Letter Writing in the Campaign Against Slavery in the United States
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The Politics of Correspondence: Letter Writing in the Campaign Against Slavery in the United States Mary Tibbetts Freeman Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 Ó 2018 Mary Tibbetts Freeman All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Politics of Correspondence: Letter Writing in the Campaign Against Slavery in the United States Mary Tibbetts Freeman The abolitionists were a community of wordsmiths whose political movement took shape in a sea of printed and handwritten words. These words enabled opponents of slavery in the nineteenth-century United States to exert political power, even though many of them were excluded from mainstream politics. Women and most African Americans could not vote, and they faced violent reprisals for speaking publicly. White men involved in the antislavery cause frequently spurned party politics, using writing as a key site of political engagement. Reading and writing allowed people from different backgrounds to see themselves as part of a political collective against slavery. “The Politics of Correspondence” examines how abolitionists harnessed the power of the written word to further their political aims, arguing that letter writing enabled a disparate and politically marginal assortment of people to take shape as a coherent and powerful movement. “The Politics of Correspondence” expands the definition of politics, demonstrating that private correspondence, not just public action, can be a significant form of political participation. The antislavery movement’s body of shared political ideas and principles emerged out of contest and debate carried on largely through the exchange of letters. People on the political fringes and disfranchised persons, especially African Americans and women, harnessed the medium of letters to assert themselves as legitimate political agents, claiming entitlements hitherto denied them. In doing so, they contested the presumed boundaries of the body politic and played key roles in advancing demands for immediate emancipation, civil rights, and equality to the forefront of national political discussions. “The Politics of Correspondence” argues that correspondence was a flexible medium that abolitionists used throughout this period in efforts to both shape and respond to the changing conditions of national politics. A vast and dispersed archive documents the antislavery movement and serves as the basis of research for the dissertation. Scholars of antislavery have used the extensive manuscript collections of prominent abolitionists and print archives of antislavery newspapers, pamphlets, and circulars to investigate the movement’s ideas and organization. But this is the first project to focus on letter writing itself and its role in the movement. Rather than view letters as transparent windows into the past, “The Politics of Correspondence” examines them as tools that ordinary people and unexpected political agents used to advance the antislavery cause. Abolitionists relied upon conventions associated with handwritten letters, which they creatively manipulated to achieve political ends. Writing a letter was an act of composition that involved self-reflection, imagined discussion, and staking a claim to one’s beliefs. Correspondents drew upon shared cultural understandings, ranging from the anonymity of the postal system to the sense of physical intimacy associated with handwritten letters. They inventively employed these understandings to make political statements that simultaneously relied upon and subverted letter-writing conventions. Table of Contents List of Illustrations ii Acknowledgments iii Introduction: “I take the liberty to write to you…” 1 Chapter 1:Rehearsal for Abolition: Pennsylvania Slaves in the Era of Gradual Emancipation 32 Chapter 2: “I take my pen in hand:” The Postal Revolution and the Antislavery Movement 82 Chapter 3: “Abler pens than mine:” Creating Antislavery Rhetoric through Letters 130 Chapter 4: Strangers, Sisters, and Friends: Letters as Tools of Organization and Unity 170 Chapter 5: Fugitive Letters Honesty, Storytelling, and Concealment in Fugitive Slave Abolitionism 215 Chapter 6: Writing the First Draft for Freedom: Bearing Witness to Emancipation 265 Chapter 7: Penmanship as Citizenship: Literacy, Letter Writing, and Politics in the Reconstruction South 314 Conclusion: “we will remain your affectionate Brother Soldier” 350 Bibliography 358 i List of Illustrations Figure 1: Letter from Reuben Ruby to Amos A. Phelps, 29 September 1836, Anti-Slavery Collection, Boston Public Library. 2 Figure 2: Letter from James Gipson to Thomas Harrison, 11 June 1804, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 36 Figure 3: Frontispiece from Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, 243 Manchester: Printed by Lee and Glynn, 1851. Figure 4: Letter from M[ary] W[alker] to Catherine Robbins, 19 April [1853?], Ames Family Historical Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. 261 Figure 5: Patriotic Envelope depicting “Contraband of War,” ca. 1861, U.S. Civil War Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. 292 Figure 6: “Freedmen’s Writing Book,” recto, Boston: Crosby & Ainsworth, 1865. From the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 316 Figure 7: “Freedmen’s Writing Book,” verso, Boston: Crosby & Ainsworth, 1865. From the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 317 Figure 8: Letter from Mary Tibbs to Emily Howland, 29 November 1865, Emily Howland Papers, Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University. 332 ii Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the generosity of mentors, archivists, colleagues, friends, and family. My research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Smith College Special Collections, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, the American Philosophical Society, the New England Regional Fellowships Consortium, the Oberlin College Archives, and the Central New York Humanities Corridor Visiting Scholars Program. In addition to the staff of the aforementioned institutions, I am grateful to archivists at the Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island Historical Societies; the Boston Public Library; Syracuse University’s Special Collections Research Center, the University of Rochester’s Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation; and Cornell University’s Rare and Manuscript Collections. My final year of writing was generously funded by the Columbia University Department of History’s Lowenheim Prize for Excellence in Dissertation Research. At Columbia, I have benefited from the rich intellectual life and support of the Department of History. The department staff, including Sharee Nash, Lawino Lurum, Patrick McMorrow, and Patricia Morel have shepherded me through administrative hurdles and funding battles. Faculty including Mae Ngai, Evan Haefeli, Alice Kessler-Harris, Natasha Lightfoot, and Hilary Hallett advised me at various points as I found my way to this project. Stephanie McCurry and Richard John helpfully pointed me towards new ideas and sources along the way. The CSER dissertation workshop, led by Karl Jacoby, helped me as I wrote the final chapters, offering deadlines as well as perceptive comments. iii I have been extremely fortunate to have a committee made up of close readers and sticklers for clarity in my analysis and writing. Farah Griffin has offered important insight into the literary aspects of the project. Christopher Brown helped me to formulate the first questions that led me to the dissertation and has always encouraged me to put the history and historiography of American slavery and abolition in its proper transatlantic context. Elizabeth Blackmar has never hesitated to ask the toughest questions that cut to the roots of my strengths and weaknesses as a historical thinker. Eric Foner has offered sound advice every step of the way and has steered me towards ideas and projects that have enriched me as a teacher and a scholar. His encouragement over the years has given me confidence in my work. Finally, the advice of Barbara Fields has shaped this project from its beginnings. She has challenged me to follow hunches, to research and write about people in the past with empathy, and to allow my narrative voice to shine through. She has been my constant supporter, and I am proud to call myself a “Barbarian.” Teaching at Columbia has presented opportunities to test my ideas and reap the rewards of my students’ insights. I am especially grateful to the students in my seminar on the politics of slavery and antislavery in Fall 2016 and the Spring 2016 and 2017 Columbia and Slavery seminars for reminding me how exciting historical research is and how important it can be for understanding the present. Thai Jones, at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, has been an invaluable ally in connecting students to the process of archival discovery, not to mention letting me dig around in the stacks in pursuit of my own archival treasures. The seeds for this project, and for my academic career in American history, were planted when I was an undergraduate at Williams College. There I was lucky enough to find a work