Recaptured Africans

by Fett, Sharla M. ;

  147. “Capture of the Slave Vessels and Their Cargoes,” Frank Leslie’s, 23 June 1860, 65–66.

  148. “The Africans of the Slave Bark ‘Wildfire,’” Harper’s, 2 June 1860, 345.

  149. See Rediker, Slave Ship, 143.

  150. Fernando Moreno to Jacob Thompson, 10 May 1860, reel 6, RSI. Mel Fisher Maritime Museum archaeologist Corey Malcom showed me the probable location of the Wildfire on the wharf near Fort Taylor during a tour of Key West, 10 February 2009.

  151. Diouf, Dreams of Africa, 61.

  152. Wallis, “Black Bodies, White Science,” 46–56. See also Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, 97–98.

  153. Wallis, “Black Bodies, White Science,” 49.

  154. For a discussion of both academic and popular uses of ethnographic photography, see Edwards introduction and Poignant, “Surveying the Field of View,” 42–73.

  155. “Chiefs of the Soudan, Etc. Africa,” Illustrated London News, 24 April 1858, 417.

  156. “Death of John McNevin: A Man Who Sketched Battle Pictures in Two Wars,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 March 1894; The Brooklyn City Directory for the Year Ending May 1, 1862 (Brooklyn: J. Lain & Co.), 295, http://www.bklynlibrary.org/citydir/ (accessed 10 June 2015). McNevin signed the Wildfire illustration “M’N.” My survey of McNevin’s varying signatures in other Harper’s issues in 1859–61 led me to the conclusion that this illustration is McNevin’s work. To my knowledge, the artist of this well-known Wildfire image has not been previously identified.

  157. 1860 Manuscript Census, Brooklyn Ward 13, District 2, Kings, New York, roll M653 772, p. 997, image 359, Family History Library Film 803772, Ancestry Library database; Voorsanger and Howat, Art and the Empire City, 255.

  158. Sometime between 1853 and 1860, John McNevin immigrated to the United States. There is a small chance he was working at the Illustrated London News when it published the Zeldina images, for which the artist is unknown.

  159. Descriptions of women’s shaved heads illustrate how the ethnographic lens obscured the experience of commodification in the slave trade, for captives routinely had their heads shaved before embarking from African slaving ports. See Diouf, Dreams of Africa, 57.

  160. “The Africans of the Slave Bark ‘Wildfire,’” Harper’s, 2 June 1860, 345.

  161. On “image-text collaboration” and the generation of meaning through interaction between words and pictures in illustrated weeklies, see Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page, 2–3, 30–48, 30.

  162. Sinnema makes a similar point regarding the function of illustrated travel literature in Victorian England; see ibid., 45.

  163. Wallis, “Black Bodies, White Science,” 55; Foreman, “Who’s Your Mama?,” 517.

  164. See, for example, “Stowing the Cargo of a Slaver at Night,” in Howe, Life and Death on the Ocean, facing p. 537, and “Blacks in the Ship’s Hold,” by J. M. Rugendas, as discussed in Slenes, “African Abrahams,” 150, 160.

  165. Morgan, Laboring Women, 12–49.

  166. For similar open-blouse images in illustrated news, see “Women of the Ouled-Riah Tribe,” in “Modern Algiers,” Harper’s, 4 December 1858, 772–73. See also the central female figure in “New Blacks,” by J. M. Rugendas, as discussed in Slenes, “African Abrahams,” 156–57.

  167. Thank you to Gabrielle Foreman for important insights on the analysis of nineteenth-century domestic portraiture in this image.

  168. Williams, Alchemy of Race and Rights.

  169. Thompson to McLain, 9 June 1860 (suggestions originally made by the ACS leader McLain and approved by Thompson), reel 1, RSI.

  170. Young Ship Log, 1 July 1860.

  171. Grymes Report, 31; Webster Lindsly to McLain, 3 September 1860, reel 10, RSI.

  172. Webster Lindsly to McLain, 3 September 1860, reel 10, RSI.

  Chapter 4

  1. “The Three African Boys—Further Efforts to Converse with Them,” NYT, 30 August 1860. On conditions in the jail, see “Eldridge-Street Jail” and “The Black Hole on Eldridge-Street,” NYT, 25 May 1857.

  2. “The Slavers in Port—Visit to the Three Captive Africans in Eldridge-Street Jail,” NYT, 17 August 1860. The Eldridge Street jail was, in fact, the same jail where Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua had been confined for several weeks after he sought his freedom from a Brazilian ship captain who had sailed to New York City in 1847. See Law and Lovejoy, Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, 45–46.

  3. The egalitarian concept of “human rights” discussed here extends beyond African American abolitionists to both white and black activists who embraced immediate abolition. See Stauffer, Black Hearts of Men, 98. However, this chapter emphasizes the stake that black abolitionists in particular had in asserting their human rights during the 1840s and 1850s in the face of the polygenist argument.

  4. Rael, “Common Nature, a United Destiny,” 197; Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 38–74. See also Melish, “‘Condition’ Debate and Racial Discourse,” and Sinha, “Coming of Age,” 27–28.

  5. Curry, Free Black, table A-7, 250. In absolute terms, New York’s African American population fell from its peak 16,358 in 1840 to 12,472 in 1860. Leslie Harris attributes the decline to economic hard times, political discrimination, the threat of slave catchers, and outmigration to Brooklyn and rural areas to the north and west; see Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 275. Key studies of African Americans in New York include Hodges, Root and Branch; Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery; Alexander, African or American?; Wilder, In the Company of Black Men; and Hodges, David Ruggles.

  6. Sinha, “Black Abolitionism,” 241; Wilder, In the Company of Black Men, 36–53.

  7. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 212; Hodges, David Ruggles, 4 (practical abolition), 97–98, 131.

  8. Law and Lovejoy, Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, 45–46, 195–212. This rescue is also discussed (with some inaccuracies) in 1860 in relation to the William R. Kibby boys in “The Slavers in Port—Visit to the Three Captive Africans in Eldridge-Street Jail,” NYT, 17 August 1860.

  9. “The Slave Trade of New York,” World, 29 June 1860.

  10. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 32–39, 53–55; Fish, “War on the Slave Trade,” 156–57; Vinson, “Law as Lawbreaker.”

  11. Foner, Business and Slavery; Quigley, “Southern Slavery in a Free City.”

  12. “The Slave-Trade—the Actual Character of the Traffic,” NYT, 17 March 1860; Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 49; Davis, “James Buchanan,” 448.

  13. Many of the remaining twenty-two voyages began in Cuba but often utilized American-built ships, the U.S. flag, and American financial backing. See Voyages, http://slavevoyages.org/voyages/EyV7qP9t (accessed 27 February 2016).

  14. Voyages, ID #4362, for New York origins of Wildfire 1860 voyage; Drake and Shufeldt, “Secret History of the Slave Trade,” 221.

  15. Vermilyea, Slaver, the War, and around the World, 5.

  16. “Is the Plan of the American Union under the Constitution Anti-Slavery or Not?,” 160.

  17. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 170–216; Hodges, Root and Branch, 187–226, 256–61; White, Stories of Freedom; McHenry, Forgotten Readers, 84–140; Wilder, In the Company of Black Men, 101–80.

  18. On the increasingly dire situation of northern African American communities, see Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 264–78; Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest, 237–78; Swift, Black Prophets of Justice, 244–316; and Stauffer, “Fighting the Devil with His Own Fire,” 74–77.

  19. On the political and cultural significance of the Anglo-African Magazine and the Weekly, see Ball, To Live an Antislavery Life, 109–31, and Jackson, “‘Cultural Stronghold.’”

  20. “The Revival of an Old Branch of Commerce,” Weekly Anglo-African, 23 June 1860.

  21. Fish, “War on the Slave Trade,” 155.

  22. Vinson, “Law as Lawbreaker,” 37–42.

  23. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 194–96.

  24. “The Revival of an Old Branch of
Commerce,” Weekly Anglo-African, 23 June 1860.

  25. “More Slave-Hunting in New York,” Weekly Anglo-African, 5 May 1860.

  26. Anbinder, “Isaiah Rynders,” 46.

  27. For proslavery imperialism, see Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 14–15, 303–29.

  28. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 243, notes that William J. Wilson wrote in the mid-1850s for Douglass’s newspaper The North Star under the pseudonym “Ethiop.” See also Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest, 238, and Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 75.

  29. Sinha, Counterrevolution of Slavery, 157–72.

  30. Ethiop, “The Anglo-African and the African Slave Trade,” 285–86. Ethiop’s point here was that a reopened slave trade would have unintended consequences for whites: “When the final day does come, as come it must, and should it be a hand-to-hand struggle, it may then be with the Anglo-African a question of numbers on this continent.” For similar sharp satirical analysis, see Ethiop, “What Shall We Do with the White People?”

  31. “That Oyster Bed,” Weekly Anglo-African, 7 October 1859. On African American critiques of liberty rhetoric in the revolutionary and early national period, see Sinha, “Alternative Tradition of Radicalism.”

  32. For titles available from Thomas Hamilton at 48 Beekman St., the Anglo-African office, see Weekly Anglo-African, 24 November 1860.

  33. Delany, Blake, 3, xi. On the political significance of Delany’s novel, see Stauffer, Black Hearts of Men, 182, and Sundquist, To Wake the Nations, 182–85.

  34. “The Horrors of the Slave Trade, A Narrative of Thrilling Interest,” Weekly Anglo-African, 24 November 1860; Drake and West, Revelations of a Slave Smuggler.

  35. On the significance of African American reading rooms and connections to the black press, see McHenry, Forgotten Readers, 84–140. McHenry notes (135) that the Anglo-African reading room opened in November 1859 and was located at 178 Prince Street.

  36. “The Re-Opening of the Slave Trade,” Anglo-African Magazine 1, no. 9 (September 1859): 301. Anti–slave trade activism can be understood as part of the Anglo-African Magazine’s revolutionary transnational ideology. See Ball, To Live an Antislavery Life, 117–24. On the idea of a “redeemer race,” see Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 38–74.

  37. “‘The Rev. J. W. C. Pennington,’” Anti-Slavery Reporter, 28 June 1843.

  38. Blyden, “Chapter in the History of the African Slave Trade,” 184. On French recruitment of African apprenticed labor, see Vos, “‘Without the Slave Trade.’”

  39. In addition to the New York scholarship on this point, cited previously, see the recent study of the problem of northern slavery in the early republic period by Gigantino, Ragged Road to Abolition, and Sinha, Slave’s Cause, 65–96.

  40. Walker, “Walker’s Appeal”; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 3–22; Sidbury, Becoming African in America, 169, 190; Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 47–78; Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest, 39, 90, 160, 163–64, 181; Hodges, David Ruggles, 39–41.

  41. “Colonization Society” and “For the Freedom’s Journal,” Freedom’s Journal, 7 September 1827.

  42. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 47–78; Cornish and Wright, Colonization Scheme.

  43. Pennington, Fugitive Blacksmith, 54; Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 175–78. In addition to opposing the ACS, Pennington almost always opposed emigration to Africa, although at certain points in his career he explored Jamaica as a possible destination for black emigrants from the United States. See Alexander, African or American?, 222, and Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 75.

  44. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 55; Hodges, David Ruggles, 199; Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 272.

  45. On African American debates over the colonization movement, see Moses, Liberian Dreams; Power-Green, Against Wind and Tide; and Everill, “‘Destiny Seems to Point Me to That Country.’”

  46. Canney, Africa Squadron, 99, 106, 123–24, 149.

  47. Fanning, Caribbean Crossing.

  48. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 175–78; Swift, Black Prophets of Justice, 286–99; Blackett, “Martin R. Delany and Robert Campbell”; Fairhead, Geysbeek, Holsoe, and Leach, African-American Exploration in West Africa.

  49. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 162–94; Swift, Black Prophets of Justice, 252–53, 285, 286, 292–93.

  50. “Great Meeting in New York,” Weekly Anglo-African, 28 April 1860; “The Colored Citizens of New York and the African Civilization Society,” Liberator, 4 May 1860, 72; J. W. C. Pennington, “Rev. J. Sella Martin and the African Civilization Society,” Weekly Anglo-African, 12 May 1860; “Meeting of the African Civilization Society,” Weekly Anglo-African, 17 March 1860; Alexander, African or American?, 141–49.

  51. “The Colored Citizens of New York and the African Civilization Society,” Weekly Anglo-African, 21 April 1860.

  52. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 75; Swift, Black Prophets of Justice, 297. For details, see William Herries, “The African Civilization Society,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 8 July 1859, in which Herries lists Pennington on the side of African Civilization Society supporters, and “The Deceptive African Civilization Society,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 22 July 1859, in which George Downing notes Pennington’s disavowal of the society.

  53. Douglass, Claims of the Negro, 10; Pennington, Text Book; Garnet, Past and the Present Condition, 12.

  54. Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 8, 15, 19, 36–74.

  55. Pennington, Text Book, 54. On Pennington as “steadfastly egalitarian,” see Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 51. See also Sinha, “Coming of Age,” 27–28.

  56. Garnet, Past and the Present Condition, 6. See also Sinha, “Coming of Age,” 27–28.

  57. Douglass, Claims of the Negro, 9–10.

  58. Frederick Douglass, “Postmaster General Blair and Frederick Douglass,” Douglass’ Monthly, October 1862, 726.

  59. Rael, “Common Nature, a United Destiny,” 185; Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest, 237–78; Melish, “‘Condition’ Debate and Racial Discourse”; Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 18, 41, 219–22.

  60. Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 58–63; McCune Smith and Stauffer, Works of James McCune Smith, xxix–xxxiv.

  61. McCune Smith, “Civilization”; Bay, White Image in the Black Mind, 61.

  62. “Annual Meeting of the Coloured Orphan Asylum,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, 22 February 1849.

  63. Concession, one of five tropes of engagement with racial science that Rael identifies, acknowledged the degradation of a black subject in order to position “African Americans as a group requiring redemption from injustice” (Rael, “Common Nature, a United Destiny,” 188).

  64. “Annual Meeting of the Coloured Orphan Asylum,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, 22 February 1849.

  65. Douglass, Claims of the Negro, 34.

  66. Sinha, Counterrevolution of Slavery, 125–54.

  67. The World began publishing its daily paper in June 1860. It aimed to promote middle-class values of Christianity and self-improvement in a secular newspaper. See editorial statement of purpose, The World, 14 June 1860. The Liberator would not have been a likely choice for Pennington in any case, since he had been at odds with the Garrisonians for at least a decade due to his affiliation with the Presbyterian denomination as well as rumors of irregularities in his fundraising activities. See Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 48–50.

  68. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 20–22. On black millennial thought, see Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest, 266–78; Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 8–10; and Swift, Black Prophets of Justice, 249–51.

  69. Pennington, “Great Conflict Requires Great Faith,” 344–45.

  70. Pennington, Fugitive Blacksmith, 1–11.

  71. Hodges, David Ruggles, 34. Hodges refers to a specific New York cohort, but the term “Freedom Generation” first appears in Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 8, 245–71.r />
  72. 1855 New York Census and 1860 Federal Census, Ancestry Library database. Thomas H. Pennington was born in 1844, when Pennington was married to Harriet Pennington.

  73. This biographical summary draws from Pennington’s narrative as well as Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 6–70; Swift, Black Prophets of Justice, 204–43; and Webber, American to the Backbone.

  74. See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the period of “second slavery.”

  75. Pennington, “American Slave in England.”

  76. Pennington, “Review of Slavery and the Slave Trade.” A comparative discussion of slavery as an institution not born in Africa but “an institution of the dark age!” appears in Pennington, Text Book, 43 (emphasis in original).

  77. Moses, Classical Black Nationalism; Moses, Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 33–55. For eighteenth-century African American thought on African redemption and the nineteenth-century shifts in that thinking on African Americans’ relationship to Africa, see Sidbury, Becoming African in America.

  78. Pennington, “Intelligence from Jamaica.”

  79. Pennington, “Self-Redeeming Power of the Colored Races of the World,” 315, 314.

  80. Pennington, “Instructions of the Executive Committee,” 66.

  81. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 22–25.

  82. Ibid., 27.

  83. Swift, Black Prophets of Justice, 204, 237, 245, also makes this point in reference to Pennington and Henry Highland Garnet. See “benighted” in “Instructions of the Executive Committee,” 65, and Pennington, “Letter from Rev. Dr. Pennington.” See also “Anti-Slavery Fair,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 11 December 1851, and “The Late Fugitive Slave Case,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 9 June 1854. In the appendix of his narrative, Pennington also refers to “the native Africans” owned by Frisby Tilghman, who would stand alongside the slaveholder before the judgment seat after his death; see Pennington, Fugitive Blacksmith, 82. “Mandingo,” used as an ethnonym in North American sources, usually referred to Mande-speaking people (often Muslim) from Senegambia and Sierra Leone. See Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 39–40, 68, and Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities, 48, 54, 99–100.