influential in the Catholic church’s view of witchcraft as encompassing sorcery and heresy; he believed that only informal pacts with the Devil could exist,318 but in the late medieval era people came to believe that pacts could be more formal.319 It was strongly believed that witches obtained power through pacts made with the Devil, and thus were guilty of diabolism; during the Middle Ages this view developed robustly, leading to witches being considered flying devil-worshippers who obtained their power through the devilish sabbaths they attended.320 Some individuals might be accused of maleficium or diabolism or both.321 During the medieval era, most accusations focused on the harm the witch had caused rather than on how he or she had derived such power.322 A key difference in how witchcraft was handled was evident when “university-trained lawyers and churchmen” were involved rather than less trained individuals – they “tended to

315 Levack, 4.

316 Levack, 5.

317 Levack, 7.

318 Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, 2nd ed. (New York: Checkmark Books, 1999), 11.

319 Levack, Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 7-8.

320 Levack, 8.

321 Levack, 9.

322 Oldridge, Witchcraft Reader, 5.

97 stress the satanic nature of the witch’s magic, and insisted that their abilities derived from a pact with the Devil.”323

According to Levack, the judges presiding over the Salem witch trials were

legally untrained men [who] all came from the general vicinity where the accusations originated and were affected, therefore, by the highly charged emotional atmosphere that developed during the early stages of the hunt. Thus the Salem judges had more in common with the elders and lairds who served as local commissioners of justiciary in Scotland than with the central judges who went on circuit in England.324

It therefore appears that the judges were influenced by the local events of their communities.

The focus of these judges on pacts with the devil played a dynamic role in shaping the course of the witch trials. As they saw it, a pact with the devil, or devil’s pact, is “a pledge to serve the Devil or one of his demons” by granting to him both allegiance and one’s soul thereafter in exchange for something the person desires in the present.325

Such understandings were based on the belief that in order to worship God, one must pledge service and one’s soul, and that in order to follow Satan one would have to do the same.326 However, Christian theologians, not the Bible itself, were the basis of this

323 Oldridge, 5.

324 Levack, “State Building and Witch Hunting in Early Modern Europe,” in The Witchcraft Reader, ed. Darren Oldridge (London; New York: Routledge, 2002), 221.

325 Guiley, Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, 99.

326 Guiley, 99.

98 understanding.327 A devil’s pact might be made orally or in writing; when written, it was on “virgin parchment and sign[ed]…In blood.”328 This understanding of the pact goes back to early Christianity, and was viewed as associated with magic, sorcery, or divination.329 Testimony in witch trials in many European countries described such pacts. According to Guiley, it was common for normal people, often in distress, to agree to such an exchange with the devil.330 Since material prosperity was often seen as a gift from God, to achieve such wealth without demonstrating public piety implied that one had committed a crime and thus was in league with the devil.331

The typical story of a Devil’s pact from the Middle Ages through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went thus: a simple person found him or herself tempted.

Either Satan or a demon would appear in the physique of a man or an animal and offer assistance for a price: his or her soul. The pact would last a certain number of years, after which Satan would take his due: the person would die and his or her soul would go to hell, often experiencing a “dreadful demise.”332 The best known of these stories, as

Guiley states, is that of Faust, who sells his soul to Mephistophilis for endless youth and

327 Guiley, 99.

328 Guiley, 99.

329 Guiley, 99.

330 Guiley, 99.

331 Guiley, 99.

332 Guiley, 100.

99 the ability to sustain and fulfill lust.333 The version of Doctor Faustus I quote here is a blend of A and B texts (quartos from years 1604 and 1616).

When we are introduced to Faustus in medieval Wittenberg, Germany, we learn that he was lowborn, to parents “base of stock”334 and began to rise through the ranks, being “grac’d” with “scholarism,”335 and shortly after being designated “docto[r].”336

Having an insatiable quest for knowledge, he becomes “swoln with cunning, of a self- conceit,/ His waxen wings did mount above his reach.”337 As a result, the “heavens conspired his overthrow” after he degenerated into “a devilish exercise.”338 Attracted to the dark arts such as necromancy, and wanting to have evil spirits do his bidding, he gluts himself with desire for magic and power.339 Unable to stop himself from reading a book of sorcery even when his Good Angel entreats him to “lay that damned book aside,/and gaze not on it, lest attempt by soul,/and he got his heavy wrath upon the head!…]Read, read the Scriptures,”340 he continues to feed his desire for magic. He is thrilled at the

333 Guiley, 100.

334 Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, 11. Hereafter abbreviated TTHDF. https://books.google.ca/books?id=yPxdv3_cwHQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Doctor+Faustus&hl=en&sa =X&ved=0ahUKEwil- _bfkqzbAhVK7oMKHRq5DkQQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Faustus%2C%20%5B%E2%80%A6%5D% 20thine%20hour%20is%20almost%20come&f=false

335 TTHDF, 16.

336 TTHDF, .17.

337 TTHDF, 20-21.

338 TTHDF, .22-23.

339 TTHDF, 25-26.

340 TTHDF, 1.71-74.

100 prospect that he will be able to make spirits “fetch… [Him] what…[He] please[s]” and answer any questions he has.341 In other words, Faustus believes he will be able to make spirits into his servants who will give him all he desires. He imagines a sort of masterdom he will then conjure through this spiritual pact.

Doctor Faustus is so enamored with the perceived benefits of the dark arts that he agrees to trade his soul for these immeasurable powers. That is, he makes a straight exchange.342 This is unsurprising, because Mephistophilis claims his plan is “that I shall wait on Faustus while he lives,/so he will buy my service with his soul.”343

Mephistophilis instructs Faustus: “thou must bequeath [your soul] solemly,/and write a deed of gift with thine own blood;/For that security craves great Lucifer./If thou deny it, I will back to hell.”344 When Faustus asks what good his soul will do Mephistophilis’ lord,

Mephistophilis replies that it will “Enlarge his kingdom.”345 Thus, when Mephistophilis asks Faustus “shall I have thy soul?” he replies, “Ay…I give it thee.”346 He is then instructed by Mephistophilis to stab his own arm, “and bind thy soul, that at some certain day/ Great Lucifer may claim it as his own;/ and then be thou as great as Lucifer.”347

Faustus has essentially requested that he be in the master class, at least until the Devil

341 TTHDF, 1.80-81.

342 TTHDF, 5.28-30.

343 TTHDF, 5.31-32.

344 TTHDF, 5.34-37.

345 TTHDF, 5.39-40.

346 TTHDF, 5.45-48.

347 TTHDF, 5.51-52.

101 takes his soul: this is masterdom with a clear end-date. The devil enlarges his kingdom in the long run by giving Faustus substantial dark powers in the short term.

This arrangement is extremely different from the one the witches of Salem village described. Faustus is to write the contract “in manner of a deed of gift”348 which in no wise is the type of contract created in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries for indentured servants. Faustus’ blood congeals, making him unable initially to draw up the contract; he requires fire to dissolve his blood and render it in ink.349 He wonders what his blood congealing might signify, but nonetheless writes his signature. Mephistophilis, eager for Faustus to sign, says longingly in an aside “O, what will not I do to obtain his soul?”.350 Soon after, Faustus reveals that he “bequeath’d his soul to Lucifer”351 and that unexpectedly an inscription has appeared on his arm “Homo, fuge!”352 which translates into English as “Man, fly!” Seeing this, Faustus asks “Whither should I fly?/If unto God, he’ll throw me down to hell.”353 That a warning appears on his arm, much like a servant or slave might be branded, signifies that God may indeed be wrestling for ownership of

Faustus’ soul, but Faustus is convinced that he is now damned. He internalizes a sense of depravity at the choice he has made. Obviously Mephistophilis takes the threat that

Faustus may rescind his agreement seriously, for he says soon after, “I’ll fetch [Faustus]

348 TTHDF, 5.60.

349 TTHDF, 5.62-63.

350 TTHDF, 5.73.

351 TTHDF, 5.75.

352 TTHDF, 5.76-77.

353 TTHDF, 5.77-78.

102 somewhat to delight his mind”354: in other words, he sees the danger of losing Faustus’ soul as a real possibility and hastens to distract Faustus with pleasure – in this case, the stage directions reveal that Faustus is bequeathed with “rich apparel” and “crowns” “to delight [his] mind withal,/And to shew [him] what magic can perform.”355

The delights Faustus receives enlarge his sense of masterdom; in this sense, they provide him with one of the benefits sometimes generated by receiving freedom dues, but they are enticements, not rewards. And the fight for Faustus’ soul continues to be a hallmark of his experience, as we see in a later moment where a good angel strives to convince Faustus that it is not too late for him to repent and turn to God while an evil angel tells him otherwise.356 Lucifer himself tells Faustus that Christ is just, so his soul cannot be saved.357 We see that Faustus struggles to keep his promise to Lucifer when he continues to “tal[k] of Christ,”358 for which Faustus requests Lucifer’s pardon359 and makes additional promises, “Never to name God, or pray to him,/To burn his Scriptures, slay his ministers,/And make my spirits pull his churches down.”360

354 TTHDF, 5.82.

355 TTHDF, 5.85.

356 TTHDF, 6.78-82.

357 TTHDF, 6.85.

358 TTHDF, 6.92.

359 TTHDF, 6.95.

360 TTHDF, 6.95-99.

103

Furthermore, Faustus’s concept of time is important. He says that “time doth run with calm and silent foot,/Short’ning my days and thread of vital life,/Calls for the payment of my latest years.”361 Later he comments to himself “Thy fatal time doth draw to final end”362 and, as he continues to wrestle with his impending end, says, “Damn’d art thou, Faustus…thine hour is almost come.”363 At the end of the play, the Devil takes

Faustus’s soul while Christian friends who have warned him to recant and turn to Christ listen to the horrific sounds of his death, and his soul being taken, in the next room.

Faustus’s contract with the Devil follows the tradition of a soul promised in exchange for some desired reward – a reward that ends with the delivery of his soul at the time of his death. In other words, Faustus’s contract provided him with limited benefits during his life.

I argue that the distinctions between the agreements the alleged witches of Salem made and Faustus’s are significant. As we will see, individuals in the Salem Witch Trials propose that they both live after their agreements and are promised fine things, the likes of which could enable them to be well-off. Clothing, land, and money are all significant rewards that could enable an individual to either enjoy class ascension or purchase the tools and other benefits to eventually garner wealth. Where Faustus was never truly free, these individuals who follow Tituba’s testimony posit that freedom is just one term of service away. Moreover, individuals in the Salem Witch trials consistently stipulate for

361 TTHDF, 14.2-4.

362 TTHDF, 14.43.

363 TTHDF, 17.55-57.

104 what period of time they pledged their service to the Devil, which, to my knowledge, accused witches elsewhere did not. Other witch trials feature pacts similar to Faustus’s.

But in Salem the pact with the Devil further morphed during the Trials to encompass familiar language and lore associated by Puritan New Englanders with standard terms of indenture and freedom dues.

Tituba: Of Diaspora and Reinvention in New England’s Promised Land

Tituba has fascinated both historians and scholars of popular culture. Her master

Samuel Parris likely brought her and her husband, John, from Barbados to Boston to

Salem Village.364 The court documents say there is “circumstantial evidence” that she was born in Barbados and that the community believed she had been.365 They also note that New Englanders of that time owned both “Negro” and “Indian” slaves. Popular culture now describes her as Caribbean – Indian or full or partial African-American or

African. The first introduction of her in the court records is a “Warrant for the

Apprehension of Sarah Osburn & and Tituba, and Officer’s Return” dated February 29th,

1691/2. This document refers to “titibe an Indian Woman servant, of mr Saml Parris,”

364 Ray, Satan & Salem, 33.

365 As the editorial notes to RSWH reveal, “Although Tituba is widely believed to be from Barbados, no firm evidence, as in the case of Candy [the slave identified by magistrates as a “Negro”] supports that belief even though circumstantial evidence offers reasonable arguments for that origin” (RSWH, 464. Notes to the “Examination of Candy.” Monday, July 4th, 1692. Original source: Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, from the Charter of King William and Queen Mary, in 1691, Until the Year 1750, vol. 2, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936], 26).

105 saying she is suspected of witchcraft.366 The warrant states that Osburn and Tituba committed “much injury” to Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Anna Putnam, and

366 RSWH, 126. “Warrant for the Apprehension of Sarah Osburn & and Tituba, and Officer’s Return.” February 29th, 1691/2. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 33, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Most scholars suggest Tituba was Indian; indeed, the seventeenth century court records consistently identify her this way, as the work of Chadwick Hansen, Elaine G. Breslaw, and my own careful reading of all the court records attests. In keeping with this I therefore refer to her as Indian in this chapter. As Breslaw points out forcefully, the records provide not even “a hint that [Tituba] was of even partial African descent” (Elaine G. Breslaw, “Tituba’s Confession: The Multicultural Dimensions of the 1692 Salem Witch-Hunt,” Ethnohistory 44, no. 3 [1997], xxi). Veta Smith Tucker and Peter Charles Hoffer have sought to argue that Tituba may have been African. Much of this lean argument relies on claiming a Yoruba etymology for Tituba’s name, despite the fact that of over forty references to Tituba’s name only thirteen have the “uba” ending needed to claim the name has Yoruba etymology (Bernard Rosenthal, “Tituba’s Story,” New England Quarterly 71, no. 2 [1998], 200). Barbados had both Black and Indian slaves in the seventeenth century, and even when the selling of Indian slaves to Barbados subsided, children of Indian descent were still born in slavery, rendering arguments which suggest that if Tituba is from Barbados she must also be African appear less likely. Moreover, a slave from Barbados named Candy was examined in Salem Village on July 4, 1692 and clearly identified by the same magistrates as a “Negro” (RSWH, 464); clearly the magistrates were making racialized distinctions regarding the slaves who appeared before the court. For more on Tituba, see Breslaw, 535-56; Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem (New York and London: New York University Press, 1996); Chadwick Hansen, “The Metamorphosis of Tituba, or Why American Intellectuals Can’t Tell an Indian Witch from a Negro,” New England Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1974), 3-12; Rosenthal, 190-203; Veta Smith Tucker, “Purloined Identity: The Racial Metamorphosis of Tituba of Salem Village,” Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 4 (2000), 624-34; Peter Charles Hoffer, The Devil’s Disciples: Makers of the Salem Witchcraft Trials (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 154. Granted, classifications for race were often murky in seventeenth century colonial America through to twentieth century in America. The term Indian, for instance, was in many ways a vanishing designation; Indians were with some frequency mistakenly or intentionally designated “Negro.” For example, as Michael Guasco explains, Massachusetts officials demanded the removal of seventeen captive Pequot Indians in 1637 in connection with their involvement in the Pequot War. These captives were put on the ship of Captain Pierce and were bound for Bermuda. Unfortunately, Pierce missed his stop in Bermuda and sailed on to the West Indies. Upon arrival in the West Indies, the Providence Island Company designated the Indian Pequots “cannibal negroes” in their records, which condemned them to become lifetime slaves (Guasco 1-2). Other scholars that consider this moment include Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996), 237; Almon Wheeler Lauber, Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1913), 122–25; and Alison Games, “ ‘The Sanctuarye of our rebell negroes’: The Atlantic Context of Local Resistance on Providence Island,” Slavery & Abolition 19:3 (December 1998): 7. Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2014), 1-2. Arica L. Coleman also points out that in Europe the broad use for the term Negro predominated and that Europeans liberally applied the term to “numerous groups of non-white people” (loc. 1380 of 6700). This broad usage of the term should render it unsurprising that so many American Indians who were imported or exported from the colonies were in practice designated Negroes (Loc. 1447 of 6700). These problematical designations also appeared after the seventeenth century as well. From 1790 to 1860 the Federal Census did not use the term Indian as a racial designation. Thus, American Indians were designated “Negro, mulatto, of free people of color – terms also used to identify a range of people of color including

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Elizabeth Hubbard, four girls aged nine to seventeen, of Salem Village.367 It requests

Tituba’s presence at court. Constable Joseph Herrick368 confirms in the warrant that she was apprehended for this purpose 1 March 1692. Herrick also reveals that he searched the premises where Tituba resided for “Images and such like but can find non.”369

Tituba was the third person subject to examination in the course of the Salem

Witch trials, after Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn. Much scholarship has suggested that by informing her examiners that the Devil had recruited more witches in Boston and in

Salem Village, Tituba essentially launched the Salem witch trials, as the search began in earnest in response. The magistrates examined her on numerous occasions.370 As Ray notes, court records and contemporary accounts do not support the notion many

those of African descent” (Coleman Loc. 144 of 6700). The category Indian was finally added in 1870 but, despite this, American Indians and African Americans were still continually grouped in the category “colored”: this continued for most of the twentieth century, especially in the eastern United States. These trends also were evident in vital records like birth and death certificates in Virginia.

The murkiness of race terms does not, however, seem to have extended to applying the term Indian to people who were not indigenous, although it might not distinguish East Indians from West Indians. Some runaway advertisements specified which, such as an advertisement dated Aug. 4, 1768, which described Thomas Greenwich as “an East India Indian”, suggesting sensitivity to the distinction of designating someone as Indian (qtd. on Coleman loc. 4922 of 6700). Thus it seems unlikely that Tituba would have been termed an Indian if she was of African descent. The circumstantial evidence suggests she was an Indian native to Barbados rather than an American Indian. For more on the numerous challenges to the designation “Indian”, see Arica L. Coleman, That The Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and The Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013). Kindle edition.

367 RSWH, 126.

368 A note in the court records reveals that the handwriting in which Joseph Herrick’s name was written was in fact Thomas Putnam’s. Evidently, Thomas Putnam wrote the return on the warrant and then signed Joseph Herrick’s name to it (RSWH, 126).

369 RSWH, 126.

370 Ray, Satan & Salem, 36.

107 historians have advanced that Tituba was the catalyst for the ensuing witchcraft accusations simply because she told fortunes for two girls in Parris’s home. Ray argues that John Hathorne shaped Tituba’s testimony, describing it as reflecting a “standard

Puritan notion of a contract with the devil and the concept of ‘signing the devil’s book.’”371 I dispute this claim by demonstrating that Tituba focussed her narrative, which revolves around freedom dues, on service – something Ray overlooks by unduly emphasizing the spiritual narrative regarding “signing the devil’s book.” While Ray correctly argues that John Hathorne’s role in Tituba’s early examinations has not been scrutinized nearly enough, I dispute his claim that Hathorne successfully shaped its content. Rather, Tituba’s narrative shows that – however much she may have been coerced into giving a confession at all and naming others – she used this opportunity to mount an argument about New England. Her claims were decidedly non-standard – less about a spiritual contract with the devil and more about a contract for her own betterment and New England’s failures in this regard. As such, her claims exceeded even Hathorne’s expectations, in both scale and scope.

By analysing aspects of Tituba’s testimony, I will demonstrate that historians have overlooked a vital piece of her narrative. Her first examination, on March 1,

1691/2, undermined core New England understandings of freedom, bondage, and truth. It gave voice to the struggles of many New Englanders who sought change through freedom dues. This is all the more significant when we consider contemporaneous sources which speculate that Samuel Parris may have given Tituba no choice but to

371 Ray, 6.

108

“confess” to the magistrates:372 he may have beaten Tituba to compel her to confess herself a witch and name others who were in the Devil’s employ.373 In light of this,

Tituba’s sculpting of her narrative in fact wrests autonomy from an untenable situation.

Hathorne asks Tituba leading questions. Yet her claims supersede his assumptions, proving beyond his control. For example, she rejects the implicit charge when he asks her why she hurts “these children.” She responds, “I doe not hurt them.”

On the other hand, when Hathorne asks her if she has ever seen the devil, she responds,

“the Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” Yet she maintains her innocence regarding harm of children: when he presses her to say who else was with the devil, Tituba responds that there were “4 women and sometimes hurt the children.”374 She accuses

Goody Osburn and Sarah Good as well as unnamed others of afflicting children. When she finally acknowledges hurting children, she describes it as an act of self-defense –

“they [evil spirits] woud doe worse to me,” and says that an apparition came to her and

372 Ray, 6.

373 Ray, 32. Ray rightly asserts that “the most plausible explanation for [Tituba’s] compliance before the magistrates” is that Parris compelled her (Ray, 35). He cites “strong circumstantial evidence,” including a report by a Boston merchant named Robert Calef, although Calef’s report is unclear about whether he heard that Parris beat Tituba to force her to confess. Various observations of Tituba’s body after her arrest suggest evidence of Parris’s abuse: Hale describes “Marks of the Devils wounding her” and Atty. Gen. Thomas Newton describes Tituba’s leg seeming “pinched” (Ray, 35; see notes 6-8). Court records reveal Hathorne’s knowledge that before being examined, Parris wanted Tituba to reveal her role in telling the fortunes of the girls at his residence. At her first examination Tituba reveals “when hir master hath asked hir about these things she Sayeth thay [the witches] will nott let hir Tell”; since she does not explain why she nonetheless confessed the following day in court, it seems possible that violence loosened her tongue (Ray, 35).

374 Hathorne’s transcription has the strikethrough. He served as hand 2 here (“hand” is the term the editors of Records of the Salem Witch Hunt used to identify the handwriting of the various individuals who recorded evidence in the course of these proceedings). RSWH, 128. Written by Ezekiell Chevers, “The Examination of Titibe [Tituba].” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, nos. 11 & 12, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

109 ordered her to kill the children – but she says that she will not harm them anymore. Later

Hathorne returns to Tituba’s claims that she has been forced to hurt a number of children, asking why she did not tell her master. Tituba replies, “I was afraid[.] [Goody Osborne and Sarah Good] said they would cut off my head if I told.”375 She implies later that

Goody has taken responsibility for hurting the children.

An apparition is the primary solicitor of Tituba’s service. It has various forms: a hog, a dog, a man who has a yellow bird, and a “tal man” “in black cloathes… with white hair I thinke.”376 Coming to Tituba as a dog, it tells her to serve him; she says she is afraid, and it tells her that “if [she does] not he would do worse to me”. She answers, “I will serve you no longer” and it threatens to hurt her again. Then it transforms into a man who has a yellow bird that promises her “pretty things” for service. Hathorne inquires what these pretty things are, and Tituba replies “he did not show me them.”377 On further

375 RSWH, 128.

376 RSWH, 129. Written by Ezekiell Chevers, “The Examination of Titibe [Tituba].” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, nos. 11 & 12, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Corwin’s record also reveals that Tituba tells her examiner that the man who appears to her is dressed in “black Cloaths Some times, Some times Searge Xoat of other Couler, a Tll man wth White hayr, I think” (RSWH, 135. The first of “Two Examinations of Tituba, as Recorded by Jonathan Corwin.” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Salem Selections, Massachusetts Box, Essex C., Manuscripts & Archives, New York Public Library. New York, NY).

377 Here I quote Hathorne’s record. Jonathan Corwin’s record of the same examination has Tituba claiming that the little yellow bird belong to the man “whoe hath pretty things ere besides.” When she is asked “what pretty things?” she replies “he hath nott showed ym unto me, but he Sd he would showe ym me tomorrow, and tould me if I would Serve him, I should have ye Bird” (RSWH, 134. The first of “Two Examinations of Tituba, as Recorded by Jonathan Corwin.” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Salem Selections, Massachusetts Box, Essex C., Manuscripts & Archives, New York Public Library. New York, NY). This is slightly different from Hathorne’s record of Tituba’s examination; from Corwin’s record, I surmise that the bird was one of many things Tituba was to be given in exchange for her service. Joseph Putnam’s record omits this passage, but states that she claimed that a yellow bird requested that she serve it. Putnam’s account lacks the nuance and meticulous detail of Hathorne and Corwin’s accounts in general

110 questioning, Tituba says a red cat and a black cat also asked for her service. She claims that she and others in the service of the Devil “ride upon stickes and are there presently,” invoking the popular-lore image of witches riding on poles in her claims.

Through her testimony, Tituba acknowledges that she has been in league with a man in black clothes as well as other people who, along with herself, have hurt children.

But she establishes that she was strongly coerced to this end. This serves at least two functions: first, she positions herself as lacking any desire to harm children but seeking self-preservation; second, through her narrative, she directs the gaze of her examiner away from her own actions towards those of others whom she portrays as still on the loose, wreaking havoc in Salem. In terms of representation, Tituba would have known that her examiner would have assumed that the spectral man dressed in black was the devil. Puritan spirituality and theology would have strongly supported this reading. After her claims, as Ray reveals, “accusers subsequently called [this figure] the ‘black man’” and revealed he was fighting for the souls of those in Salem.378 The black man’s focus would have thus seemed obvious to most Puritans. Furthermore, other witch trials featured testimonies that claimed the existence of a “black man”; for instance, Francoise

Secretain, a French woman convicted of witchcraft in 1598, was said to have confessed that she had “given herself to the Devil, who at that time had the likeness of a big black

and is far shorter. Unlike the other two men, Hathorne had legal training, which suggests he was the most careful.

378 Ray, Satan & Salem, 34.

111 man.”379 Oldridge believes that Secretain blended folklore into her claims, because the representation of Satan as “a big black man,” or a dog or cat, was common in popular folklore.380

Based on his leading questions, Tituba knows that Hathorne will assume certain things have taken place regardless of what she says. Yet she wrests a bit of control to give voice to her desire for freedom and her critical attitude towards the brand of freedom on offer in Salem Village within the narrative the legal system forces on her. This expression begins with her first examination, which imbeds her desire for freedom in the expected tale of witchcraft. Because Tituba’s tale extends beyond the mention of a spectral black man and is multifaceted, I will explain her narrative using other examples from examinations.

Other records from March 1, 1692 contain direct statements that “Titiba vpon

Examination, and after some denyall acknowledged ye matter of fact. According to her

Examination giuen more fully will appeare. And who also charged Sarah Good and Sarah

Osborne with e381 same.”382 Tituba was examined again on March 2, March 3, and

379 Qtd. in Oldridge, Witchcraft Reader, 5. See Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks for black as a symbol of evil in European/Caucasian consciousness. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 2008).

380 Oldridge, Witchcraft Reader, 5.

381 Angled brackets here signify that the letters in question were challenging to interpret because of the quality of the text; this bracketing was added by the editors of the Records of the Salem Witch Hunt. For more on this, see RSWH, 92.

382 RSWH, 131. “Examinations & Mittimus of Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, & Tituba, as Recorded by John Hathorne.” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 14, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. The order in which accused witches gave testimony is worth noting. For instance, Osburn’s examination occurred right after Sarah Good accused her. However, Osburn does not accuse

112

March 5. Underneath each entry that indicates these dates, the recorder has placed notes indicating that Tituba’s testimony was consistent: (ie. {titiba againe sd ye same}383).384

But there were, in fact, some differences in Tituba’s claims. And these changes make all the difference in how we read her statements.

On the second day of her examination, March 2, 1691/2, Tituba reveals the nature of the covenant between herself and the devil. She explains: “he Tell me he [is] God, & I must beleive him & Serve him Six yeares & he would give me many fine things.”

Servants were furnished with generous freedom dues upon completion of service in

Barbados, the region she is believed to have hailed from, and the specification of a length of time suggest a reference to such contracts.385 Around six years would commonly have been recognised as a normal term of indentured servitude in both Barbados and New

England.386 The examiner acknowledges this reference to a contract when he asks, “did he Say you must Write anything? Did he offer you any paper?” Tituba replies “yes, then

Next time he Come to me & showed me some fine things, Something like Creatures, a little bird Something like green & white.” Ray assumes erroneously that Tituba is

Tituba of anything, and Tituba is examined after her. Osburn’s examination is significant because she makes the claim of the Devil is able to take the form of people who are in fact innocent when afflicting others. For more details, see RSWH, 129.

383 Insertion of {} made by the general editors of Records of the Salem Witch Hunt to indicate that the “letters or words written above or below the line or in the margin as a correction or afterthought by the recorders themselves or by other correctors” (RSWH, 92).

384 RSWH, 131.

385 I discuss this at length in my Introductory chapter.

386 Michael L. Bush reveals that normal terms of indentured servitude in regions such as North America, the Americas and the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and Africa, to name some locations of his study, ran from approximately three years to five, give or take (Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 28).

113 confused;387 he does not recognise that the “fine things” she references are likely freedom dues – that the apparition might show her fine things after asking her to write something as evidence that he can fulfill his obligations under the contract. Thus she is crafting the narrative which indicates a contract of indenture and that promises freedom dues as her expected reward. Her offhand “yes” suggests that the spiritual significance of signing a piece of paper and the materiality of it – the particular way and manner in which she was brought to sign a certain document – are unimportant.

I argue that Ray’s claim that Tituba is “eager to portray herself as innocent victim of a demonic plot”388 misses the mark. He writes that “she made up her story as she went along, striving to provide acceptable answers to Hathorne’s leading questions.”389 Yet

Tituba recognises that there were no “acceptable answers,” and she takes control of the narrative in a way that Hathorne’s leading questions, such as his focus on the nature of the signing of the contract, cannot hinder.

Jonathan Corwin’s record of Tituba’s March 1 testimony reveals that Hathorne asked her, “did you never practie witchcraft in your owne Countr?” To which she replies: “noe Never before now.”390 Hansen’s article supports Tituba’s claim here, as he reveals that the “witchcraft” indicated in the court records – when she pours egg white into a glass in order to receive a vision and when she combines rye meal with urine of

387 Ray, Satan & Salem, 39.

388 Ray, 39.

389 Ray, 39.

390 RSWH, 134.

114 afflicted girls to ascertain who is afflicting them – is actually an “English folk method of divining”391 as well as “an old English recipe for witch finding”392 respectively.

Nonetheless, this exchange may have suggested to her that her examiners had their own expectations of what her exposure to witchcraft might be as a result of her homeland, thus prompting the narrative that begins to emerge in the next day’s testimony.

In her second examination, which occurred on March 2nd, 1691/2, Tituba explains that because she initially refused to sign the contract, the Devil once again asked her to serve him. He came to her with a book in his pocket. Hathorne asks Tituba “did nott he make you write yor Name [in the book]?” She denies it, but he persists,393 and finally she admits to signing the book, saying she saw nine other marks written in it as well, but that she does not know all the names signified by each mark.

Up to this point, Tituba has represented herself as having contracted her service to the devil in exchange for freedom dues, that she saw others in the company of the Devil and other names written in his book, and that she finally did sign the book herself. This leaves her vulnerable to others’ accusations as well as implying that the court should seek out and prosecute other witches. For instance, by admitting that she has hurt some children, if only because she was forced, she opens herself up to the criminal charge of causing harm. Elizabeth Hubbard levied such an accusation, saying that she

391 Hansen, “The Metamorphosis of Tituba,” 4.

392 Hansen, 5.

393 st nd RSWH, 135-36. “Two Examinations of Tituba, as Recorded by Jonathan Corwin.” March 1 & 2 , 1692. Original source: Salem Selections, Massachusetts Box, Essex C., Manuscripts & Archives, New York Public Library. New York, NY.

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saw the Apperishtion of Tituba Indian which did Immediately most greviously torment me by pricking pinching and alsmost choaking me and so continewed hurting me most greviously by times hurting: tell the day of hir examination: but as soon as she began to confess she left ofe hurting me and has hurt {e} but little sence.394

Her claims were significant because the magistrates considered choking, pinching, pricking, to be conventional signs of witchcraft. Ann Putnam Jr. echoes:

Tituba Mr parishes [Parris’s] Indian woman395 which did tortor me most greviously by pricking an[d] pinching me…tell [till] the first day of march being the day of hir Examination and then also most greviously also at the beginning of hir Examination: but sene [since] she confessed she has hurt {me} be but little.396

William Allen, John Hughes, William Good, and Samuel Braybrook, the first adult accusers in the case, also claimed to have seen, flying, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and

Tituba.397 Similarly, in the examination of Dorcas Hoar, Abigail Williams claims that she saw both Dorcas and Tituba,398 although she does not specify what they were doing.

394 RSWH, 139. “Deposition of Elizabeth Hubbard v. Tituba.” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 32, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

395 It is interesting to note that modern adaptations of the Salem Witch Trials choose to represent Tituba as a black woman rather than Indian as we see in Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem (1986). Maryse Condé, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem [Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009]).

396 RSWH, 140. “Deposition of Ann Putnam Jr. v. Tituba.” March 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 35, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

397 RSWH, 141. “Statement of William Allen, John Hughes, William Good, & Samuel Braybrook v. Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, & Tituba.” March 5th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 29, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

398 RSWH, 225. “Examination of Dorcas Hoar.” May 2nd, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 206, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

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These reported sightings shore up the validity of Tituba’s and others’ claims to involvement with the Devil, thus bolstering their perceived truthfulness in their examiners’ eyes.

Hathorne showed interest in the characterization of service to the devil as indentured servitude in his examination of several subsequent accused witches, as many other townspeople subsequently admitted entering into servitude with the Devil. This suggests the broad repercussions of the argument about the Devil that Tituba began and which various others picked up and embellished about New England society.

Listening and Tellin’: The Examination of Martha Cory

Once Tituba confesses, it becomes evident through the court records that not only have the townspeople become aware of the content of the examinations thus far, but the magistrates themselves are keeping track of what has been said in order to further examine new individuals brought to the court to give evidence. We see this when

Hathorne examined Martha Cory on March 21st, 1692. Cory is the last accused person who seems ignorant of Tituba’s testimony and the narrative that continued thereafter.

Hathorne399 asks Cory if she “covenanted with the devil” or “deal wth any familiar[?].”

And she replies “no never”. He asks about a bird that purportedly afflicted children in the courthouse that Tituba had referenced, but she replies “I know no bird.” Finally he says,

399 This examination was written in the handwriting of Samuel Parris and John Hathorne; as Hathorne did indeed examine Tituba much earlier, it is unclear whether he only recorded some of Martha’s examination or if he actively asked her questions.

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“do you not know that Tituba confessed it[?]” Martha replies “I did not hear her speak.”

It is clear, however, that Tituba’s examination is shaping Hathorne’s questions and his own expectations about what subsequently interrogated individuals will say. He references the idea of a term of service: “Were you to serve the Devil ten years tell how many?” Martha bites her lip, after which a number of the afflicted children start to bite their lips also, and she laughs in reply, perhaps nervously. Hathorne seems keen to learn whether the terms of her agreement resemble Tituba’s. But the afflicted courtroom children interrupt the questioning, exclaiming just then that “there was a yellow bird with her.”400 Clearly they, too, know the content of previous examinations, as Tituba’s testimony explicitly mentions seeing a yellow bird. The animal was considered particularly significant; a note to Martha Cory’s examination reveals, “the bird referenced in the examination was implicitly a ‘familiar’ of the devil.” Samuel Parris would often reference it when he recorded subsequent examinations.401

During the examination, the courtroom children accused Cory of “afflicting them, by Biting, Pinching, Strangling, &c. And that they did in their Fit, see her Likeness coming to who them, and bringing Book to them.” Martha replies that “she had no

Book.” This is a reference to the book in the Devil’s pocket and suggests she may have known the content of Tituba’s examination. When her examiner asks “what do you say to

400 RSWH, 146. “Examination of Martha Cory.” March 21st, 1692. Original Source: Essex Institute Collection, no. 1, James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

401 RSWH, 148. “Examination of Martha Cory as told by Deodat Lawson.” March 21st, 1692. Original source: Deodat Lawson. A Brief and True Narrative of Some Remarkable Passages Relating to Sundry Persons Afflicted by Witchcraft, at Salem Village Which happened from the Nineteenth of March to the Fifth of April 1692 (Boston: Benjamin Harris, 1692), 4-5.

118 all these things that are apparent [?]” She replies “if you will all go hang me how can I help it [being hanged ?].”402 She is further questioned “why do you not tell how the

Devil comes in your shape and hurts these, you said you would[?]” And Martha replies

“how can I know how[?].” When the examiner counters that she said she would show them, she laughs again. In both cases it appears Cory feels helpless. She believes that her examiners have already made up their minds. But if she had heard the testimony of

Tituba and Osburn she might have claimed, as Osburn did, that the Devil had used her likeness to afflict others, that she was innocent.403 Indeed, the children dub her the

402 RSWH, 146.

403 This question appears in subsequent examinations as well. For instance, interrogating Rebecca Nurse’s on March 4th, 1692, her examiner says “what uncertainty there may be in apparitions I know not, yet this with me strikes hard upon you that you are at this very present charged with familiar spirits: this is your bodily person they speak to: they say now they see these familiar spirits come to your bodily person, now what do you say to that [?]” (RSWH, 158. “The Examination of Rebecca Nurse.” March 24th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 72, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA). Rebecca replies “I have none Sir” (RSWH, 158). The examiner’s claim makes it apparent that he is seeking to distinguish between her “bodily person” and her likeness. Later he says, “When this Witchcraft came upon the stage there was no suspicion of Tituba (Mr Parris’s Indian woman) She profest much love and to that Child Betty Parris, but it was her apparition did the mischief, & why should not you also be guilty, for your apparition dust hurt also” (RSWH, 159. “The Examination of Rebecca Nurse.” March 24th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 72, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA). Ultimately, Rebecca’s examiner makes the case that nothing about Tituba initially seemed suspicious, yet she eventually did “mischief” through her apparition. Rather than engaging the idea that an apparition of Rebecca Nurse could have been used without her own consent and true involvement, he tries to establish Rebecca’s intent to harm via said apparition. Ignoring the possibility that an apparition might act without a person’s consent is a way of moving away from the dominant theological question. This examiner’s comment is the first hint that Tituba was accused of “spectral assault” upon Betty Parris (see note, RSWH, 159), but it also marks a key shift in juridical attitude towards the role of apparitions in witchcraft in these examinations. Similarly, when Bridget Bishop claims in her examination that she is innocent of witchcraft, Hathorne rejoins: “have you not given consent that some evill spirit should doe this in your likenes [?]” (RSWH, 184. “Examination of Bridget Bishop, as Recorded by Ezekiel Cheever.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 137, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.). Clearly, the narrative concerning the likeness of an individual afflicting another and whether or not the physical embodiment of this likeness must have given consent in order for such to occur evolves in this moment: indeed, the tenor of Hathorne’s question assumes that she has given such consent. Despite the line of questioning employed, Bishop once again answers “no,” explaining that she is “innocent of being a witch” (RSWH, 184). (I have thus far used Ezekiel Cheever’s account; Samuel Parris’s account of Bishop’s

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“Gospel Witch”404 because she served as a recruiter for the Devil, carrying the book as if it were a preservation of the gospels, buttressing the examiners’ preconceived notions.

Had Martha argued that the Devil was using her likeness against her will to harm the children, instead of laughing, she may have been able to redirect her examiners’ gaze to a line of argumentation that had already been raised in the course of the examinations and a theological query central to the Salem Witch Trials. Astonishingly, Lawson’s account reveals that the children continue to speak where Martha herself is silent, telling the magistrates that “she had Covenanted with the Devil for ten years, six of them were gone, and for more to come.”405 Thus, regarding the possibility of her indentured service to the

Devil, the children give the examiners what they are looking for. However, they do so incompletely, because they do not specify what freedom dues Cory was to receive.

examination renders the question as “Have you not to do with familiar Spirits…[?] How is it then, that your appearance doth hurt these?” [RSWH, 185. “Examination of Bridget Bishop, as Recorded by Samuel Parris.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 125, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.]). Further questions about spectre evidence arise in the examination of Abigail Hobbs. Abigail denies going in her own person to pinch the children in the courtroom and replies yes when the examiner asks “Doth the Devil go for you?” (RSWH, 191. “Examination of Abigail Hobbs.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: UNCAT MS, Miscellaneous Photostats [1692]. Positive Photostat, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, MA). Hobbs explains that “the Devil has my consent, & goes & hurts them” and that “The Devil told me, if I gave consent, he would do it [afflict others] in my shape” (RSWH, 191). Thus she furthers develops the court’s understanding of the limits of specter evidence. Furthermore, her examiner asks if the devil “come[s] to your body?” – likely referencing demonic possession – but she replies “They do not come to my body; they come only in sight” (RSWH, 192. “Examination of Abigail Hobbs.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: UNCAT MS, Miscellaneous Photostats [1692]. Positive Photostat, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, MA). Whether specters could afflict others without the consent of those whose bodies they imitated becomes a central focus in the examinations.

404 RSWH, 148.

405 RSWH, 149. “Examination of Martha Cory as told by Deodat Lawson.” March 21st, 1692. Original source: Deodat Lawson. A Brief and True Narrative Of Some Remarkable passages Relating to Sundry Persons Afflicted by Witchcraft at Salem Village Which happened from the 19th of March to the Fifth of April 1692 (Boston: Benjamin Harris, 1692), 4-5.

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As Deodat Lawson’s account of Martha Cory’s examination makes clear, “it was the judgment of all that were present, that they [the courtroom children] were Bewitched, and only the Accused Person said, they were Distracted.”406 Similarly Lawson explicitly describes a consensus between Hathorne and Nicholas Noyes that the children bit their lips after Cory did because she had “Bewitched” them.407 He also states that the children showed marks on their arms and wrists as evidence that Cory had bitten them and pinched them from a distance.408 The swells of the magistrates who asked leading questions as they followed up on the claims of past examinations, and the drama of courtroom children, distracts the magistrates from the honest account of events she provides. This consensus about the damning nature of the courtroom children’s performance, which appeared to reinforce conclusions the magistrates were already forming, may have made Cory reticent to speak. She may have seen that a claim of innocence was not profitable. The narrative of her connection to the Devil continues full speed ahead, despite her own reluctant answers, as townspeople come forward to accuse her of afflicting individuals on various occasions.409 Cory, the wife of Giles Cory, who

406 RSWH, 149.

407 RSWH, 149.

408 RSWH, 149. The court record discusses the evidence that was visible but does not discuss other means that might have caused the marks.

409 Although Martha Cory did not admit to being in league with the devil, after her examination more accusers came forward, as they had with Tituba. Elizabeth Hubbard claimed that an apparition of Cory hurt her “and urge[d her] to write in her book…and then in the time of hir examination she did torment me most dreadfully by biting pinching and almost choking me the marks of which I shewed to seuerall” (RSWH, 151. “Deposition of Ezekiel Cheever & Edward Putnam v. Martha Cory.” March 21st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 39, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA). She also claims to have seen Cory afflict Mercy Lewes, Abigail William, Ann Putnam, and Mary Walcott on the day of her examination. Thus, she bolstered the performance of the children in the courthouse condemning Cory. Samuel Parris, Nathaniel Ingersoll, and Thomas Putnam all witnessed the claims of physical marks on the

121 was executed by pressing410 during the Salem Witch Trials, was hanged after her conviction. Thus, in death, her examination served as a cautionary tale. As becomes evident, those who testified after her made sure to study the narrative Tituba pioneered and its influence on the magistrates.

Freedom Dues Bound: Conventional Statements, Un- conventional Beliefs

The records of the court suggest that accused persons arrived at court familiar with Tituba’s testimony after Cory’s ignorance had been so costly. Subsequently examined individuals took care to be prepared to answer the leading questions the magistrates would put to them. It is unsurprising, then, that as awareness of the stakes of examination grew, Tituba’s earlier claims about service and freedom dues were increasingly evident in the narratives of others who were examined as well.

Tituba’s claim that she was offered freedom dues in exchange for serving the

Devil does not appear to have its roots in other witchcraft trials, such as those in Sweden, for instance. Most mentions of freedom dues provided by others in the course of the

children in the courtroom. They also repeat the claim of some of the afflicted children said that there “was a black man whispering in [Cory’s] ear” (RSWH, 152. “Deposition of Samuel Parris, Nathaniel Ingersoll, & Thomas Putnam v. Martha Cory.” March 21st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 42, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA). Edward Putnam added his claim that he witnessed a yellow bird sucking Martha Cory’s fingers and that she afflicted a number of local women (RSWH, 153. “Deposition of Edward Putnam v. Martha Cory.” March 23rd, 1692. Witchcraft Papers, no. 20, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, MA). Thus a robust narrative about her involvement in witchcraft emerged without her participation and Martha is damned in the eyes of her examiners.

410 The practice of pressing involved heavy weights placed on the torso of a person until he or she died.

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Salem Witch Trials were conventional; that is, they conformed to dominant ways of understanding service in exchange for freedom dues. As individuals became aware of various lines of questioning and answers that were given in the Salem court, it seems they often gave answers that demonstrated their knowledge of previous testimony. For instance, either John Hathorne or John Corwin (both were presiding at the time) asked a leading question of Mary Walcot: “have you seen a white man?” to which she replied

“Yes, Sir, a great many times.”411 The editors’ notes in Records of the Salem Witch Hunt reveal that this reference to a “white man” likely was modeled on the stories which came out of the Swedish witch trials.412 Yet Walcot’s own claims reappear in the text of other examinations of the Salem witch trials. Similarities in content between various instances of freedom dues narratives in these records suggest that townspeople began to use references to their service for the Devil, and his promise of freedom dues, to demonstrate the current impossibility of social and economic betterment in late seventeenth century

New England.

Significantly, the examination of Abigail Hobbs on April 19th, 1692 returns to the perceived power of freedom dues as mounted by Tituba. After Tituba’s examination,

Hobbs’s claims are the first to draw on freedom dues in exchange for service in a very

411 RSWH, 173. “Examination of Sarah Cloyce & Elizabeth Procter.” April 11th, 1692. Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, from the Charter of King William and Queen Mary, in 1691, Until the Year 1750, vol. 2, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 21-23.

412 RSWH, 175. “Examination of Sarah Cloyce & Elizabeth Procter.” April 11th, 1692. Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, from the Charter of King William and Queen Mary, in 1691, Until the Year 1750, vol. 2, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 21-23.

123 detailed manner. When John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin question Hobbs, like Tituba she says that the Devil has promised her “fine things” in exchange for signing to his service, that is, her being a “Witch.”413 Later, she clarifies that she was to hurt others, including Mercy Lewes and Ann Putnam, whom she claimed to afflict by pinching.414

When asked if the Devil wanted her to “make a Covenant wth him?,” she replies “yes” and admits she complied. But “I hope God will forgive me,” she says. Her examiner responds, “The Lord give you Repentance,” signifying a retreat into relative kindness.415

Here the juridical role seems to collapse with that of a pastor responding to a parishioner’s confession, as if Hobbs’s revelation held the key to her spiritual redemption. This collapse suggests a contest of sorts between juridical and pastoral responsibilities, as it signifies the court’s clear belief that it can both enforce law and order and restore the spiritual well-being of accused witches. A trend of not executing confessed witches had begun to emerge, and the hearers would have been likely to recognise this collapse of roles. Moreover, individuals examined at court may have been scrupulous to draw in elements of past examinations into their own narrative to guarantee a favourable juridical response. Confessions may therefore have been given to win favour with the magistrates.

Hobbs’s testimony soon turns toward freedom dues in a way that is even more pointed than Tituba’s. A discussion of the devil’s book ensues. Hobbs says that she

413 RSWH, 190. “Examination of Abigail Hobbs.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: UNCAT MS, Miscellaneous Photostats (1692). Positive Photostat, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, MA.

414 RSWH, 191.

415 RSWH, 190.

124 refuses the first request to sign, which is issued by a cat. Hathorne asks if she had signed at any other time. Hobbs reveals she accepted the second request, made by men she saw, and that she served them two or three years.416 Hathorne asks what she would receive in return, a query that reveals that he had picked up on the significance – in Tituba’s testimony - of past claims of promised dues and is looking for evidence of a pattern of recruitment to the Devil’s service. She replies “they would give me fine cloths.”417

Joannah Tyler made a similar claim on September 16th, 1692, describing a promise of

“fine Cloaths” for service.418 The significance of clothing for service was well- established in the seventeenth century; like Harriet Wilson’s Frado, who I discuss in chapter four, Hobbs and Tyler would have had trouble affording clothing, but would have known such to be key in finding a job after a period of indenture.419 Clothing could be worth several months’ wages, and was thus significant freedom dues. Furthermore, it may be that Hobbs, Tyler, and others who referenced fine clothing as their freedom dues were regularly seen with clothing that revealed their lower rank in society; in this context, such a claim before the magistrates might make their admission to being seduced into the service of the Devil - by their own lack - more plausible. Hobbs does suggest that she did not receive the “fine clothes” she was promised in exchange for her service420 from the

416 RSWH, 190.

417 RSWH, 190.

418 RSWH, 661. “Examination of Joannah Tyler, Copy.” September 16th, 1692. Essex Institute Collection, no. 24, 10v, James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

419 I speak about this at length in my first chapter as well as my chapter on Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig.

420 RSWH, 190.

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Devil’s recruiters, which is an unusual claim. Most confessions suggested the devil intended to make good on his promises, making up for the lack of social mobility in New

England by providing the servant with whatever he or she found it hard to procure through their own labours there.

Hobbs explains that she is not possessed by the devil, but only sees him. The record reveals that it appears that she “was taken DEAF” after making that claim. Then,

Mary Wolcot, Mercy Lewes, Betty Hubbard, Abig: Williams, & Ann Putman june [junior] said they saw Sarah Good, & Sarah Osburn run their fingers into the examinants [Hobbs’s] ears: by & by she this examinant and was blind with her eyes quite open. A little after, she spake, & said, Sarah Good saith I shall not speak. And so the Court ordered. Her being seized with dumbness to be taken away.421

The examiners ordered Hobbs removed from the courtroom and the examination ends here, so they evidently believed Hobbs had been struck both deaf and dumb. A note is appended to this examination explaining that the supposedly “bewitched persons” were

“tormented” while Hobbs testified. Tituba’s testimony – with its referencing of service in exchange for the “fine things” that were to be her freedom dues – had provided seed narratives for Hobbs’s. Between the seed narrative and the courtroom drama, this occurrence in the courtroom appears to have teetered between fanatical and fantastical.

Furthermore, because Abigail Hobbs’s confession was the second, following directly

421 RSWH, 192.

126 after Tituba’s, it had the potential to hold more weight with examiners, who all seemed convinced that the devil was loose in Salem.422

A second examination of Hobbs follows the next day, in prison rather than in the courtroom. At this time she claims that the apparition of Judah White, “a Jersey maid,” in “fine Cloaths” – a “coloured silk…mantle, with a Top knot and an hood” – in the company of Sarah Good, told her not to go to the examination, but to escape by

“fly[ing].”423 Hobbs says she had told the apparition she would not obey and, beyond that, that she would “Confes all that she knew.”424 Hobbs also “Confesseth further that the Devil in the shape of a Man came to her and would have her to afflict Ann Putnam,

Mercy Lewis, and Abigail Williams.”425 Hobbs claims that White’s apparition revealed to her that the Devil presented her with wooden images of all those to be afflicted and instructed her to “prick them into those images,” causing them to cry out with pain.426

Hobbs may have described Judah White’s fine clothing in order to suggest she had been contracted to the devil for a period of years and has already received freedom dues.427 A

422 Hobbs “owned” this testimony on September 9th; because she was a “confessed witch,” she was not permitted to “swear it” (note of editors of the RSWH, 193. “Examination of Abigail Hobbs.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: UNCAT MS, Miscellaneous Photostats [1692]. Positive Photostat, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, MA).

423 th th RSWH, 198. “Examinations of Abigail Hobbs in Prison.” April 20 , 1692 and May 12 , 1692 respectively. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 155, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

424 RSWH, 198.

425 RSWH, 198.

426 RSWH, 198.

427 Here Hobbs is simply describing White’s clothing – the articles in question are not in evidence.

127 number of examined persons acknowledged multiple contracts with the devil, so the suggestion that White remained in service after receiving freedom dues would not seem odd. Thus it would have reinforced Hobbs’s earlier claims about how her own contract with the devil functioned while tacitly suggesting that service to the devil in exchange for receiving freedom dues may have been a long-standing trend.

Hobbs continued to act as an accuser. For example, the examination of George

Burroughs that occurs on May 9th had appended to it a statement by Hobbs affirming that

Burroughs “in his Shape appears to her” and “urged her to set her hand the Book, which she did.”428 Hobbs’s next examinations, both of which occur in prison on May 12th, focus on Mr. Burroughs and whether or not he sought to recruit others for witchcraft and try to get them to afflict his wife through the pin-sticking method. The examiner for the second interrogation on this date appears to be John Hathorne, as it was written in his hand.

Hathorne focuses on whether Hobbs had contact with Burroughs’s wife or has seen him engage in witchcraft before asking her if she “Conseted to the Inflicting of any Other besides those in the Village?” She says she has but that she is uncertain of whom exactly she was afflicting. In the course of this examination Hobbs acknowledges that she afflicted Mary Laurence because Mary had said something about her that was displeasing.429 Some passages in this examination are lost; the next question in the

428 RSWH, 242. “Examination of George Burroughs and Statement of Abigail Hobbs v. George Burroughs.” May 9th, 1692. Original source: UNCAT MS, Miscellaneous (1692). Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, MA.

429 th th RSWH, 199. “Examinations of Abigail Hobbs in Prison.” April 20 , 1692 and May 12 , 1692 respectively. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 155, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

128 record must refer to missing text, as her interrogator asks “who brought the image to you?” Hobbs responds that Mr. Burroughs brought it to her, claiming that he was angry with the family depicted in it. She says she is not sure how she knew that Mr. Burroughs was a witch. At this point she describes six years of service, which echoes Tituba’s initial structure of six years of servitude followed by freedom dues of “fine things,” though her manner of fulfilling the contract is different: instead of serving for six years continuously, she serves two contracts, the first for two years and the second for four.430 The suggestion that the Devil did not meet his obligation to provide her with fine clothing after the first term she served for him appears forgotten. Bush indicates that indentures were around three to five years, give or take,431 so two years, while shorter, does seem a reasonable length of time to earn freedom dues. Perhaps Hobbs increases her accusation against New

England by suggesting that the Devil still seemed like a better bet than honest hard work in Salem Village, even after his apparent failure to honor their deal.

Claims of contracting one’s service to the Devil in exchange for some desirable future benefit as freedom dues – a phrase never explicitly mentioned but described – continued vigorously during the Salem witch trials and grew increasingly detailed. On

May 9th, Lewis’s testimony hints at the freedom dues narrative:

Burroughs carried me up to an exceeding high mountain and shewed me all the kingdoms of the earth and tould me that he would giue [meaning give] them all to me if I would writ in his book. and if I would not he would thro me down and brake my

430 RSWH, 199.

431 Bush, Servitude in Modern Times, 28.

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neck: but I tould him that they ware non of his to giue and I would not writ if he throde {me}432 down on 100 pitchforks.433

The biblical references transform the freedom dues narrative by pulling in some of the substance of the temptations of Jesus from the Gospels in Matthew 4:1-11.434 It may be that Lewis intended to seal Burroughs’s conviction. After all, charges of acting the part of the Devil may have seemed especially damning when leveled at a minister. And since the

Biblical account of Jesus’s temptation seemed so similar to Burroughs’s offers in exchange for her signing the book, it may have seemed clear that Burroughs was, somehow, the spawn of Satan. This is particularly significant because the Devil sought to tempt Jesus to bow down and serve him in exchange for many things over which God was reputed to have absolute control. Burroughs’s alleged proposition to Lewis highlights both the depth of her temptation but also the spiritual victory of her refusal to yield. (It also highlights her exegesis of the biblical passage when she tells Burroughs that he is

432 Insertion of {} made by the general editors of Records of the Salem Witch Hunt to indicate that the “letters or words written above or below the line or in the margin as a correction or afterthought by the recorders themselves or by other correctors” (92).

433 RSWT, 245. “Deposition of Mercy Lewis v. George Burroughs, and Statement of Thomas Putnam & Edward Putnam v. George Burroughs.” May 9th, 1692. Original Source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 25, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

434 Lewis’s testimony against Burroughs seems to mark a turning point in the course of these examinations, and allusions to biblical narratives become common after this point, including in the deposition of Ann Putnam the younger, Thomas Putnam, and Robert Morey. Ann relates the figure who seeks a signature in the devil’s book to Pharaoh of Egypt, who refused to let God’s people go in the Book of Exodus. This suggests parallels between her own affliction and those of “God’s people,”[“the tribes of Israel”] particularly when she says “I will not writ old pharaoh…in your book” (RSWH, 274. “Deposition of Ann Putnam Jr., Thomas Putnam, & Robert Morey v. Thomas Farrar Sr..” May 16th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 114, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA).

130 trying to give her things that are not his rightfully to give.435) The deposition of Joseph

Ring against Susannah Martin and Thomas Hardy on May 13th, 1692 seems to reference the bountiful things Lewis described. Joseph claims that Hardy and some others came to him the prior April and presented a book to sign “with pmise of any thing that he woold have” presenting “all delectabl things[:] psons and places.”436 This is likely to be another instance of servitude followed by promised freedom dues of enormous riches.

Mercy Lewis also gave a deposition in the case of accused witch George Jacobs

Sr. on May 10th, 1692. In it she claims that an apparition has been appearing to her of an elderly, gray-haired man who gave his name as George Jacobs. He beats her with a stick in order to compel her to sign his book but she refuses. She claims he once threatened to kill her because she would not write in his book and because she has witnessed against his maid and successfully convinced her to confess. She credits her endurance of the beatings to “being upheld by an Allmighty hand and incouraged by them that stood by.”437 This reference to being borne up by the Christian God strengthens Lewis’s characterization as being tempted by one in league with the Devil against which, in keeping with Puritan theology, access to a dimension of God’s strength could prove

435 This was one of the more colorful accounts of Burroughs’s purportedly devilish dealings with individuals he sought to recruit. Wolcott claims Burroughs asked her to sign his book in exchange for being well (RSWH, 248. “Deposition of Mary Walcott v. George Burroughs.” Original source: Witchcraft Papers, no. 7a, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, MA) but includes no augmented tale about the nature of the request.

436 RSWH, 267. “Deposition of Joseph Ring v. Susannah Martin & Thomas Hardy.” Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 181.2 &185, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

437 RSWH, 253. “Deposition of Mercy Lewis v. George Jacobs Sr.” May 10th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 229, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

131 useful.438 Here she also describes promises of “gold” and “many figne [meaning fine] things,” saying she refused even “if he would giue me all the world.”439 This latter portion of her claim is, again, an allusion to Satan’s temptation of Jesus. She uses similar phrasing as that which describes Burroughs’s offer.

As the Salem Witch Trials continued, individuals developed the freedom dues narrative by overtly referencing diabolic pledges of modest to extreme prosperity. For example, Susannah Shelden’s deposition against Elizabeth Colson and John Willard accuses Colson of bringing a book to her to sign; when Shelden refuses, Colson vows to give her “A blak Peas [piece] of monny [money],” claiming that she would be “well.”440

A later portion of this account accuses Willard and Colson along with an unnamed man of “tempt[ing Shelden] with their Boocks And money And Afflicet[ing] her sorely.”441

Although Shelden’s claim does not make it clear whether the money would be given to her immediately after signing or after her service is completed, she does attempt to use the framework of service and signing in exchange for freedom dues in her claims.

438 RSWH, 253.

439 RSWH, 254. “Deposition of Mercy Lewis v. George Jacobs Sr..” May 10th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 229, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

440 RSWH, 293. “Statement of Susannah Shelden v. Elizabeth Colson & John Willard.” May 18th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 244, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

441 RSWH, 294. “Statement of Susannah Shelden v. Elizabeth Colson & John Willard.” May 18th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 244, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

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Shelden, like the others, is drawing on past testimony.442 On the other hand, Barker’s fourteen-year-old son also gave testimony on September 1, 1692, revealing that he signed the Devil’s book. He was to receive “a sute of cloaths.”443 The younger Barker clearly understands the terms of indenture to culminate in his receipt of freedom dues. He also details how he went about afflicting others. Stephen Johnson, on the other hand, admitted to serving the devil and afflicting people for the promise of French shoes.

Social standing once more figures in the claims people make in examination, as

Samuel Wardwell agrees to serve the Devil after he pledges that, in exchange, “he should live comfortably and be a captain.”444 He later retracts these claims, admitting that he had lied,445 but Thomas Chandler and Ephraim Foster accuse him of telling fortunes.446 Sarah

Wardell, on the other hand, is promised “Such thing as I wanted as Clothing & ye like” and then signs a paper to this effect. She also references the “pretty handsome apparel” of

442 A note in the RSWH records actually acknowledges this, saying that Shelden “twice evokes the narrative of the Swedish trials, once with her reference to the shining angel who protected the children there, and the other to the Devils ‘Creouned hat’” (RSWH, 294).

443 RSWH, 571. “Examination of William Barker Jr.” Thursday, September 1st, 1692. Suffolk Court Giles, vol. 32, docket 2761, 103, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, MA.

444 RSWH, 576. “Examination of Samuel Wardwell.” September 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 59, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

445 RSWH, 577. “Examination of Samuel Wardwell.” September 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 59, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

446 RSWH, 644. “Deposition of Thomas Chandler v. Samuel Wardwell.” Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 60, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; RSWH, 645. “Deposition of Ephraim Foster v. Samuel Wardwell.” Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 58, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

133 the people in the Devil’s company, implying that these fine articles of clothing were likely attained through similar agreements.447

Similarly, Mary Lacey claimed that “the Devil came to me, and bid me obey him and I should want for nothing.”448 Furthermore, in the examination of Richard Carrier,

Mary Lacey, her daughter of the same name, and Andrew Carrier, Richard Carrier reveals that he began afflicting others “a year last May.” He reveals that a Black man with a high crowned hat implored him to believe in him and promised him clothes and a horse for service.449 His brother Andrew reveals that more than a month previously he had signed the Devil’s book.450 He also describes the Devil as a black man. He says both his mother and brother accompanied the Devil when he signed. He describes a promise of “house and land in Andeauor [Andover, Massachusetts]” for five years’ service to the Devil.451

While Richard Carrier’s confession is clearly linked to torture that he experienced, the reference to freedom dues is quite similar to Andrew’s, even though it appears Andrew was not tortured. Both brothers took the opportunity to give voice to their discontent by

447 RSWH, 577. “Examination of Sarah Wardwell, Copy.” September 1st, 1692. Original source: Essex Institute Collection, no. 24, 8v-9r, James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

448 RSWH, 472. “Examinations of Ann Foster, Mary Lacey Sr., & Mary Lacey Jr.” William Frederick Poole. The Witchcraft Delusion of 1692. By Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, From an Unpublished Manuscript (an Early Draft of his History of Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts Archives. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 24, no 4 (October 1870), 399-401.

449 The notes for this lengthy examination suggest that “Richard Carrier’s conversion to becoming a confessor is unusual in that it was clearly related to his being tortured” (RSWH, 480-482. “Examinations of Richard Carrier, Mary Lacey Jr., Mary Lacey Sr., &Andrew Carrier, Copy.” July 22nd, 1692. Original source: Essex Institute Collection, no. 24, 3r-4v, James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA).

450 RSWH, 481-482.

451 RSWH, 482.

134 claiming rich freedom dues seduced them into serving the Devil. This demonstrates the desire of individuals to achieve prosperity in ways that reject the hopes once held for

New England.

Dissenting Voices: Resisting the Siren’s Call; or, Crushing the Serpent’s Head?

Like Hobbs, Ann Foster and Mary Bridges claimed that the devil had failed in a promise to provide freedom dues. On July 15th, 1692, Foster told the court that the devil appeared to her in the shape of a bird and promised her “this gift” and “prosperity” if she believed him but that two years later she did not receive her due.452 Bridges also describes a promise for money and fine clothes if she served the Devil by afflicting a woman she knew, and the Devil’s subsequent failure to live up to his bargain. By making a claim that the Devil proved to be a liar, both Foster and Bridges not only play into dominant understandings of a deceptive Devil, but also distinguish themselves from accusers who seemed to trust the Devil. They call into question the social transformations that other individuals have claimed the devil extended to them.

After Bridges’s testimony, a slew of examinations appear in which the accused claim that they did not sign the Devil’s book and were not baptized by him – for instance,

452 RSWH, 467. “Examination of Ann Foster.” July 15th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 48, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. This example is odd because it suggests that the devil promised to reward Foster for belief – rather than signature and service – something that has not appeared in the vast majority of examinations of the Salem Witch Trials. She later clarifies that she did indeed have to serve the Devil, which may suggest the earlier statement was meant to imply service.

135

Bridges’s mother (also named Mary), and John Jackson S. Perhaps individuals who refused to sign the Devil’s book shored up the notion of the persistence of Christian virtue despite the economic disappointment of New England, implying that suppressed incomes made them vulnerable to devilish temptation, but that they did not succumb. As avowed resisters of the Devil’s pledges they claimed they could turn a blind eye to the challenges of New England life and remain stoic in their faith. This story, no less than the majority narrative of people who succumb because New England has not given them what they expected, highlights the broken promise. This failed diabolical pledge created a desire for social justice and equity that made the Devil stronger. After all, freedom dues were intended to enfranchise the recipients, to enable these individuals to move from labouring to becoming a property owner or at least having more financial means leading to greater autonomy. Testimonies in the Salem Witch Trials make frequent references to financial difficulty. Thus the figure of the Devil could be understood as taking advantage of the challenges of Puritan life and the limited means for personal autonomy and advancement to offer something individuals desired and could not achieve. Despite the few claims that the Devil does not deliver on his promises, he by and large is portrayed as a figure who sought to empower the populace.

William Barker Sr. of Andover demonstrated how well-developed this lore about the Devil was. He admitted under examination to being “ensnared by the Devil” for three years, that he had signed the book because he was promised freedom dues in the form of the Devil providing debt relief and a comfortable living. As Barker put it, the Devil realized that “[Barker] had a great family, the world went hard with him” and as a result,

136 the Devil “was willing to pay every man his own.”453 Barker explains that the Devil intended to “set up his own worship, about all churches in the land, to fall next upon

Salem and soe goe through the country.”454 Beyond the spiritual dominion of Salem, the

Devil meant to make all people “equall” and therefore win their support. There would be

“no day of resurrection or of judgment, and [no] punishment nor shame for sin,” Barker explained.455

Barker’s testimony demonstrates that Salem townspeople were holding to the narrative about the Devil – clearly, local lore about how these examinations characterized the devil was beginning to establish an argument for why people might be thus persuaded to join the Devil’s band. Barker’s clear articulation of the fact that the Devil was already in the process of winning people to his side by promising equality and financial restoration suggests accused witches could position themselves as having little option but to serve the Devil for employment, as they were struggling in New England. Barker thus suggests that New England’s inequality and lack of opportunity were creating a spiritual risk for its inhabitants by making them vulnerable to the Devil as well as raising the risk of being afflicted by people working in his service; it threatened to bring down the whole

453 RSWH, 561. “Examination of William Barker, Sr.” August 29th, 1692. Massachusetts Archives Collection, vol. 135, no. 39. Massachusetts State Archives. Boston, MA.

454 RSWH, 562. “Examination of William Barker, Sr.” August 29th, 1692. Massachusetts Archives Collection, vol. 135, no. 39. Massachusetts State Archives. Boston, MA.

455 RSWH, 562.

137 project through a hostile takeover by the Devil. Barker fled before he could stand trial456; he likely expected a terrible fate given his admission.

To “be well”: Dreams of a Different Life and a “New” New England

A number of confessions that played on the idea that the Devil offered them freedom dues reference a promise by the Devil that through service they can expect to

“be well.” The Oxford English Dictionary reveals a number of seventeenth-century understandings for the concept of wellness.457 In its predicative use, the term well can indicate recovery from illness or general health, but also “a state of things, work, an undertaking etc.: satisfactory; of such a nature or in such a condition as to meet with approval or give satisfaction.” A number of examples in the OED demonstrate a range - from indicating that a situation is satisfactory generally to connecting such wellness with the accumulation of possessions. Predicative use of this term can also include referencing

“a state of prosperity or affluence, well off.”458 Other examples of the predicative use of this term reveal that being or doing well was associated with the favour of a particular

456 RSWH, 562.

457 “Well, adj. and n.3.” OED Online. January 2018. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/view/Entry/226980?rskey=XR69DW&result=3 (Accessed January 23, 2018.)

458 “Well,” OED Online.

138 social group. The OED gives a number of examples which reference being “well” in a royal Court.459

I suggest, therefore, that the claim that the Devil would make those in his service

“well” implies wellness in terms of health, social standing, and personal satisfaction.

Indeed, the claim that the Devil promised that individuals would “be well” in exchange for time spent in his service reinforces the idea that cares of life were uppermost in the minds of many individuals the magistrates examined. What emerges, then, is a repeated portrayal of the Devil as the purveyor of a life beyond what seventeenth-century, New

England offered, a life beyond the now-empty promises that were made of how a Puritan

New England would succeed spectacularly. Wellness – with its resonances of health, financial gain, social favour, and personal satisfaction – was one way of expressing the freedom dues that some of the examined individuals claimed they were to receive in exchange for their service to the Devil. Those who cited being well as their reward clearly understood what freedom dues were intended to accomplish and had no qualms about referencing these received social meanings into their examinations when asked.

The claims of those who were to receive freedom dues of wellness both support my argument and demonstrate how those examined gave voice to this deep desire for enfranchisement. These claims suggest that an alternate law and rule – the Devil’s – might be the only way to achieve these dreams to demonstrate the impossibility of opportunity for enfranchisement as it currently was in seventeenth century New England.

459 Many of the sentence examples in the OED indicate that the meaning for this form of wellness stayed quite constant in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.

139

I suggest, however, that this is not so much about wanting to live under the Devil’s rule, although Puritan spirituality considered this something that could actually occur. I believe many of these claims were made to give voice to the stresses of Puritan life in ways that were typically prohibited in the “don’t complain, just work harder” sphere so common to

Puritan New England leaders’ vocabulary. Perhaps those who made these claims felt that it was only with the threat of a devilish takeover looming large that magistrates and ministers would finally listen to the concerns of those they served. They had the ear of the magistrates, at least, and potentially the whole community in trials that were receiving significant community attention.

The Examination of Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Procter: “Wellness” as Freedom Dues

On 11 April 1692, the honourable Thomas Danforth presided over the questioning of Sarah Cloyce and Elizabeth Procter, a joint proceeding in which the court documents do not distinguish between the statements of the two women.460 For the first third of the account neither of them speaks; Danforth questions their accusers and their responses dominate. Someone named John says that he had been afflicted by “Goody Procter first, and then Goody Cloyse”.461 But a third party, a gentlewoman, “brought the [Devil’s] book to me.” When asked for more detail about what afflictions he suffered, John replies

460 Emphasis on testimonies of others rather than the accused is a shift away from the conduct of earlier examinations.

461 RSWH, 173. “Examination of Sarah Cloyce & Elizabeth Procter.” April 11th, 1692. Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, from the Charter of King William and Queen Mary, in 1691, Until the Year 1750, vol. 2, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 21-23.

140

“She [Procter or Cloyse] choked me, and brought the book”; he touched the book for the purpose of “be[ing] well.” Abigail Williams accuses Procter and Cloyce of drinking blood twice a day as part of their “sacrament.”462 After questioning Procter, Danforth quickly becomes distracted by Mary Walcot, whose actions suggest that she is being afflicted. He references the Devil’s book, again, asking the accusers if “she” – which woman he means is unclear – brought the book to them. John responds, “Yes, Sir…. to write.”463 John seems to struggle to articulate the contractual aspect of writing in the book. Putnam comes a little closer than John to the form and substance of Tituba’s original claims, saying that the book was brought to her and she was made to “set her hand to it.” Similarly, Abigail Williams acknowledges that the book has been brought to her and says she was to “write in it and I shall be well,” thus revealing that she has signed to service in exchange for wellness.464

But why is wellness desirable for so many who testify? I suggest that the desire for wellness is especially significant in the light of the fact that many indentured servants experienced physical harm at the hands of their masters or mistresses. Such abuse may provide an important context for their claims of receiving assurances of wellness should each pay fealty to the devil. In “Statement of Elizabeth Hubbard v. George Burroughs,” we learn that 17-year-old Hubbard claims that Burroughs appeared to her with “the book”

462 RSWH, 173.

463 RSWH, 174. “Examination of Sarah Cloyce & Elizabeth Procter.” April 11th, 1692. Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, from the Charter of King William and Queen Mary, in 1691, Until the Year 1750, vol. 2, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 21-23.

464 RSWH, 174.

141 with lines which were “read as blod” and pinched her twice before leaving. According to

Hubbard, the next morning he appeared again and told her he was “Wizard” and a

“conjurar” and went away but certain sins appeared to hurt every day and night, and he urged her “uery much to set my hand to his book: and to run away telling me that if I would do so I should be well & that I should need feare no body.”465 He continues tormenting her, seeking to convince her to sign his book, finally resorting to threats that he will kill her, while also biting and pinching her and poking her with pins.466 This testimony suggests service is to be exchanged for wellness and protection. It is significant that when Hubbard does not quickly acquiesce to signing the book, Burroughs escalates his argument, seeking to coerce her through physical pain into making the contract

“legal.” Hubbard crafts this narrative with emphasis on Burrough’s seeking people to sign the book, therefore revealing that his focus is recruitment.

The idea of “wellness” as freedom dues extends Tituba’s original claim that she was told she would receive “pretty things” and “fine things” in exchange for her service.

Whether the accusers conceived of wellness as physical, spiritual, emotional, or financial, it is interesting that they chose a term often associated with wholeness. Certainly, the stress of the Salem Witch trials may have made wellness seem a particularly wonderful reward. And in legal proceedings where torture was frequently used to get individuals to

465 RSWH, 243. “Statement of Elizabeth Hubbard v. George Burroughs.” May 9th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 2, no. 30, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

466 RSWH, 243.

142 confess to witchcraft or reveal others who were witches, it may be that the accused and the examined developed a heightened sense of the value of wellness.

Mary Warren went through numerous stressful experiences prior to finally claiming that the Devil promised her she should “be well” if she served him. Testifying the same day as Hobbs’s first examination, Warren also draws on claims and actions apparent in prior testimony to bolster her own narrative. Warren had been called to give evidence that others were engaged in witchcraft in the cases of Sarah Cloyce and

Elizabeth Proctor, but had become an accuser who also claimed to be afflicted. In her testimony on April 19, 1692, she claims that she had acknowledged to Betty Hubbard that

“the afflicted persons did but dissemble.”467 This claim appears to imply that Warren’s previous role in giving evidence against others who were believed to be engaged in witchcraft might be suspect, because how else could she be so sure that previous claims of affliction where shows? Benjamin Ray believes that Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis,

Elizabeth Hubbard, and Marry Walcott, and Abigail Williams eventually heard that

Warren was suggesting they were pretending rather than being truly afflicted, and believed it signaled her betrayal;468 as a result, these girls all began to claim Warren was afflicting them in court, causing them to fall into “violent fit[s]” and “cr[y] out.”469 Once

Hathorne says to Warren: “Well here was one just now that was a Tormentor in her

467 RSWH, 196. “Examination of Mary Warren.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 111, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

468 Ray, Satan & Salem, 58.

469 RSWH, 196.

143 apparition, & she owns that she had made a league with the Devil,” the pressure is too much and Warren claims that the apparitions of Martha Cory and John and Elizabeth

Procter are attacking her.470 As the accusations pour in, now implicating her, Warren’s own performance eclipses the actions of the afflicted as she falls “into a fit” for “a good space” according to the court documents, crying out,“Oh! I am sorry for it, I’m sorry for it” and “cryed out, Oh Lord help me, Oh good Lord save me!” It may be that she recognised that she had become entrapped in the very performance that she herself had earlier rendered via her witchcraft accusations. Her fitful state appears to intensify after making these claims and she seems desperate to clear her name of the accusations pouring in from the girls and Hathorne; she says: “I will tell, I will tell…. I will tell, they did, they did, they did…. They brought me to it.”471 She is removed from the courtroom for a period, then brought back, likely not only because she appears to be beside herself, but also because she seems to be facing a spiritual battle about revealing what she knows.

Once she returns, Hathorne resumes questioning in earnest – “Have you signed the Devil’s book?” She replies no, that she has not even touched it472 She speaks of a female being who threatens to kill her, and appears to “claw…off” the unseen figure. The observers would likely have considered the threat to be a response to her outcry, “I will

470 A note to the “Statement of Mary Warren v. John Procter & Elizabeth Procter” reveals that eventually Mary Warren “after much indecisiveness” decided that she would join the ranks of the accusers (RSWH, 224. “Statement of Mary Warren v. John Procter & Elizabeth Procter.” Unknown date in April 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 55, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA).

471 RSWH, 196.

472 RSWH, 196.

144 speak Satan,” during her testimony. The examiners inquire about what she was told to do.

They ask her if, like Cloyce and Procter, she has been promised wellness for service. Like

Abigail Hobbs, Warren becomes mute. The record notes, “then her lips were bit[ten] so that she could not speak. So she was sent away.” A note directly following this examination reveals that “not one of the sufferers was afflicted during her examination after…she began to confess, tho they were tormented before.”473 This suggests that

Samuel Parris, identified as “hand one” in this examination, crafted the narrative in the void created by the absence of Warren’s speech, which the examiners permit because

Hobbs’s performance bolstered the credibility of Warren’s.

Three days later, in an examination in prison, Warren extends the discussion about whether or not she knew what manner of book she was signing and what reward she received. The examiner asks her whether she knew that the book she was asked to sign was the Devil’s book, she replies “No, But I thought it was no good book Then [after signing] I thought it was the Devil’s Book.”474 In a subsequent examination, she reveals that she suspected after she touched it because “her finger blacked it.”475 She accuses her master and mistress, John and Elizabeth Procter, of being witches, saying her mistress had admitted it, that her master was “very averse to the putting up of Bills for publick

473 RSWH, 197. “Examination of Mary Warren.” April 19th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 111, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

474 RSWH, 199.

475 RSWH, 203. “Examination of Mary Warren.” April 21st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, nos. 113 & 114, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

145 prayer,”476 that he had threatened to force hot tongs down her throat477 and “puther hand to ye book.”478 She also accuses Giles Cory of coming to her in her room in prison and afflicting her.479

A third examination of Mary Warren, on May 12th, 1692, reveals little new information. It does, however, indicate that Procter promised that she “should be well” if she signed the book.480 This addition reinforces the freedom dues narrative that appears throughout this examination. But given that the court records themselves reveal a significant amount of duress and distress during her examinations, perhaps it is no wonder that she crafts, at the last, a tale of being promised wellness in exchange for her service. In her examination, Warren acquiesces to the pressure of the courtroom girls who claim that they are afflicted and resent what they perceive to be her betrayal because she, in contrast, argues that they are pretending faking the effects of witchcraft. When she finally succumbs to the pressure to be false, she does so wresting the language – little more than a dream in her current existence – of being a fully autonomous and

476 RSWH, 199.

477 RSWH, 201. “Examination of Mary Warren.” April 21st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, nos. 113 & 114, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

478 RSWH, 202. “Examination of Mary Warren.” April 21st, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, nos. 113 & 114, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

479 RSWH, 200. “Examination of Mary Warren in Prison.” April 20th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 115, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

480 RSWH, 262. “Examination of Mary Warren.” May 12th, 1692. Original source: Essex County Court Archives, vol. 1, no. 116, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, on deposit James Duncan Philips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

146 enfranchised individual: “he Tould me if I would Sett my hand to yt book I should be well.”481 Thus she adds her narrative to the throng of those who reveal the hard pressure under which they labour in New England and the challenges of even giving voice to one’s own desires.

The desire to “be well” in a context where so few individuals were reveals the struggle many individuals experienced in New England. In this context, the desire to “be well” is the equivalent of wanting for nothing: social, economic, personal, and physical autonomy and betterment. This particular mode of representing freedom dues, then, presents us with the crux of the matter. Mention of freedom dues was never simply about economic choices, but about the choices one wants to freely make. While wellness could be about economic opportunity, it is clear from the testimonies of some individuals before the courts that it was also about physical safety and autonomy. Given the physical harm indentured servants could expect, those who speak of being owed wellness, but describe harm they were experiencing prior to the Devil’s assurances, or who mention physical protection, may well be hailing a key experience of those who finished their service and expected to receive freedom dues – the ability finally to have autonomy. And in a Salem Village where so many magistrates and ministers had clear views about the

“right” response to challenges, both spiritually and socially, it is no wonder that individuals dragged before the courts decided to give voice to the barrenness of opportunities in this new land, this New England, that was once considered so full of promise.

481 RSWH, 262.

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The Unmentionables: Devilish Indentured Servitude, the Seduction of Freedom Dues, and the Puritan New England Dream

Indeed, disappointed expectations were clearly painful for many of its inhabitants.

The summary form of the court records which detail individual examinations482 of the

Records of the Salem Witch Hunt, note signing the Devil’s book, but completely avoid discussion of freedom dues. These documents expose the tension between the official framing of the records and the social realities to which individual voices point. Moreover, they highlight the conflict between witchcraft as an ideological construction and the traces of lived experience to which the records attest. For example, the Court Record of the Trial of Sarah Buckley and the Court Records of the Trial of Mary Marston mention, respectively, “Certain detestable arts Called Witchcraft and Sorceries wickedly mallitiously and ffeloneously…[being] used practised and Exercised At and in the Towne of Salem”483 and

A wicked and diabollicall Covenant wickedly mallitiousely and ffeloneously with the Devill did make and Signe the Devills book, and promis to worship the Devill and serue him by which wicked Covenant with the Devill the said Mary Marston is become a detestable Witch Contrary to the Peace of our Soveraigne Lord &

482 This begins on page 742 of RSWH.

483 RSWH, 745. “Court Record of the Trial of Sarah Buckley.” January 4th, 1693. Records of the Superior Court of Judicature (1692/3), pp. 2-3, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives. Boston, MA.

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Lady the King and Queen their Crowne & Dignity and the Lawes in that Case made and provided.484

When witchcraft or a covenant with the Devil is mentioned, it is quickly refocused towards spiritual matters of practising witchcraft or being in league with the devil, without mentioning the personal and social transformation people anticipated from such covenants. These records reject the narratives given by the people themselves by refocusing on spiritual matters and the threat this posed to English law and government rather than giving voice, specifically, to the implications of the claims various persons made at law.

Similar reframings occur in the “Call for a Day of Prayer and Fasting” made in

Boston, December 21, 1692 which “His Excellency and Council” issue and is to occur on

Thursday, the 29th of December, 1692. This document claims that

The Various Awful Judgements of God continued upon the English Nation, and the Dispersions therof in Their Majesties several Plantations, by War, Sickness, Earth-quakes, and other Desolating Calamities; more especially, by permiting Witchcrafts and Evil Angels to Rage amongst his People: All which Loudly Call to Deep Humiliation and Earnest Application to Heaven as the best Expedient for Deliverance…. Exhorting both Ministers and People fervently to Implore Heavens Blessings upon Their Majesties, their Three Kingdoms and Plantations Abroad, and upon the whole Protestant Interest; That a Spirit of Reformation may be Powered down from on High, and Gods Anger Diverted, that Divine Conduct may be vouchsafed to all the English Governments, and Success attend their Affairs. And all Servile Labour on said Day is herby Forbiden.485

484 RSWH, 755. “Court Record of the Trial of Mary Marston.” January 6th, 1693. Records of the Superior Court of Judicature (1692/3), 8, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Judicial Archives, Massachusetts State Archives. Boston, MA.

485 RSWH, 718-719. “Call for a Day of Prayer and Fasting.” December 21st, 1692. Colonial Office 5/857, p. 97. National Archives, London, UK.

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Given what the court records themselves show as a whole, it seems significant that this statement, which was made in response to the tragic results that were beginning to unfold as a result of the Salem Witch Trials, does not mention the individuals whose fortunes were currently languishing in New England. It calls upon inhabitants of New England to focus on the fortunes of the King and Queen in England, and the only reference to personal social or economic transformation comes in a slight mention of prayers for the success of the reformation and success of English affairs. This prayer sidelines the very deep-seated, tumultuous concerns which trouble individual New Englanders.

Taken together, these omissions or re-framings by the magistrates might suggest the perceived un-speakability of the horror rendered by people revealing their challenges, one by one, in a promised land; the embarrassment that the court itself was forced to record – in any way – evidence that the New England project was financially unsuccessful, and that her people were struggling, despite all earlier glowing predictions of economic utopia. Perhaps the court sought to avoid writing a second time (that is, in summary form) what was already painful but rendered in court records as a legal necessity for recording what the Salem Witch Trials had been. Perhaps the court sought to grapple with the multifaceted narratives that emerged from the proceedings by erasing the idea of humanitarian enfranchisement, rather than the spiritual seduction, perpetrated by the Devil. These summaries essentially suppress the experiences of struggle and challenge in Puritan New England to which individuals had given voice by redirecting the reader’s attention to a purported Devil and potential witches to be indicted. Perhaps the magistrates were deeply uncomfortable with the ways in which various examinations revealed, via the Devil’s promises, the lack of expected opportunities in New England.

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Perhaps as people gave voice to the challenges in their lives and their desires to find solutions not on offer in New England, the trials took on a tenor of defiance to the establishment of New England as supposedly superior to England in freedoms and opportunities, a tenor that only increased as more individuals gave testimony in the proceedings. The court records reveal that many innocent people died in jail of infirmity or old age.486 Many also found their lands and possessions unlawfully seized, and a number of families who were not unfortunate financially were ruined or impoverished by the Salem Witch Trial proceedings and unlawful jailings of key family members.487

Ultimately, Tituba’s confession empowered the tongues of many in Salem Village who were summoned to be examined and who – finally having an illustrious, listening, questioning audience – gave voice to their challenges, and their desired solutions, to a previously deaf-to-complaint New England elite.

486 Ray, Satan & Salem, 177.

487 Ray, 2, 174-76.

Chapter Three “None but negers are sarvants”:488 Comity, Freedom Dues, and Hawthorne’s Abolitionist Leanings in The Scarlet Letter

Scholars have often argued that the Fugitive Slave Law, which was passed in the same year The Scarlet Letter was published—1850—provides a central historical framework for understanding the text, because Hawthorne wrote his novel in the context of the discussions that led to the law’s passage.489 This law stated that anyone who

488 Charles William Janson, an English visitor to America, described the local treatment of the term “servant” thus: The arrogance of domestics in this land of republican liberty and equality, is particularly calculated to excite the astonishment of strangers. To call persons of this description servants, or to speak of their master or mistress, is a grievous affront…. [I once had the following conversation with a servant-maid:] “Is your master at home?”--”I have no master.”--”Don’t you live here?”--”I stay here.”--”And who are you then?”-- ”Why, I am Mr. ___’s help. I’d have you know, man, that I am no sarvant; none but negers are sarvants.” (Charles William Janson, The Stranger in America: containing Observations made during a long Residence in that Country, on the Genius, Manners and Customs of the people of the United States; with Biographical Particulars of Public Characters; hints and facts relative to the Arts, Sciences, Commerce, Agriculture, Manufactures, Emigration, and the Slave Trade (London: Albion Press, 1807), 87-88. Context suggests this occurred somewhere on a journey from Boston to New York. Tomlins calls this claim by the servant maid “accurate.” (Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1850-1865 [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010]: 329). He explains that the timing of Janson’s visit and this statement coincided with the time that “legal incidents of servitude on the mainland had become identified with specific categories of European migrant labor and with absolute servitude of slavery” (Tomlins, 329). David R. Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, 3rd ed. [London and New York: Verso, 2007], 47-50) provides additional instances of domestics articulating the distinction between the races.

489 What follows is representative of these discussions: Sacvan Bercovitch explains that achieving consensus by both northern and southern states making concessions in 1850 was not “primarily pejorative” as it is to contemporary readers, although it became pejorative shortly after (Sacvan Bercovitch, The Office of The Scarlet Letter [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991], 100). Jennifer Fleischner indicates that Hawthorne, like many northerners in the mid nineteenth century, adopted an attitude of compromise towards slavery bolstered by the legal shifts of the day (Jennifer Fleischner, “Hawthorne and the Politics of Slavery,” Studies in the Novel 23, no. 1 [Spring 1991]: 97). Jay Grossman describes the Fugitive Slave Law as making 1850 America “hyper-racialized” (Jay Grossman, “‘A’ is for Abolition?: Race, Authorship, The Scarlet Letter,” Textual Practice 7 [1993]: 16). Jonathan Arac points out that understanding The Scarlet Letter requires materials that thoroughly analyze “the history of around 1850” (251): to this end he discusses the Compromise of 1850 (254) (Jonathan Arac, “The Politics of The Scarlet Letter,”in Ideology and Classic American Literature, ed. Sacan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen [Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986]). Laura Hanft Korobkin claims that “If Puritan history makes Hawthorne’s historical manipulations visible, the politics of 1850 make them comprehensible” (Laura Hanft Korobkin, “The Scarlet Letter of the Law: Hawthorne and Criminal Justice,” Novel 30 [1997]: 194).

151 152 harbored an escaped slave could be imprisoned or fined. It addressed the problem Kentucky statesman Henry Clay explained to Congress: “a man from a slave State cannot now, in any degree of safety, travel in a free state with his servant…[even for] a short time”.490

The US federal circuit court’s ruling in Butler v. Hopper (1806) had rendered the

1793 Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter by setting a precedent for free states to invoke the

Somerset principle, which Lord Mansfield’s decision to free James Somerset on the basis that any slave who touched England’s free soil was instantaneously free established in

England. Abolitionists launched a number of freedom suits based on the case.491 A number of scholars have read numerous hints at government and legislative unrest in the text as commentary on these events that led to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

490 “Selections: Seizure of Fugitive Slaves,” Liberator (Feb. 22, 1850): 29.

491 In Butler v. Hopper, the US senator from South Carolina, Pierce Butler, claimed he was a sojourner in Pennsylvania as part of his ongoing duty to travel the country, and therefore should not be subject to the state’s laws; he therefore sought to retain his slave, Ben. While the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 law provided six months’ grace to visiting masters, the ruling suggests Butler argued his case on the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution. As Finkelman points out, Justice Washington fails to provide a context for Butler’s reasoning, but reveals the jury’s contention that “the plaintiff was a resident” of Pennsylvania from 1794 onwards, and thus not eligible for the grace period (qtd. in Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981], 242; Butler v. Hopper, 4F. Cas. 905 [1806]). Justice Washington’s ruling refusing to return Butler’s slave established that courts might emancipate slaves in transit, which would prompt northern states to make slaves in transit between free and slave states central to the arguments for comity. It explicitly referenced the right of free states to pass laws which would free slaves as long as such slaves were not fugitives and empowered free states to decide who qualified as a “resident” under the comity clauses of the constitution. It also clearly distinguished fugitives from slaves in transit (Finkelman, 242). Butler v. Hopper opened the gap the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 sought to close, and it did so based on the Somerset principles. As Drescher points out, “The Fugitive Slave Law was designed as if to demonstrate to northerners just how far their ‘free soil’ was from the world of the Somerset decision” (Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery [Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 324). That is, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 responded to a long and vexed legal tradition and a Union which was buckling under the weight of comity’s denial, which was rooted in debates about the Somerset case and free soil doctrine.

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The possibility that Hester’s scarlet A represents a slave’s brand and, that

Hawthorne may have sculpted her characterization to suggest that she her position resembles a black slave woman’s, has also gained attention along these lines. Such discussions have focused intensely on the idea that the letter is ambiguous and therefore accommodates multiple meanings.492 Moreover, because the primary referents for some scholars are the present day as well as general nineteenth century contexts, at times other legal and historical contexts have been overlooked. All of these longstanding trends have led to a shift away from reading Hester’s letter and person through the discourses of either indenture or slavery.

I suggest this shift represents an error. Hester’s “A” functions similarly to slavery’s brand, and Hawthorne’s presentation of her reflects a range of legal and historical contexts, including contemporary understandings of the Somerset principle, which this chapter will present. I argue Hawthorne refers to a case well-known in its time, Commonwealth vs. Aves

492 Interpretations of Hester’s “A” abound; therefore, what follows is not intended to be comprehensive but representative. For more on the A’s “potential [...] for compassionate interpretation” (209) by the “discretionary authority” (209) of the magistracy, see Korobkin, “Scarlet Letter of the Law”; for more on “the letter’s transparency” yet capacity for “eva[sion]” (853) in relation to the law and speech, see Christopher Diffee, “Postponing Politics in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter,” MLN 11, no. 5 (1996): 835-71; for more on the “heterogeneous meaning of the ‘A’“ in relation to “American democracy” (298), that Hester’s “voluntary action” of replacing the A after Pearl’s removal of it “allows” the letter A to create a community via “consent” rather than “force” (301) see Elizabeth Hewitt, “Scarlet Letters, Dead Letters: Correspondence and the Poetics of Democracy in Melville and Hawthorne,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (1999): 295-319; for more on Hester’s “subver[sion]” of the brand (“the patriarchal sign”) by “making” it “stand” for “woman” and woman as “other” (360), see Suzan Last, “Hawthorne’s Feminine Voices: Reading The Scarlet Letter as Woman,” The Journal of Narrative Technique 27, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 349-76; for more on the letter’s function as a “strategy of pluralism”, in which “all meanings are partly true” (588), see Sacvan Bercovitch’s “The A-Politics of Ambiguity in The Scarlet Letter,” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); for more on the letter in the liberal imagination, see Arthur Riss, “A is for Anything: US liberalism and the making of The Scarlet Letter” in Race, Slavery, and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 111-35.

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(1836), to create, in The Scarlet Letter, a commentary on the Fugitive Slave Law that reveals a distinct point of view. Put simply, Hester’s basic rights as a white woman servant are at stake. Her lifelong indentured servitude evolves in the course of the novel into a variety of racialized white slavery.493 Moreover, I demonstrate that, in Hawthorne’s view, the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 would signal that slavery itself encroached on the privileges of whites.494 While Hawthorne was certainly racist495, this does not preclude a belief in abolition. In fact, there was always a troubling connection between abolitionist ideologies and racist predilections. The principle of comity and its contentious nature at the time of Hawthorne’s writing provides the foundation for his approach to slavery.

Key Historical and Legal Context for The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne’s initial readers came to The Scarlet Letter in a period of contention between America and its former colonial parent, among American states, and among

493 Since both whites and blacks became racialized in the seventeenth century, I use the term “racialized white slavery”, or suggest that Hester’s bondage appears to be racialized black enslavement by another name, to denote Hawthorne’s representation of Hester’s servitude that appears characteristic of black chattel slavery specifically by representing Hester’s servitude as lifelong.

494 The Fugitive Slave Law was primarily used to apprehend black people, but in Ableman v. Booth and United States v. Booth (both 1858) the US Supreme Court demonstrated that slavery could undermine white servants as well by supporting the apprehension of whites under the Fugitive Slave Law (Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 336-37).

495 One of the key texts which censures Hawthorne for his racism is Brenda Wineapple’s Hawthorne: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), attributing to him identification with slaveholders (Wineapple, 264) and claiming that he supported “passivity and inaction, the one a psychological state, the other a political one, and both of them consistent with the proslavery argument” (Wineapple, 263).

155 differing political points of view within Massachusetts, where Hawthorne set his novel. As this section will lay out, differing laws, particularly with respect to slavery, led to a number of challenges to comity. At this time, comity’s challenge was that slaveholders called the taking of their slaves a violation, and abolitionists called slaveholders’ holding slaves once they had transported them to “free” states illegal. While legal differences over slavery might instigate such debates, they revolved around comity as a principle. Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century readers were acutely aware of the issue.

Indeed, as I discussed in my first chapter, throughout the nineteenth century comity tensions between slave and free states, America and Britain, were a source of constant agitation. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was an attempt by lawmakers to force Union between states, bolster slaveholders’ privileges of transit, and protect sacrosanct white

American privileges. Nineteenth-century American comity conflicts often centered on the frustration of northern states at having to permit slave transit, residence, or sojourn on free soil, and the frustrations of southern states at having their slaves apprehended during transit, residence, or sojourn.496 In the context of these tensions over comity, and questions regarding the sanctity and preservation of white American freedoms, Hawthorne’s use of

Hester to indicate the ways in which white privileges were facing restriction takes on renewed significance.

Contemporary readers of The Scarlet Letter would have been familiar with two cases in Massachusetts that involved comity. Commonwealth vs. Howard in 1832 set the

496 For more details on the extensive differences of the individual states regarding slave transit, residence, and sojourn, see Finkelman, Imperfect Union.

156 stage for Commonwealth vs. Aves four years later. In Howard, The New England Anti-

Slavery Society sought a writ of habeas corpus against Mrs. Howard, who visited in Boston with “Francisco,” a black boy between the ages of twelve and fourteen, because they believed she planned to carry “Franscisco” to Cuba to either “keep or sell as a slave.”497

Mrs. Howard denied the charges, claiming that “Francisco” was a free servant.

Samuel Sewall argued that because Howard had brought “Francisco” to

Massachusetts as a slave he had attained freedom on his arrival in Massachusetts. Chief

Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court Lemuel Shaw denied the claim. He cited

Franscisco’s preference to remain with Howard, based on his private meeting with the young man; his being old enough to make his own choice; Howard’s claim that Franscisco was not a slave; and his confidence that, as Howard’s lawyer had argued, the boy’s freedom in Massachusetts would be upheld in Cuba.498 Shaw claimed that “if Mrs. Howard, in her return to the writ, had claimed the boy as a slave, I should have ordered him to be discharged from her custody”.499 His ruling exposed the troublesome gray areas of finding in favour of freedom that existed between slavery and servitude. It rested on the readily- abused notion of slave voluntariness and permitted any slave-owner to claim his slave was

497 The Liberator, Dec. 8, 1832; In re Francisco, 9 Am. Jur. 490 (1833)

498 Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 102.

499 Daily Atlas, Dec. 5, 1832; “recopied verbatim” (Levy, Law of the Commonwealth, 61; notes) by The Liberator, Dec. 8, 1832, and The American Jurist and Law Magazine, 9 (1832): 490-92. As Leonard Levy reveals, this case was “unreported in the official reports of the Court” (Levy, Law of the Commonwealth, 61; notes); the original newspaper sources give us the facts of the case. See Leonard Levy, The Law of The Commonwealth and Chief Justice Shaw (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1957).

157 a servant and therefore to be excused by Shaw’s court. The assumption of slave owner truthfulness at law was a troublesome fiction.

It was perhaps partially the need to address this race-based fiction of implicit slaveowner truthfulness as measured against the reality – that slaves’ testimony was not implicitly untrustworthy – that came to a head in Commonwealth vs. Aves. Shaw ruled in this case as well. The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and antislavery champion Leven

H. Harris petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus against Aves for holding a young girl, Med, as a slave500. Harris invoked the Somerset principle, arguing “your petitioner fears that the said Med, who is free by the law of Massachusetts, may be unlawfully carried back into

New-Orleans, and there made a slave, unless this honorable Court will interfere for her protection”.501 She had travelled with Mary Slater of New Orleans, who had fallen ill during a visit to her father, Thomas Aves, in Boston, and remained there in anticipation of returning home when she regained her health.

Newspapers around the United States covered the case, as well as the Boston

Female Anti-Slavery Society Reports and The Liberator. Legal precedent suggested that slaves became free once a master took them into a free state, but Aves’ insistence that the

500 “Petition for the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” in Case of the Slave-Child, Med: Report of the Arguments of Counsel and of the Opinion of the Court in the case of Commonwealth vs. Aves: Tried and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (Boston: Published by Isaac Knapp, 1836). Hereafter, this edition will be referenced as SCM. Most of the pagination in this edition is regular, but there are pockets of unnumbered pages and minor irregularities which I denote by using a chronological letter after the closest regular page number (e.g 13a) as well as “N. pag.” to indicate that the page is in fact unnumbered.

501 SCM, 3.

158 visit was temporary mitigated this502. Antislavery lawyers argued that the Commonwealth must expressly uphold slavery to permit it in Massachusetts. Attorney Benjamin Robbins

Curtis grounded his disagreement in The Fugitive Slave Clause of Article VI in the

Constitution, which required the return of fugitives who escaped to free states, saying it negated the Somerset principle.

Aves pointed out that Med and her mother both wished to maintain their kin ties, and that Louisiana’s black codes prohibited the separation or sale of children under ten from their mothers, assigning heavy fines to slaveholders who violated such rules.503 The preference of the two slaves would make the case highly contentious in public opinion, among abolitionists and slaveholders and their supporters alike.504 Aves sought to use the context of a robust legal tradition of associating bound servitude with youth that made children and servants essentially equal under the law in Massachusetts.505 While different

502 As Bruckner Melton points out, the Dred Scott decision (1857) would replicate this finer point of distinction in the law (Bruckner F. Melton, Jr., “Commonwealth vs. Aves: 1836,” in Great American Trials. Enclyclopedia.com. (August 7, 2018). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3498200053.html. Indeed, Benjamin Robbins Curtis who represented Aves dissented in the Dred Scott case (Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 103).

503 Several other slave holding states had such laws, though it was not uncommon to overturn them or note an exception when, as in the settling of an estate, a higher price would be achieved by separating mother and child. See Jenny Bourne Wahl’s The Bondsman’s Burden: An Economic Analysis of the Common Law of Southern Slavery. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

504 L. Moreau Lislet, A General Digest of the Acts of the Legislature of Louisiana: Passed from the Year 1804, to 1827, Inclusive, vol. 1 (New Orleans: Benjamin Levy, 1828), 101; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage, 1976), 32. Louisiana penal law mandated a fine of $1000-$2000 and imprisonment of 6-12 months. M. M. Robinson, A Digest of the Penal Law of the State of Louisiana, Analytically Arranged (New Orleans: Published for the Author, 1841), 121-22.

505As Tomlins indicates, the 1642 “General Court’s orders for the good education of children” evidenced clear use of the terms “child,” “servant,” and “apprentice” “as if they were synonymous” (Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 255). The “catalog of statute law” in the Massachusetts colony and various laws passed between 1642 and 1710 also evidenced the collapse of the concepts. The policy of bringing male servants

159 treatment of the legal bond between parents and children and masters and children reveals a respect for kinship bonds, youth were, as Tomlins notes, “considered simultaneously socially vulnerable and socially dangerous, and hence meet for restraint”.506 A shortage of adult labour at the time enhanced the value of children’s labour and thus the incentive to bind them, which facilitated continuity. Massachusetts had more age-specific rules about children’s labour than other US states or England; for example, children could be “in service” to their own fathers or even “bound out” to neighbors.507 Aves described his role vis-à-vis six-year-old Med as that of a guardian, playing on the blurry lines between master and parent that prevailed at the time.

The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society asserted that slavery made it impossible for Med’s mother to be a good mother and that this justified their assumption of her role508: in their view, they were preventing “a violation of the rights of the child”.509 Attorney Ellis

Gray Loring also referenced the same legal context in Massachusetts law that Aves had invoked in addition to Massachusetts laws that had supported removing indentured children

between eight and twenty-five years old to Massachusetts from Britain reveals the acceptance of child labour (Tomlins, 257-8).

506 Tomlins, 255. The Lawes and Libertyes adopted in New England in 1648 took apprenticeship of young people as a model (Tomlins, 253), as passages concerned with the welfare of young servants attest: protections from those escaping the “Tiranny and crueltie” of masters, “prescribed release from service and compensation for any servant subjected to ill-treatment”, and restrictions on “assignment or hire of a servant to another for any period longer than one year and without the consent of authority” (Tomlins, 253).

507 Tomlins, 258.

508 Edlie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 88.

509 Maria Weston Chapman, Right and Wrong in Boston, in 1836: Annual Report of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (Boston: Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, 1836), 64.

160 from their masters if they failed to educate them. His argument tacitly spoke to Med’s humanity when he spoke of “the inhumanity of separating mother and child” and told the court that “a promise has been given to the mother that her child should be returned to her” and that retaining her in Boston violated this commitment.510 He says:

Are the children of the slave mother born here to be also slaves or will their father, if he should be a free Citizen of Massachusetts, be entitled to his own children?... There can be…no cancelation of indentures, for abuse of authority. A slave has no civil rights.... These consequences seem indeed revolting, but they are in character with the system to which they belong.511

Here Loring reflects an understanding that even abolitionists will object to the division of

Med from her mother. He references a speech by Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, a prominent politician and slaveholder who supported gradual emancipation, that condemned slavery’s effects on kinship relations as “abrogating the clearest laws of nature” when dividing parents from children.512 Loring argues for the dissolution of a kin tie against the “law[s] of nature” despite knowing that many people believe the laws of nature are a strong reason for preserving kin ties.

Loring argues that the conditions of slavery make a reunion between Med and her mother irrelevant: in his view, “freedom” was a supreme good that should take precedence over parental preference. He notes, “the necessity of this separation is undoubtedly a

510 SCM, 13a: N.pag.

511 SCM, 27. In this reference, Loring speaks of indenture and slave status as if they are one and the same, but, as I discussed in the introduction, it is likely that the speaker is invoking the long-standing practice of masters indenturing servants prior to entering a free state in order to retain their property in persons. Upon completion of transit, sojourn, or residence in the free state, such indentured servants were returned to slave states and once more became slaves.

512 SCM, 18.

161 painful feature of the present case”, an act of “breaking up the domestic ties” for which slavery – “that odious system” – is responsible.513 Loring suggests that the abuses associated with slavery are “deep-rooted” and thus result in “incidental and temporary disorder” such as dividing Med and her mother that resist “attempt[s] to rectify [them]”.514

He says:

is there really any inhumanity in making this child a free citizen of Massachusetts? Is it unkindness to the child? Surely not. If she were able to form an intelligent wish, we are bound to presume she would prefer freedom to slavery. Any other supposition is a concession that the average chance for happiness and usefulness here, is less than it would be in slavery. Is it unkindness to the mother? Not if she desires the true good of her child. No doubt she felt anxious that her daughter should be returned to her. But her apprehension was of a very different event from that we seek to bring about.515

Med’s inability to have “an intelligent wish” justifies the severing of the kinship tie she values. Any good mother would prefer her child attain freedom in Massachusetts. People on both sides of the slavery issue would disagree, but Shaw may have found the argument compelling.516

513 SCM, 13a: N.pag.The term “odious” here may have been alluding to the statement often attributed to Mansfield, but often in dispute, that “The state of slavery…is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law” (See Steven M. Wise, Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery [Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005], 182). Because Mansfield’s personal views were not abolitionist, Loring likely made this reference to suggest that, like Mansfield’s, his arguments were grounded in law, a wise strategy as Shaw did not align with abolitionist thought.

514 SCM, 13a: N.pag.

515 SCM, 13a: N.pag.

516 In reality, many free blacks experienced abject poverty, dislocation, loss of kin ties, and pernicious racism, as well as a real threat of re-enslavement. These ills made freedom less distinguishable from slavery than it might otherwise have been. Further, loss of kin ties ways one of the chief was slave status was inscribed. See Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 6.

162

Less controversially, Loring also curries favour with the Massachusetts laws regarding the education of children: “This child, if freed, will be educated for usefulness and respectability. She will never want a friend, nor the means of improvement and happiness”.517 Because Med is a slave, he knows the court will assume her master would not give her the good education that Massachusetts law has hitherto supported, and he promises to see she has it.

Loring also makes reference to white slavery. His report suggests that the court imagine a white slave child brought to America by a Russian or Turkish noble – and asks whether or not any American would be agreeable to “retain[ing]...despotic authority over our fair skinned fellow creature pleading for freedom?”518 Indeed, he indicates that such a “proposition would be thought at once ludicrous and horrible. It would not be tolerated one moment”519. Here, he powerfully invokes American fears of white slavery to make his point.

Shaw’s verdict was famous. Med was not a “fugitive”; therefore, he argued, writs of law applicable to “fugitives” were not applicable to her. Mary Slater could not exercise her property rights in Massachusetts. Since the state had abolished slavery, she could not ask the Commonwealth to protect her right to hold a slave. As Shaw’s Opinion of the Court states, “all persons coming within the limits of a state, become subject to all its municipal

517 SCM, 13a:N.pag.

518 SCM, 15.

519 SCM, 15.

163 laws, civil and criminal, and entitled to the privileges which those laws confer;... this rule applies as well to blacks as whites”.520

Many abolitionists hailed the decision, which rendered Med a ward of the state, as winning Med’s freedom. While many northerners would not have supported such callous disregard for a mother-child bond under most circumstances, many placed a higher value on reinforcing Massachusetts’s law. Six-year-old Med was placed in the custody of the

Boston Samaritan Asylum for Indigent Children, which later renamed her “Maria

Sommersett” to pay homage to Mansfield’s ruling in Britain. She was a ward of the state and an ironic embodiment of the persuasive fiction of English freedom. Later, Isaac Knapp, publisher of the famous abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, adopted her.

At the time Hawthorne was writing The Scarlet Letter, Aves was a significant legal precedent used by free states; by 1860 it held sway in all free states north of the Mason-

Dixon line. The people of Massachusetts hailed it and its treatment of comity as a proud moment for Massachusetts law, even though abolitionists had condemned slavery for encouraging the same disregard for kin ties that the decision enacted. Their embrace of such a reversal, which was far from universal among abolitionists, suggests comity’s prominence in the public consciousness. Loring quoted Isaac Knapp: “I have full confidence in the Management of the Asylum, & doubt not every thing possible will be done for her health, & comfort. I feel a strong interest in her, & most earnestly pray that

520 SCM, 38.

164 she & her mother may, one day, be reunited, in freedom,”521 a statement that suggests his awareness that this reversal might prove divisive. The decision galvanized Southerners, who depicted it as a sign of northern abolitionists’ hypocrisy that they were now willing to separate mothers from their children when it suited them.522

In the wake of the decision, abolitionists targeted slaves brought into Massachusetts and ultimately other northern states in a string of suits, and many violated the wishes of the slaves on whose behalf they purported to act523. Aves is central to my analysis of The

Scarlet Letter; as I will argue, the possibility that the magistracy will take Pearl away from

Hester, dissolving their kin ties, invokes the experience of Med’s mother. Hester’s lifetime indentured servitude rather tellingly reveals she is experiencing bondage which appears to be a variety of racialized white slavery, one that makes her a prime candidate for losing her daughter just as Med’s mother did; Hawthorne uses the parallel to evoke, deeply, the existential threat to white autonomy.

As Hawthorne clearly realized, antislavery thought in the nineteenth-century

United States owed much to Massachusetts and to Aves. Undoubtedly, Shaw was “the most

521 Knapp paid for a full time nurse to give Med care at the orphanage during an illness and sent his own doctor as “consulting physician”; his interest in her seems to have been earnest (qtd. in Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 112; original source: “Loring to Miss Sullivan,” Mar. 8, 1838, Ellis Gray Loring Papers, letterbook, Houghton Library, Harvard University).

522 Aves was not the last freedom suit of the day to separate children from their mothers against their will; see Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 93.

523 Wong, 93.

165 influential state jurist during his thirty-year tenure on the bench”524; as such, his ruling in

Aves had weight throughout the country. Judges in other free states followed the precedent, and northern judges who did not free slaves in transit felt compelled to defend their elision of his ruling.525

Furthermore, The Case of the Slave-Child, Med was not in any way obscure, and the public remembered it keenly. It was a landmark case that had social currency. Lydia

Maria Child, a founding member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (hereafter

BFASS), wrote in a Liberator column entitled, “The Ladies’ Fair,” in 1837, describing work-bags to commemorate the case for sale at an antislavery fair. She noted that the decision by Judge Shaw was “honorable to himself and his country.” The celebratory work-bag depicted a slave kneeling in front of “the figure of Justice” and underneath, in gold letters, was printed “Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, by the adoption of the

Bill of Rights as a part of the Constitution, A.D. 1780. Slavery says of this law, ‘Lo, ‘tis cold and dead, and will not harm me.’ Anti-Slavery replies, ‘But with my breath I can revive it!’ Soon after, the statement follows: The adjudication of the case of a slave brought into Massachusetts from another State, fifty-six years afterwards, Aug. 26, A.D.

1836.”526 The other side of the work-bag had the lines:

Old Massachusetts yet Retains her earlier fires!

524 Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 101.

525 Finkelman, 101.

526 Lydia Maria Child, “The Ladies’ Fair,” Liberator (Jan. 2, 1837): 3

166

Still on our hills are set The altars of our sires!

Our ‘fierce democracies’ Have yet their strength unborn! And giant power shall see Its Gaza-gates uptorn.

In drawing on Med’s case, the text on the bag connected antislavery with the revolutionary tradition in America in general and Massachusetts in particular, a kind of revisionist history .527 Aves is used, Wong writes, to “pus[h] back the horizon of slavery’s demise so that it could be claimed, without anachronism, that ‘Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts’ in 1780”.528 In fact Henry David Thoreau reminded abolitionists in 1854 that there was still “Slavery in Massachusetts,” but the case’s utility in rewriting history may have been part of the reason it remained in the public consciousness. Thus it is clear that Hawthorne’s audience would have recognised his reference to it.

Completing the portrayal, as mentioned in the introduction, other cases established that lifetime servitude was slavery, even if masters used the fig leaf of indenture terminology. For instance, in Fish v. Fisher (1800) the courts held that selling an indentured black of twenty years old into a further twenty years of service made a mockery of the

527 Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 90.

528 Wong, 90.

167 indenture, since this was effectively a sale for “the expected lifetime of the slave”529.

Similarly, the 1680 New Jersey census noted eighteen slaves within the state, but their legal designations were “apprentices for life”.530 Apparently, those compiling the census clearly understood that lifetime service was slavery. This ready slippage between indenture and slavery presented an ongoing problem for the adjudication of cases in favorem vitae et libertatis.531

Hawthorne’s selection of a Massachusetts setting for The Scarlet Letter invoked these slippery distinctions as well as comity in general and Aves in particular. The

Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the first legal code to be established by European colonists in New England, clearly provided for sentences of hard labour. Hawthorne’s contemporary audience may have been familiar with the principles of the Body of Liberties, which was adopted in Massachusetts in 1641, as well as the Lawes and Libertyes engendered in 1648, which entailed freedom dues.532 This payment, which was made upon completion of seven years’ indentured service in the Puritan American context, was a significant feature of indenture. Servants who failed to “make satisfaction” through good service would not be entitled to freedom dues and might see their indenture extended. Case

529 Fish had fled slavery to New York only to be recaptured there by his master; his master swiftly sold him to Fisher for a twenty-year indenture. The courts ruled the indenture violated New York’s laws. Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 74.

530 Finkelman, 76.

531 In 1818 Mississippi’s highest court claimed that slavery could “only exist through municipal regulations, and “in matters of doubt…courts must lean in favorem vitae et libertatis” (in favour of life and liberty) Harry v. Decker & Hopkins, Walker (Miss.) 36, 42 (1818).

532 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 253.

168 records as far back as 1638 clearly reveal that Massachusetts’s magistrates condemned whites to punitive slavery for confined terms (unlike chattel slavery, punitive slavery was not heritable) during the period in which Hawthorne set his novel.533 In mid-seventeenth- century America, there was nothing normal about a white woman being designated a lifetime indentured servant; in mid-nineteenth-century America, even less so. Ultimately,

Hester’s lifelong indentured servitude is so foreign to the Massachusetts legal context that it is unlikely that Hawthorne was unaware that her servitude would ‘read’ as racialized white slavery to the nineteenth century reader.

The Scarlet Letter’s Engagement with Enslavement

While most scholars are comfortable acknowledging the “Africanist presence” that Toni

Morrison claims suffuses The Scarlet Letter534, a good deal of dissent535 attends the

533 Tomlins, 480.

534 For more on Toni Morrison’s revision of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, see Jane Cocalis’s “The ‘Dark and Abiding Presence’ in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Toni Morrison’s Beloved,” in The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era. ed. by Aliki Barnstone, Michael Thomson Manson, and Carol J. Singley (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1967), 250-62; for Morrison’s own consideration of The Scarlet Letter, see Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).

535 Scholars have discussed various aspects of the function of race in The Scarlet Letter. For more on the “black Puritan” in romances, see John C. Stubbs, “Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter: The Theory of Romance and the Use of the New England Situation,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 83, no. 5 (October 1968): 1439; for more on Hawthorne’s “exploit[ation]” of Hester’s “ambiguous racial markings” (662) and racial mothering, see Leland S. Person, “The Dark Labyrinth of Mind: Hawthorne, Hester, and the Ironies of Racial Mothering,” in The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings, ed. Leland S. Person (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1970), 656-69; for more on the ways Hawthorne’s “obliterat[ion]” of “the historic black presence” and refusal to show “Native American culture as an alternative to…white Boston” renders Hester dependent on the “sympath[y]” of women (643), see Jean Fagan Yellin, “The Scarlet Letter and the Antislavery Feminists,” in The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings, ed. Leland S. Person (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1970), 632-55; for more on the significance of Hawthorne’s “allusions to Indians” for understanding the colonial contexts of Hester’s letter

169 question of the similarity of the plight of Hester Prynne to a black slave. The context I have laid out in Part I provides the background for Hawthorne’s presentation of Hester as a white person caught in the fiction of lifelong indenture – a slave in all but name. To support this argument I address Hawthorne’s knowledge of how a white woman could be best presented as enslaved; his presentation of the letter A; the specific descriptions of her indenture as lifelong; his reference to the testimony of Tituba, a slave accused of witchcraft who testified before his ancestor; the threat to Hester’s maternal rights; references to Hebraic principles that should have rendered Hester free; and the description of slavery’s effect on

Hester’s soul. I demonstrate that the novel makes extensive reference to the Aves case. Part

III will reveal how these representations come together to render a critique of the Fugitive

Slave Law and the threat it posed to the rights of white men with property.

Hawthorne and The Cenci

The Cenci has been called the “the most significant serious play of its century written in English,”536 and it is virtually certain that Hawthorne read it. He wrote in

“Earth’s Holocaust” (1844), “methought Shelley’s poetry emitted a purer light than almost any other productions of his day”.537 Indeed, Beatrice Cenci, the real-life sixteenth-century subject of The Cenci, was immensely popular as a figure in what Diane

and portrayal (253), see Laura Doyle, “‘A’ for Atlantic: The Colonizing Force of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter,” American Literature 79, no. 2 (June 2007): 243-73.

536 Stuart Curran, Shelley’s Cenci: Scorpions Ringed with Fire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 33.

537 Nathaniel Hawthorne. “Earth’s Holocaust” from The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vol. 10. Ed. William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce, Claude Simpson, et al. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1963-1997:397.

170

Long Hoeveler has called the late eighteenth and nineteenth century “Atlantic-rim literary culture”.538 Many authors found the narrative surrounding her fertile ground for their own writing, including Walpole, Swinburne, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickens and

Wharton.539 We know he checked out a volume of Shelley’s work from the Salem

Athenaeum on July 22nd, 1833 and on June 23rd, 1835.540 Hawthorne also spent some time gazing on Guido Reni’s famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci, pondering original sin.541

Many scholars agree that it and Shelley’s play formed the basis of Hawthorne’s The

Marble Faun (1860), which was set in Rome like the Cenci and directly compares the two major female characters to Beatrice Cenci.542 Edwards believes that The Marble

Faun teaches the importance of “feeling kinship” with others who also have a “sinful nature”, because “we partake of the same human nature as those who commit the worst of

538 Diane Long Hoeveler, “Beatrice Cenci in Hawthorne, Melville and her Atlantic-Rim Contexts,” Erudit. Transatlantic Romanticism 38-39 (May 2005).

539 Hoeveler.

540 Marion L. Kesselring, Hawthorne’s Reading, 1828-1850: A Transcription and Identification of Titles Recorded in the Charge-Books of the Salem Athenaeum (New York: New York Public Library, 1949), 47.

541 We know that Hawthorne looked at the painting of Beatrice Cenci around February 20th, 1858, when he writes in his journal of his visit to the Barberini Gallery to see this painting. He is preoccupied with the look of sorrow in Beatrice’s eyes and contemplates both innocence, sin, and her “fallen angel” status while looking at the portrait. Newton Arvin, ed., The Heart of Hawthorne’s Journals (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929: rpt. 1967), 261-62. It is not actually known whether the portrait was of Cenci, but it was widely believed to be so.

542 Paul Edwards, “Musing with the Muse in the Photographically Illustrated Marble Faun,” Word & Image 30, no. 1 (January-March 2014): 64, 71, 72.

171 crimes”543. Scholars have also identified the influence of The Cenci in Hawthorne’s The

Blithedale Romance (1852)544 and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844).545

Geoff Bender believes The Scarlet Letter draws on The Cenci as well; he uses the example of Francesco Cenci to understand Roger Prynne/Chillingworth. Bender suggests that Chillingworth has a “queer relationship” with Arthur Dimmesdale. In his view, The

Scarlet Letter has “no Beatrice”.546 Bender believes that “Dimmesdale masochistically submits to Chillingworth’s sadistic advances in mutually pleasurable encounters that, while not necessarily genitally engaged, are yet as sexual as the moment of Pearl’s conception”.547 In contrast, I believe that Hester Prynne is The Scarlet Letter’s Beatrice.

Hester, like Beatrice, is under the magistrate’s authority and her portrayal systematically reveals her growing enslavement in the community she inhabits.

Given Hawthorne’s known engagement with The Cenci in other texts which preceded The Scarlet Letter, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that he was aware of the seed text’s presentation of a white woman as being held in cruel bondage by her father.

George Elliott Clarke notes that while Shelley’s play The Cenci may not “explicitly”

543 Edwards, 74. He draws his conclusion the following original work: The Marble Faun, Vol. II, Ch.X, p. 111.

544 Sterling Eisminger, “The Legend of Shelley’s Heart and Hawthorne’s Ethan Brand,” Hawthorne Society Newsletter 2, no. 2 (1976): 4.

545 Martin F. Kearney, “Hawthorne’s Beatrice Rappaccini: Unlocking Her Paradoxical Nature with a Shelleyean Key,” College Language Association Journal 29, no. 3 (March 1986): 317.

546 Geoff Bender, “‘I Feel a Giddy Sickness of Strange Awe’: Chillingworth, Cenci, and the Silent Pleasure of Pain,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 42, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 59.

547 Bender, 59.

172 challenge slavery, British abolitionists were acting to end African slavery in the empire when it appeared, thus allowing the play to be “glossed...as a commentary on historical happenings, and as a prophecy on the sanguinary end of chattel slavery”.548 It also exhibits gothic conventions often seen in slave narratives of the nineteenth century.549 In this motif, the “darkness of evil and the gloom of autocracy” in The Cenci mimics “the pall that tyranny-slavery casts over natural affections” and the resulting “defensive violence” of those harmed (who function as “types of slaves”) against the oppressor.550

Beatrice’s rape at her father’s hands calls to mind the rape of black women in slavery.551

When Beatrice kills her father, The Cenci inescapably engages the possibility that it may be appropriate for the oppressed to attack their oppressors, an implicit question in slavery.552 Thus, in Beatrice Cenci, Hawthorne could find a fertile soil for his characterization of Hester Prynne as a woman who eventually becomes, as I’ll argue, enslaved. Beatrice Cenci could have been an important signal to Hawthorne for how to present a white woman as a slave woman without ever declaring her as such.

548 George Elliott Clarke, “Racing Shelley, or Reading The Cenci as a Gothic Slave Narrative,” European Romantic Review 11, no. 2 (March 2000): 168.

549 Clarke, 168.

550 Clarke, 168.

551 Clarke, 173.

552 Clarke, 173-74.

173

Hester’s Branded Body

To begin to explore important nuances of Hawthorne’s narrative, I want to situate

Hester’s brand.553 A white woman in New England wearing a scarlet letter A on her bosom invokes parallels between her own status and that of black slaves, who were literally branded. Hawthorne uses the term brand directly; he states that she is “deeply branded.”554

He also uses the term in connecting Hester’s emotional pain to physical hurt: “Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye…. When Strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter...they branded it afresh into Hester’s soul”.555 One matron insists that the brand’s placement is wrong: they should have branded Hester’s forehead.556 Similarly,

Roger Chillingsworth’s touch on the letter when he visits her in jail “seemed to scorch into

Hester’s breast, as if it had been red-hot”.557 We learn that the world has “set a mark upon”

Hester similar to “that which branded the brow of Cain”.558 As God gives the biblical Cain a mark for his crime559, this comment re-inscribes the permanency of the scarlet letter; the

553 See note 5 for a full list.

554 Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter: A Romance. Boston: Samuel E. Cassino, 1892:120. Hereafter TSL.

555 TSL, 150.

556 TSL, 88.

557 TSL, 128.

558 TSL, 147.

559 See Genesis 4:15 and the surrounding passages for more on this event.

174 mark of Cain was also associated with the skin’s color becoming black,560 reinforcing the notion that Hester’s servitude is racialized slavery.

A number of scholars have interpreted the scene where Hester puts aside the scarlet letter A, only to reattach it at Pearl’s request, as signaling that she wears the letter voluntarily (see for example Hewitt, Bercovitch, and Arac, Riss). However, these accounts ignore the systemic nature of penal bondage. Following David Van Leer, I argue that in comparing the letter, just as Hester reattaches it, as having been, when flung aside, like “a lost jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable misfortune”,561 the novel signals Hester’s lack of choice. Leer argues this “aside” carries within its hull

“unaccountable misfortune for anyone who would pick it up”562; by infusing this scene with a palpable sense of foreboding and guilt for her past misdeeds, Hawthorne indicates that Hester intentionally avoids removing her A in the town.

560 Syriac Christianity interprets Genesis 4:5 which says “And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell” to mean that Cain experienced a permanent change in skin color; see David M. Goldenberg, “The Curse of Cain,” The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 2nd ed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 180. The Eastern Christian (Armenian) Adam-Book in the 5th-6th centuries further shores up the connection between the mark of Cain and “race”; describing the mark as “beat[ing] Cain’s face with hail, which blackened like coal, and thus he remained with a black face”. For this and more see William Lowndes Lipscomb, “The History of Abel and Cain,”10, in The American Apocryphal Adam Literature (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 145, 250 (text) and 160, 271 (translation). Most US and European Protestant clergy cited the mark of Cain as reason to bar blacks from the clergy until around 1960. For this and more see Randall M. Miller and David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988).

561 TSL, 361.

562 David Van Leer, “Hester’s Labyrinth: Transcendental Rhetoric in Puritan Boston,” in New Essays on The Scarlet Letter, ed. Michael J. Colacurcio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 67.

175

The historic and legal context of New England punishment for adultery likewise suggests that Hester did not wear the letter voluntarily. As the Records of Plymouth indicate, the punishment for adultery in the eighteenth century included not only the charge to daily wear the letters “AD” for “Adulterers” on the “outside of their uppermost garment, in a most eminent place” but also that adulterers who remove the letters would be whipped.

Thus, Hester is subject to the A’s function as part of what Hawthorne calls the “penal machine”.563

While the townspeople’s recognition of Hester’s life of good works results in

“many people refus[ing] to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification” and saying

“it meant Able” because Hester has “a woman’s strength”,564 this does not negate the reality of her branding. In effect, the mythology changes, with the “The scarlet letter ha[ving] the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom”.565 But, continual service nonetheless upholds this transformed perception of her scarlet letter. Much like a nun, Hester experiences as penance lifelong service for the betterment of others. It is fitting, then, that

Hester “had been offered to the world” as a “living hieroglyphic”;566 the term

563 Records of Plymouth Colony: Court Order. Ed. Nathaniel Shurtleff. Boston: White, 1855: 28.

564 TSL, 287.

565 TSL, 290.

566 TSL, 369.

176

“hieroglyphic” references the ways in which her marked body has been made picture-like for all to see, yet remains difficult for society to decipher.567

Several scholars have presented alternate interpretations for the A. Laura Doyle, who emphasizes the ways in which The Scarlet Letter illuminates the colonial history of white/Native American relations, considers Hester’s letter A a signal of her Native-like free spirit.568 Susan Last, drawing on Shari Benstock, reads Hester’s skillful embroidery of the letter A as “a spectacle of femininity, of female sexuality, of all that Puritan law hopes to repress.”569 I argue that these interpretations can only have been secondary implications of the letter for The Scarlet Letter’s first readers, given the historical import of branding and slavery at the time.

The brand reveals that Hester’s whiteness is insufficient to label her a freewoman; her slavery is inscribed in the brand. The narrator ensures that the reader knows of short and long term effects of the scarlet letter. As Lester H. Hunt points out, the “immediate effect of the scarlet letter” is to remove Hester from – as the narrator puts it – “ordinary

567 This re-signification of the A may reference the escaped slave communities of Maroons in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil in the eighteenth century. Slaveholders branded Maroons they had recaptured with an F on their shoulders, and slaves came to view the mark as a band of honor signifying their (temporary) achievement of independence. Like the Maroons before their capture, Hester lives on the very fringes of society (Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 59).

568 Doyle, “‘A’ for Atlantic,” 258.

569 Susan Last, “Hawthorne’s Feminine Voices: Reading The Scarlet Letter as Woman,” The Journal of Narrative Technique, 27, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 360. Original source: Shari Benstock, “The Scarlet Letter (a)doree, or the Female Body Embroidered” in The Scarlet Letter, ed. Ross C. Murfin (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 289.

177 relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself”.570 Hunt explains further that, in the long term, Hester’s treatment at Puritans’ hands “merely reinforces” her

“outsider” status; he supports this argument by highlighting the narrator’s comment “in all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it”.571

The letter also invokes a historical context in which slaves and freed people alike had to wear ornaments to identify their status. For example, Heuman describes legislation that passed in 1768 in the Danish West Indies requiring freed people to wear a distinctive cockade or badge at all times, and a similar act in Jamaica requiring freed people to wear a blue cross on their right shoulders.572 “Ornaments” both required and forbidden often identified slaves of the period.573

Hester’s Indenture

The fact that cloth ornaments were historically used to designate those who were unfree to some degree makes the scarlet letter A fit within the context of both indenture and slavery. Crucially, I argue, Hawthorne presents Hester as the lifelong bondservant of the

Puritan townspeople, “the people’s victim and life-long bond-slave”,574 a designation

570 Lester H. Hunt, “The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.” Philosophy and Literature 8, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 81

571 Hunt, 81.

572 Gad J. Heuman, “Freed Persons,” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 214.

573 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 58.

574 TSL, 405.

178 associated with black slaves. I contend that Hawthorne presents us with Hester as a white, lifelong indentured servant specifically to invoke racialized white slavery that would be quite legible to his nineteenth-century readers. By doing this, he also increased the acceptability of discussing a portrayal which readers might have viewed as terrifying: the white slave narrative where the protagonist in bondage never achieves freedom and, of all dreaded ends, concludes the story still enduring what appears to be chattel slavery.

Hawthorne styles Hester an indentured servant while providing key clues that indicate that

Hester is, in fact, enslaved.575 Hester’s reflections towards the end of the novel recalling a charming cottage she frequented as a child which “retaine[d] a half-obliterated shield of arms” in her “native village in Old England”576 call further attention to the fact that something is amiss. These recollections suggest Hester is descended from English nobility.

Hester’s characterization reflects the slipperiness of the term “indentured servitude” in law and history at the time. Hawthorne’s collection of short stories – The

Whole History of Grandfather’s Chair (1841), which is alternately entitled True Stories from New England History, 1620-1692, also reveals his understanding of differences between indenture and slavery and his understanding of lifetime servitude as slavery. In the second story from this three-story cycle, “Famous Old People”, Hawthorne depicts a

575 Although I argue that Hawthorne intentionally presents Hester to us as indentured servant in name only – for all practical purposes, he takes pains to demonstrate that she is indeed a slave – I am not making the argument championed by Robert Steinfeld and Stanley Engerman that the distinctions “free” and “unfree” labour “collapse into each other” (Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 10), and are therefore often indistinguishable. Rather, I am arguing that Hawthorne presents the legal difference between conventional white servitude and lifetime indentured servitude.

576 TSL, 102.

179 young girl asking her grandfather if there were any slaves in the American colonies. He replies that there were black slaves “from Africa” and “Indians from South America” and

“white people from Ireland” but that these Irish slaves “were sold, not for life, but for a certain number of years, in order to pay the expenses of their voyage across the Atlantic”.577

While, as Larry J. Reynolds notes, Grandfather’s depiction is not entirely historically accurate, his emphasis on a set number of years of service refers to a historical reality. As scholars have indicated, even when whites were sold alongside Native Americans and

Africans in the colonies the terms of sale were nearly always for a set number of years.578

This passage suggests that Hawthorne’s portrayal of Hester as permanently indentured in

The Scarlet Letter is not accidental.579 And however present-day readers may miss the import of these key cues, the audience contemporaneous to Hawthorne surely would have not made this error.

While Hawthorne characterizes the A as a brand, a symbolism he adopts for his lifetime servant experiencing racialized white slavery, the fact that Hester’s brand is embroidered suggests a degree of impermanence. Mr. Wilson offers the removal of the

577 Qtd. on Larry J. Reynolds, Devils and Rebels: The Making of Hawthorne’s Damned Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 34. Original source: “Famous Old People” from The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vol. 6. Ed. William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce, Claude Simpson, et al. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1963-1997: 109.

578 Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 34.

579 Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s “The White Nigger” discusses the sale of black slaves but also of “White Niggers” – those sales of white Nova Scotians – as proof that slavery has not been extinguished in Her Majesty’s dominions (Thomas Chandler Haliburton, “The White Nigger,” in The Clockmaker: The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville [Halifax: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005], 173). Those struck off to the lowest bidder are whites who are poor, but often the masters are not much better off financially than the poor white individual bid upon (Haliburton, 175). One wonders if Hawthorne was aware of Haliburton’s work when crafting his portrayal of Hester.

180 scarlet letter for cooperation, yet Hester treats her impermanent brand as permanent:

“Never!... It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off”.580 Hawthorne repeatedly represents Hester’s misery as lifelong, saying she is “burdened with a life-long sorrow”581 and has a “wild and dreary, but life-long home”.582 Indeed, the only other character to which he attaches the phrase “life-long” is Arthur Dimmesdale, who “endure[s] the lifelong chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another’s fireside”.583

While I believe these statements suggest Hester’s reaction to her lifelong servitude, I demonstrate that Hawthorne allows Hester’s brand to retain a degree of impermanence in order to call the reader to action. Hester is the “lifelong bond servant” of the townspeople; they could choose to free her. Thus she is experiencing something like racialized white slavery via lifelong indentured servitude; something like spiritual demise as a result of her bondage; something like a chattel slave’s brand; something like the oppression of whites by the US government. Through Hester’s representation, these similarities productively signify that if comity is taken to an extreme, northern whites will experience something like political enslavement. Rhetorically, Hawthorne suggests that such political enslavement of whites to the American government might make whites just like black chattel slaves. Of course, this last rhetorical move is overspeak of the variety that Mary

Nyquist discusses in Arbitrary Rule, which sometimes blends the discourse of political slavery with chattel slavery to superimpose the terror of stripping a people’s rights at their

580 TSL, 120.

581 TSL, 467.

582 TSL, 139.

583 TSL, 222.

181 government’s behest584. Hawthorne uses this overspeak to sound an alarm regarding the restriction of sacrosanct white privileges in the Fugitive Slave Law.

Nineteenth-century readers would automatically recognise that there was something terribly wrong if the indenture of a white woman was “lifelong”. As Beckles aptly points out, seventeenth-century Barbados was instituting lifelong indentures for blacks that made a mockery of any suggestion that they were not slaves, and clear evidence shows whites’ were limited to between three and ten years.585 Migrant indentured labour was rapidly diminishing in America because of a widespread adoption of black slave labour.586 Hawthorne does not directly state that Hester was a slave in part because of this; explicitly stating that Hester is a slave would exceed acceptable norms for the sensational portrayals of white women in nineteenth-century sentimental texts. Therefore, Hawthorne makes Hester a lifelong indentured slave, a designation his readers would understand as racialized black enslavement by another name.587

584 Nyquist, Arbitrary Rule, 2, 5.

585 Hilary McDonald Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627-1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 77.

586 New England’s earliest slaves existed in the late 1630s (Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 479). In 1640 approximately two hundred blacks lived in New England, about 150 of them in Massachusetts Bay. By 1641, the General Court had made Nathaniel Ward’s Body of Liberties “established authority (though not fundamental law) for the colony” (Tomlins, 479); in effect, this meant acceptance of its allowable varieties of enslavement – “lawfull Captives taken in just warres … strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us” (qtd. in Tomlins, 479).

587 That Ellis Gray Loring referenced the intolerable notion of white slavery by suggesting the Court imagine the slave girl Med were a white slave child held by “a Russian or Turk noble” (15) in Aves reinforces this point. He did not mention white slavery in America because his hearers would not have considered that plausible.

182

Further blurring the lines between slavery and indentured servitude, a historical shift from black slavery back to indentured servitude occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Christopher Tomlins and Joanne Pope Melish both explain, emancipation in northern states was normally gradual, and involved varying degrees of indentured servitude such that newly freed slaves spent inordinate periods of time still subjugated to their former owners in one way or another. The typical practice was for newborns to be indentured pending freedom at some time in the future. Passing laws outlawing slavery did not, therefore, effectively end it. Further, Hawthorne set The Scarlet

Letter in a period of a flurry of legal activity around the giving and receiving of wages in

New England – attempts to prevent both “excessive” wages and “oppressive[ely]” low wages by law-giving bodies abounded between the 1630s and the 1680s.588 In this context,

Hester’s lifelong bondage would strongly signal that her indenture was mere artifice, similar to that of black indentured servants in Barbados.

In fact, Hawthorne’s setting The Scarlet Letter in the mid-seventeenth century further reinforces my claims. In mid-seventeenth-century New England there were clear legal references to lifetime servitude as the purview of black bodies; indeed, a 1652 Rhode

Island law reveals, “There is a common course practiced amongst Englishmen to buy negers, to the end that they may have them for service or slaves forever.”589 And certainly, as Melish explains, by the 1700s “enslavement for life” was the signature of non-white

588 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 247.

589 John Codman Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States, vol. 1 (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange), 275.

183 bodies.590 Indeed, the association of non-white bodies with lifetime slavery was evident further in Rhode Island’s “An Act authorizing the manumission of negroes, mulattoes, and others, and for the gradual abolition of slavery” which stated that on the first of March,

1784,

no person or persons, whether negroes, mulattoes, or others, who shall be born within the limits of this state…shall be deemed or considered as servants for life, or slaves,” and that “all servitude for life, or slavery of children, to be born as aforesaid, in consequence of the condition of their mothers, be, and the same is, hereby taken away, extinguished, and forever abolished. (Emphases mine.)591

The fact that lawmakers in Rhode Island recognised that they could not end slavery without terminating lifelong servitude demonstrates just how connected the duration of servitude was to social understandings of the boundaries between slavery and indentured service.

Even more significant for our understanding of Hester’s portrayal is the fact that the Massachusetts into which Hawthorne cast her was undergoing a labour shortage. Its rural economy had a paucity of labourers, and many farmers, unable to recruit enough indentured servants, bought slaves. Hawthorne’s readers would have registered that slaves were common and indentured servants rare in the Massachusetts of his setting.592

590 Melish, Disowning Slavery, 34.

591 John Russell Bartlett, ed., Records of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England (Providence Press, 1865), 10:7.

592 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 481. Hawthorne also invokes white slavery in his selection of time period for the setting of The Scarlet Letter: Francis Knight’s A Relation of Seaven Yeares Slaverie (1640) and Newes from Sally (1642), texts whose foci were the horrors of English enslavement to the Turks, were published in the same period.

184

Hawthorne’s trick of invoking slavery by describing indentured servitude uses the style of the U.S. Constitution and the then-pending Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, both of which avoid words relating to slavery in order to expressly target slaves. The three clauses in the original U.S. Constitution that referenced slavery at the time (The Three-Fifths

Clause in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3; The Slave Trade Clause in Article I, Section 9,

Clause 1; and The Fugitive Slave Clause in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) avoid the term.

In this way, Hawthorne highlights the thinly-veiled artifice of the Fugitive Slave Law. As

I will explain further in the conclusion of this chapter, his strategy also serves the purpose of eliding censorship.

The Salem Witch Trials and the Pliability of Race

I argue that inspiration for Hawthorne’s portrayal of the slippage between indentured servitude and slavery derives in part from the Salem Witch Trials. In The Scarlet Letter,

Hawthorne notes his “shame” at the “cruelties” of his “ancestors”,593 some of whom were judges in the Salem Witch Trials; I argue that in his portrayal of Hester as all-but-a-slave, he references the testimony of Tituba, a slave accused of witchcraft in 1692 and questioned by John Hathorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestor. Her testimony includes the depiction of a dream of a man, claiming he was God, offering to reward her with “many fine things” for six years’ service.594 This refers to a contract for indentured service, with payable freedom dues. Tituba was in reality a slave of Reverend Samuel Parris at the time, but I

593 TSL, 15.

594 This reference and Tituba’s testimony can be found in Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts, 3 vols. (New York: De Capo Press, 1977), 2:361-62, 3:745-57.

185 suggest this dream constituted an expression of a wish to be an indentured servant with an opportunity for freedom and enfranchisement. It invokes the pliability of race in Tituba’s mind and in The Scarlet Letter, because Hawthorne would surely have known the intimate details of Tituba’s testimony and the Salem Witch Trials as his family’s role was central to

New England lore. During the time of the Salem Witch Trials and before slavery became a “race-based labor system”,595 it was common for “English men and women and Indians

[to be] made slaves for failing to live up to the expectations of colonial officials bent on preserving order and English rule in the Americas.”596 These colonial leaders cherished the hope that rehabilitative enslavement in such instances would preserve “Englishness among the European colonists and facilitate the transformation of Indians into English subjects”.597 Read in this light, Tituba’s wish for indentured service and freedom dues may also articulate a wish to be “rehabilitated”, transformed into a proper English subject. Even for Tituba, the desire for an English variety of freedom is insatiable. Larry J. Reynolds depicts the ways in which understandings of Tituba’s story confound common readings of whiteness and blackness as generally stable in 19th century, race-conscious America, stating:

The parallels between…forbidden assemblies [of slaves] in the antebellum South and tales of witchcraft in New England in the late seventeenth century may explain

595 Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 158.

596 Guasco, 158.

597 Guasco, 158.

186

why Tituba…metamorphosed into a Negro slave practicing voodoo in the literary and historical accounts of Salem witchcraft.598

While Chadwick Hensen’s work suggests that Tituba was a Carib Indian, Hawthorne’s understanding of her seems to have reflected her embodiment of indeterminate racial heritage. For instance, Reynolds suggests that in “Septimius Norton” (ca.1861-62),

Hawthorne implies that Tituba is mixed-race; the great aunt of the protagonist’s biracial aunt.599 Indeed, as he commented in his 1845 letter to Evert Duyckinck, writing the events of Salem 1692 “worthily…would demand research and study, and as deep thought as any man could bring to it. The more I look at it, the more difficulties do I see—yet difficulties such as I should like to overcome. Perhaps it may be the work of an after time”.600 I believe this project was on his mind in writing The Scarlet Letter.

Much of literature that depicts Tituba – such as Ann Petry’s popular Tituba of Salem

Village (1955) – has blackened her. This reflects the racialization of American slavery, which increasingly viewed black bodies as optimal for enslavement, and even went so far as to designate non-black enslaved bodies as “Negro”, such as the seventeenth century

English settlers renaming of the Pequots in New England as a group “cannibal negros”.601

598 Larry J. Reynolds, Devils and Rebels, 84.

599 Larry J. Reynolds, 85. Original Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Septimius Norton” from Vol. 13 of The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce, Claude Simpson, et al. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1963-1997: 266.

600 16:126-27.

601 Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen, 186.

187

In the same way that Morgan Godwyn explains “These two words, Negro and Slave, being by Custom grown Homogenous and Convertible; even as Negro and Christian, Englishman and Heathen, are by the like corrupt Custom and Partiality made Opposites; thereby as it were implying, that the one could not be Christians, nor the other Infidels”,602 Guasco contends that “the Pequots could become ‘negros’ not because of confusion about their physical appearance or the absence of even the most basic understanding of national ethnic characteristics, but because the definitive slave in the broader Atlantic world was becoming the ‘negro’”.603 There was a moment in the sixteenth century when Indians such as Tituba were considered closer to whites racially and thus candidates for freedom, but as Guasco documents, by the seventeenth century, both British and Americans eschewed this view.604

Like the transport of African-descent slaves to the West Indies, this exercise in enslavement frequently traded on the blurred lines between slavery and indenture, with, for example, a ninety-nine-year indenture imposed on Indian women sold in Bermuda.605 Understanding the similarities between the plight of blacks and Indians in the seventeenth century and beyond becomes increasingly important for understanding how Tituba’s role in the Salem trials adjudicated by his ancestors becomes a key inspiration for The Scarlet Letter’s argument.

602 Morgan Godwyn, The Negro’s and Indians Advocate (London, 1680), 36.

603 Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen, 186.

604 Guasco, 188.

605 The records name her “Anne”. In fact she was purchased in both 1646 and 1648 with a contract that claimed the purchaser would receive ninety-nine years of service; there was no pretense of ninety-seven in 1648 (Guasco, 188).

188

The Parallels between Hester’s Case and Commonwealth vs. Aves

Far more than the Salem Witch Trials, however, Hawthorne’s comments on

Commonwealth vs. Aves reveal his novel’s intense engagement with issues related to slavery. His project to comment on Aves begins with his depiction of Hester’s indenture and thereby excavates New England’s history of unfreedom in his presentation of her. To understand Hawthorne’s representation of New England’s vexed relationship to freedom, it is important to grasp the nuances of Hester’s representation of slave motherhood through the plight of Med’s mother. I argue that Hawthorne selected Commonwealth vs. Aves as a referent, among other instances of America’s violation of comity, because of its relationship to the myth of a free New England as developed by abolitionists in

Massachusetts. It was a significant precedent for northern and southern courts alike.

Scholars have long debated whether or not Hester represents slave motherhood606; given that many scholars strongly deny that Hester’s characterization engages racialized white bondage, this is not surprising. However, Hawthorne had ample precedent for his invocation of slave motherhood as a trope, as this was a typical rhetorical move made in abolitionist writings. At the same time, he recognises that such a presentation has shock value, and this is one reason Hester’s slavery is only hinted at.

606 For example, Leland S. Person asserts that “Hester Prynne is not a slave mother” (Person, “Dark Labyrinth of Mind,” 669). Indeed, Susan Last points out that Hester’s refusal to name Pearl’s father is an act of resistance, but does not make the nuanced link when she describes this resistance as “link[ing]” Hester “uncannily” and “ironically” with “slave mothers” (Person, 666).

189

In the novel, the threat to Hester’s kinship claim to Pearl has its origins in the

Puritan leaders’ preoccupation with Pearl’s unknown beginnings, which leads them to claim that taking her would be for the better raising of the child and betterment of Hester’s soul.607 Upon hearing of this, Hester is “full of concern...but so conscious of her own right” to raise her daughter.608 She goes to the home of one of the magistrates to plead her cause.

Mr. Wilson asks Pearl: “Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?”.609 By this loaded question, he clearly hopes to elicit the name of Pearl’s earthly father, although the question suggests an inspection for proper religious instruction. When the narrator notes, “Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those [spiritual] truths” (196). While Massachusetts in Hester’s time as well as

Hawthorne’s could have separated children from their parents on the basis of a failure to provide religious instruction and church attendance,610 Wilson’s question scarcely suffices to take a step the state and culture took very seriously. Moreover, the narrators’ claim – that Pearl knew who had made her, that Hester had indeed provided religious instruction to the child – suggests the tyrannical approach of the magistracy. The fact that Governor

607 TSL, 176.

608 TSL, 177.

609 TSL, 196.

610 Part of the Lawes and Liberties, the 1642 “General Court’s orders for the good education of children” (Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 255). suggest the legal body addressing such a hearing would be the magistracy. The order required town selectmen to call “masters of families” to account for education of children, apprentices, and servants, religious and otherwise. It provided for public demonstrations of religious knowledge before the selectmen such as Mr. Wilson seeks from Pearl, and requires them to solicit the help of the magistracy (or “the next County Court for that Shire” if magistrates were unavailable) in the removal of children whose education did not prove their masters and/or parents had educated them properly.

190

Bellingham, flanked by the ministers and magistracy, claims to wonder if it is wise to entrust the care of Pearl’s “immortal soul” to the “guidance” of one who has fallen, like

Hester,611 is meant to arouse the reader’s suspicions. Hester has cared for Pearl for three years, and the magistracy has no evidence of neglect of religious instruction. Moreover, this stance is theologically unsound, for it assumes inaccurately that Hester is unrepentant: if they assumed genuine repentance, they would not hold against her a misdeed of three years past.

In Commonwealth vs. Aves, Loring argued for Med’s removal on the basis of strict requirements—in her case, that children receive an education. Similarly invoking concerns regarding Pearl’s education, Mr. Wilson questions Pearl rigorously. During this interrogation, Mr. Wilson assumes Pearl is a “wilful” subject with the ability to intuit her earthly father’s identity, which is foolish, given that she is only about three years old. But

Pearl’s response, to say that she has “not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses, that grew by the prison-door”,612 prompts the magistracy to argue that Hester should relinquish Pearl for Pearl’s own good.613 They are eager to divest Hester of her mother’s rights, just as the court in Aves divested Med’s mother of her rights, even though the laws of their own jurisdiction stipulated that underage persons were not to be taken without consent of their masters, parents, or guardians, except in extreme

611 TSL, 194.

612 TSL, 197.

613 TSL, 198-200.

191 circumstances.614 Indeed, the argument made to Hester in this scene – that if Pearl is taken, she “shall be well cared for! – far better than thou canst do it”615 – resembles the argument made in Aves: that because she herself was in slavery, Med’s mother could not possibly be a good mother.

To reinforce the sense in this scene that the Magistracy has preconceived notions and is intent on stripping Hester of her mother’s right, after Pearl’s response, Governor

Bellingham is quick to exclaim: “Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her!… Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no further”.616 This statement recalls that of Caiaphas the High Priest at Jesus’s trial. Jesus has refused to speak during the trial, though many false witnesses have been brought to speak; unfortunately, their testimonies conflict. When Jesus finally responds to Caiaphas’ question “Art thou the Christ, the son of the Blessed?” he states, “I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven”. In response to this – and after a trial of false witnesses before judges determined at the the outset to condemn Jesus to death –

Caiaphas rips his clothes and exclaims, “What need we any further witnesses?” Swiftly the verdict is issued: Jesus is to be put to death.617 In Christian religious praxis, the premature cessation of inquiry, where verdicts are speedily handed down after one response is given

614 “An Act for the Preventing of Persons Under Age, Apprentices, or Servants, Being Transported out of the Province without the Consent of their Masters, Parents or Guardians,” Province Laws, 1718-19. ch. 14, 119.

615 TSL, 199.

616 TSL, 198.

617 I am quoting from the account found in the Gospel of Mark. See Mark 14: 53-65 KJV for Jesus’ trial. For an alternate rendering of this trial, please see Matthew 26: 57-68.

192 to a question, is regularly associated with unjust legal process. This would be a powerful signal to Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century reader.

This intertext is significant for understanding the rhetorical stances apparent during this scene. Clearly, Governor Bellingham and his aides had made up their minds about their course of action prior to this discussion with Hester, as one question asked to a little child of three years old who was, in fact, taught who made her, is all it takes to generate a verdict.

Thus, the authorities have arbitrarily decided to take a white woman’s child: they are not, truly, concerned about whether or not Pearl has received religious instruction, and if not for Dimmesdale’s advocacy, Pearl would likely have been lost to Hester forever.

The magistracy’s approach to Hester’s case has attracted the interest of a number of scholars. As Laura Hanft Korobkin points out, the 1641 Body of Liberties gave accused persons the right to choose between a jury and a bench trial, to challenge jurors for cause, to call witnesses to a speedy trial, to the making of written records of trials, and to appeal a verdict;618 the magistracy in The Scarlet Letter acts in violation of the Body’s introductory paragraph, which guaranteed that “no man’s life shall be taken away, no mans honour or good name shall be stayened, no mans person shall be arrested, restryaned, banished, dismembred, nor any wayes punished” except as “expresse[ly]” dictated by law.

These guarantees protected legal personhood, and in omitting Hester’s right to a fair trial

Hawthorne hints that the magistracy is not to be trusted: without a trial, Hester’s person is under assault, and she has little means to defend herself. Both a woman and a servant, she is ultimately subject to the patriarchy (which, among other things, considered women

618 Korobkin, “Scarlet Letter of the Law,” 197.

193 valuable only if they could make a financially prosperous marriage) that renders matriarchal family structures both illegible and illegitimate. Thus, she must appeal to Mr.

Dimmesdale as her pastor (and, known only to her, the father of her child) to speak on behalf of her “mother’s rights”;619 without his advocacy, her rights as a mother would be disregarded. Dimmesdale plays the role of (Reverend) father and argues that there is “awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child”,620 an assertion the magistracy is content to let stand. They remain curious about Pearl’s origins and doubtful about Hester’s claim to her child, but confident in Dimmesdale’s judgment and subsequent advocacy. This highlights the failure of the magistracy to investigate circumstances, a prominent feature of Aves in which complainant and jurist deemed it an act of liberation to place in an orphanage a child who would have preferred to maintain her kin ties.

Reading Hawthorne’s scenario in conjunction with the powerful intertext of the law’s function in Aves laser-focuses the reader’s vision on the seductively persuasive – but disturbing – reasoning the magistracy presents. The magistracy’s attempt to divest Hester of her child clearly demonstrates Hester’s enslavement; like Med’s mother, she is at risk for losing her child, even though she is white. While Med’s mother has no opportunity to speak for herself, the attorneys on both sides of the case gave her preference considerable time in their arguments, and southern outrage following the decision cited the separation of mother and child as evidence that the court overstepped its bounds. The violation of black personhood through the law in effect paves the way for the same trend in terms of

619 TSL, 200.

620 TSL, 201.

194 white privileges: because slave status makes it easy to be divested of one’s child, whites who become slaves or even indentured servants in conditions that resemble slavery are subject to the same risks. Moreover, in Hawthorne’s scene – Wilson asks Pearl to reveal

“who made” her, assuming that she will choose to reveal either the name of her earthly father or her Heavenly Father – like the court in Aves, the magistracy adopts the fiction of

“slave children” as “wilful agents capable of choice and free of coercive restraints in legal and popular rhetoric.”621

Pearl on the Auction Block

The representation of Med’s child status in Aves provides a significant intertext for our understanding of Hawthorne’s use of Aves in his portrayal of Hester and Pearl. The lawyers in the Aves case both establish and seek to destroy ideas about what Massachusetts should allow. For example, Loring claims that while Massachusetts law “will not permit a man to beat his neighbour, to kidnap or sell him into exile, to forbid his marriage, to rob him of his children, to deprive him of education, to plunder him of his earnings, shall we be told that it will allow a system [slavery] which is an aggregate of all these offences?”622

He decries the instituting of such things, and part of Hawthorne’s irony derives from the number of times his text demonstrates that acts Loring tells us are prohibited – such as robbing parents of their children623 – can indeed occur under Massachusetts law.

Similarly, references in Aves to the “fact” that Massachusetts law “entitle[s]” parents to

621 Wong, Neither Fugitive Nor Free, 84.

622 SCM, 21.

623 SCM, 21.

195 their “own children” and prevents “cruelty” by “cancel[ling]...Indentures” judiciously, become central issues in Hawthorne’s text.

In addition to justifying dissolving Med’s kinship ties with assurances of her proper education, Loring argues that black slave mothers have no privileges associated with kin.

The Magistracy’s willingness to treat Hester in a similar manner, then, speaks volumes about her vulnerability before the law and the extent to which she is, indeed, in danger of losing Pearl. The signals in the novel that the magistracy intends wrongdoing support this reading. Hawthorne portrays a magistracy that denies Hester her legal right to a speedy jury trial and hence suggests they are not the remedy for the excessively punitive system.

Here Hawthorne reveals that the law’s view of children actually facilitated their kidnapping for sale. Furthermore, the law’s willingness to remove a child from a master’s or parent’s care on the basis of poor education, as the magistrates propose to do in Pearl’s case, reflects the reality in Massachusetts law that Loring invoked in Aves and that extended back to the setting’s time period.

Correspondingly, poor children bound out to masters by town selectmen who absented themselves from service were required to make satisfaction “either by service or otherwise, as [to the justices of the court of sessions] shall seem meet.”624 Ultimately, however, it is Hester’s lifelong indenture that demonstrates to the reader that the potential loss of her child, Pearl, is a real risk: she, like Med’s mother, can see her rights as a mother disregarded.

624 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 257. Original source: “An Act in Further Addition to an Act Intitled ‘An Act in Explanation of and Supplement to an Act Referring to the Poor’”. Province Laws, 1758-9, ch. 17.

196

The magistracy Hawthorne depicts reflects their historical traits. Around 1680, the

British Crown made some changes to the role of the magistracy, including requiring magistrates to appeal any capital crimes to the Crown in Whitehall.625 As Weir documents, the monarchy imposed this requirement on the grounds that Massachusetts Bay was using capital punishment too freely and for the wrong crimes.626 Hawthorne’s portrayal of an unrestrained magistracy therefore carries historical truth. Many magistrates felt they – as

God’s representatives on earth – should have special privileges when governing the people and believed that this gave them unrestrained power. John Winthrop, for example, declared that the magistracy possessed a “direct link with God.”627

Further, Hawthorne’s suggestion that the legal body addressing such a hearing would be the magistracy was correct. The General Court of Massachusetts in 1642 issued

“orders for the good education of children” that required town selectmen to call “masters of families” to account for education of children, apprentices, and servants, religious and otherwise. It provided for public demonstrations of religious knowledge before the selectmen, similar to the questioning to which Mr. Wilson subjects Pearl, and requires them to solicit the help of the magistracy (or “the next County Court for that Shire” if magistrates were unavailable) in the removal of children whose education did not prove their masters and/or parents had trained them properly. Removal of Pearl from Hester’s care because of

625 David A. Weir. Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 60.

626 Weir, 60.

627 Kristin Boudreau, “Hawthorne’s Model of Christian Charity” in The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings, ed. Leland S. Person (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 352.

197 her failure to show familiarity and assimilation of Scriptural tenets was not a stretch legally, nor was it an occasion of the magistracy dabbling in matters beneath their stature. Given the culture of “youthful” labour in Massachusetts at the time, had Hester lost custody of

Pearl, her daughter would likely have become an indentured servant. As we have seen,

Hawthorne was acutely aware that such a servant may be a slave in all but name.

I suggest, therefore, it is no coincidence that, much as Med’s mother lost her child to a Boston orphanage, Hawthorne presents to his reader a white female indentured labourer in Boston on the cusp of losing her child. Nor was this implausible: Hawthorne reveals that Pearl is three years old,628 and Tomlins reveals that girls could be indentured at this age.629 The closeness of Hester’s portrayal to the details of the Aves case – her own near-loss of her daughter at the hands of the Governor and magistrates – would have made evident to readers that her daughter was on the verge of being impressed into the labour force against her will: Pearl, then, is on slavery’s auctioning block in the scene where some leaders who are particularly stringent regarding “religion and government” consider taking her away from Hester.

The Novel’s Invocation of Mosaic Law

The Scarlet Letter demonstrates Hawthorne’s awareness of the Body of Liberties, which stipulated that those enslaved “shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which

628 TSL, 196.

629 Christopher Tomlins’s research in the 1646-1700 county court records for York County, Virginia shows that among 313 cases of servants brought into the region, the youngest recorded age for a male servant was five years old while the youngest recorded age for a female servant was three years old (593).

198 the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doth moraly require”,630 and the use of Hebrew Scriptures to craft law was common in Puritan tradition.631 Hebrew scripture called for a sabbatical/fallow year once every seven years; in that year servants were freed and those in debt were pardoned. I suggest this connection becomes a feature of Hawthorne’s representation of Hester’s enslavement in The Scarlet Letter. Specifically, the seven years between Hester’s debut atop the scaffold and her subsequent revisiting of the scaffold with Pearl at Dimmesdale’s request brings up the Hebrew and Biblical themes of sabbatical, Jubilee, and the rules of indenture. I also demonstrate that Hawthorne’s selection of a year ending in a “49” for the conclusion of his narrative—historical events have led scholars to believe the narrative begins in 1642 and ends in 1649—conjures associations with the Jewish year of Jubilee, although his novel depicts only one seven year cycle instead of seven.632 This automatic seventh-year and forty-ninth year freedom never happens in The Scarlet Letter; Hawthorne structures this key timeline to compel readers to consider Hester’s indenture – and indeed its complete failure – in the light of the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws of the Old Testament633.

630 Quoted in Tomlins, 99.

631 As Tomlins notes, Hawthorne’s contemporaries would have considered this stipulation a “distinguishing feature of Massachusetts slavery in that no separate structure of extraordinary or summary jurisdiction devoted exclusively to slave crime and discipline was ever established in the colony, unlike that initiated in Barbados or copied elsewhere on the mainland” (Tomlins, 480).

632 Debate about whether or not Jubilee represents seven seven-year cycles ending in the 49th year, or the same cycle system ending in the 50th year, emerged long after Hawthorne’s lifetime; his readers would have recognized the theological construct his use of 49 references.

633 Other scholars have not recognized this theme.

199

Grubb states that seven years’ servitude in the colonies was a common penalty

(commuted from death) for convicted British thieves634; Hawthorne’s use of the seven year time span reflects this common time period for indentured convict labour. His association of the seven-year cycle with Sabbatical/fallow years and Jubilee years encompasses his representation of the problem of indebtedness, as well as the promise of achieving both physical and spiritual freedom.

Commonwealth vs. Aves itself also mentions the Jewish laws of servitude and bondage, as well as Jubilee, and I argue Hawthorne invokes the case again in referencing these aspects. Loring calls himself “reluctant” to engage in theological discussion, but points out that “mild and merciful regulations...mitigated the harshness of Hebrew servitude…. Perpetual slavery was unknown; – all slaves without exception being set free at the jubilee or fiftieth year”.635 Thus, in his view, American slavery was far harsher than

Hebrew slavery. One of Loring’s notes even describes a debate regarding the slave trade in the House of Lords about the allowable term of slavery, reminding the court that Bishop

Horsley had pointed out that Levitical Law did not permit perpetual “slavery” and that the

Old Testament describes the Jews receiving punishment for failing to free their slaves at the time of the Jubilee. While Horsley conflates Hebrew and non-Hebrew servants or slaves in a way contemporary Biblical scholars would dispute, this passage establishes that Jubilee and the sabbatical laws were contentious issues in debates of the American systems of

634 Farley Grubb, “Penal Slavery,” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 313-14.

635 SCM, 19.

200 slavery and servitude in the period. Certainly, by 1800 The Bible Rights of The Slave or

Jewish Servitude & American Slavery Compared was published anonymously636, so

Hebraic servitude and American servitude were being discussed in relation to the acceptability of American slavery in the light of Biblical tenets.

Hawthorne nimbly prepares his reader for his use of the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws, and nineteenth-century American readers would not miss the references 637. For instance, when Hester tries to explain the election day festivities by telling Pearl that

the children have come from their schools, and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy. For today, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so – as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered – they make merry and rejoice; as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world! (Emphases mine)638

This passage makes multiple Old Testament references639. The adults being released from fields and children being released from their schools mimics the celebrations and freedoms

636 The cover claims that “the author of A Word On Behalf of The Slave” authored this book. I did locate a text by this title written by C. Gilpin and discussed in The Juvenile Missionary Magazine, but I’ve been unable to ascertain if this is the author of the text in question.

637 Hawthorne’s readers would have had a degree of general literacy about Old Testament conventions, particularly as used in the law. Indeed, William Wells Brown’s belief that Clotel would “proclaim [...] the Year of Jubilee” (qtd. in Nabers, 72) throughout America indicates that general understandings of Old Testament law suffused the social discourse of American societies. For more details, see Deak Nabers, Victory of Law: The Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil War, and American Literature, 1852-1867 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 72.

638 TSL, 410.

639 Part of Moses’ commands to the people of Israel mention “the end of every seven years” where there is “the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles” (Deut. 31:10 KJV). He admonishes them to ensure that they observe these rituals; thus, Hawthorne’s uses of references which allude to this release after Hester has served seven years are significant.

201 of the Sabbatical year and year of Jubilee. Similarly, the phrase the “good and golden year” is likely invokes both the Hebraic use of the term “jubilee” and the Roman Catholic usage of “the jubilee” established by Boniface VIII in 1300.640 The Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1797 uses “golden year” in reference to the first celebration of Jubilee;641 the

Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the jubilee in Roman Catholic praxis was a year of amnesty, charity, and other pious acts642. This Roman Catholic tradition likely borrows its notions of release during a designated, year-long time frame from the Hebraic usage of the term jubilee.643 However, these references are perhaps ironic in that Hester does not receive release from the consequences of her sin—these celebrations appear “as if” they are this release;644 Hester’s debts to society have not, in accordance with Sabbatical and

Jubilee laws, been forgiven. This phrase “poor old world”645 at once claims Hester’s

Puritan “world” is too “old” to receive this full release – based on the laws of “Old”

England, the attempt to recreate this “golden year” is fallow/barren646.

640 Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Year of Jubilee: Religious Celebration”. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Year-of-Jubilee. August 10th, 2018.

641 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol.9, part 1, 3rd Edition, Eds Colin Macfarquhar & George Gleig. Edinburgh,1797, 391.

642 http://www.oed.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/view/Entry/101849?rskey=dRN98W&result=2#. March 15th, 2015

643 Catholicism differs from Judaism substantially but Hebraic law informs its body of law.

644 TSL, 410.

645 TSL, 410.

646 In a different but related vein, Boudreau suggests that “We must doubt Hester’s faith in the reality of this congregated mirth, since her last encounter with the public holiday, when the children were released from their schoolwork, was the scene of her ignominious display seven years earlier” (Boudreau, “Hawthorne’s Model,” 357). Evan Lansing Smith believes The Scarlet Letter follows a schema similar to

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Jackson’s explanation of the larger Biblical contexts at work strengthens our understanding of this negative contrast of New England’s variety of bondage to that characteristic of the Sabbatical and Jubilee laws. He claims that “Deuteronomy emphasizes the humanitarian aspect of seventh-year release, in requiring not only that it be ‘free’ but also that the former master not send out the debt slave empty-handed and destitute.”647 In particular, the gifts given to the slave prior to leaving “represented gratitude for the slave’s labor and effort but also affirmed the slave’s new status as an equally free person.”648 In effect, what these laws insisted on was the payment of freedom dues to the Hebrew who was previously bound.

In the light of this context, that Hester does not receive freedom dues is especially important for our understanding of her portrayal. Freedom dues, like the term of indenture, invoke the subtle but powerful differences between black and white slavery and servitude in seventeenth-century law.649 As Beckles notes, masters avoided, deferred, and minimized freedom dues whenever possible, and the law lacked the specificity to prevent this.650

that in typology, with the Old Testament being fulfilled in the New Testament, but he overlooks the invocation of the Sabbatical laws or Year of Jubilee. For more on Smith’s views, see “Re-Figuring Revelations: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter,” ATQ. Periodicals Archive Online (Rhode Island: University of Rhode Island, 1990).

647 Bernard S. Jackson, “Biblical Literature: An Overview,” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 90.

648 Ephraim Isaac, “Hebrew Scriptures,” in A Historical Guide to World Slavery, ed. Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 94.

649 James Curtis Ballagh demonstrates Virginia removed the obligation to make the payment of freedom dues to black slaves, as well as making it impossible for black servants to make satisfaction by additional time in service for running away (Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 9).

650 Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 141-142.

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Certainly, this was a noted difference from how such dues functioned in the Old Testament laws or the initial propaganda surrounding “freedom dues,” which pitched it as an opportunity for social and economic enfranchisement. Beckles further indicates that in

Barbados, black slaves did not receive freedom dues, and for white servants, freedom dues were very challenging to procure as “magistrates were not particularly sympathetic to the pleas of those who were not property owners.”651 However, the Lawes and Libertyes were instituted after fifteen years of public debate and agitation, in 1648, calling for freedom dues after seven years service for all indentured servants.652 While as elsewhere failure of the indentured servant to “make satisfaction” – as the Lawes expound, “if any have bene unfaithfull, negligent or unprofitable in their service, notwithstanding the good usage of their maisters, they shall not be dismissed until they have made satisfaction according to the Judgement of Authoritie”653 – the Lawes and Libertyes were taken extremely seriously and implemented during the period in which The Scarlet Letter takes place.

Thus Hawthorne’s contemporary readers may well have wondered why Hester does not symbolically receive freedom dues although the novel portrays her as devoted in her service and beloved of her masters. They would have recognised this as suggesting that, like an indentured black servant who was in practice a slave, she was barred by law from receiving the payment or attaining her freedom. Invoking the context of Sabbatical and

651 Beckles, 142.

652 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 253.

653 Quoted in Tomlins, 253.

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Jubilee laws heightens this comparison. The final scene on the scaffold strongly influences the lasting effect the novel has on the reader: in contrast to the humanitarian thrust of the biblical Sabbatical and Jubilee laws, codified in colonial law and referenced in

Commonwealth vs. Aves, it leaves the reader with a picture of a slave system that wrings every last inkling of hope.

The Eroded State of Hester’s Soul

Hawthorne’s description of Hester’s inability to become free also relates to the demise of her soul. While in nineteenth century America it was not uncommon for slaveholders to believe that slavery was good because it had a Christianizing effect on slaves, abolitionist camps argued that slavery degraded black souls, leaving them spiritually vulnerable. Hawthorne draws on these arguments, using the suffering of

Hester’s soul to highlight the detrimental effects of enslavement.

Regarding Hester’s spiritual state, the narrator asks the rhetorical question, “had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much misery, and wrought out no repentance?”654 Hester’s spiritual state has been utterly ravaged by her bondage, and it remains damaged at the end of the narrative. A passage set during a return visit to the scaffold reinforces this sense of indelible damage:

after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through seven miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, [Hester]...encountered it freely and voluntarily [...] ‘Look your last on the scarlet

654 TSL, 315.

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latter and its wearer!’ – the people’s victim and life-long bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to them.655

This gesture towards her position as a “bond-slave” in conjunction with “seven miserable years” of service and penance indicate the ways in which indenture controls Hester’s existence. She tells Dimmesdale that his soul is “crushed under this seven years’ weight of misery”.656 Hester has become much like the Governor’s “free-born Englishman” who is now a “seven years’ slave” and likewise becomes the “property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, a joint-stool”.657 Worse, Hester is a lifelong bond-servant owned by the town. Like the Englishman, she was free-born. Her life becomes a product to be consumed without reservation by the townspeople. As the abolitionists of Hawthorne’s day so often suggested could happen, Hester’s soul is crushed by her relentless bondage.

Moreover, when Hester says to Dimmesdale, “Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!”,658 and he intimates that heaven may not forgive their sin,659 we see their questioning of whether or not they will, at last, be spiritually saved.

Hester’s use of the term “ransomed” reveals her cherished hope that their suffering will finally pay the debt of their sin-determined indenture; however, the overwhelming sense

655 TSL, 405.

656 TSL, 353.

657 TSL, 183.

658 TSL, 456.

659 TSL, 348.

206 of foreboding that plagues the final chapters of this text suggest that, spiritually, the penance will not end. I suggest that “ransomed” here is a play on not only the futility of

Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s religious penance, but also a historical allusion to the fact that, unlike many white slave narratives which ended with the liberation of the enslaved and celebration of republican virtue, in reality, many white slaves were never ransomed, rendering their slavery perpetual. This becomes all the more poignant when we learn that, for Hester: “here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence”;660 her lifelong indenture does not end, either spiritually or physically. We are told that during her period of indenture, “all the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline”;661 that Hester’s “heart has lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind”;662 and that “at times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul”.663 Thus, “[t]he scarlet letter had not done its office”.664 Hester’s temptation to murder her daughter and commit suicide instead of living out her indenture reinforces the futility of using enslavement as a means of redemption; in fact, bondage has destroyed her soul and faith.

660 TSL, 466.

661 TSL, 290.

662 TSL, 296.

663 TSL, 296.

664 TSL, 296.

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Hawthorne suggests that the scarlet letter has facilitated passage into dangerous regions:

The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, – stern and wild ones, – and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.665

A white woman born in England and a longtime resident of the colony should have no need of such a passport unless she decides to leave the continent. Freed blacks, however, required passports to acquire any mobility or protection from slave catchers666 – a limited freedom, permitted by their masters’ certification that they could be trusted to return. Like a freed black person, rather than being integrated into mainstream society, Hester remains on the fringes. In this passage, she is “set…free”, to continue living in this society as a servant/slave – rather than being executed, as should have been the punishment for adultery. Indeed, this is quite similar to the notions Orlando Patterson discusses in Slavery and Social Death, where slavery is the master’s choice to allow a person to live who it is within his power to let die: this is why one of the most salient attributes of slavery is that

“the slave’s powerlessness…always originated (or was conceived of as having originated) as a substitute for death, usually violent death”667 and one of the reasons why “slavery and

665 TSL, 357.

666 For an excellent analysis of the use of passports by blacks in America, please see the conclusion “Fictions of Free Travel” in Wong, Neither Fugitive Nor Free, 242.

667 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 5.

208 freedom are intimately connected.”668 The fact that “Shame, Despair, and Solitude” have been styled her “teachers” suggest that Hester is experiencing the dishonor often associated with slavery, which, Patterson describes as normal.669 Arguably the scarlet letter A imparts

“the profound natal alienation of the slave” that Patterson calls “social death,” though

Hawthorne portrays it as spiritual death.

Hawthorne’s vesting of the soul with figurative legal personhood specifically references an American context: nineteenth-century debates about chattel slaves revolved around the question as to whether they possessed souls. When Dimmesdale explains

Chillingworth’s wrong, he invokes the classic stoic and Christian position that the soul has rights of which it cannot be divested, even if the individual to whom the soul belongs is indentured or enslaved, charging that Chillingworth “violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart”“.670 His use of the term “violated” and “sanctity” suggests the heart he refers to here is in fact a soul. He likewise describes souls as autonomous; he purports feeling like “a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heart”.671 In this schema, souls can exert as much influence as a human master.

This violation of the soul’s personhood, then, brings into question the methods of regulating it that the Puritans in Hawthorne’s text use. Lester H. Hunt points out that

Hester’s punishment utterly fails in the office of bringing a wayward soul back into her

668 Patterson, ix.

669 Patterson, 10.

670 TSL, 348.

671 TSL, 360.

209 community, not least because it expels her, and that Hawthorne states as much when he says “The scarlet letter had not done its office”672. The use of human bondage to rehabilitate those who violated social norms was common in the British colonies and

America.673 But Hester is not rehabilitated: therefore, the failure of Hester’s punishment symbolizes more than the loss of her soul. It symbolizes the futility of all her attempts to

“make satisfaction” and achieve true freedom from her past misdeeds and attain full membership in her community.

Jane Cocalis explains that Hawthorne “allows Hester to gain our respect by ignoring the Calvinist doctrine of salvation only through God’s grace and redeeming herself through good works.”674 I argue, however, that Hester’s portrayal reveals her inability to redeem herself though good works; she loses her soul after all. The Antinomian debate, which peaked from 1636 to 1638 in America, frames this portrayal of the soul. This controversy is particularly significant as it gave rise to a number of key questions. David

A. Weir lists some of the questions this debate engaged:

Were [sinning parishioners] still justified before God? If yes, would others follow the same route and live a recklessly sinful life with the hope of eternal security? If no, would one suggest that good works were required for justification? What should the church do with the lapsed who desired restoration? At what point should ecclesiastical – and civil – discipline begin? Was “penance” required for restoration?675

672 Lester H. Hunt, “The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne’s Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Philosophy and Literature 8, no. 1, (April 1984): 81.

673 Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen, 161.

674 Cocalis, “Dark and Abiding Presence” 256.

675 Weir, Early New England, 21.

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The question as to whether a “covenant of grace” or a “covenant of works” took precedence in deciding a person’s salvific fate was a chief debate in Protestant churches.676

A rising sense, after 1580, that it might be possible to fall from grace prompted much angst.677 In part, the Antinomian controversy constituted a great debate over how a community should punish a person like Hester, as the constant tension between her penance and its effectiveness in the narrative indicates. The contrasts Hawthorne’s text makes between Catholic practices and Protestant practices become increasingly significant; as

Orlando Patterson describes it, Pauline Christianity is “dualistic,” with persistent tensions between the “ethic of judgment” and the “ethic of the justified person.”678 Catholicism focused on the “ethic of judgment and obedience” while Protestantism “strongly reviv[ed] the ethic of the justified person”;679 thus, tacitly, underneath all these representations, there is a relentless sussing out of the effectiveness of the Protestant Calvinist ethic.

This scrutiny of the soul highlights Hawthorne’s careful sculpting of a modified abolitionist argument. Readers of The Scarlet Letter can use this narrative as a medium to understand how promoting (white or black) varieties of slavery systemically erodes the rights of whites. The Scarlet Letter functions as a white slave narrative, making known the interior lives of Hester, Dimmesdale, and Pearl. Championing the ability of whites to be

676 Weir, 22.

677 Weir, 22.

678 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 74.

679 Patterson, 74.

211 free - and highlighting the systemic eschewing of their freedoms in law alongside black rights - Hawthorne rallies his reader to understand the precariousness of the white

American’s liberties. The scene with Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale atop the scaffold, then, functions as a critique of the excessive surveillance as intense scrutiny effectively enslaves those so watched.680 The (white) reader is implicated as party to this enactment of bondage. Yet, Hawthorne uses this text clearly to challenge the prevailing political, social, and economic dimensions of bondage which are specific to New England and

England herself, attempting to harness this relentless monitoring towards a greater good.

Pearl’s Inheritance

Pearl’s inheritance in The Scarlet Letter resolves a number of questions about

Hawthorne’s ambivalence towards abolitionist arguments. As Ronald Emerick explains, many of Hawthorne’s novels emphasize the effects of heredity, describing children who inherit their parents’ “dominant traits” or “outstanding physical, moral or spiritual characteristics”.681 Emerick argues that Pearl seems to inherit Chillingworth’s inhumanity rather than Dimmesdale’s humanity682; similarly, Arnold Goldman views Pearl’s

680 See Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1975).

681 Ronald Emerick. “Baby Chillingworth: Hawthorne’s Use of Heredity in The Scarlet Letter,” The Bucknell Review, 31, no. 2. (January 1988): 45.

682 Emerick, 55. As he points out, the townspeople refer to her as a “demon off-spring”, and even Chillingworth, associated with the black arts himself, asks Dimmesdale “What, in Heaven’s name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil?” (TSL, 237). Emerick also points out that Pearl recognizes her ability to torture both animal and human, as when she hits birds with rocks, chases terrified little children, throws flowers on her mother’s scarlet letter A, and asks painful questions about her parents’ relationship. She is sensible, as it were, of “torture” she can inflict (TSL, 168). Ultimately, then, Emerick challenges Seymour Katz’s

212 characterization as one suffused with a “pitiful symbolization of inherited social depravity,” a “depravity” he partially locates in “English injustice”.683

However, critics have found strong and sometimes exact parallels between

Hawthorne’s descriptions of his own children and Pearl, which suggests he intended to portray Pearl ambiguously.684 Susan Last, who documents the pattern, charges that ultimately, the evil Hawthorne associates with Pearl condemns Puritan and patriarchal judgments of Hester.685 Last views Pearl’s end in Hawthorne’s text as a function of her parents’ sin and agrees that it serves as a comment on misguided, Puritan judgment.

I offer another perspective – that what Last views as “Puritan and patriarchal judgment” causing “morbid effects on Hester” and what Reynolds views as highlighting

Puritan “retribution” is, in fact, Hawthorne’s attempt to demonstrate the ways in which the degradation of the soul - which abolitionist discourse associated with slavery - is passed

argument that “Pearl’s initial being is obviously derived from Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s natures by a principle of genetic probabilities” (qtd. in Emerick, 47), dryly pointing out that, in reality, “Pearl hasn’t inherited anything from Dimmesdale but a brow” (Emerick, 47). Her impishness makes her appear to be the offspring of the evil Chillingworth. But for all her impish qualities, she has an uncanny “instinct for truth” which makes her “acutely aware of her parents’ guilt and shame” (Emerick, 52). This makes her “a relentless agent of conscience” a constant reminder of her parents’ sin (Emerick, 52). As a result, Emericks concludes that Pearl’s “intuitive torture” has a fundamentally different purpose than that of Chillingworth: what Anne Marie McNamara has called “the angelic purpose of redemption” (qtd. in Emerick, 56); what Hyatt Waggoner has called Pearl’s “mora[l] neutral[ity]” (qtd. in Emerick, 56); what Emerick views as the cause of both her parents’ “repentance” and “her own salvation” (Emerick, 56).

683 Arnold Goldman, “Hawthorne’s Old Home,” in Nathaniel Hawthorne: New Critical Essays, ed. A. Robert Lee (London: Barnes and Noble, 1982), 166.

684 Last, “Hawthorne’s Feminine Voices,” 366.

685 Last, 366.

213 from Hester to Pearl686; it signifies the way by which her lifetime servitude becomes heritable, much as it would under black chattel slavery.

I suggest, that this unrealistic ending is meant to be conspicuous. As I will describe in Part IV, Hawthorne had a reason to reassure readers with an implausible story, but they would have known that Chillingsworth would scarcely have bequeathed wealth to Pearl given his obsession with revenging the occasion of her illicit conception. But I submit that

Hawthorne provides the reader with this fairy-tale like closure to reaffirm Hester’s motherhood, which was clearly under fire in the magistracy’s questioning of her and threats to remove Pearl from her custody. In the seventeenth century, there was a belief that the achievements of children were directly attributable to the quality of parenting to which they were exposed: removal from their parents’ care at least ostensibly happened because of such failures. That Pearl meets such a celebrated end, then, is Hawthorne’s reinforcement of Hester’s motherhood and damning of the magistracy who sought to unjustly deprive her of her child.

Was Hawthorne an Abolitionist?

Given the argument I have laid out about the similarities between Commonwealth vs. Aves and the story Hawthorne present to his reader, one might wonder: how far does

686 Leland S. Person does not suggest the link I note between Hester’s slavish fate and Pearl’s in terms of the soul, but he explains that “Pearl’s inheritance from Chillingworth rather than from Dimmesdale makes a kind of sense—if Dimmesdale, with his exaggerated paleness, plays the role of slave-owning father. While Dimmesdale seems to acknowledge his paternity, his death enables Pearl’s repatriation away from her father’s world. She follows the condition of her mother” (Person, “Dark Labyrinth of Mind,” 668).

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Hawthorne’s consideration of the challenges to liberties based on race go? Was he an abolitionist? I begin to consider these questions with an 1851 letter from Hawthorne to

Zachariah Burchmore that provides a greater understanding of Hawthorne’s antislavery sentiments and discomfort with the Fugitive Slave Law:

I have not, as you suggest, the slightest sympathy for the slaves; or, at least, not half so much as for the laboring whites, who, I believe, as a general thing, are ten times worse off than the Southern negros [sic]. Still, whenever I am absolutely cornered, I shall go for New England rather than the South; – and this Fugitive Law cornered me. Of course, I knew what I was doing when I signed that Free-Soil document, and bade farewell to all ideas of foreign consulships, or other official stations.687

This wholehearted support for New England over the South suggests a clear bias against the interests of comity and union. He acknowledges nonetheless feeling conflicted about the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. It was not, however, that he believed such efforts to save the union were futile, as Larry J. Reynolds has claimed.

My views on the antislavery nature of Hawthorne’s arguments here are reinforced by Robert Steven Levine. He describes Hawthorne’s letter as “contradictory,” yet indicative of “a more progressive Hawthorne than we usually imagine”:

His remark on the slaves is qualified with respect to the white working class (with the suggestion that his lack of sympathy is relative and not absolute), and then is further qualified by a statement of his opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law (which suggests some commitment to antislavery), and then is qualified even further by the

687 Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Letters, 1843-1853: To Zachariah Burchmore, Salem,” in The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, vol. 16, ed. Thomas Woodson, L. Neal Smith, and Norman Holmes Pearson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1985), 456.

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surprising revelation that he has signed a Free-Soil document that threatens to keep him permanently unemployed. 688

The numerous qualifications in this key passage suggest that, while he was certainly a racist, Hawthorne could have been an abolitionist.

Larry J. Reynolds points out Hawthorne’s now “notorious” mention of “the mistiness of a philanthropic theory” in his biography of Franklin Pierce689 – alongside

Hawthorne’s letters and notes – and suggests that they manifest Hawthorne’s view that abolitionism was the human desire to take on a task that could only be remedied by God.690

Thus, he implies, Hawthorne could not have been an abolitionist. According to Reynolds,

Hawthorne shows in this passage, a clear “dichotomy” between the “reality” of the United

States and the “mistiness” of abolitionism. Indeed, Hawthorne describes slavery as an

“evi[l] which divine Providence does not leave to be remedied by human contrivances” emphases mine).691 In other words, ultimately “divine Providence,” not human beings, would end slavery. While Reynolds points out the oddity of Hawthorne questioning an

“effect” rather than a “cause” in his statement in Pierce’s biography; referencing the OED,

688 See Robert Steven Levine’s chapter “Genealogical Fictions: Melville and Hannah Crafts in Hawthorne’s House” in Dislocating Race & Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-century American Literary Nationalism (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 132.

689 Nathaniel Hawthorne, Life of Franklin Pierce. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1852. 31

690 Reynolds, Devils and Rebels, 2.

691 Hawthorne, “Chiefly About War-matters. By a Peaceable Man” of The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vol.23. Eds. by Thomas Woodson, Claude Simpson, and L. Neal Smith, et al. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1963-1997: 416-17.

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Reynolds points out that mistiness can also refer to an obscuring of mental vision or outlook, when the real character of a thing is metaphorically veiled. He states: “For

Hawthorne, mist also suggested ocular and mental deception, such as that surrounding specters and ghosts.” Hawthorne, then, resists antislavery inclinations entirely.692 If

Reynolds is correct, Hawthorne’s statement definitively proves that he disparaged abolitionism as a threat to the nation. The case can rest, and scholars who have pored over

The Scarlet Letter can be assured that Hawthorne viewed abolitionism in a cut and dried manner.

But Hawthorne’s full statement in the biography complicates his views. It states that Pierce did not “shun the obloquy that sometimes threatened to pursue the northern man who dared to love that great and sacred reality – his whole, united, native country – better than the mistiness of a philanthropic theory”.693 This comment suggests that Hawthorne felt that the price of union – if it came at the expense of white freedoms alongside those of blacks – might be too high. And therein lies the conflict between how this passage has been interpreted in scholarship and the tensions which inform the portrayals in The Scarlet

Letter.

As I suggest, Hawthorne remained aware of the ways in which abolitionists were viewed socially. In autumn 1835 following a riot in Boston, he wrote about abolitionists in his notebook:

692 Hawthorne, Life of Franklin Pierce, 31.

693 Hawthorne, “Letters, 1843-1853,” 23:292.

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A sketch to be given of a modern reformer, – a type of the extreme doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold water, and other such topics. He goes about the streets haranguing most eloquently, and is on the point of making many converts, when his labors are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the keeper of a mad-house, whence he has escaped. Much may be made of this idea.694

Hawthorne hated slavery, deeming it a “foul scurf”695 on the South,696 yet the view he espouses here – that abolitionists are “mad” – explains the degree to which Hawthorne was aware of social perceptions of abolitionists: indeed, at one point, such views were his own.

But Hawthorne’s interrogation of the ways in which the privileges of white Americans were being challenged in service of Union in The Scarlet Letter suggests that he developed abolitionist leanings.

This line of inquiry is especially meaningful for understanding Hawthorne’s suggestion in his notebook that he was “more of an abolitionist in feeling than in principle”,697 yet his support of the Free-Soil Party following the Fugitive Slave Law of

1850698 and the fact that he found himself during his travels to Manassas (long after the writing of The Scarlet Letter in 1862), helping a band of runaway slaves escape,699 suggests

694 Qtd. in Reynolds, Devils and Rebels, 48-49. Original source Hawthorne “The American Notebooks, 1835-1837” from The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vol. 8. Ed. William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce, Claude Simpson, et al. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1963-1997: 10.

695 Hawthorne, “Letters, 1843-1853,” 23:431.

696 Reynolds, Devils and Rebels, 2.

697 Qtd. in Reynolds, 96. Original source Hawthorne, Centenary Edition, 8:12

698 Reynolds, Devils and Rebels, 5.

699 Reynolds, 97.

218 otherwise. Hawthorne’s participation in helping fugitives was no half-hearted matter: he furnished the runways with “food and wine, some small sums of money, and got them a lift upon a train going Northwards”.700 We do not learn of this assistance of runaways from

Hawthorne, but rather, from his traveling companion and friend, Dicey: as Reynolds puts it, Hawthorne “suppressed [these details] in his own account of this encounter”.701 In a time of increasing civil unrest in America, it is impossible that Hawthorne did not realize that his actions could mark him as an abolitionist – an awareness that would be heightened as tensions rose. His carefully sculpted 1850 publication of The Scarlet Letter shows his understanding of this context.

Hawthorne foresaw that violations of comity would lead to stripping whites of their privileges.702 Thus he saw the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 as a threat to the rights of some white, propertied men. Christopher Tomlins by implication points out the soundness of this logic. The belief that restraining the movement of slaves, bound apprentices, and indentured servants would ensure order in the country led to the creation of the Fugitive

700 Qtd. in Reynolds, 97.

701 Reynolds, 97. 702 Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 poem “Slavery in Massachusetts” articulated similar concerns. Citing the marine in “Slavery in Massachusetts,” Deak Nabers points to the phrase “The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly but as machines, with their bodies” (qtd. in Nabers, Victory of Law, 55. as evidence of this fear of the palpable translucency of the line between obedience to government and slavery. Moreover, portraying men as “machines” highlights the degree to which their reasoning faculties have been subdued in service of government: here, there is no “choice” or the capability for it. Furthermore, even if the minds of the marines are not automated, their bodies are forced to obey. Thoreau describes workers as “just as much tools and little men” (qtd. in Nabers, 55. Hawthorne’s concerns in The Scarlet Letter ran parallel to the concerns of many individuals about devaluing white privileges.

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Slave Law of 1793.703 The law applied to every person “held to Service or Labour”704 and was broad enough to also encompass “disobedient apprentices” as well as those deemed

‘insolent Negroes”.705 Clearly, earlier comity violations had established a trajectory finally manifested in this blurring of the boundaries between white and black personhood.

Although the Fugitive Slave Law was not yet passed when Hawthorne published his book, there was certainly much discussion of how such a law could function. Given his deep concern that whites were being reduced to the social situation of blacks through loss of freedoms inscribed in law, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 embodied all he feared.

Many others voiced similar concerns. William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the

Liberator, for example, stated: “The insatiable appetite of the slave power is no longer satisfied with black victims,” and “the jails of the South are fast filling up with victims from the ranks of the whites – the educated and refined – the old colony stock of ancient

Puritan blood!”706 Garrison and his followers advanced the notion that the relationship betwixt the state and its citizens was similar to that between master and slave. The narrative of a “free” New England here creates indignation as Southerners jail white Puritans. This likely exacerbated Hawthorne’s fears regarding the precariously unprotected nature of the

703 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 397.

704 Tomlins, 397.

705 Tomlins, 397.

706 For this statement and other commentary, see “Massachusetts and South Carolina,” Liberator, Mar. 7, 1845. It is interesting that this comment reinforces the notion of the “pure” origins of the Puritans and thereby invokes ahistorical folklore that New England has always fought for freedoms.

220 rights of white, propertied males.707 While at least some abolitionists had supported the violations of comity in Aves, correct was Hawthorne’s sense that comity should be protected to shield white Puritans from the evils of the Fugitive Slave Law.

Critics Who Disagree

Much of my conceptualization of personhood as it regards Hester’s A specifically and

Hawthorne’s representation of the systemic negation of her rights as a white woman servant more generally is at odds with the arguments of the prominent scholars Bercovitch and

Riss. Bercovitch’s insight into how critics read American literature is central to these discussions and, in the case of The Scarlet Letter, shows us how “the logic of liberal representation has been reproduced in a text that does not take race-based slavery as its explicit topic”.708 Riss analyzes and responds to Bercovitch’s work:

The United States, in short, has been made into a liberal nation not only by the way race-based slavery has been discussed but also by the way US literary culture has been read. Bercovitch’s account of America (as an ideological symbol) turns on a reading of the scarlet A as an identity marker with no essential content, as something whose meanings, like clothing, can be put on or taken off. This understanding of the A assumes, I will argue, a particular relationship between surface characteristic and identity that itself is symptomatic of the liberal imperative to place the “person” out of history.709

707 Garrison took these views to an extreme not evident in Hawthorne’s writing, also advocating “the emancipation of our whole race from the dominion of man” (Nabers, Victory of Law, 55-56. Original source William Lloyd Garrison, “Prospectus to the Liberator Volume VIII,” Liberator, Jan. 19, 1838).]

708 Riss, “A is for Anything,” 112.

709 Riss, 112.

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In Riss’ view, Bercovitch’s way of reading is symptomatic of

how deeply modern readers have read the A as a polyvalent symbol because modern readers begin with the premise that the meaning of one’s identity cannot be reduced to surface markers, whether they be the A or race. That is, rather than argue that The Scarlet Letter is the “liberal example par excellence of art as ideological mimesis,” I want to approach “The Office of The Scarlet Letter” as a liberal example of criticism as ideological mimesis. If Bercovitch suggests that Hawthorne’s text enforces a particular style of interpreting, I want to reverse Bercovitch’s claim in order to explore how the style of interpretation that Bercovitch identifies as governing the logic of The Scarlet Letter is itself a symptom of liberalism.710

This focus on the “person” outside of historical context is the millstone of Riss’s and

Bercovitch’s arguments, yet my own also requires it. While Bercovitch’s argument depends upon his reader’s complicity in a systematic erasure of historical debates over what constitutes the “person,” and Riss’s necessitates viewing Bercovitch’s and

Hawthorne’s texts as examples of “how the imperatives of liberal representation have reproduced themselves even in the work of those who set out to critique the premises of liberal representation”,711 my argument engages the issue of Hester’s conditional personhood.

I believe that Hawthorne himself intended his reader to experience The Scarlet

Letter as the apex of raging debates about white and black personhood in the nineteenth- century; in effect, my argument is the antithesis of Bercovitch’s and Riss’s. Accordingly,

710 Riss, 125.

711 Riss, 113.

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I do not believe the scarlet letter A is a “purely contingent signifier”.712 Where Bercovitch argues that The Scarlet Letter “performs a significant liberal office”,713 and thereby

“fulfills the liberal imperative to mystify the origins of a historically particular account of the ‘person’“,714 and Riss reads the notion of the “indeterminate A” as “the primary effect of US liberal thought”715 which embraces a “modern anti-essentialist conception of the

‘person’“,716 I read Hawthorne’s text as firmly grounded in nineteenth century debates about personhood, an argument Riss avoids from.

Riss’s argument is progressive in its elucidation of the ways that the dominant patterns of reading the scarlet letter A – those that privilege the purported “elastic[ity]” of the A and reject fixed meanings for it – is a liberal reader’s imperative, it eventually treads water: as he states candidly, he is not arguing that “Hawthorne intends The Scarlet Letter to be, either explicitly or implicitly, an allegory about race or slavery”.717 He further elaborates this point:

indeed, it is unclear if such a claim could be substantiated except suggestively through metaphoric resonances – I have focused on the way that modern criticism has constructed readings of the novel’s central identity marker that are informed by a particular set of assumptions about race and identity. Since I am not arguing that the A be read as a racial marker, no specific reading is inevitable from this argument

712 Riss, 113.

713 Riss, 113.

714 Riss, 113.

715 Riss, 113.

716 Riss, 126-27.

717 Riss, 134.

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about the way that readings of the scarlet letter have been grounded on a decontextualized notion of race. I am only claiming that such an analogy between the A and race has structured modern criticism and that this analogy has not been historicized. I am suggesting that this analogy has not been historicized because the antebellum debate over the relationship between race and “personhood” has been erased.718

Here, Riss sidesteps artfully the liberal cautions that might be offered to his approach. He points out, further, that he is not “disputing Bercovitch’s point that the A functions like a racial marker”, but is rather “questioning whether during the antebellum period racial markers so clearly work” in the manner Bercovitch maintains.719

Other critics have also disputed the degree to which Hawthorne engaged discourses and representations of race in his writing of The Scarlet Letter. Jean Fagan Yellin loosely extends the analysis of Hester as enslaved, pointing out that:

Although Hester is not marked by an iron chain but by a piece of needlework, recurrent references to the scarlet letter as a brand force the connections between the embroidered symbol and the instruments of slavery. Later, presenting abolitionist iconography in its fullness, the narrator irrevocably links Hester, his seventeenth-century adultress, to the antislavery feminists, his contemporaries, by using their image of an enchained woman to describe Hester’s condition in Boston: “The chain that bound her . . . was of iron links and galling to her inmost soul”.720

718 Riss, 135.

719 Riss, 127.

720 Yellin, “Antislavery Feminists,” 640.

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In spite of these remarks, Yellin concludes that Hawthorne deliberately “obliterat[ed] this historic black presence [of Africans]” in New England.721 Yellin locates this in the fact that no blacks appear in the text, which she describes as “guarantee[ing] Hester’s absolute isolation”.722 She rightly notes that New England did have black people at the time. While

Yellin acknowledges that Hawthorne presents individuals who have “blackened soul[s]”, in the satanic conspiracy who are “ruled by the Black Man”,723 I locate the presence of blackness in the overwhelming presence of the Aves case as an intertext for The Scarlet

Letter, which invokes the presence of Med and her mother. Indeed, Hester’s characterization only exists in the shadows of Med and her mother. For instance, Yellin points out that the schooner Pearl – for whom Hester’s daughter may have been named – was carrying black sisters Mary and Emily Edmondson and fugitive slaves to freedom, and that the Edmondsons’ “would-be rescuers” – Captain Edward Sayer and Mate Daniel

Dreyton – were charged and jailed for four years before they were pardoned724; therefore

Hawthorne invoked the systemic disregard for white privileges inherent in these events.725

Leland S. Person concurs with my view that Hester represents a slave mother, criticizing Yellin’s failure to go beyond seeing Hester as a “single mother” linked to other

721 Yellin, 643.

722 Yellin, 643.

723 Yellin, 643.

724 Saddled with “heavy fines” they couldn’t pay, they required pardon to gain their liberty (qtd. in Yellin, 637).

725 Yellin, 637.”

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“fallen women,” insisting that she ignores the full implications of Hester’s role. He draws on Deborah Gray White’s extensive documentation of cases of infanticide by slave mothers in the 1830s and 1840s;726 in his view, “the question of bad and even infanticidal mothering arises in The Scarlet Letter”727. He also argues that Hawthorne surely invokes infanticide by slave mothers when he states that Hester considers at times “whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to heaven and go herself to such a futurity as Eternal Justice should provide”.728 Yet Person asserts Hester is not “a slave mother or a black woman who has

‘passed’ as white”.729 My reading of Hester Prynne’s lifelong bondage does not suggest she is somehow black and passing, but that Hawthorne depicts her as white and receiving treatment disturbingly consonant with that usually deemed appropriate to enslaved blacks.

726 Person, “Dark Labyrinth of Mind,” 657.

727 Person, 658. Person elucidates numerous connections between the occurrences in The Scarlet Letter contemporary cases of infanticide. For instance, he relates John Winthrop’s comment that Talbie broke her child’s neck to “free it from future misery” (qtd. in Person, 658) to Hester’s thoughts of saving Pearl from worldly pain (Person, 658). He also compares the abandonment of Mary Martin by her father to Hester’s abandonment by Chillingworth (a “father-like husband”; Person, 659); Martin was sentenced to death for killing her infant who was conceived in adultery. Person points out that Cotton Mather preached multiple sermons loosely inspired by the execution of Margaret Gaulacher, another mother guilty of infanticide (Person, 659).

728 Qtd. in Person, 660. Original source TSL, 154. Person also acknowledges the fortuitousness of recent scholarship which has brought to light more nuanced readings through the lens of race and gender. In particular, he mentions the importance of Morrison’s unearthing of the “Africanist presence” in Hawthorne’s text. Still, he points out that the key issue is how Hester’s connection as “woman” and “mother” reads in relation to other nineteenth-century female “characters”, among whom are “slave mothers” and “antislavery feminists” (Person, 663) – not Hester’s purported “blackness” (Person, 663). He merely takes Hawthorne’s reference to importing slaves as a “monstrous birth” (qtd. in Person, 656) as his grounding foci to ascertain how Hester’s “maternal behavior signifies within a racial context of ‘other,’ if not monstrous, mothering” (Person, 656).

729 Person, 663.

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Laura Hanft Korobkin also advances an argument that contrasts with mine. She highlights the fact that Hester receives no physical punishment as evidence that Hawthorne specifically sought to avoid any suggestion that Hester was a slave. As she points out, a number of documented cases describe whipping of adulterers; it was the standard punishment at the time for sex crimes.730 Korobkin’s Hawthorne is comfortable seeing

Hester “humiliated” and “imprisoned” but not “whipped”,731 indicating a desire to avoid even the chance that the reader might read Hester as a slave woman. As she puts it, by presenting us with an unwhipped Hester, Hawthorne’s novel, which “is structured to prevent” this reading, avoids all hint of “American slave[ry]” and “passionate abolitionist manifesto” bravado.732 She calls Hester’s slavery “psychological” slavery in his text, which she describes as in line with antebellum understandings of slavery. I assert that

Hawthorne has powerfully signaled Hester’s slave status and has no need to demonstrate it through whipping; Hester may be a psychological slave but she is also a literal one, and the text clearly identifies her as such through her lifelong servitude, a context Korobkin clearly misses when she refers to it as Hester’s “humiliat[ing] […]lifetime of letter wearing”.733

730 Korobkin highlights the 1641 case of Thomas Bray and Anne (wife of Francis Linceford) and the 1658 Act created for the colony of New Plymouth, which names whipping as the punishment for adultery.

731 Korobkin, “Scarlet Letter of the Law,” 202.

732 Korobkin, 204.

733 Korobkin, 202.

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Korobkin also diverges from my point of view on the texts’ relationship to the 1641

Body of Liberties. While noting that protections the Body provided for a jury and bench trial, she fails to see that the magistracy’s violation of these rules represents an attack on

Hester’s personhood.734 Because she views mistakenly the magistracy as being kind and generous to Hester, relying heavily on John Winthrop’s view of the magistracy as autonomous and focused on increasing mercy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, she, along with Kristin Boudreau, figures the magistrates as “gentle, almost parental”.735 Boudreau also concludes that the magistracy’s punishment proves effective, that the scarlet letter does, in fact, “do its office” of making Hester an “exemplary citizen and Christian”736 even though Hawthorne clearly demonstrates that her “intercourse with society” jeopardizes her soul. Although contemporary readers might view The Scarlet Letter as a story where an erring woman is finally accepted by her society and is considered a “Sister of Mercy,” scholars who adopt this stance are eliding not only numerous hints through characterization, but rich historical and legal contexts, which suggest that this is not the case. While Korobkin suggests that the magistrates are The Scarlet Letter’s “traditional villains”, who appear “rigid, severe, and frostbitten, incapable of judging a woman’s

734 Moreover, while Korobkin appears to believe that, while the portrayal of the magistrates is “ahistorical,” the chief instance in which “community -directed restraints,” “designed to make the rule of law both rational and humane,” are lost is when Chillingworth chooses to “retain control over Dimmesdale’s prosecution rather than turn it over to the magistrates” (Korobkin, 211). In contrast, my argument pinpoints Hester’s scaffold sentence at the hands of the magistracy sans jury, as the original moment of lost legal authority. All subsequent challenges to Hester’s personhood stem from this first abuse at the hands of the “law.”

735 Boudreau, “Model of Christian Charity,” 364.

736 Boudreau, 354.

228 heart”,737 she nonetheless calls them “compassionate”.738 Korobkin argues the magistracies powers were greatly restrained during this time by the jury and therefore history suggests they could not have sentenced Hester in the relatively mild way they do.739

She points out that, in reality, juries constantly challenged the power of magistrates,” and that activists in the seventeenth century sought to establish standard sentencing to circumscribe the authority of magistrates in sentencing.740 In short, Korobkin charges

Hawthorne with an “ahistorical imagining of the machinery of Puritan criminal law”741 that renders them far more powerful than they were in reality. She believes that Hawthorne

“present[s] the Puritan magistracy as unassailably secure in their powers, a type of idealized federal bureaucracy”.742 Ultimately, she chalks up Hawthorne’s apparent misrepresentations – his “absent[ing] of the jury trial, his erasure of historical “challenges

737 Korobkin, “Scarlet Letter of the Law,” 194.

738 Korobkin, 193.

739 Korobkin, 199.

740 Korobkin, 194.

741 Korobkin, 194. Korobkin elaborates that “At the same time that the novel seems obsessed with crime and punishment, it avoids—indeed erases—the institutions and procedures that constitute public criminal process” (Korobkin, 194). She also charges Hawthorne with numerous inaccuracies, a charge other scholars have also levied. For instance, Michael J. Colacurcio suggests that the statement suggesting that Bellingham, rather than Winthrop, was in office can only indicate that “the men who judge Hester Prynne do not appear to know what they are talking about” (Colacurcio, “‘The Woman’s Own Choice’: Sex, Metaphor, and the Puritan ‘Sources’ of The Scarlet Letter,” in New Essays on The Scarlet Letter, ed. Michael J. Colacurcio [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 114). But while Hawthorne’s portrayal does not always stand up to historical fact checking, his portrayal of the magistracy is meant to highlight key factual elements of their function, elements which Korobkin has missed.

742 Korobkin, “Scarlet Letter of the Law,” 208.

229 to magistratical authority”743 – to his desire to “refigure” Hester’s case as “a comic example of the magistrates’ willingness to stoop responsively to aid a poor widow, just as they do not deign to listen to Hester’s plea for continued custody of Pearl”.744 Thus, for

Korobkin, comic relief must surely have been Hawthorne’s goal, as his approach is near laughable in its “ahistorical” characterizations.745

However, a deeper reach into the historical context of this time complicates

Korobkin’s view. While she acknowledges “intense attacks on the magistrates’ undemocratic authority”746 in the year when Hester would have been on the scaffold, she skims over this questionable use of authority, focusing on the discrepancies between

Hawthorne’s portrayal of an autonomous magistracy and the historical fact of the jury’s role by this time period. She also pays considerable attention to the magistracies’ beliefs in the spirituality of their role as chosen judges rather than the actual violations that occurred at their hands. These foci work against a thorough understanding of how the magistracy functions in Hawthorne’s text. While Korobkin grounds her argument in the claim that Hawthorne’s representation of the magistracy is “ahistorical” because the jury’s

743 Korobkin, 208.

744 Korobkin, 208.

745 There is a good argument, in any case, for Korobkin’s stance being overstated. As Colacurcio indicates, history demonstrates that it was actually Winthrop rather than Bellingham who was presiding during the time of the novel (Colacurcio, “Woman’s Own Choice,” 109). Nevertheless, Hawthorne may have enacted this exchange to highlight the fact that a jury may not, in fact, have decided to condemn Hester. For it seems that in May 1642, Bellingham was thrust “out of office” for behavior “not so different from Hester’s own” (Colacurcio, 109).

746 Korobkin, “Scarlet Letter of the Law,” 206.

230 authority restricted that of the magistracy, the British Crown felt that only the strong arm of the monarchy could check the rampant abuses of power by colonial magistracies.747

I believe that Hawthorne presents the reader with ample proof that 1) Hester’s

“intellectual liberty” is compromised and 2) the end is night of so-called “inner freedom,” the “inherent[ly] […] whit[e]” ideal Hester supposedly embodies. He describes Hester’s soul as eroded by her spiritual bondage; her whiteness fails to protect against physical and intellectual slavery. Hester does not, in fact, exercise her “freedom [to] ultimately…consent”, as Korobkin claims. Rather, I argue, Hester finds herself pinned beneath the wheel of the legal apparati to which she is subjected much as was Beatrice

Cenci. Hawthorne takes great pains to ensure that his readers reflect on the ways in which white privileges are being eroded: through The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne suggests that if white Americans wish to avoid the dispossession characteristic of chattel slaves – and the political enslavement they certainly experienced – Americans must be careful.748

747 The problem of abuses of power by the magistracy extended to Scotland as well, as Hilary Beckles indicates; in many Scottish towns magistrates had no scruples about sentencing unemployed persons to ten years’ “servitude in Barbados” for minor offenses (Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery, 49).

748 Indeed, Korobkin takes Hawthorne’s declaration in his biography of Franklin Pierce, that to “subvert” the ills of slavery would mean “tearing to pieces the Constitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into distracted fragments” the whole country, as more than it is. She takes it for a clear sign of Hawthorne’s conviction that “excessive sympathy” for slaves might ultimately cause sympathizers to attempt rescue, confrontation, and uprisings, and undermine the Union (Korobkin, “Scarlet Letter of the Law,” 205), concluding that Hawthorne “firmly equate[s]” abolitionism with “destructiveness” (Korobkin, 205). Other scholars agree that Hawthorne could not have written the biography while holding abolitionist sympathies. But I argue he might believe in abolitionism while considering it futile or destructive. Furthermore, he might believe that maintaining slavery, while protecting the Union, is eroding the rights of white men, and be deeply conflicted over whether this cost is too high. In short, Hawthorne’s belief that abolitionism can undermine the security of the Union does not equal unflinching acceptance of the cost of Union. Scholars have been reticent to acknowledge these shades of gray on the abolitionist spectrum.

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Korobkin makes an opposing argument, asserting that “the debate over obedience to law is crucial to reading The Scarlet Letter”.749 Her conclusion – that Hawthorne’s text presents disobeying the law as “arrogant,” “unnecessary,” and “dangerous”750 – rests on her failure to recognise the centrality of Aves to Hawthorne’s portrayals of Hester and Pearl, and the ways that this would tether the nineteenth-century reader’s response. Korobkin believes Hawthorne grants readers a wide tether by using fiction and thereby permitting them to read the novel in less than “explicitly” political terms, and by presenting Hester

Prynne’s “hard-won freedom and serenity” and as a figure of admiration to encourage readers that might be resistant to understand the novel’s “underlying attitude toward law and obedience”.751 I envision a much shorter tether, whereby Hawthorne’s use of the powerful and well-known context of Aves would make an explicit, dramatic case that rights of white men with property were being eroded alongside those of dispossessed, criminalized, fugitive blacks. And indeed, while Korobkin believes that Hester wins her freedom, I argue that Hawthorne purposefully depicts Hester as never truly attaining her freedom, either spiritually or physically, and that he therefore powerfully reinscribes her enslavement.

The final critic whose contrasting opinion from mine I will discuss is Mark

Kinkead-Weekes. In reading Hester’s loss of soul, he argues:

749 Korobkin, 196.

750 Korobkin, 206.

751 Korobkin, 196.

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Sin breaks the sinners’ bonds with God and society; a breach that can only be healed by full public confession, showing that not only sin but its companionship have been recognized and renounced. But this they cannot do; Hester because she cannot renounce her love and indeed wishes to take Dimmesdale’s sin on herself; he because he is a coward, but also because he cannot bear to forfeit the chance of doing good as a priest.752

Not only does his reference to Dimmesdale as a “priest” draw inaccurately on the Catholic context rather than the more appropriate Puritan Protestant context, Weekes also oddly assumes that the Calvinist Puritan context is more appropriate to understanding Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s “sin” and their subsequent need for “full public confession.”753 The

“justified” person in Protestant Calvinist praxis has renounced all sins committed in order to remain “justified.” (For instance, an Calvinist, rather than a Armenian, stance would read that Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s sins do not break their unions with God or society, and therefore that Hester and Dimmesdale’s salvations would remain “assured,” despite their sin). Ultimately, Hester’s soul is eroded by her bondage, and in sculpting her portrayal thus, Hawthorne mobilizes a key abolitionist argument of his day.

While there are numerous perspectives on what Hawthorne aimed to do in writing

The Scarlet Letter, synthesizing the historical and legal influences that were significant in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries provides a decidedly different read of the text’s accomplishments. Because censorship likely played an important role in his

752 Mark Kinkead-Weekes, “The Letter, the Picture, and the Mirror: Hawthorne’s Framing of The Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne: New Critical Essays, ed A. Robert Lee (London: Vision-Barnes & Noble, 1982), 81.

753 Kinkead-Weekes, 81.

233 sculpting of the characterizations in his text, Hawthorne used clear, compelling contexts from his day that would reveal his claims while making it hard to be publicly censured by invoking the twin foci of white slave narratives and racialized white slavery.

Conclusion

The final piece of historical context I will introduce here is that Hawthorne wrote under threat of censorship. Whereas British abolitionists had amassed considerable political power,754 American abolitionists had achieved no such acceptance (Drescher,

Finkelman).755 Indeed, a culture of intellectual censorship existed at the time Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter; it explains why he presents racialized slavery in only indirect terms. Hawthorne sculpted Hester’s portrayal as close to slavery as possible, yet left her – very technically – as the indentured “people’s bond-slave” because to do otherwise put his liberty and life in danger.756

754 As Seymour Drescher notes, “abolitionists were welcomed with respect and crowned by overwhelming success” in Britain in the early nineteenth century and by the 1830s, political parties in power had to retain the abolitionist vote to retain influence; British citizens viewed abolitionists as “the voice of the British people” (Drescher, History of Slavery and Antislavery, 305).

755 As Finkelman points out, Justice Shaw, who ruled in the Aves case, was “not an abolitionist and disliked their radical tendencies” (Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 107). In light of this and the fact antislavery society was controversial even in New England, Loring sought to distance himself in making his case for Med’s freedom. Loring’s claim to distance probably did not fully persuade Shaw or anyone else, as two of three lawyers retained for counsel of the petitioner were members of the William Lloyd Garrison’s New England Anti-Slavery Society; only Rufus Choate was not a member (Finkelman, 108).

756 TSL, 405.

234

Because indentured servitude was, in theory, a temporary designation,757 readers could experience moments of catharsis when grappling with the stark realities of Hester’s slave-like portrayal without Hawthorne’s direct presentation of slavery. Starting in 1836,

Congress criminalized appeals to outlaw indentured slavery.758 Whites were “tarred and feathered” and sometimes “lynched” for petitioning to abolish indentured servitude, and even punished for “reading books critical of slavery”.759 As Gilmore indicates, only five years after Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter, the Kansas legislature prescribed two years “at hard labor” for the crime of advancing views that criticized slavery.760 I suggest that Hawthorne disguised his criticism of slavery in The Scarlet Letter. While the reader might wish that Hester’s lifelong indenture be finally terminated, no such event occurs.

Hester never “makes satisfaction” and she never receives “freedom dues.” Despite their tireless endurance of the plights that attend their indentures, both Hester and Dimmesdale grow tired and want to escape. Hester tells Dimmesdale: “some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man’s tread. There thou are free!”761 She also says

757 Tomlins, Freedom Bound, 8.

758 Michael T. Gilmore, “Hawthorne and Politics (Again): Words and Deeds in the 1850s,” in Hawthorne and the Real: Bicentennial Essays, ed. Millicent Bell (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005), 23.

759 Gilmore, 23. Massachusetts Congressman John Quincy Adams, who viewed the right to petition as a “cornerstone of the whole edifice of liberty”, spent eight years getting this gag rule repealed (Gilmore, 23). Significantly, the gag rule was first passed in 1836: the same year as Shaw’s crucial ruling in Commonwealth vs. Aves was made.

760Kansas, USA, 1855 Statutes, Chapter 151; qtd. in Gilmore, 24. These laws are often referred to as the Kansas “Black Laws.” For more details about this historical moment and its usefulness for understanding Hawthorne’s work, see Gilmore’s “Hawthorne and Politics (Again): Words and Deeds in the 1850s” from Hawthorne and the Real: Bicentennial Essays.

761 TSL, 185.

235 he can get freedom via the sea;762 “In our native land...in vast London,763 – or surely, in

Germany, in France, in pleasant Italy, – thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge!

And what has thou to do with all these iron men and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!”.764 This proposal serves as a signal to the reader that something had gone terribly awry with Hester’s purported indenture: only runaways escaped via the “high seas” and thereby “proposed to reject totally and irrevocably their enslavement or indentureship.”765 As Beckles explains of servants in Barbados,

Servants escaped the island in several ways. They stowed away on vessels plying the region; some collectively seized boats at night and sailed towards the Windward Islands; others disguised themselves as sailors, seamen, or soldiers and got aboard military vessels. Ironically, some seamen tried to trade their lifestyles for those of servants on the estates, while servants envied the seamen their apparent freedom and adventurous existence.766

This long-standing tradition of escape via the high seas would have been well-known in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries; it signals further that Hester’s indenture has gone beyond the acceptable norms for white women. Further, Hester’s emphasis on

762 TSL, 185.

763 “Vast London” here suggests not only London’s size but the ease with which one could essentially disappear, becoming near impossible to locate. Thus, this reference does not undermine Hawthorne’s general argument about the abuse of power and the gradual clawing back of freedoms that many believed the Somerset case had granted. Certainly, the freedom Hester references here could only be achieved were Dimmesdale to remain invisible by changing his name, effectively transforming his identity. Thus it depends on remaining outside of dominant society.

764 TSL, 185-86.

765 Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery, 106.

766 Beckles, 106.

236 opinions as enacting her bondage is astute here. But what makes the case the most strongly that Hester experiences slavery by another name is her clear assumption that freedom cannot be found in America but, perhaps, in the vast city of London, England.

The irony is palpable. In the shadow of the Aves case existed the Somerset case, in which freedoms appeared to be granted if a slave merely touched English soil, but terminology in Blackstone’s commentaries and subsequent legal cases quickly revealed that this powerful narrative was largely fiction. Freedom is precarious at best in England, too. What Hester’s “indenture” reveals is the carefully-constructed fictions that have maintained, for so long, the belief in a historically free England and New England. But ultimately, while both the “new” and “old” England claim to have never had slavery, both have had slavery “by another name.”

Chapter Four The “Bind” in Binding Out: Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig and the Challenge of New England Expectations

When Harriet Wilson’s now-classic and celebrated text, Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black in a Two-Story White House, North, Showing That

Slavery’s Shadows Fall Even There, was first published in September of 1859 by

Boston’s George C. Rand and Avery, she truly hoped to transform her fortunes. Our Nig was a landmark as the first novel published by an African-American woman, and the fifth fictional publication by any African-American in North America.767 Yet Our Nig languished in “libraries, bookshops, and antique stores.”768 An antiquarian bookseller introduced Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to the tale in 1981, and his subsequent republishing of it in 1983 saved the novel from obscurity. Since Our Nig’s republication, scholars have been “pondering the enormous significance”769 of a young, mixed-race, freeborn indentured servant writing a narrative about the slavish service she experienced in

Milford, New Hampshire.770

767 Henry Louis Gates Jr., introduction to Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, by Harriet E. Wilson (New York: Vintage, 2002), xiii.

768 Eric Gardner, “‘This Attempt of Their Sister’: Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig from Printer to Readers,” The New England Quarterly 66, no. 2 (June 1993): 226.

769 This phrase was first used by Alice Walker who praised Our Nig after first reading it. Qtd. on the cover of Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, 3rd ed. (New York: Vintage, 2002). All subsequent references are from this edition and are abbreviated ON.

770 According to Barbara A. White, Wilson’s childhood masters owned a “bit of land about ten miles long by one mile wide lying between Milford and Wilton, New Hampshire” (28-29). For ease of discussion, I will refer to their home as being in Milford. For more on the factual basis of Wilson’s Our Nig see White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil: New Information about Harriet Wilson and the ‘Bellmont’ Family,” American Literature 65, no. 1 (March 1993): 19-52.

237 238

As many scholars have noted, Wilson’s service was not slavery. Both Harriet

Wilson and her autobiographically based heroine, Alfrado (called Frado throughout), served well-to do American families as bound out children. Such children had to work, but they were not – like slaves – born to service, and their servitude had an end date. Like craft apprentices, they were dedicated to service as children and released with majority, but unlike them, they were not bound on the condition of learning a craft.771 Rather they were children whose families or the local magistrates had determined should not remain with their parents as they had better prospects for improvement elsewhere772: they were removed as part of poor773 relief.774

Scholars have persistently775 aligned Frado’s experience with indentured servitude and contrasted that state with African American slavery.776 As Barbara A.

771 Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray, “Overviews,” in Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America, ed. Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray (London: Cornell University Press, 2009), 1-2.

772 The Countryman’s Lamentation, On the Neglect of a Proper Education of Children; With an Address to the Inhabitants of New-Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Dunlap, 1762), ii–iii, 42–44, 46.

773 Lawrence William Towner points out, however, that the term “poor” in Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies did not only refer to those who were considered members of the “pauper class,” but anyone who “had insufficient property to ward off charges of idleness, disorderly living, living outside of family organization – in effect, living contrary to the accepted social mores” (51). “The Poor as a Source of Bound Labor,” in Lawrence William Towner, A Good Master Well Served: Masters and Servants in Colonial Massachusetts, 1620-1750 (New York: Garland, 1998), 51-75.

774 Herndon and Murray, “Overviews,” 1-2.

775 For instance, see the work of Tess Chakkalakal, “‘Whimsical Contrasts’: Love and Marriage in The Minister’s Wooing and Our Nig,” New England Quarterly 84, no. 1 (March 2011): 170. Similarly, this is seen in Barbara Krah’s “Tracking Frado: The Challenge of Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig to Nineteenth- Century Conventions of Writing Womanhood,” Amerikastudien/American Studies 49, no. 4 (2004): 465.

776 Margaret Lindgren’s view – that Wilson as an author was “literally bought and sold” and is “attempt[ing] to reverse this positioning through writing to and of the very audience which objectified her in first place” in her narrative (18) – represents a variety of over-speak about Wilson’s plight

239

White points out in her groundbreaking 1993 research on the historical context of Our

Nig, written contracts stated the period of binding out. Further, host families had an obligation to provide education.777 White reveals that in Milford, as in many other jurisdictions in America, poor relief transitioned from “outdoor relief” to “indoor relief” in the early part of the nineteenth century. The old system involved auctioning the poor to specific households; the new involved putting them to work in publicly owned “poor farms.”778 At the time of Wilson’s birth in 1825, towns like Milford paid wealthier citizens to assume responsibility for its poor in exchange for labour, auctioning them off to the lowest bidder.779 Milford erected a poor farm in the 1830s, so it was utilizing indoor and outdoor relief by the time Wilson wrote her novel.780 The 1828 New

Hampshire law’s reference to “bind out to labor, or to employ in their work house,”781 thus references this distinction but also gestures towards the fact that these two forms of relief might be used interchangeably.

uncharacteristic of mainstream scholarship on this issue. Margaret Lindgren, “Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson and the Redoubled Voice in Black Autobiography,” Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review 8, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 18-38.

777 White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” 47n9. For more discussion on binding out and labouring conditions, see Marcus W. Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, 1607-1783 (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1965), 107.

778 White, 47n9.

779 This system was termed the vendue system or the “New England method,” (White, 47n9).

780 White, 47n9.

781 Laws of the State of New Hampshire: With the Constitutions of the United States and of the State Prefixed (Hopkinton, MA: Published by Isaac Long Jr. Luther Roby, Printer, 1830), 304, section 7; qtd. in William M. Richardson, The New-Hampshire Town Officer (Concord, MA: Published by Jacob B. Moore, 1829), 212.

240

White began the discussion of Frado’s experience within the specific conventions of binding out in the nineteenth-century American North East in 1993. Most of White’s engagement with child binding out appears in a detailed footnote where she explains that

Wilson was likely bound out as a child and that, even if there was not a written contract, there are clear indications in Our Nig that there was at least an informal binding out arrangement.782 In White’s view, the specifics of Wilson’s servitude are important insofar as they illuminate for the reader details about the family who Wilson served and also verify the historical accuracy of Wilson’s story. Scholars such as Harryette Mullen clearly accept White’s assertions as they consider Wilson’s text but have not claimed that it has greater importance than White suggests.783

The now-classic works of historians David Galenson – White Servitude in

Colonial America: An Economic Analysis – and Abbot Emerson Smith – Colonists in

Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776 – provided rich insights into indentured servitude in America but, while including children in their analysis, were limited in how expansively they could draw conclusions about the treatment of children. Facing similar challenges, White’s discussion of Wilson’s status as

782 White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” 47n9.

783 Harryette Mullen points out that Wilson’s indenture followed the tradition by beginning between the ages of six and twelve. Harryette Mullen, “Runaway Tongue: Resistant Orality in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Our Nig, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Beloved,” in The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Shirley Samuels (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 257. It is worth considering, however, that in “A Proper and Instructive Education,” Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray indicate that it can be “misleading to specify a ‘typical’ age at binding for all American pauper apprentices” (15). Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray, “‘A Proper and Instructive Education’: Raising Children in Pauper Apprenticeship,” in Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America, ed. Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray (London: Cornell University Press, 2009).

241 a bound out child preceded the 1998 book publication of Lawrence William Towner’s acclaimed 1954 dissertation, which contained a detailed chapter on bound out children in

Massachusetts, 1620-1750. It also preceded the more expansive historical research championed by Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray, which featured the results of their survey of approximately 18,000 written binding out contracts in England and North

America signed between 1589 and 1870.784 Herndon and Murray et al. revealed particularly New England expectations of bound out children and their host families.

Their research allows new reflection on a question that Eric Gardner, writing in the same year as White, addressed– the question of abolitionists’ relationship to the book.

Presenting previously unknown details of the books’ coming to be and be bought, he illuminated how unlikely it was that such a story, published in the abolitionist epicenter,

Boston, and by an abolition-sympathetic printer, was genuinely unknown in its time.

Gardner argues compellingly that Our Nig was probably ignored because it challenged the cherished notion that the American North was the paragon of freedom to the South’s relentless bondage.

As Gardner notes, quoting Wilson herself, she had a New England

“mistress…wholly imbued with southern principles” and thus “depicts aspects of

Northern life that abolitionists would have regretted.”785 With the benefit of historical research to broaden my contextualization of Our Nig, I will demonstrate that Gardner

784 Herndon and Murray, “A Proper and Instructive Education,” 3-18. Details are from page 15.

785 Eric Gardner, “This Attempt of Their Sister,” 242.

242 understated the case. The work of Sarah L. H. Gronningsater, who considers the effect of northern gradual emancipation laws on children, is integral to understanding binding out laws created for free born but poor children in nineteenth century New Hampshire.

Furthermore, Herndon and Murray, et al.’s seminal work reveals that Wilson lived in a home that violated community mores regarding child binding out in ways that eviscerated the New England vision of law, order, and freedom – and that her neighbors in the supposedly superior North knew, and failed to stop it. Thus, I argue, the “southern principles” of Frado’s mistress were merely one aspect of the commensurate failed New

England binding out which would have mortified abolitionists.

Wilson’s likely masters (the Haywards) were the basis for her portrayal of Frado’s masters (the Bellmonts).786 From the narrative, we learn that a nameless, wealthy man had seduced Frado’s white mother, Mag, then abandoned her. Destitute and now deemed a fallen woman, she marries a “kind-hearted” free black man named Jim and the couple have two children, Frado and her sister. After Jim’s death, Mag becomes the common- law partner of Seth, but is continually plagued by financial hardship. Mag and Seth ultimately leave Frado with the Bellmonts when she is six. The Bellmonts feed, clothe, and educate Frado, but Mrs. Bellmont proves to be a “she-devil,” and her daughter Mary equally depraved, and they abuse her almost constantly, even when other family members attempt to intervene. The bulk of the novel involves Frado’s period of service, which

786 White explains the correspondence between characters in Wilson’s text and the Haywards as follows: Rebecca S. (Hutchinson) Hayward (Mrs. Bellmont), Nehemiah Hayward Jr. (Mr. John Bellmont), Rebecca S. Hayward (Mary Bellmont, their daughter), George Milton Hayward (James, their son), Lucretia (Jane, their daughter), and either Charles S. Hayward or Nehemiah Peabody Hayward (Jack, their son) (White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” Figure 5, 42).

243 ends when she turns eighteen. Once her service has ended, and she marries a sailor who eventually never returns, she struggles to remain gainfully employed and support herself and their child. She ends up on poor relief because of sickliness due to Mrs. Bellmont’s abuse of her when she was a child. Through Frado’s experience, the challenges of

Wilson’s origins – and, as we come to learn, future – weave themselves palpably into the reader’s mind.

The Practice of Binding Out

Binding out was common in America from colonial settlement through the mid -

1800s,787 and it operated according to a system of expectations for both children and their host families. A New Hampshire law passed December 16th, 1828, empowered overseers of the poor to “bind out to labor, or to employ in their work house, every person residing in their town who lives idly and pursues no lawful calling or business, and who is poor and stands in need of relief from such town, or whose family standing in need of relief is supported by such town.”788 Any child who was chargeable to the town and was unemployed or whose parents could or would not support them was a prime candidate for binding out.789

787 Herndon and Murray, “Overviews,” 2.

788 Laws ... New Hampshire, 304, section 7; qtd. in Richardson, New-Hampshire Town Officer, 212.

789 My paraphrase based on Laws … New Hampshire, 304, sections 7 and 8; qtd. in Richardson, 212-13.

244

Herndon and Murray describe binding out as a hybrid: “a kind of master/servant relationship,” an “[adoptive] parent/child relationship,” and a “family/state relationship,” with the family acting in the interest of the state to provide its youth with a proper home.790 Their work reveals that most children with any disadvantage in America, whether they were orphaned, illegitimate, abandoned, had been removed from their homes because of abuse, or whose parents the state deemed to be providing “improper” living situations, were bound out until they reached adulthood – 18 for girls and 21 for boys.791 As they explain, official documents referred to the practice of binding out the children of the poor and sometimes the troublesome as “pauper apprenticeship,” “orphan apprenticeship,” or “indenture of poor children.”792 Magistrates could remove children against their parents’ wishes.

Parents might also reach out to officials to procure a position for their children, and magistrates might formalize an existing living arrangement by legalizing verbal indentures for orphaned or abandoned children who were already a part of a household.793 A crucial objective of such agreements was to prevent children from becoming dependent on relief in adulthood, which came solely from local taxes.794

790 Herndon and Murray, “Overviews,” 2.

791 Herndon and Murray, 1. The difference between female and male indentured servants’ time-to-release likely reflected assumptions about the timing of marriage. Boys had to receive more rigorous, extensive training than girls, as they might need to support a wife and children.

792 Herndon and Murray, “A Proper and Instructive Education,” 4-5.

793 Herndon and Murray, 7. 794 Indeed, the magistrate’s main object in sanctioning binding out contracts was to lower the cost of poor relief to the community in the future (Herndon and Murray, 3, 6). Different states and smaller jurisdictions

245

Because of this, indenture agreements were binding on masters as well as children.795

Even informal agreements obligated the master’s household to provide clothes, lodging, food, and education796 in exchange for a child’s labour.797

The record reflects differential treatment by race. In a few documented cases, the state took children from free black parents solely on the basis of their skin color, deeming them not “sufficiently responsible” to govern their children.798 This practice, at least, would not have applied to Frado or Wilson, being born to a white mother. There was much regional variation799 in whether or not it was common to bind out black children, but contracts reveal that black children served for longer periods than white children; they were bound out at younger ages and freed at older ages.800 Contracts provided fewer

had different standards by which families were judged incapable of raising their children (Herndon and Murray, 7).

795 Herndon and Murray, 13.

796 Herndon and Murray, 8.

797 While written indentures were carefully constructed and often saw magistrates following up with children, informal indentures bore less scrutiny, although townspeople sometimes alerted the magistrates to systemic abuse, which might lead to a child’s removal regardless of the indenture’s formality. Herndon and Murray, 8-9.

798 Herndon and Murray, 7.

799 For instance, black children do not appear in Charleston Orphan House indentures and only seldom appear in the Boston Almshouse and Chester County Almshouse indentures, which suggests that officials in these locales had other means of “placing” black children. Similarly, there were only two indentures in New England for black children and a few in Connecticut for children who were non-white. On the opposite end of the spectrum, locations where slavery was widespread, such as Rhode Island, Maryland, and Virginia, saw the emergence of a “highly racialized” variety of pauper apprenticeship in the early nineteenth century: there was clear evidence of a desire to “harness” the labour of all “people of color” (Herndon and Murray, 15). For this and other details, see Herndon and Murray, 3-18.

800 Herndon and Murray, 14-15; Ruth Wallis Herndon, “‘Proper’ Magistrates and Masters: Binding Out Poor Children in Southern New England, 1720–1820,” in Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper

246 literacy and labour skills to black girls than black boys, a difference not apparent in contracts for white children.801 As the product of a union between black and white persons, both Frado and Wilson would be viewed as “mulatta,” or mixed-race, children.

The one-drop rule was by no means normalized as it was later; Frado/Wilson would not automatically have been considered black. Being born to a white mother, however, should have provided the author and her heroine with a stronger measure of protection from the slavish servitude which eventually tarnished their experiences of freedom in

New England, a point I return to later in this chapter. In their treatment of her, Frado’s host family violated established New England norms for both black and white children.

Herndon and Murray analyze The Countryman’s Lamentation (1762), a well- known book that guided many masters in Northern communities, to illuminate their obligations. In it, the main social critic – “Jersey Man” – promotes the view that poor children should be plucked from the “Briers and Rubbish” of their natal homes and placed in more orderly households so that the community could “expect a useful Member in succeeding Periods of Life.”802 Jersey Man justified indenture by asserting that masters could improve bound out children through education, as well as moral

Apprentice System in Early America, ed. Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray (London: Cornell University Press, 2009), 40.

801 Herndon and Murray, “A Proper and Instructive Education,” 15-16.

802 Countryman’s Lamentation, ii-iii, 42-44, 46; reprinted (qtd.) in Herndon and Murray, 4.

247 example,803 as their poor parents could not. Thus the Bellmonts had an obligation to

Frado and to their community.

The Bellmonts’ failure with regard to Frado does more than, as Gardner notes, fail to provide the “promise” of “the North…as a magical land where the protagonist will eventually realize the promise of freedom.”804 Scholars such as Ellen Pratofiorito805 and

Elizabeth Breau806 have examined the relationship between Wilson’s indentured servitude and the common features of American chattel slavery. Pratofiorito notes that, at a time when the “free North” was celebrated,807 mainstream abolitionists would have considered Frado’s “hard work under cruel servitude,”808 which “begins in freedom and moves into an indentured servitude undiscernible from slavery”809 disturbing; similarly,

Breau considers the variety of indentured servitude Frado experiences to be the “partner” of slavery, and points out that the Bellmonts assume they are entitled to Frado’s labour.810 Such details as Mrs. Bellmont’s cutting off Frado’s hair, a longstanding means

803 Such moral example was expected to be superior to that of the children’s biological parents and aligned with community mores as well as the laws of the day (Herndon and Murray, 12).

804 Gardner, “This Attempt of Their Sister,” 243.

805 Ellen Pratofiorito, “‘To Demand Your Sympathy and Aid’: Our Nig and the Problem of No Audience,” Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 24, no. 5 (Spring 2001): 31-48.

806 Elizabeth Breau, “Identifying Satire: Our Nig,” Callaloo 16, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 456.

807 Pratofiorito, “To Demand Your Sympathy,” 34.

808 Pratofiorito, 40.

809 Pratofiorito, 43.

810 Breau, “Identifying Satire,” 456.

248 of disassociating slaves from their personhood and reinforcing their slave status,811 round out this picture.812 But one of the central reasons these occurrences would have been disturbing to Northern readers is because they highlight what I have termed the paradox of improvement – the tension between the master’s desire to improve his own position, materially, through the child’s labour, as well as exercise autonomy and the legal requirement to improve the child.

In order to understand this paradox of improvement, it is helpful to consider the work of Gronningsater, which focuses on the politics of Northern gradual emancipation trends. The 1780s saw Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island choose to free the children of slave mothers, with the expectation that such children would be servants until they became adults.813 Pennsylvania passed America’s first gradual emancipation statute in 1780. It specified that the children of slaves would carry on as servants of their mother’s owner “in the manner and on the conditions whereon servants [are] bound by indenture.”814 These specifically included “like freedom dues” 815 – the allotment of

811 As Victoria Sherrow explains, Africans were often shaved during transportation for slave labour, a tradition that began with African prisoners of war, a way of signaling their anonymity (Victoria Sherrow, “African Americans: Impact of Slavery,” in Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History [London: Greenwood Press, 2006], 16). However, slave mistresses popularized another reason for cutting hair; if a female African house slave had “long, wavy hair,” her “jealous” mistress might insist that the slave’s hair be “cut off” in order to make her appear “less attractive” (Sherrow, 17).

812 ON, 70.

813 Sarah L. H. Gronningsater, “Born Free in the Master’s House: Children and Gradual Emancipation in the Early American North,” in Child Slavery Before and After Emancipation: An Argument for Child- Centered Slavery Studies, ed. Anna Mae Duane. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 123.

814 Pennsylvania’s “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” (1780); qtd. in Gronningsater, 131.

815 Pennsylvania’s “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” (1780); qtd. in Gronningsater, 131.

249 necessities designed to prepare a new adult to establish him or herself. New York passed a law in 1799 that all children born to slaves after July 4 of that year would be “born free” but still required to serve their mother’s owner until 25 years of age for females and

28 years of age for males.816 New Jersey followed New York’s model in 1804.817 These laws provided that, should a master wish to “abandon” children the law had made free, those who oversaw poor relief would then bind said children out to another household

“on the same terms and conditions the children of paupers were subject to.”818 This history demonstrates that the laws crafted for apprenticed children born to be completely freed upon majority under gradual emancipation as well as those for pauper apprentices relied on the techniques and practices integral to binding out as a legal and historical framework.

Gradual emancipation in the northern states around the turn of the nineteenth century meant that abolitionists in 1859, when Our Nig appeared, would have remembered a time when people in Connecticut and Rhode Island held slaves. One of the challenges of the Quaker model on which gradual emancipation was based was that such freedom was tenuous. The community might expect individual masters to assume a fathering role in relation to their slaves, teach them literacy skills, treat them kindly, provide religious training, and perhaps even free them before the law required.819 But the

816 Gronningsater, 124.

817 Gronningsater, 124.

818 Gronningsater, 124.

819 Gronningsater, 126.

250 children born to slaves and bound under the laws that freed them had not negotiated the terms of their own binding, and nor did pauper apprentices such as Frado.820 Thus, the tension between the master prioritizing his preferences against those of the labouring child endured. The law required improvement as preparation for freedom, both for freed children but bound out born free children. In drawing attention to the fact that she received insufficient training or preparation – indeed, the circumstances of her binding out itself thrust her on public relief – Wilson draws attention to shameful facts.

Another point of reference for binding out were the laws governing the apprentice-master relationship. New Hampshire laws on binding out made clear references to these guidelines. For example, New Hampshire’s 1828 binding law stipulated that the binding out children experienced was to be “as good and effectual in law to all intents and purposes as any way and method of binding out apprentices whatever” and “the said overseers shall make the contract equitably and as much as may be for the interest of the persons bound out” by providing training in reading, writing, and business as relevant.821 Beyond this, the overseers were expected to “inquire into the usage of all persons so bound out, and shall endeavor to redress any wrongs or injuries they may sustain.”822 Moreover, “the persons to whom such apprentices may be bound shall have the same authority over them that other masters have by law over their

820 John E. Murray and Ruth Wallis Herndon, “Markets for Children in Early America: A Political Economy of Pauper Apprenticeship,” Journal of Economic History 62, no. 2 (June 2002): 356.

821 “Laws ... New Hampshire,” 304, section 8; qtd. in Richardson, New-Hampshire Town Officer, 213.

822 “Laws ... New Hampshire,” 304, section 8; qtd. in Richardson, 213.

251 apprentices during their apprenticeship.”823 Thus, not only did the law enshrine the connections between binding out pauper children and apprenticeship more generally, it clearly stated overseers’ obligation to redress wrongs masters committed against bound out children. The Revised Statues of the State of New Hampshire passed in December

23rd, 1842 upheld these expectations.824 Of course, children’s rights were easily trounced by virtue of their inferior status at law. Thus, because the laws for apprentices under gradual emancipation were in many ways used as a framework for the laws created to bind out free but poor children in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the state sought to clarify a distinction between freedom and enslavement that in practice was easily violated. Given the prevalence of binding out in New England at the time, abolitionists might have preferred to avert their eyes.

Reading Our Nig in the light of Herndon’s and Murray’s, as well as

Gronningsater’s, research gives greater precision to considerations of the relationship between Wilson’s condition and that of slavery. All reveal facts of which Wilson’s contemporary readers would have been well aware, and would have affected abolitionists’ view of the book and the light it cast on their cause. Specific slave-like aspects of Wilson’s binding out violated community mores and exposed her desperate plight to her readers. They also revealed the tenuousness of abolitionists’ claim to New

England’s moral superiority.

823 “Laws ... New Hampshire,” 304, section 8; qtd. in Richardson, 213.

824 The Revised Statutes of the State of New Hampshire Passed December 23rd, 1842, To Which Are Prefixed the Constitutions of the United States and of the State of New Hampshire (Concord, MA: Carroll & Baker, State Printers, 1843), 138.

252

Imbued with Southern Principles

Many scholars have explored how Frado came to live with the Bellmonts. The novel does not specify whether a written contract existed, and no official document of

Wilson’s binding out has been found. Breau and White suggest that Wilson’s real-life binding out may have been informal rather than officially sanctioned.825 References in

Wilson’s text about Frado’s experience, however, suggest that there may have been an official indenture in place. First, the legal preconditions for removal existed. Frado’s father, like Wilson’s, was black, and, at the time of Frado’s indenture, her mother was living unmarried with Seth; the magistrates could have removed Frado on either basis.

Further, prior to his death, the novel describes Frado and her sister as “an additional charge” on their father;826 this language may refer to the tax-based relief system and its power over children’s living arrangements. Wilson clearly understood child binding out and local discussions about the potential of “imprudent” unions to “breed up a charge” on the poor rate.827 While Frado is in fact bound out after Jim dies, the phrase suggests a recognition that the system that termed the poor “chargeable,” that is, on public relief,

825 Breau, “Identifying Satire,” 456.

826 ON, 14.

827 Here I have applied the quoted material from Hindle and Herndon on page 34 to Wilson’s way of discussing the status of Frado and Frado’s sister in relation to Jim, their father. For more details, see Steve Hindle and Ruth Wallis Herndon, “Recreating Proper Families in England and North America: Pauper Apprenticeship in Transatlantic Context,” in Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America, ed. Ruth Wallis Herndon and John E. Murray (London: Cornell University Press, 2009), 19-36. For details on this notion in terms of English poor relief in the seventeenth though the eighteenth centuries, see also Steve Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c. 115-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 337-53.

253 also forcibly removed and bound out children.828 While Mag may have created an informal indenture, anticipating a removal, the fact that Frado has no apparent contact with Mag or Seth during her indenture suggests that she did not. As Herndon and Murray write, parents who arranged indentures typically had continued contact with their children, but did not with children removed by magistrates. Further, Frado repeatedly recalls that her indenture expires at eighteen. In an instance of abuse, she considers running away but decides to “stay contentedly through her period of service, which would expire when she was eighteen years of age.”829 An informal agreement would be less likely to “expire” at a particular time. Mere community mores might not hold her, especially as the community knows that she has been abused and might feel this justifies her running away. Staying, then, seems to indicate that she feared magistracy, rather than communal, enforcement. This insistence on the connection between her slave-like condition and a practice enshrined in New England law would not have been comfortable for abolitionists.

Further invoking the traditions of law governing binding out, Frado took its terms seriously. That she discards the possibility of running away backs this reading. Gardner argues convincingly that the fact that she considers flight distinguishes Frado from the enslaved characters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.830 However, Breau rightly points out that the distinction is small. Frado shouts, “Stop!... [S]trike me, and I’ll never work a mite more

828 Hindle and Herndon, “Recreating Proper Families,” 22.

829 ON, 109.

830 Gardner, “This Attempt of Their Sister,” 243.

254 for you.”831 The threat succeeds in staying her mistress’s hand, and Frado stands “like one who feels the stirring of free and independent thoughts.”832 Breau points out that she stands “like” one feeling such stirring – the text does not say that she actually feels it.833

I would argue that here Wilson tries to present the reader with what she believes to be

Mrs. Bellmont’s perspective – that Mrs. Bellmont fears that Frado is having free and independent thoughts. New Hampshire laws at the time support this view. In chapter

“VIII: Of Masters and Apprentices,” The New Hampshire Town Officer (1829) reveals that it was considered the “right and duty of all parents and guardians, Selectmen, as the case may be, to inquire into the usage of such minors and defend them from the cruelties, neglects,” and empowers “parents, guardians, selectmen or overseers,” to complain “of any personal cruelty, ill usage, neglect or breaches of covenant,” to a justice of the peace, who should hear such complaints and, if he found them warranted, remove the child and require the master to pay court costs and damages.834 Thus the authorities had responsibility to ensure that apprenticed minors were shielded from cruelty, neglect, and breaches of contract. Moreover, by specifying a system of redress for master abuses the law provided a check on their power over the apprentice. While it did not, of course, give a complaint Frado might have brought standing in court, if she were indeed having “free and independent thoughts,” she might well escape to a person obligated to take Mrs.

831 ON, 105.

832 ON, 105.

833 Breau, “Identifying Satire,” 464.

834 “An Act to Secure to Masters and Apprentices Bound by Deed or Indenture their Mutual Privileges,” passed December 28th, 1805; qtd. in Richardson, New-Hampshire Town Officer, 93-94.

255

Bellmont to court if they knew of the abuse she experienced, an outcome Mrs. Bellmont might have feared.

The Bellmonts themselves acknowledge the community norm of providing Frado an education. This expectation would have prevailed regardless of whether the binding out was formal, although it would have had more force if it were. Despite Mrs. Bellmont and Mary’s argument that it will accomplish little to educate people of color, as they are

“incapable of elevation,” Mr. Bellmont, his son Jack, and his daughter Jane argue that

Frado’s education should continue.835 Mr. Bellmont prevails at the first point of disagreement with his wife, but Mrs. Bellmont insists that Frado’s education is

“completed” when she is nine and has had three years of education, and Frado’s time at school ends.836 According to White, Mrs. Bellmont likely references a community standard of three years that was written into most binding out agreements.837 Thus these discussions represent a debate of the expectations and the terms of binding out.

Community perception of Frado’s binding out as veering from expected norms, like the physical abuse she experiences, could result in public disapproval and magistrate intervention, something the Bellmonts would wish to avoid. For the abolitionist reader, it would be disturbing that people plainly aware of their legal obligation in New England custom would hold Frado in a slave-like state.

835 ON, 30.

836 ON, 41.

837 White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” 47n9.

256

Mrs. Bellmont’s clear desire to violate the social contract is telling, and a harbinger of her eventually complete refusal to consider that binding out’s main rationale was to prevent children from relying on public assistance in adulthood, education being a key component of that prevention.838 The Countryman’s Lamentation urged parents who might resist relinquishing their children to recognise that binding out would improve them as citizens.839 Yet servitude, and her abuse at Mrs. Bellmont’s hands, makes Frado dependent on relief.

But where is the line between abuse and discipline? Parents and masters had the right to use physical discipline in the nineteenth century, but the community distinguished discipline from abuse. Even in the eighteenth century, Jersey Man assures parents that suffering would only be such as provided improvement, suggesting that even in the case of “Hardship” to bound out children “the Ballance was greatly in [their]

Favour” and that they themselves would “rather go thro’ it than miss of

Improvement.”840 He claims that extreme beating is rare.841 But in reality, Herndon and

Murray argue, “[s]evere masters were in every community.”842 Jonathan A. Noyalas writes that free black children might be punished for running away by being bound to extended indenture of by being sold into slavery altogether, and posits that they were

838 Herndon and Murray, “A Proper and Instructive Education,” 12.

839 Herndon and Murray, 9.

840 Countryman’s Lamentation, 45-46; reprinted (qtd.) in Herndon and Murray, 11.

841 Countryman’s Lamentation, 46; reprinted (qtd.) in Herndon and Murray, 13.

842 Herndon and Murray, 13-14.

257 particularly likely to experience abuse843: Frado certainly did. Thus, the uncomfortable facts Our Nig brings to light about binding out in New England were not unusual.

The nature of Frado’s abuse is revealed in snippets. Mrs. Bellmont whips Frado for offering her mistress’s leftovers to a dog in the household before eating from the plate herself as instructed.844 Soon after, she whips Frado for crying,845 accusing her of self- pity because she does not want to work (in fact she is weeping because Mrs. Bellmont’s son James is ill).846 Later, Mrs. Bellmont beats Frado for telling James that his mother has acted to keep his aunt from seeing him.847 Less violently, but nonetheless cruel in intent, Mrs. Bellmont sells the dog Frado had received from Jack.848 A more extended depiction of abuse begins when Mary tries to push Frado into a stream and falls in herself; she falsely claims that Frado pushed her in. (Neither child can swim, and their schoolmates must rescue them both.) Mother and daughter assault Frado “inhumanly.”849

Mrs. Bellmont props Frado’s mouth open with wood, as if she is a horse with an iron bit

843 Jonathan A. Noyalas, “Southern Free Blacks,” in Encyclopedia of African American History, ed. Leslie M. Alexander and Walter C. Rucker, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2010), 540.

844 ON, 71-72.

845 ON, 77.

846 ON, 76.

847 ON, 93.

848 ON, 61.

849 ON, 34.

258 in its mouth. It also silences the truth of her narrative – as Breau argues, the image of

Frado with her mouth “propp[ed]” open is

compelling because of the immediacy of the pain it conveys, [and it] is also a powerful satiric inversion – Frado cannot speak because her mouth is open. The piece of wood is both an unusually painful gag and a parodic one, depriving Frado of the speech that should emerge from her open mouth.850

The wood recalls the disciplinary iron bridles used in the colonies to force open the mouths of enslaved Africans.851 Frado cannot speak for herself: others must speak for her. Yet at this point in the narrative, no one does.

We soon come to understand the meaning of Wilson’s characterization of Mrs.

Bellmont as “wholly imbued with southern principles.”.852 She treats Frado according to a number of conventional abolitionist representations of southern U.S. slavery, heaping labour on her and whipping her to ensure her toil. She reflects on the profit Frado provided the previous summer, acknowledging “she did the work of two girls” and telling

Mr. Bellmont, “I’ll beat the money out of her, if I can’t get her worth any other way.”853

Frado’s Northern mistress views her much as Southern owners viewed their slaves: her

850 Breau, “Identifying Satire,” 461.

851 Olaudau Equiano’s narrative describes seeing an African slave woman wearing an iron muzzle (another name for a bridle); furthermore, he lists the “iron muzzle” as one of many common devices used on African slaves. Olaudau Equiano, Interesting Narrative of Olaudau Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, 9th ed. (London: Stationers’ Hall, 1794), 59-60, 139. It is also interesting to note that The International Slavery Museum in Liverpool (UK) has a few of these muzzles on display.

852 ON, 3.

853 ON, 90.

259 body is a source of profit and monetary gain, her personhood is non-extant. Mrs.

Bellmont acknowledges that Frado is compensated far below the true value of her labour.

Mrs. Bellmont’s assessment that Frado does double the work she could have expected at the age of seven calls attention to another binding out violation. Previous scholarship has underestimated the importance of Frado’s age. In Lamentation, the Jersey

Man prescribes “a suitable Portion of Labour according to [children’s] Age of

Ability,”854 referencing the general mores of Northern American communities in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. It was an accepted principle in the eighteenth century that under the age of six or seven, children could not “labor enough to earn their keep”; by the nineteenth century, community standards raised the age of capability to eight or nine.855 Therefore, official agreements for binding out typically compensated masters who took on pauper apprentices below ages deemed conventional.856 Thus at the age of seven Frado should not do the work of one girl, much less two.

Mr. Bellmont’s failures also defied community standards. He opposes ineffectually his wife’s abuse. The beating after the near-drowning occurs as soon as he is

“out of sight.”857 In yet another fit of rage, Mrs. Bellmont threatens to “take the skin from

854 Countryman’s Lamentation, iii, 49; reprinted (qtd.) in Herndon and Murray, “A Proper and Instructive Education,” 13. 855 Herndon and Murray, 15-16.

856 Herndon and Murray, 15-16.

857 ON, 34.

260 her [Frado’s] body,”858 and Mr. Bellmont forbids her, admonishing, “Remember!”859

Later he advises Frado that “when she was sure she did not deserve a whipping, [she should] avoid it if she could.”860 As he tells her: “You are looking sick...you cannot endure beating as you once could.”861 He will not prevent the abuse, either to protect

Frado, his own investment, or his obligation to release her as an able-bodied adult who can provide for herself. Rather than acting as patriarchal protector as the head of his household and legally Frado’s master, he cowers. Mrs. Bellmont’s role overseeing management and daily care conformed to the role of wives in most such arrangements, but the ultimate responsibility to the community lay with Mr. Bellmont.862

Once again, the paradox of improvement comes to the fore, as we see that the roles of master and parent, both assumed integral to the binding out agreement, in fact, conflict. Murray’s and Herndon’s 2002 article discusses the role of patriarchal authority in binding out children; indeed, providing pauper apprentices with strong father figures was central to placement decisions. There was a clear connection between a “proper” home for children and the presence of a male head.863 Part of the logic of binding out was

858 ON, 46.

859 ON, 47.

860 ON, 104. Publisher’s/Wilson’s emphasis.

861 ON, 104.

862 Magistrates often referenced the master’s wife’s role in upholding the terms of an agreement as it pertained to the child’s improvement (Herndon and Murray, “A Proper and Instructive Education,” 12).

863 Murray and Herndon, “Markets for Children,” 358.

261 that the town fathers stepped in where actual fathers failed, and assigned a new father, the master.864 Thus, bound out children were purportedly awash in various levels of protective fathering – town fathers to ensure the welfare of children and masters who would step into a fathering role if needed. Similarly, in the case of gradual emancipation, children remained bound to their mother’s masters until adulthood so that the master could train them as a father might, for independent adulthood. Indeed, this was described as “act[ing] the part of the father”865 to children in the “deferred-freedom model.”866

Quaker David Cooper suggested in his 1772 pamphlet that masters should heed the

Golden Rule and treat black children in ways similar to that of their own biological children.867 Of course, a master in the role of surrogate father would nonetheless order the movements and work of the child of a slave mother prior to adulthood, but the main aim of this child’s servitude was for said child to be gainfully trained rather than commodified.868 This suggests both the depth of the Bellmonts’ failure with regard to

Frado and the closeness of her condition to slavery as it existed in New England. (Many of Our Nig’s readers would remember the period in which New England began phasing slavery out.) Mr. Bellmont’s ineffectual masterdom and fathering results in profit, not training, becoming the focus of Frado’s servitude. This profit motive again highlights the

864 Murray and Herndon, 359.

865 David Cooper, A Mite Cast into the Treasury: Or, Observations on Slave-Keeping (Philadelphia, 1772), 16.

866 Gronningsater, “Born Free,” 124.

867 Cooper, Mite Cast into the Treasury, 13-15.

868 Gronningsater, “Born Free,” 129; (original source) Cooper, Mite Cast into the Treasury, 13-15.

262 paradox of improvement: Mrs. Bellmont chooses to improve the situation of her family instead of Frado’s and Mr. Bellmont does not stop her. Worse, the town later has to support Frado in her illness because of their decision. Mrs. Bellmont and Mary render

Frado’s a life of abuse, pain, and neglect. The kindness of James, of her teacher, and of

Mr. Bellmont’s sister punctuate her suffering, but neither they nor any one else stop it.

The Failure of Frado’s Binding Out

Frado’s case becomes complicated as her health declines and she is in dire need of assistance. We see that “over the course of Wilson’s narrative, […] Frado’s once healthy body is tortured, maimed, beaten, and broken; before our eyes, Frado’s body is transformed from her strongest asset to her greatest liability.”869 Mr. Bellmont’s sister,

Aunt Abby, takes Frado in for a period after her indenture, but the townspeople seek to force the Bellmonts to care for her, feeling “that the place where her declining health began, should be the place of relief” and that the Bellmonts “owed [Frado] a shelter and attention, when disabled”.870 This consensus by the town is more significant than it might appear at first glance. In the mid-eighteenth century, Quakers particularly stewed over the ethical questions intrinsic to freeing elderly, sick, or very young slaves. Masters could and did free elderly or ill slaves in order to avoid providing for their care, in spite of laws

869 Cynthia J. Davis, “Speaking the Body’s Pain: Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig,” African-American Review 27, no. 3 (1993): 391.

870 ON, 120-121.

263 designed to prevent it for the sake of protecting public welfare systems.871 The provision allowing masters who wanted to abandon a child free under gradual emancipation to place him or her with the overseers of the poor for binding out in Pennsylvania nonetheless made them responsible should the child “become chargeable” – that is, an expense to the public coffers.872 While Frado does leave the Bellmonts’ residence when she reaches the age of majority, the Pennsylvania law suggests the existence of communal understandings that the previous owner should financially care for those who became “chargeable” to a town, as Milford insists in Frado’s case. Clearly this law was in keeping with norms that masters must render bound out children able to be independent.

New Hampshire’s laws revealed a lot of anxiety about chargeability. In The

History of Lyndeborough New Hampshire, 1735-1905, a section titled “Overseers of the

Poor” contains a telling quotation: “the poor ye have with you always, and when ye will ye may do them good.”873 The first part of this quotation draws on Scripture passages –

Matthew 26:11 and Mark 14:7. Yet the laws allowed Selectmen to “warn out of town” any individuals deemed likely to become “town charges.”874 Clear is the tension between helping the poor and avoiding their costs via expulsion. Binding children out to proper homes was supposed to resolve this challenge. Similarly, in Richardson’s The New

871 Gronningsater, “Born Free,” 126-27.

872 “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” (1780); qtd. in Gronningsater, 132.

873 Rev. D. Donovan and Jacob A. Woodward, The History of the Town of Lyndeborough New Hampshire, 1735-1905 (Lyndeborough, NH: Tufts College Press, H. W. Whittemore & Co., 1906), 270.

874 Donovan and Woodward, 270.

264

Hampshire Town Officer (1829), intense are concerns about children becoming

“chargeable” to the town or individuals in the community. Laws regarding maintaining

“illegitimate children” discussed the mother’s ability to provide witness against the alleged father of the child,875 for the purpose of procuring funds for the child’s maintenance from the father rather than public coffers.876 Similarly, there were concerns about paupers and their settlement and support, as the expense was considered to be

“among the heaviest taxes paid by the people of the state.”877

Mrs. Bellmont declares shamelessly that “the public must pay the expense” to care for Frado when she cannot work in adulthood.878 Having violated the terms of indenture by making Frado unable to work, she compounds the transgression by refusing

875 It should be noted that if the mother had committed a crime, her testimony as a witness would be inadmissible in court as she would be viewed as “incompetent to testify.” Furthermore, while a mother could give consistent witness to which man had fathered her child, her “credibility [was] left to the court or jury [that] tr[ied] the cause,” (Richardson, New-Hampshire Town Officer, 75). Moreover, she would have to state in her complaint made prior to the child’s birth both time and place where the child was conceived so that the jury could compare her claims with when the child was actually born and could then assess the validity of her claim (Richardson, 77). Such a woman could not speak generally of a time when the child might have been conceived: she was required to name an exact day (Richardson, 78). Thus the testimony of a woman who had committed no crime was assailable.

876 Richardson, 75. This refers both to “An Act to Provide for the Maintenance of Bastard Children” (1827) and was upheld in the 1842 Revised Statutes of the State of New Hampshire.

877 ON, 122; Richardson, New-Hampshire Town Officer, 205.

878 A number of scholars have considered the ways in which Frado’s illness in the text interrupts stereotypical notions of black women. For instance, Cynthia Davis explains that the text undermines “representation[s] of black bodies as truly and innately lascivious” (Davis, “Speaking the Body’s Pain,” 392); in her view, by demonstrating that black women can feel pain, Wilson “intervenes in the racist attempt to classify black as bestial” (Davis, 392). Similarly, Diane Price Herndl provides a thorough discussion of the ways in which ill black women’s bodies challenge the racist medical views of the nineteenth century and its implications for understanding Our Nig. For more about illness and race in Wilson’s text, see Davis, 391-403; and Diane Price Herndl, “The Invisible (Invalid) Woman: African- American Women, Illness, and Nineteenth-Century Narrative,” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 24, no. 6 (1995): 553-72.

265 to support her once-servant. Thus, Mrs. Bellmont emerges as a parasite on her community. We also learn that “a branch of the Bellmont family” “defrauded” a townsman of his money.879 Because of Mrs. Bellmont’s parasitic leanings, Frado is forced to give voice to her circumstance to seek financial support: as Davis puts it –

Wilson “undo[es] the silenc[ing] intended by the pain” and “compel[s] Wilson/Frado to speak”880 - to seek a means of support.

Since Mrs. Bellmont’s abuse of Frado taxes public coffers when she becomes disabled, the personal “profit” and “money” Mrs. Bellmont makes through Frado’s bondage infringes on the commonweal. This is a striking censure of the cost of unfree labour to society; that it occurs in Milford, New Hampshire – not in the US South – depicts the problem of bondage as a national, not a local, problem. Wilson has mounted a meticulously constructed abolitionist argument, that bondage is costly – rather than enriching – to American society. Yet white abolitionists, who, as Gardner notes, (quoting

William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease), “directed their efforts almost solely at the ‘distant

South,’” may have found this revelation uncomfortable, even counterproductive.881

879 ON, 123.

880 Davis, “Speaking the Body’s Pain,” 393.

881 Qtd. in Gardner, “This Attempt of Their Sister,” 241. See also William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks Search for Freedom, 1830-1861 (New York: Atheneum, 1974; reprinted Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).

266

The “Spirit of Adoption”: Religious Rhetoric and Wilson’s Appeal for Belonging

Beyond the discomfort of the abolitionist audience the publisher particularly sought, the poor reception that Wilson’s text received might also relate to her narrative’s unapologetic, African Christianity. As I suggest, in making claims for racial similarity to

(white) Christian Northerners, she may have exceed the acceptable bounds of the “Spirit of Adoption” doctrine and racial hierarchies as people in the nineteenth century understood them.

Our Nig anticipates a white, Northern reader sympathetic to abolition. Wilson mobilizes her belief in the moral responsibility of the United States, a view that had roots in the Second Great Awakening,882 by requesting aid from her white, Christian, Northern audience, a claim she can only expect to have rhetorical force if she is using her conversion – her acquired position as an “adopted” member of the family of God – as collateral. Wilson’s claim to belonging to Christian fraternity, then, deeply engaged the issues of the day in ways that would have been legible to her readers.

Religious Instruction and Frado’s Conversion

Apart from the vile abuse Frado suffers at the Bellmonts’, Mrs. Bellmont’s attitude towards Frado’s spiritual life would draw disapproval from abolitionist sympathizers. Mrs. Bellmont systematically discourages Frado from both Christian company and piety. She becomes annoyed when Frado becomes “pious”, by for she fears

882 Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 303.

267 that Frado’s piety will cause her to seek promotion and act above her station. For example, Mrs. Bellmont tells Mr. Bellmont, “Why, according to you and James, we should very soon have her in the parlor, as smart as our own girls,” and she tells him, after finding Frado reading her Bible, it is “just as though she expected to turn pious nigger, and preach to white folks.”883 But Mr. Bellmont disagrees: “Let her do just as she has a mind to. If it is a comfort to her, let her enjoy the privilege of being good. I see no objection.”884 Mrs. Bellmont nonetheless tells Frado that “religion was not meant for niggers”885 and that prayer is “for whites, not for blacks.”886 Frado “mourn[s] over her unfitness for heaven” after James’s death,887 and Mrs. Bellmont tells her she should not hope to join James in heaven.888 Here the reader might view Mrs. Bellmont as worse than proslavery advocates, who were not above using the promise of heaven to encourage

883 In The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists, Barry Hankins discusses the fact that not only did black pastors preach to other blacks during this time, but that some instructed predominantly white congregations (Barry Hankins, The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists [Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2004], 72). The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech discusses the role of black pastors in the period at length. In 1792 after one white preacher resigned his post at the “racially mixed” Portsmouth, Virginia Baptist Church, a new black preacher, Josiah Bailey, was his replacement (Shane White and Graham White, The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons, and Speech [Boston: Beacon Press, 2006], 121). The congregation then purchased his freedom and that of his whole family (Hankins, Second Great Awakening, 72). Similarly, another black pastor was hired for a white congregation in Gloucester County (Hankins, 72). Therefore when Mrs. Bellmont comments on the folly of Frado’s religious devotion, suggesting that it is “just as though she expected to turn pious nigger, and preach to white folks,” she is referencing a specific historical occurrence – one she feels was indicative of an egregious reversal of the ‘natural’ racial order of things.

884 ON, 89.

885 ON, 68.

886 ON, 94.

887 ON, 99.

888 ON, 100.

268 compliance from their slaves: she wishes Frado to eschew Christian instruction altogether. She resembles very early English colonists, who hesitated to provide religious instruction because they were unsure that it was acceptable to enslave Christians, and because black slaves might try to exploit Protestantism to achieve their liberty.889 In such instances, Wilson challenges the view among abolitionists that only southern slavery compromises slave’s souls.

Mr. Bellmont’s disagreement with Mrs. Bellmont perhaps does not reflect any commitment to treating Frado better than most of those in servitude. Even Cotton Mather believed that servants (and slaves) merited religious instruction: “Your Servants will be the Better Servants, for being made Christian Servants…. Were your Servants well tinged with the Spirit of Christianity, it would render them exceeding Dutiful unto their Masters, exceeding Patient under their Masters, exceeding faithful in their Business, and afraid of speaking or doing anything that may justly displease you.”890 Mather insisted that

“complexion” did not justify a slave owner’s failing to provide his slaves with religious instruction, stating specifically that skin darkened by “the long force of the African

889 Guasco’s note explains that in 1667 Fernando asserted himself as “a Christian [that] had been several years in England.” Despite Fernando’s claims, the court ruled against him because of a recently passed statute which clarified that the condition of slaves was in no wise altered by baptism or conversion (Warren M. Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century [Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975], 200). For more a more in-depth discussion of this and related issues, see Warren M. Billings, “The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth- Century Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly 30, no. 3 (July 1973): 467-74; Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 220.

890Cotton Mather, The Negro Christianized (Boston: B. Green, 1706), 2-3, 21; reprinted (qtd.) in Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860 (London: Cornell University Press, 1998), 32.

269

Sun”891 did not disqualify them from Christian instruction. Thus Mrs. Bellmont’s refusal to give Frado religious instruction violated community norms. Wilson amplifies this fact by portraying Mrs. Bellmont’s attempts to subdue her faith as futile; Frado is clearly a

Christian.

The effects of Mrs. Bellmont’s perception of race and Christianity so influence

Frado that when she asks James “Who made me so?” and James answers “God,” she asks once more – as if to verify the accuracy of his claim – if God made him, his aunt, and

Mrs. Bellmont. When he says “yes,” she decides then that she does not like God since he made Mrs. Bellmont white, and her black; she asks: “Why didn’t he make us both white?”,892 rather than asking why she could not be equal and remain black. Her question suggests her frustration that God has placed James at a racial advantage and herself at a disadvantage; she is unsure of God’s fairness as a result. But the kindness of James and

Aunt Abby overrides Mrs. Bellmont’s anti-Christian discouragement. Aunt Abby and

James confer about the benefits of Christian instruction for Frado, and Aunt Abby takes

Frado to hear the gospel in the evening, when Mrs. Bellmont never attends, and talks to

Frado about Christianity on the way.893 Both the minister and Aunt Abby instruct Frado in religious matters, and, after James’s death, she asks the minister if black people can go

891 Cotton Mather, The Negro Christianized, 24.

892 ON, 51.

893 ON, 68-69.

270 to heaven.894 At first, she does not believe him when he responds affirmatively, but when the minister urges the congregation “to accept the offers of mercy,” pleading: “Come to

Christ...all, young or old, white or black, bond or free, come all to Christ for pardon; repent, believe,”895 Frado begins to believe. Based on the minister’s preaching she determines to repent and become fit for heaven, feeling “[s]he would gladly repent” to see James again.896

It is significant that Frado’s desire to preserve the bond of kinship within the community of Christians primarily drives her desire to be found redeemed. James treats

Frado as kin in the spiritual sense and in kindness and closeness, and, during his lifetime, he seeks to convert her, saying that if she serves God “it will be but a short time before we are in a heavenly home together. There will never be any sickness or sorrow there.”897

His death actually secures her conversion; the prospect of a paradise where she can truly be James’s kin is exciting. For her, then, conversion means shedding not only the “fetters of sin,” but also those of race. Furthermore, the idea that she will “rise to the communion of the saints”898 implies that she will also gain a spiritual family.

894 ON, 84.

895 ON, 85.

896 ON, 85.

897 ON, 95.

898 ON, 87.

271

Despite the analysis I have presented here for Frado’s conversion to Christianity, most critics do not believe that she converts. Gates suggests that “Frado never truly undergoes a religious transformation, merely the appearance of one.”899 Beth Maclay

Doriani notes Frado’s “interest in Christianity so that she can share heaven with James” but claims she “repudiates Christianity.”900 Similarly, Karsten H. Piep argues that

James’s death makes conversion seem less appealing to Frado.901 Barbara Krah, Claudia

Tate, and Jill Jones902 concur that no conversion occurs; Harryette Mullen calls it

“partial.”903 Cynthia J. Davis acknowledges religion’s role in giving black women a voice, but suggests that “Harriet Wilson and her Frado are ‘saved’ not through religion but through speech itself.”904 She further argues that “when Frado speaks it is self – and not God – inspired”; she views Frado’s reticence to go to a Heaven where Mrs. Bellmont will gain admittance, expressed late in the novel, as proof positive that she does not convert to Christianity.905 Diane Price Herndl sidesteps the question of whether or not

899 Gates, introduction to Our Nig, xlix.

900 Beth Maclay Doriani, “Black Womanhood in Nineteenth Century America: Subversion and Self- Construction in Two Women’s Autobiographies,” American Quarterly 43, no. 2 (1991): 215.

901 Karsten H. Piep, “‘Nothing New Under the Sun’: Postsentimental Conflict in Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig,” Colloquy 11 (2006): 189.

902 Krah, “Tracking Frado,” 471-72; Claudia Tate, Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine’s Text at the Turn of the Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992: 47; Jill Jones, “The Disappearing ‘I’ in Our Nig,” Legacy 13, no. 1 (1996): 49.

903 Mullen, “Runaway Tongue,” 257.

904 Davis, “Speaking the Body’s Pain,” 396.

905 Davis, 401.

272

Frado accepts Christ as her saviour, describing the spiritual transformation that occurs while Wilson is quite sick as a “religious awakening,” but not considering it an actual adoption of faith.906

I thus recognise that I advance a minority view here.907 Numerous references to significant passages in Christian Scriptures by Frado and the narrator provide an ideological basis for believing that Frado undergoes a measured conversion. Elizabeth

West suggests that Frado’s is an “anti-conversion experience”908 and a “failed conversion” that “undermine[s] prevailing social constructions of Christianity, race, and womanhood.”909 But an enduring Christian discourse of kinship through spiritual community suffuses this text. Frado cannot feel she has access to this community without conversion. West’s argument depends on Mrs. Bellmont convincing Frado that heaven cannot admit both blacks and whites. But this argument does not take into account the fact that while Frado might fear Mrs. Bellmont, she loves James.910 This is a reversal of

906 Herndl, “Invisible (Invalid) Woman,” 567.

907 Julia Stern, P. Gabrielle Foreman, and Gates suggest that “Wilson revises...conversion” (H. Jordan Landry, “Bringing Down the House: The Trickster’s Signifying on Victimization in Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig.” Callaloo 36, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 442). See Gates, introduction to Our Nig, iii; P. Gabrielle Foreman, “The Spoken and The Silenced in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Our Nig,” Callaloo 13, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 314-15; Elizabeth J. West, “Reworking the Conversion Narrative: Race and Christianity in ‘Our Nig,’” Melus 24, no. 2 (1999): 9-12; and Julia Stern, “Excavating Genre in Our Nig,” American Literature 67, no. 3 (September 1995): 441-42.

908 West, “Reworking the Conversion Narrative,” 4.

909 West, 3.

910 Barbara A. White reveals in “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil” that Wilson’s masters were, in fact, the Haywards. We thus discover that the Haywards’ eldest son is named George M.; Wilson may have named her son George Mason for this boy, and based Frado’s relationship with James on her feelings for George (White, 23). White also suggests that Wilson’s comment – “a frail child, driven from shelter by the cruelty of his mother, was an object of interest to James” (50) – is meant to imply that Mrs. Bellmont beat James as

273 expected gender roles, because Evangelicals preached that a woman’s place was in the home911; one would therefore expect the catechesis to be provided by Mrs. Bellmont as the lady of the house, rather than from James, her son. Thus, Frado listens eagerly when

James suggests that there is a heavenly community to which she might gain access.

Ultimately, her closeness to James overrules her fear of Mrs. Bellmont, and she believes that heaven accommodates blacks as well. Certainly, Frado wavers, but this is not grounds for believing that her conversion is ineffectual, because – as the Scriptures demonstrate – it is acceptable to make strides towards belief while acknowledging a struggle with unbelief.912 In this schema, then, the intensity of Frado’s questioning – and the race-based concerns she has regarding Christianity for blacks – does not suggest failed conversion. Moreover, while West suggests that Frado fails to convert because she

“never expels the whiteness that impedes her vision of heaven,”913 we see that Frado does not require a white-less afterlife; indeed, she wants a heaven characterized by racial equality, and she moves forward with conversion on the basis of her belief that she will share a deeper kinship with James, his sister Jane, and Aunt Abby, white people for whom she cares deeply. In this regard, my reading stands in stark contrast to that of John

well, a claim she bolsters with evidence that Rebecca S. Hutchinson Hayward’s father was abusive to his children (White, 31). Thus, Frado and James may have had an unusually strong bond.

911 Trisha Tucker, “Gendering the Evangelical Novel,” Rocky Mountain Review (Spring 2012): 84.

912 When a father brings his son, who is possessed by an evil spirit, to Jesus, Jesus tells the father “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (vs. 23). The father weeps, crying “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (vs. 24). Even though this father clearly admits at this juncture to the fact that he is struggling with unbelief, Jesus honors his sincerity and immediately casts the evil spirit out of the son. For more on this passage, please see Mark 9:23-29.

913 West, “Reworking the Conversion Narrative,” 4.

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Ernest, who suggests that Wilson “pictures a system that recognizes and capitalizes on racial tensions and mutual distrust, a new system of exchange and balanced conflict – a new economy of identity – that readers support by purchasing the book and participate in by reading it.”914 According to Ernest, “Wilson grounds her goal of an ‘economically profitable job of work’ in an eschatological vision of the existing economic system, and a consideration of the market economy as the vehicle God provided to regulate and improve human affairs.”915 The reader comes to see that Wilson’s text “is designed to initiate a more active system of exchange, based on mutual dependence and devoted to communal development. In Wilson’s vision of Christianity, as presented in this work, redemptive faith requires that “one redeem one’s resources and economic management of selfhood.”916 Thus, Wilson supplies to the reader what “only she and others like her can supply: the products of experience and the profits of a fully realized and hard-earned

Christian perspective.”917 While I do not agree with Ernest that Wilson’s vision is primarily economic – I believe it is religious, and that her understanding of Christian family necessarily extends, over time, to the familial claims for solvency and assistance she makes – I would push these ideas further. Ultimately, the paradise Frado anticipates – a home free of the Mrs. Bellmonts of the world – excites her.

914 John Ernest, “Economies of Identity: Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig,” PMLA 109, no. 3 (May 1994): 425.

915 Ernest, 432.

916 Ernest, 434.

917 Ernest, 435.

275

Even James suggests that, if Frado converts to Christianity, there are “elements in her heart which, transformed and purified by the gospel, would make her worthy [of] the esteem and friendship of the world”;918 thus, he expects conversion to unlock a new dimension of communal acceptance of Frado. Given how widespread Christian adherence was during the nineteenth century, and James’s own deep commitment to the faith, his reference to “the world” is unlikely to indicate only her acceptance by secular society.

James is effectively forecasting the ways in which Frado’s life will become intimately bound to the larger Christian community of which he, and many of his society, profess to be a part. Because of the layers of Scriptural complexity implicated in Wilson’s text, I am also inclined to agree with this assessment of William L. Andrews in Three Classic

African-American Novels:

Consistent with a view of Christianity put forward in much nineteenth century African-American writing, Alfrado’s faith transforms her self- image, endows her with a genuine sense of power and hope, and spurs her toward intellectual achievement. The ultimate contest in the novel centers on whether Mrs. Bellmont’s physical and spiritual persecution can blight Alfrado’s sense of personal value…. Alfrado ultimately wins this struggle for her soul, testifying to her victory by setting out on her own in quest of economic, intellectual, and spiritual “self improvement.”919

The transformed Frado lays hold of the self-improvement spurred on by her conversion. I suggest that making Frado’s faith the theological basis for new avenues of kinship and the cause of her revitalized conceptualization of herself shows just how persuasive this

918 ON, 69.

919William L. Andrews, Ed. The African-American Novel in the Age of Reaction. (New York: Mentor, 1992), 20; reprinted (qtd.) in West, “Reworking the Conversion Narrative,” 10.

276

Christian rhetoric of spiritual community and kinship can be. Wilson’s powerful mobilization of Christian discourse should determine our understanding of this text.

As a discourse, the notion of a “spirit of adoption” is the hinge upon which

Wilson’s argument turns.920 Romans eight explains the theological underpinnings by which individuals are considered children of God. Paul explains that no one can please

God if he or she is “carnal[ly] minded” (vs. 6)921 and “in the flesh” (vs. 8). It is the

“Spirit” that brings “life” (vs. 10), and all who experience this life “are debtors” (vs. 12) to “the Spirit of God” and “are the sons of God” (vs.14). This transformation, when received, by one’s personal choice to shed the carnal and fleshly and live in the Spirit bequeaths “the Spirit of Adoption whereby [sons and daughters of God] cry, Abba,

Father” (vs. 15). The Spirit then seals this “witness” that those who have undergone this change are “the children of God” (vs. 16).

Paul’s explanation here is more than a rote discussion of changed status. He continues, saying that such “children” [of God] become “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”, both “suffer[ing] with him” and “glorified” with him (vs. 17). These heirs wait to step into “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (vs. 21) and “the adoption...the [bodily] redemption” (vs. 23). Nothing can separate these adopted children

920 For more on the Spirit of Adoption, see John Wesley, The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption: A Sermon on Rom. Viii. 15. Dublin: S. Powell MDCCXLVII, 1747; Robert Brian Lewis, Paul’s “Spirit of Adoption” in its Roman Imperial Context. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark US, 2016; Trevor J. Burke, Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor. Nottingham, England: Apollos; Downers Grove, III; InterVarsity Press, 2006.

921 All references taken from the Book of Romans, the eighth chapter, The Holy Bible, King James Version. Quotations from specific verses of Romans 8 indicated by (vs.), etc.

277 from the love of Christ – not “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (vs. 35). The spirit of adoption as presented in this passage obliterates the racially-defined hierarchies of Christianity Mrs. Bellmont strives to impress upon Frado; the declaration that all individuals who shed their carnal desires and choose to live according to the Spirit can become God’s children in the fullest sense – heirs – with all attendant benefits - is what Wilson grasps tenaciously in her final request.

In this vein, then, I turn again to the narrator’s poignant plea at the conclusion of the narrative and suggest the ways in which it signifies the completeness of her conversion to Christianity: “Reposing on God, she has thus far journeyed securely. Still an invalid, she asks your sympathy, gentle reader. Refuse not, because some part of her history is unknown. Save by the Omniscient God. Enough has been unrolled to demand your sympathy and aid.”922 By invoking God, Frado presents herself as part of the white

Christian reader’s family, in spite of Mrs. Bellmont’s efforts to frustrate her conversion inclinations. Frado’s indenture and Mrs. Bellmont’s subsequent refusal to assist her when she becomes too sick to work provides a backdrop for Wilson’s final plea. Mrs. Bellmont throws Frado upon the mercies of public aid after her mistreatment precisely because she does not view Frado as her racial equal or blood kin causes. Her abandonment of her servant, whose health she has destroyed, is the means by which she inscribes Frado’s otherness to herself. In contrast to West’s claim that the text never confirms Frado’s religious faith, the conclusion of the narrative clearly demonstrates her conversion and

922 ON, 154.

278 resolve to utilize key facets of the Christian discourse to which she now has access as a member of the Christian community. Frado realizes that while her mother may not have been a Christian,923 converting has both spiritual and economic value. Through the language of spiritual adoption,924 she realizes that she can break away from her mother’s legacy. Her mother’s view – that children can be “heirs also of parental disgrace and calumny, from which only long years of patient endurance in paths of rectitude can disencumber them”925 – sounds very much like Christian repentance in its stress on turning from an undesirable path towards following and remaining on a path informed by righteousness. But Wilson moves beyond this, making it clear that this “right path” is

Christian and suggesting that her Christian membership means her believing brethren owe her assistance and kinship.

While Our Nig does not represent the confessional stages associated with the

Puritan conversion narrative by explicitly repenting of sins, declaring faith, and testifying to salvation,926 Frado engages clearly the longstanding belief that one’s life demonstrates

923 ON, 16.

924 All the discourse Wilson employs regarding kinship and community mobilizes the Biblical “spirit of adoption” whereby those who convert are inducted in to Christian kinship.

925 ON, 6-7. West also suggests in her second footnote that Mark 10:14 places an “obligation [on] adults to insure the redemption of their children” (West, “Reworking the Conversion Narrative,” 26). This is incorrect – parents are admonished to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord; however, Scriptures make it abundantly clear that conversion and redemption entirely depend on individual will to repent and follow Jesus, decisions parents cannot make on behalf of their children.

926 Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 64-65.

279 the fruits of one’s repentance.927 It therefore becomes unnecessary for Wilson to employ a traditional conversion narrative. Frado’s schoolteacher, Miss Marsh, reminds the students of “their duties to the poor and friendless; their cowardice in attacking a young innocent child; referred them to one who looks not on outward appearances, but on the heart.”928 She further instructs them to “lay aside all prejudice.”929 Frado’s schoolmates treat her with increasing kindness after this sermon; she gains acceptance and finds camaraderie at school. Thus the events demonstrate the effectiveness of the Christian rhetoric upon which Miss Marsh draws.

Indeed, Miss Marsh’s de facto preaching allude directly to scriptures: her reference to the “poor and friendless” invokes 1 Timothy 5:5; all of 1 Timothy 5 is about the importance of caring for widows, elders, and slaves. We are told that those who work deserve wages. Frado, of course, receives no wages. Miss Marsh also refers to 1 Samuel

16, where the prophet Samuel, sent to anoint young David, God’s choice for King, looks at David’s older, strapping and handsome brothers and assumes that one of them is the

927 Luke 3 provides key biblical precedent for the suggestion that one’s life will demonstrate the fruits of repentance. In this passage, John the Baptist speaks to a large crowd, many of whom want to be baptized. He instructs them, saying “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (vs. 8). This comment not only reveals the spiritual importance of bringing forth faith-based works that demonstrate true repentance and belief in God, but that anyone (i.e. even the stones) can become children of God if he ordains it. John goes on to say that, much like a barren tree, anyone who does not “bring forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire (vs. 9). Concerned, his hearers ask “What shall we do then?” (vs. 10) and he replies, explaining that those who have two coats should give one coat to someone else who “hath none,” and do the same with “meat.” The message in this passage is central to Wilson’s understanding of how faith works, who is eligible for conversion, and what those in the Christian community owe to their brethren and those in need as illustrated in 1 Timothy 5.

928 ON, 32.

929 ON, 32.

280 likely lead candidate to be king. Verse seven states that “I have refused [one of David’s brothers]: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” By revealing Wilson’s familiarity with

Scripture, these allusions suggest she is a Christian, and that Frado accepts the terms of conversion in accordance with Miss March’s words. They stress the valuation of the soul and that its condition, not race, determines acceptance – which is exactly the logic the final bid for economic solvency employs. The passages from Timothy directly implicate the Christian discourse which suggests that each Believer is ‘his brother’s keeper’ as well.

By demonstrating the effectiveness of Miss Marsh’s Christian rhetoric on Frado and her classmates, Wilson reveals her own profound - if subtle - conversion. At this juncture, Christian rhetoric serves as a powerful tool by which Frado might win better treatment for herself, giving her, and, Wilson, as the autobiographer, incentive to convert.

To understand further the veracity of Wilson’s claim to Christian belonging, it is important to consider the note of support Margaretta Thorn appends to Our Nig. This piece – entitled “To the friends of our dark-complexioned brethren and sisters, this note is intended” – reinforces the words of Miss Marsh. It claims, “I have long since learned that we are not to look at the color of the hair, the eyes, or the skin, for the man or woman; their life is the criterion we are to judge by.”930 Thorn then discusses Frado’s experience

930 All references to the appended material by Thorn are from a different edition of Our Nig than I use elsewhere in this chapter, resulting in pagination differences, etc. Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Eds. P. Gabrielle Foreman and Reginald H. Pitts. Penguin Classics, 2005. Thorn, note to Our Nig, 78.

281 as a “child of misfortune”931 and implies that the Bellmonts feigned Christianity (“calling themselves Christians [the good Lord deliver me from such]”) and “likewise ruined her health by hard work, both in the field and house.” In her estimation, Frado was “indeed a slave, in every sense of the word.”932

But Thorn’s words are no mere summary of Frado’s life, for she continues, stating that Wilson “is now trying to write a book” and requests that the “public…look favorably on it, and patronize the same, for she is a worthy woman.”933 This reference to Wilson as a “worthy woman,” and the subsequent explanation of Wilson’s life provided by Thorn, is very important: by it, Thorn positions Wilson as an exemplary woman who was married, had a child, and has now fallen on hard times.934 Thomas Heywood’s 1640 The

Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of the Most Worthy Women of the World was one of the earlier establishments of this literary tradition935; it told of ordinary women from a variety of life situations and faiths who had faced and overcome challenges. To claim that

Wilson is a “worthy woman” is to bestow on her a designation that was predominantly used to speak of white American women.936 It was not uncommon that such worthy

931 Thorn, 78.

932 Thorn, 78.

933 Thorn, 78.

934 Thorn, 78-79.

935 Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 264.

936 Lerner, 267.

282 women were afflicted by illness, loss of husband, or economic hardship.937 Biographies, tracts, and pamphlets of such inspirational worthy women enjoyed wide circulation.938

In France, poor worthy women received a lot of financial and material support; moreover, a group called “The Duty to Mothers” advocated for state support for poor mothers.939

Similar ideas took hold in nineteenth-century America, with the Worthy Woman’s Aid and Hospital erected sometime before 1875, a women’s shelter which the wives of a number of “prominent St. Louisans” created, largely for widows.940

By referring to Wilson as a worthy woman who is part of “suffering humanity,”

Thorn represents Wilson as deserving of the same assistance meted out to other white women who have fallen on hard times. In the same way that poor white worthy women did not lose their national identity as Americans, so too, she indicates, Wilson’s hardships make her no less the readers’ own Christian sister and fellow American.

Thus Thorn clinches Wilson’s argument. Ultimately, the one sense in which white people owe Wilson their support is as spiritual family members. Because Frado has seen the effectiveness of this powerful Christian discourse upon her classmates, she has every

937 “Preface,” in Worthy Women of Our First Century, ed. Sarah Butler Wister and Agnes Irwin (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877), 6.

938 Diana Peschier, “Forgive Me Father: The Sacrament of Confession as a Means to Control and Debauch Young Girls and Women,” in Nineteenth-Century Anti-Catholic Discourses: The Case of Charlotte Bronte (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005),168n6.

939 Rachel G. Fuchs and Victoria E. Thompson, Women in Nineteenth-Century Europe New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), 144.

940 Michael J. Meyer, A Sense of Charity: An Excavation of the Worthy Woman’s Aid and Hospital. (Gateway, 2015), 9.

283 reason to believe that it will come to her aid again, and thus provide her economic solvency by purchasing her book. In contrast to her mother, who believes she can

“ascend” and “become an equal”941 of the nameless, upper class man who impregnates her – a belief which precipitates her social fall from grace – Frado instead grabs hold of the racial equality and liberation theology to which her Christian conversion experience entitles her.

Wilson’s later career as a Spiritualist, years after the publication of Our Nig and her clear appeals to Christian discourse, further support the notion that Wilson did not reject Christianity as a child or a young adult. Indeed, her later activities are telling: as

Ellis and Gates indicate, Wilson was elected a member of the Third Annual Convention of the Massachusetts Spiritual Association in January 1868 in Boston, and lectured

“gratuitously” (uncompensated) for this association. While Ellis and Gates may speculate accurately that her engagement in the convention was a strategic means to gain prominence in a white-controlled organization, they acknowledge that Wilson may have had “an earnest commitment to a self-described ‘liberal Christian’ movement espousing the abolition of slavery worldwide, meaningful reconstruction in the South, women’s rights (over one third of the lectures listed in the Banner over the years were female), temperance, abstinence from tobacco, and Native American rights.”942 In any case, records of Wilson’s public addresses include one about the theme, “Who and what is

941 ON, 5-6.

942 R.J. Ellis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “‘Grievances at the Treatment She Received’: Harriet E. Wilson’s Spiritualist Career in Boston, 1868-1900,” American Literary History 24, no. 2 (2012): 237.

284

God, and in whom and how are His powers and goodness most manifest?” and another focused on spiritualism and its teachings with an emphasis on “the power of love to conquer and subdue all the evil passions in the world.”943

While Ellis and Gates point to Wilson’s involvement in the Shawmut Lyceum, a group that believed that “the old theologic systems”944 had perished with the birth of “the modern spiritual movement,”945 as proof of Wilson’s skepticism,946 from the perspective of contemporary academic religious studies, it appears that Wilson chose syncretically to blend some of her Christian beliefs with those of the spiritualist movement.947 Her involvement was therefore not a rejection of Christianity, but rather, her attempt to blend some of the tenets she most valued from Christian discourse with a spiritualist leaning which she found liberating. While people who adhere to the most traditional practice of a particular faith often reject syncretic belief systems, religious practitioners of a syncretically blended belief system, as well as scholars, consider such systems legitimate expressions of faith. Wilson’s beliefs may have been extremely liberal, but they were nonetheless Christian. Moreover, Wilson’s decision to adopt a spiritualist stance may have been an attempt at procuring a means of economic survival that her earlier

943 Ellis and Gates, 238.

944 Gardner, “This Attempt of Their Sister,” 8.

945 Ellis and Gates, “Grievances at the Treatment,” 258.

946 Ellis and Gates, 258.

947 For more on religious syncretism in general and as a strategy for resistance in particular, see Shaw, Rosalind, and Steward, Charles, eds. “Introduction: Problematizing Syncretism” from Syncretism/Anti- Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis. Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994.

285 utilization of a conservative Christian paradigm in Our Nig did not achieve. As Gates and

Ellis tell it, her awareness of the harmfulness of racial stereotypes in Our Nig clashes painfully with the role she adopted for survival as a spiritualist: that of “possessed

African” (as a trance medium) who invoked “Indian guides” she claimed allowed her to conjure the presence of dead loved ones, creating a ritualistic performance that capitalized on stereotypes of Native Americans.948 Certainly, this role seems so at odds with her beliefs as evidenced in Our Nig that one wonders if they were insincere or, instead, undertaken in her desperation to survive. As Ellis and Gates explain, Wilson’s reinvention of herself as a spiritualist generated public interest and won her fees on which she could survive, in spite of her ill health. But banking on her exoticism had a cost in that postwar New England society overlooked and marginalised her, favouring whites in the spiritualist movement.949 Nonetheless, evidence does not support the idea that

Wilson’s, or Frado’s, conversion itself was insincere.

The Question of Audience

A critical aspect of sussing out the anatomy of the request for assistance Wilson makes to her reader is discerning who exactly composed her intended readership. Thus far, scholarly consensus regarding Wilson’s potential audience has been lacking.

Pratofiorio claims that “Wilson’s novel was written into a void of no audience” thus

948 Ellis and Gates, “Grievances at the Treatment,” 254.

949 Ellis and Gates, 246.

286 precipitating its “invisibility.”950 Others believe her audience was her “colored brethren” rather than the Northern White reader.951 Doriani quotes Wilson directly when she asserts, “Wilson...undermines readers’ expectation by her conscious selection of an audience: she excludes white readers from the outset, appealing to her ‘colored brethren universally for patronage’ and asserting that it is not for ‘the refined and the cultivated’ that ‘these crude narrations appear.’”952 Indeed, Wilson expresses her concern that her

“coloured brethren” will judge her “erudite” use of language as a symbol of advantage and reject her. In contrast, Margaret Lindgren believes that Wilson’s “primary audience” is white women.953 In her view, this creates an altered dynamic whereby the narrative is written with an understanding that “there is no shared subjectivity with the audience”954 – that the audience identifies with the forces that oppress her and her heroine, producing an

“essentially problematic audience relationship.”955 This fraught relationship essentially

950 Pratofiorito, “To Demand Your Sympathy,” 43.

951 For scholarship that asserts Wilson’s text is exclusively addressed to her “colored brethren,” see Bernard W. Bell, The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), p. 48; Doriani, “Black Womanhood,” 213; and Hazel V. Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). For scholarship that claims Wilson’s text is primarily directed towards whites, see Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “My Statue, My Self: Autobiographical Writings of Afro-American Women,” in Reading Black, Reading Feminists, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Penguin, 1990), 185, 192; and for scholarship that notes the ways in which these two dominant views complicate each other, see Ernest, “Economies of Identity,” 424-38.

952 Doriani, “Black Womanhood,” 213.

953 Lindgren, “Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson,” 18.

954 Lindgren, 18.

955 Lindgren, 18.

287 forced Wilson, as autobiographer, to carefully “mould” her portrayals in such a way as to not be abrasive to her “intended audience.”

Gates indicates that Wilson’s subject would have been “highly controversial” among white abolitionists956 and Gardner’s meticulous review of the novel’s contemporary reception supports this view. Wilson would consider her circumstances relevant to abolition, not least because freedom suits such as the case that culminated in the Dred Scott decision were regularly launched and battled via Northern courts.957

Wilson sought to elucidate the need for empowerment of blacks against bondage in the

North. As Breau notes, the image of Frado with her mouth kept open with a block of wood betrays Wilson’s awareness of the strategic silencing of certain slave experiences in most abolitionist-endorsed slave narratives. Mrs. Bellmont’s connection to Wilson’s mistress, Rebecca Hayward, completes the argument.958 Mrs. Hayward’s natal family were connected by both blood and marriage959 ties to the Hutchinson Family Singers, a family of performers White compares to Pete Seeger, an American folk artists and

956 Gates, introduction to Our Nig, xii.

957 As Edlie L. Wong explains, even freedom suits in the North systematically undermined this claim of a historically free American North. In Neither Fugitive nor Free, she reveals: Freedom suits unsettle the abolitionist imaginary of freedom as mapped onto a trajectory from south to north. Although northern abolitionists tended to imagine the story of freedom as a single and finished event once the slave reached the free states, these freedom suits show that for many black men and women, the line between slavery and freedom was far less clearly demarcated. Freedom suits thus reveal that the stark dichotomy of slavery and freedom was itself a regional fiction of abolitionism. Edlie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 8.

958 Breau, “Identifying Satire,” 461.

959 White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” Figure 5, 42.

288 activist, for their public support of progressive causes in the 1840s and 1850s, and their successful rallying of supporters.960 Thus, the Haywards were strongly connected to abolitionists.

Our Nig concludes with a direct request for aid. Wilson asks her white readership not to refuse her plea because “some part of her history is unknown.”961 She claims she has only “omitted what would most provoke shame in our good anti-slavery friends at home.”962 Here she points out the falsity of white abolitionists’ claim for the completeness of slave narratives that were published as a means to procure financial aid for the antislavery cause. Such narratives were constructed with similar choices made about what material to include and what to exclude; we see this in Wilson’s novel as well. As White explains, “Wilson may have deliberately pushed the maltreatment by professed abolitionists forward in time [in Our Nig] in order to disassociate it from the

[real] Bellmonts.”963 In White’s view, this demonstrates that Wilson sought to abide by abolitionist codes of politeness by disguising the identities of the real life Haywards because of their connection to the Hutchinsons, a view I believe is correct.

The fact that Wilson’s preface explicitly addresses her “colored brethren,”964 shrinks in comparison to the reality that, as Pratofiorito notes, the rest of the book makes

960 White, 35.

961 ON, 130.

962 ON, 3.

963 White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” 38.

964 ON, 3.

289 direct appeals to a white audience. To this end, Wilson may have begun by addressing her fellow blacks as a mark of “humility” before utilizing “rhetorical strategies and the gaps” that “can only be understood by locating them in her attempt to justify her story to a potentially critical – and white – audience.”965 Pratofiorito draws on Pratt’s discussion of the autoethnographic text, in which Pratt suggests that texts such as Our Nig “are typically heterogeneous on the reception end…usually addressed both to metropolitan readers and to literate sectors of the speaker’s own social group, and bound to be received very differently by each.”966 Furthermore, in passages that invoke the “gentle reader,”

Wilson typically appears to address a white audience,967 such as “You can philosophize, gentle reader, upon the impropriety of such [interracial] unions [for instance, the one between Frado’s parents], and preach dozens of sermons of the evils of amalgamation.

Want is a more powerful philosopher and preacher.”968 Opposition to miscegenation was largely a white phenomenon. As Pratofiorito points out, this passage does not confront the reader or directly take a position on miscegenation, though it does imply that disparaging it will not prevent its occurrence. Thus she suggests Wilson sought to appeal to a white audience by softening her true view that anti-miscegenation laws degrade black people and their claims to personhood and citizenship. In a similar vein, Ernest

965 Pratofiorito, “To Demand Your Sympathy,” 41.

966 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Vintage, 1997), 7; reprinted (qtd.) in Pratofiorito, 41.

967 Pratofiorito, 41.

968 ON, 13.

290 acknowledges that Wilson shows an “awareness of her white audience, for her ‘colored brethren’ would need no reminders that ‘slavery’s shadows fall’ even in the North.”969

Wilson’s request for financial assistance from the reader clearly addresses a white audience. As she explains: “Deserted by kindred, disabled by failing health, I am forced to some experiment which shall aid me in maintaining myself and [my] child without extinguishing this feeble life.”970 At the time when she makes this claim, her son,

George, is around three years old. Her husband has not returned from the sea and as an effective widow she is desperate. White identifies Wilson’s son, who died of unknown causes a mere six months after the publication of Our Nig, as “George Wilson, age three, a ‘colored’ resident of Milford” who appears in the detailed records of residents at the

Hillsborough Country Farm during his four week stay there.971 This poor farm was known for its terrible conditions, and Wilson left George with a foster family while she sought employment in Massachusetts, reuniting with him shortly before his death after the effort proved fruitless.972 Wilson’s move from addressing blacks to addressing whites thus constitutes a transition from idealism to realism. At the time of Wilson’s writing, it is primarily white people who possess the resources to assist her financially.

969 Ernest, “Economies of Identity,” 425.

970 ON, 3.

971 White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” 24.

972 White, 25.

291

Wilson’s claim to be only selling Our Nig because she has no other means of support (despite her best efforts) also suggests her familiarity with the laws of New

Hampshire. These rhetorical moves clarify that she has not been “idle” and “dissolute,” that she has not engaged in “idleness,” “crime,” or “intemperance,” all categories of individuals Richardson identifies as unworthy of support. Indeed, she qualifies as an individual who, in Richardson’s words, is “by misfortune reduced to the painful necessity of asking relief from town, [and therefore] deserves and should receive the kindest attention…[and] ought not only to be made as comfortable as due regard to the economy will permit, but be relieved in the mode best calculated to alleviate…misfortunes.”973

Thus Wilson would have hoped that her request would generate sympathy.

Similarly, she holds that her heroine does not share Mrs. Bellmont’s reckless attitude towards public relief; she has “the old resolution to take care of herself, to cast off the unpleasant charities of the public.”974 She tries to become self-sufficient by sewing and bonnet-making975 – indeed, she is “expert with her needle” and “soon equal[s] her instructress”976 – but cannot support herself and her son in this way.

973 Richardson, New-Hampshire Town Officer, 204.

974 ON, 124,

975 ON, 124.

976 ON, 124.

292

Martialing Literary Genres to Make Her Case

As the similarity of Frado to the archetypal Victorian needlewoman suggests,977

Wilson did make use of some of the conventions of domestic and seduction novels in the nineteenth century. Wilson’s use of autobiography becomes central to making this portrayal of the precariousness of her financial situation effective. Beth Maclay Doriani describes Our Nig as autobiography, yet notes her use of the archetype, in a “subversive interplay with reader’s expectations, as [she] draw[s] on and reshape[s] popular female genres – the seduction novel and the domestic novel – as well as an Afro-American genre, the slave narrative.”978 She also notes that Wilson skillfully uses fiction in her autobiography and “submerge[s] her voice under the third-person point of view yet present[s] herself through other, more subtle means”979: even her chapter titles blur the line between fiction and autobiography and, occasionally, she drops third-person narration in favour of first. In Doriani’s view, “these inconsistencies narrow the gap

977 Scholars of Our Nig consistently elide this longstanding portrayal of the Victorian needlewoman. General nods to her sewing are often similar to Doriani’s explanation: “She perfects her sewing, a gesture towards her own economic independence” (Doriani, “Black Womanhood,” 217). Jennifer Larson also argues that “both her writing and her sewing are non-alienated labour, work done by and for herself in order to foster her own goals and based on her own cultivated abilities. Both are work she can take pride in” (Jennifer Larson, “Renovating Domesticity in Ruth Hall, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Our Nig,” Women’s Studies 38, no. 5 (2009): 553). In her view, “Frado’s ability to learn to sew well is an affirmation of herself. Her competence (or, even more, expertise) is crucial to developing the confidence to feel self-reliance as possible” (Larson, “Renovating Domesticity,” 553). While these views are not incorrect, the heightened risk Wilson/Frado experiences as a colored woman unable to live by her needle underscores some of the urgency in her text.

978 Doriani, “Black Womanhood,” 200.

979 Doriani, 214.

293 between autobiography and fiction, as the reader hears Wilson’s own voice in these lapses into the first person.”980 The interconnection of the protagonist and the author become all the more apparent as the narrative hastens to its conclusion and on into appended letters. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. suggests, “the fiction, or guise of her fictional account of her life, tends to fall away the nearer her novel approaches its own ending, and the ending of her text, the composite biography written by Mrs. Wilson’s friends.”981

Wilson’s autobiographical invocation of the specter of this at-risk seamstress justifies Gates’s discussion of Wilson’s blending of both “sentimental novel” and “slave narrative” conventions, and his assertion that the combination becomes a “new form, of which Our Nig is a unique example,”982 one that powerfully mobilizes autobiography.983

In short, Wilson’s use of the autobiographical in her narrative is critical to understanding her request for personal aid. Numerous scholarly discussions have debated the role of autobiography in Wilson’s text.984 As Doriani points out, audiences did not assume black

980 Doriani, 214.

981 Gates, introduction to Our Nig, xxxvi.

982 Gates, iii.

983 Wilson clearly participated in what Valerie Smith identifies as the common practice of slave narratives to “combine elements of history, autobiography, and fiction.” Valerie Smith, Self-Discovery and Authority in African-American Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 11. As well, P. Gabrielle Foreman points out “Wilson’s identification with her subject and her claiming of the narrative” as confirmation that the novel is autobiographical (Foreman, “The Spoken and the Silenced,” 314). Foreman’s approach here bears similarities to Julia Stern’s claims that Wilson’s text is a “fictionalized autobiography” (Stern, “Excavating Genre,” 439).

984 R. J. Ellis disputes the reading of Our Nig as autobiographical, arguing Wilson may not have been indentured; this assertion clearly elides White’s fastidious scholarship on this point. While we know this assertion is historically inaccurate – Wilson was an indentured child – he rightly points out that there is a fictional element to her novel. “What Happened to Harriet E. Wilson, nee Adams?: Was She Really Hattie

294 writers’ autobiographies were authentic.985 Thus they strove to write markers of

“authenticity” into their texts to make their stories appear credible to white readers.986

Moreover, the letter from Allida, who, until this point, has been unknown to the reader, yet closes the book, testifies to Wilson’s possession of a “good character” and urges

“potential readers to buy the book” clearly placing Wilson’s text within the genre of autobiography.987 In fact, Allida’s letter refers to Wilson as Frado, reinforcing the connection between them.988

Because there is scholarly consensus about the accuracy of viewing Wilson’s fictionalized text as part of the genre of autobiography, I will analyze Our Nig in light of how it challenges dominant expectations of nineteenth century women’s novels in order to provide justification for her request for financial assistance via the purchase of her book at the conclusion of her narrative. To effectively initiate this much later request for assistance, Wilson rightly anticipates that her audience will want proof that she has done all in her power to survive, and indeed, thrive, after her binding out at the Bellmont’s home. What follows illuminates the series of textual movements Wilson makes to depict

Green? A Review of the Foreman-Pitts (2005) edition of Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black,” Transition 99 (2008): 165.

985 Doriani, “Black Womanhood,” 206.

986 Doriani, 206.

987 Foreman, “The Spoken and The Silenced,” 314.

988 Foreman, 314-15.

295 both her similarities to, and her differences from, the reader in a way that makes plain the depth of her need to the New England readers she believes should redress her plight.

Wilson does not blindly accept the, as if it were sacred code, the angelic vision of domesticity some white women writers often emulated.989 Rather, she utilizes dimensions of this code as many white women writers did,990 yet with a difference: she mobilizes the social contract she believes exists between Christian brethren to assist each other – to reach out to the white Christian northern audience that owes her aid and rescue.

Wilson’s situation raises the question that looms large at the conclusion of the narrative: what should happen if she fails to get the support she needs? As Gates argues, “one discursive field ‘collapses’...into quite another.”991 This heady mixture of fiction and autobiography becomes all the more worrisome, each campaigning for dominance.

By trying to subsist by her needle and writing a book, Wilson argues she has used sanctioned modes of economic enhancement for women. Moreover, she is suggesting that she is not so much begging for alms as proposing a justified exchange; far be it from her to become – like the Bellmonts – an anti-social parasite. At the same time, Wilson resists many stereotypical conventions. For instance, she does not eschew economic concerns. Her rejection of the notion that interracial unions are inherently wrong

989 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “‘To Weave It into the Literature of the Country’: Epic and the Fictions of African American Women,” in Poetics of the Americas: Race, Founding, and Textuality, ed. Bainard Cowan (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 72.

990 Fox-Genovese, 72.

991 Gates, introduction to Our Nig, xxvi.

296 represents another form of resistance to stock moralism. She demonstrates that moral, social, and economic imperatives can clash, forcing an individual towards supposed

“deviance” that generates a personally efficacious result.

In my view, by being very careful to demonstrate that Frado is pious, pure, and fair skinned – a tragic mulatta, the prototype of a black woman most likely to be freed –

Wilson is not so much looking to completely revise womanhood, but to more gently and compellingly plead her case as a woman who has been wronged by her host family during the course of her childhood binding out. While, as Doriani notes, she “show[s] her understanding that economic independence is vital to freedom as America defines it,” her foray “into the marketplace” is far from “fearless.”992

Doriani feels that racism makes it impossible for Our Nig to offer a happy ending.993 Similarly, Gates explains that “the protagonist’s status remains indeterminate, precisely because she has placed the conclusion of her ‘story,’ the burden of closure, upon her readers, who must purchase her book if the author-protagonist is to become self- sufficient.”994 Wilson’s dependence on the white Christian Northern community for her rescue and ultimate subsistence makes it impossible for her to provide closure for Frado or herself. Wilson offers capitalist initiative as an answer to her original labour exploitation: she attempts to undo the effects of the damage the Haywards did to her by

992 Doriani, “Black Womanhood,” 213.

993 Doriani, 218.

994 Gates, introduction to Our Nig, x1vii.

297 seeking to sustain herself. For this, she depends on the patronage of the white Northern reader.

The reconception of Mrs. Bellmont’s abusive treatment of Frado as an expense to the public is central to comprehending Wilson’s argument for solvency. Our Nig demonstrates that Wilson understood child binding in a way that transcended her own experience. Both the childhood appetite for literature she makes evident – Gates and other scholars have noted that Wilson appears well-read – and her daily absorption in

Milford’s Northern-American culture would have been powerful teachers. Our Nig demonstrates that Wilson realized the power of all these historical, literary, and legal narratives.

Another example of the Bellmont’s dereliction of their duties lies in the legal requirement for masters to provide freedom dues upon completion of service.995 (Talbot

County, Maryland, is the only known exception to the rule that binding out contracts in nineteenth-century North America required freedom dues.) While in England, freedom dues were two suits of clothing and nothing else, in North America, dues could consist of money, livestock, tools, and other resources to enable young people to support themselves in addition to clothing.996 Contracts named a civil authority that approved and

995 Herndon and Murray, “Overviews,” 1.

996 Hindle and Herndon, “Recreating Proper Families,” 33. Towner also confirms that the “customary two suits of clothing” (Towner, “Poor as a Source,” 55) was given as freedom dues upon completion of bound out service in Massachusetts and New Plymouth during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with some children getting “additional dues of a sum of money” (Towner, 56).

298 regulated their guaranties; informal child binding out involved verbal and/or written agreements between the host family and the child’s parents.

There are two main theories scholars have championed about how freedom dues functioned for bound-labourers. The first view is that freedom dues were primarily instituted to deter much-desired apprentices from leaving prior to the contracted end date of their service, as they would forfeit the freedom dues if they left.997 The second view is that freedom dues were primarily a “forced savings” which would help the former apprentice start a new life now that service was over as well rather than ending up the recipient of poor relief.998 After considering these two differing views, Murray and

Herndon suggest that near to the end of a highly productive apprentices’s terms of labour, he or she would have a greater reason to run away, as such a productivity level would be desirable to other employers as well. Reviewers of Murray and Herndon’s article suggested a third view: that perhaps end of service dues were actually a way of

997 David W. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 253-54; Robert J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 161; and Gillian Hamilton, “Enforcement in Apprenticeship Contracts: Were Runaways a Serious Problem? Evidence from Montreal” Journal of Economic History 55, no. 3 (1995): 551-74, especially 561. This effect was also at work when such dues/payments were stipulated for children who were actually bound to labour to pay for a debt owed by their parents, as Richard B. Morris discusses. Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York: Harper and Row, 1946), 357.

998 Morris, Government, 398; Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607–1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), 241; Warren B. Smith, White Servitude in Colonial South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 90; and Lawrence William Towner, “The Indentures of Boston’s Poor Apprentices, 1734–1805” in Past Imperfect: Essays on History, Libraries, and the Humanities, eds. Robert W. Karrow Jr. and Alfred F. Young (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 52-53. These scholars argue that increased surveillance of their apprentices included taking out ads for runaways and threatening extended service to prevent them from running away, and therefore, freedom dues did not serve this purpose.

299 incentivizing masters to give the apprentice training and education to ensure the apprentice would be productive enough to pay for the looming, terminal expense.999

There were some commonalities between races in terms of freedom dues: both white girls and black children typically received clothing at the end of the service term.1000 As Herndon and Murray reveal, some contracts specified the material. While today promising clothing in exchange for service might seem paltry, at the time it had substantial value, the equivalent of several months’ pay for the average labourer.1001

Even if Frado’s binding out was informal, the Bellmonts would have been expected to provide two new dresses when her period of binding out ended on her eighteenth birthday. Wilson clarifies that they did not:

The morning for departure dawned. Frado engaged to work for a family a mile distant. Mrs. Bellmont dismissed her with the assurance that she would soon wish herself back again, and a present of a silver half dollar. Her wardrobe consisted of one decent dress, without any superfluous accompaniments. A Bible from Susan [the wife of James] she felt was her greatest treasure. Now she was alone in the world.1002

999 Herndon and Murray, “Markets for Children,” 364n44.

1000 Boston may have had the most generous freedom dues for black boys, as seventeen per cent received money in addition to clothing as part of their freedom dues; Herndon, “‘Proper’ Magistrates and Masters,” 50.

1001 Murray and Herndon, “Markets for Children,” 362-63; Towner, “Indentures,” 53; Inventory of James Addam, Richmond Probate Records, 1:350, July 6, 1761.

1002 ON, 117.

300

On first glance, it may appear that Frado’s present of a silver half dollar are freedom dues. But the use of the term “present” is significant and ironic. The scene references an earlier incident in which James has arranged for Frado to sit at the family table for the first time. Dinner is over and Frado is sitting in Mrs. Bellmont’s chair with James at the table. Mrs. Bellmont enters and instructs Frado “you shall not have a clean [plate]; eat from mine.” 1003 Disgusted, Frado has her dog Fido lick Mrs. Bellmont’s plate to clean it, and then obeys. Mrs. Bellmont is furious and demands that Mr. Bellmont “notice this insult” and “whip that child.”1004 Her son Jack is “boiling over with laughter,” and he tosses Frado “a bright, silver half-dollar from his pocket” saying “There, take that;’t was worth paying for” – meaning the entertainment value of the scene.1005 (True to form,

Mrs. Bellmont beats Frado herself, in spite of her son James’s remonstrations – and threatens to cut Frado’s tongue out of her mouth if she tells James.1006)

When Mrs. Bellmont gives Frado the “present” of one silver half dollar on the day of her departure from the Bellmonts service, it is, then, not a coincidence. Like Jack, she is paying for entertainment in spite of the fact that Frado has no wish to provide any. She assures Frado “that she would soon wish herself back again.”1007 She gives Frado the money to indicate the folly of Frado departing at all and to mock the notion that Frado

1003 ON, 71.

1004 ON, 71.

1005 ON, 72.

1006 ON, 72.

1007 ON, 117,

301 can survive without the Bellmonts. In fact the claim foreshadows Frado’s doom, for

Frado cannot sustain herself. Mrs. Bellmont implies by giving Frado the money that, just as she successfully silenced Frado when she tried to assert herself in the past, Frado’s independence will prove fleeting. Mrs. Bellmont has always sought to keep Frado in eternal bondage, and is keenly aware of the fact that losing a servant who can do the work of two constitutes a major loss. Crucially, then, Frado leaves with a coin meant to mock her and only “one decent dress,” and not a new one. This paltry provision lowered the financial resources Frado had to ensure her survival now that she had fulfilled her years of service to the Bellmont family.

Compounding insult to injury, it was usually the case that highly productive indentured children in well-to do locales received “generous freedom dues”1008 and

Milford did boast a thriving economy in the nineteenth century. Moreover, in a number of cases, profitable indentured servants in prosperous American households received increased freedom dues, and the Haywards were an “established”1009 and “moderately well off” family.1010 Frado, who did the work of two hired girls, was certainly highly productive, yet she does not receive even the bare minimum in dues. To the Northern reader, the Bellmonts’ departure from established tradition in this regard demonstrated

1008 Hindle and Herndon, “Recreating Proper Families,” 34.

1009 White, “‘Our Nig’ and the She-Devil,” 22.

1010 White, 27.

302 their flouting of community mores – and that Frado had been more like a slave than local abolitionists would like to admit.

Reflecting her depravity, Mrs. Bellmont only turns to community mores for her own advantage, and she does so in this period. As Frado is “count[ing] the time by days which should release her” from her indenture,1011 Mrs. Bellmont pretends to have been the generous mistress that proper binding out requires. She implores Mrs. Smith, a kindly neighbor of the Bellmonts from whom Frado has drawn counsel in the past, to impress upon Frado that it is “ungrateful” to leave.1012 Mrs. Bellmont thus constructs Frado as an indebted subject; in order to craft this narrative, she suggests that Frado has experienced a

“home” of “comfort.” The gambit fails when Frado replies that “she had had enough of such comforts” and desires “some new ones,” adding that since “it was so wicked to be ungrateful, she would go from temptation.”1013 Even if Mrs. Bellmont had treated Frado like family and offered her comforting surroundings, Frado would not have been indebted, because she is completing her term. Indeed, Frado is only “indebted” to Mrs.

Bellmont for her poor health. But proper binding out might have left her autonomous and able to provide for herself and, later, for her son.

Upon Frado’s departure, Mrs. Bellmont, who had treated her as a slave and therefore leaned most heavily on a master/servant dynamic, suddenly decides to

1011 ON, 116.

1012 ON, 116.

1013 ON, 116.

303 emphasize a parent/child relationship. The reader knows from interactions between Frado and Mrs. Smith that she will not believe Mrs. Bellmont, but Mrs. Bellmont obviously hopes to bully Frado. She knows the overseers of the poor would have expected Mr.

Bellmont to act as a father to Frado and obviously hopes her neighbor will assume the

Bellmonts have performed a job well done. The truth, however, is that she invokes these social expectations in order to keep Frado bound indefinitely. This is the true reason that

Frado does not receive valuable freedom dues: in Mrs. Bellmont’s view, Frado’s labour will never be over, she will always be indebted, and she will thus never be entitled to her freedom and the associated dues. To a Northern reader, the absence of proper freedom dues would be conspicuous upon conclusion of the term of servitude.

The Final Indictment – Milford’s Failure

Eric Gardner claims that abolitionists likely knew about Our Nig and may have avoided supporting it.1014 As he points out, Boston, where it was published, was the center of abolitionist sympathies. Wilson’s publisher was the son of an abolitionist; Rand personally demonstrated “strong abolitionist sentiments” and promoted and printed materials that supported abolitionist causes.1015 He was known as distinguished1016 and

1014 Gardner, “This Attempt of Their Sister,” 227.

1015 Gardner, 230.

1016 Gardner, 228.

304 prolific,1017 and had his offices two blocks from the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society’s offices.1018

In addition to challenging white abolitionists’ racism,1019 Gardner suggests that they might have regarded Wilson’s text as a side-story at best and that its “unabashed representation of an interracial marriage”1020 (between Frado’s parents) may have been considered offensive. I have added to these arguments that Wilson’s depiction of her failed binding out, the slavish conditions in which she lived in a New England town, would also have imperiled abolitionist propaganda. Further, the treatment of her as a mullata child was significant. Frado was the daughter of a white woman and would have been considered free under New Hampshire law. The fact that she was treated as black and as a slave because of her father’s race would thus have also been disconcerting.

New England had a long tradition that children followed their mothers’ condition.

In the eighteenth century, when the region still had legal slavery, New England laws designated children such as Frado free because their mothers were.1021 The 1705–6 Act of the Massachusetts General Court required a mother such as Wilson’s to maintain her

1017 Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out that Rand’s company “was a printer of some distinction; it advertised its services extensively in local business directories and newspapers.” Henry Louis Gates Jr., “A Note on the Text of Our Nig,” for Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, by Harriet E. Wilson (New York: Vintage, 1983), 1vii–1ix.

1018 Gardner, “This Attempt of Their Sister,” 229.

1019 Gardner, 243.

1020 Gates, introduction to Our Nig, xxviii.

1021 Melish, Disowning Slavery, 123.

305 mixed-race child independently, but it called for the binding out of the mother – not the child1022 – if she could not.1023 As historian Francisco Bethencourt describes, “the status of freed and mixed-race people varied in different colonial societies.”1024 Even Southern locales had not always considered mixed-race children born to black men to be slaves; in

1662, the law in Virginia stipulated that children’s status followed that of their mothers, as long as they were born in colonial America.1025 Beyond these legal advantages, fair- skinned, mixed raced people soon were recognised as those more likely to be freed if in bondage.1026 Literary evidence supports this nation; many novels, including Uncle Tom’s

Cabin, contain scenes that either directly or indirectly present fair-skinned blacks as prime candidates for reduced labour and/or freedom. Certainly, one reason such mixed- race persons were considered candidates for freedom was also because, in some cases, these children were the offspring of their white masters. While, in dominant practice,

1022 Melish, 123.

1023 Because Wilson’s father was a free black, and because Massachusetts did not have legal slavery when Wilson was born, the misappropriation of her status is even more egregious. However, David H. Fowler argues that “the specter of [the] white female body as a source of ‘mixt issue’… ‘provoked’” the Act’s passage, and cases like that of Wilson’s mother, who had a sexual relationship with a black man prompted the legislation; a number of cases of relations between black women and white men had not prompted legal action (Melish, 124). While Melish points out that Fowler “may be mistaking sequence for causation here,” the difference in how the Massachusetts General Court regarded bastardy if the woman was white is, at least, suggestive (Melish, 124). As Melish acknowledges, the courts would impose whipping on white women, but not on black women, for interracial relationships, suggesting such relationships posed a threat to white men (Melish, 124). The provision regarding binding out did not apply to white men with mixed- race children, although the same law called on them to support their children.

1024 Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 245.

1025 Qtd. in Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen, 222.

1026 Sara Salih also discusses the relationship between law, freedom, and the mulatto in “Introduction: The Mulatto in Law and Literature,” in Representing Mixed Race in Jamaica and England from the Abolition Era to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2011), 1-42.

306 children followed their mother’s condition, the offspring of mixed unions did create questions about whether or not races were truly as different as many sought to insist. I disagree therefore with Breau’s claim that “Frado’s mixed racial heritage is less important than is usual for a book of this type.”1027 When Frado presents her request for aid from the reader, she does so knowing that her mixed blood makes her a prime candidate for freedom. Here mixed-race status has functioned just as her mixed-up binding out has: to reinforce her candidacy for a better style of freedom.

Her dependence on poor relief implies that white masters or mistresses who violated the town’s mores might become expensive for the community, for her own locale pays for her care through taxes that facilitate poor relief rather than the indebted

Mrs. Bellmont. Wilson’s identity as a mixed-race person itself may have alienated her potential readers – certainly, as Joanne Pope Melish explains, the nineteenth century saw many concerns over albinism and vitiligo, conditions that complicated racial identity1028 and therefore exposed the fragility of white American identity – and, by extension, concomitant liberties.

1027 Breau, “Identifying Satire,” 463.

1028 As Melish explains, cases of albinism and vitiligo were much discussed in the nineteenth-century North. Many accounts of these cases suggested that the physical alterations that could be seen with the naked eye were, in fact, simply manifestations of a “difference deep within the body, where heredity alone rather than skin colour could provide a valid marker for it” (Melish, Disowning Slavery, 147): the view was that one’s initial racial heritage was fixed at birth, no matter whether vitiligo or albinism later occurred. These discussions suggest how vexed the question of mixed-race identity was in the nineteenth century, complete with all the anxieties about preserving racial hierarchies and essential racial identifications. For more on the ways such cases were viewed in the public sphere, see Melish, 119-62.

307

Wilson tells us that Mrs. Bellmont requires Frado to work in direct sunlight to darken her skin,1029 enhancing Frado’s racial difference to reinforce her inferior social status. This suggests that her light hue threatens Mrs. Bellmont’s sense of difference from herself and her children. This layering of narratives color-codes Wilson’s argument and thereby highlights the ways in which she strives to present her request as fair-minded to her reader.

Perhaps Wilson’s portrayal of Frado as born of a white mother, a mixed-race girl who was also the victim of a failed, child binding out arrangement in New England, was a double-barreled charge her audience simply could not ignore – except by ignoring her text. For certainly, if she was supposed to be free by virtue of her mother’s race, her slavish servitude at the Bellmonts should have been tremendously appalling to white readers: her constant abuse would demonstrate, then, just how fleeting freedom based upon race status could be. In many ways, the unclear divides between autobiography and fiction, first and third person narration, and Wilson’s mixed-race heritage and that of the protagonist based on her, Frado, mimic the smudgy demarcation between slavery and servitude in the course of Frado’s service to the Bellmonts. The persistent blurring of boundaries abolitionists might like to believe could be reinforced so as to be unmovable is yet another way that Wilson points out the fine and permeable lines that demarcate various aspects of her existence. But these blurred boundaries and the entrapment she

1029 ON, 39.

308 experiences within them also gives her reason, she believes, to plead her case so directly before the public via her book.

Wilson’s request for aid was therefore the plea of one who was deserving of freedom and solvency, not only because of her failed childhood binding out at the

Bellmonts, but because the town does not speak out about Frado’s abusive situation until forced to pay via public relief. The text indicates that the townspeople knew of Frado’s abuse – indeed, Mrs. Bellmont struggled to keep hired servants more than a week because none would “live in the house with her; she’s so ugly, they can’t.”1030 Thus, the eyes of the town were conveniently dim during her abusive servitude, brightened only by the prospect of needing to support Frado. This is particularly egregious since, as aforementioned, there were laws in New Hampshire that could have been mobilized on

Frado’s behalf. Wilson’s narrative and subsequent ask, then, poignantly exposes the underbelly of New England home life and the breakdown of law and order in New

England society in ways that would likely have been deeply uncomfortable for a local abolitionist reader.

Understanding the history of binding out as it functioned in New England is vital to deciphering both the meticulous portrayal with which Wilson presents her northerner reader as well as why, as Gardner first pointed out, abolitionists may have deliberately ignored it. Viewed in the light of her damning portrayal of Frado’s experience of a failed binding out, the honesty required in order for her to make her case may have rung

1030 ON, 18.

309 simultaneously uncomfortably true and alienating. Indeed, by mounting an argument about a failed child binding out hosted by a purportedly abolitionist family, the degree to which Wilson upended the enduring New England narrative of boundless freedom and enfranchisement so etched into the lore of the day led to more clenched fists than open hands. Restricted in what she could say to a patriotically Northern American audience yet needing to make plain her need for aid due to her abuses, Wilson found herself, like

Frado, bound inextricably by the Gordian knot of binding out.

Afterthoughts

“A social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

~ James Truslow Adams on the American Dream

We end where we began – with this epigraph, taken from Adams’s Epic of

America. This articulation of the American Dream illustrates the American people’s deep aspirations for themselves and their beloved land even before it was independent of

England. It encapsulates sentiments that I have demonstrated were previously in existence in the promise of New World prosperity. Many of my project’s authors – those of the Lawes and Libertyes 1648, the Fugitive Slave Law 1850, in the Records of the

Salem Witch Hunt, Hawthorne, and Wilson – were in their own writings trying to craft a narrative about key moments in history that explored what American freedom should mean. Many of these texts reveal that their authors wrote to expose the erosion of facets of the expected liberty and wealth: the gap between what existed at the time and what should have existed.

Because the promise of prosperity is central to understanding why texts that represent freedom dues reveal the tensions they do, in the future I aim to undertake work that considers what the narrative connected to freedom dues looked like during and after

Reconstruction. The period immediately following the Civil War saw numerous discussions regarding what newly freed blacks needed to become truly autonomous and

310 311 enfranchised. Drawing on legal shifts that occurred post-Civil War, I plan to complete the arc I began with in this dissertation, where I demonstrate that the Fugitive Slave Law of

1850 was a clear reversal of principles established in earlier laws that enshrined freedom dues. I would like to consider how the narrative of humanitarian enfranchisement that became associated with freedom dues may have shifted during reconstruction with the institution of the Southern “black codes” in 1865 and 1866 under President Andrew

Johnson, codes that re-enshrined strictures previously associated with slavery and laid the foundations for an unreconstructed racial hierarchy that persists to this day.

My study explains how freedom dues became associated with the ability to transform one’s life for the better, and the absence of freedom dues became an indicator of servitude gone terribly wrong. In many cases, the authors portray such servitude as exploitative and verging on enslavement. At a time when slavery was considered the antithesis of freedom, when slaves were understood to be excluded from dreams of prosperity, these writings enhance our understanding of its accessibility. My first chapter’s consideration of the Lawes and Libertyes as well as the Fugitive Slave Law in terms of the function of freedom dues can, in future, be supplemented with future work that considers other laws or codes (such as the aforementioned “black codes”), which may help to fill out the narrative arc I have launched. Certainly, the freedom of the New

World which many believe exists today (via the American Dream) was and still is not possible without a legal framework to support its ideals. Further exploration of wills which bequeathed freedom dues to servants may be another exciting avenue of research, allowing me to consider whether masters’ personal records alter my interpretation.

312

My project lends itself well to further exploration of the detailed shifts that occur in order for various political writers to mobilize the notion of freedom dues in their abolitionist writings. Do abolitionists and scriptural commentators or pastors differ in their use of scriptural texts pertaining to freedom dues? (And how may individuals who wrote both sermons and political tracts use the freedom dues narrative in each?) What aspects of such servitude or freedom dues do political writers subordinate and why?

These are some of the many questions that my future work will consider.

There is still much to be done as discussions of freedom dues have more typically focused on standard times for service, the amount and composition of conventional dues, the problems servants experienced in collecting them, how such servants remedied said issues at law, et cetera. In other words, there has been a strong focus by historians on why and how freedom dues functioned, much of it stated as if merely factual, but little engagement with the literary and broadly cultural representation of such dues. Future projects will consider how literary texts transform dominant historical understandings about freedom dues in ways that can alter both the discourse about the American Dream and our understanding of it.

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