Blake or The Huts of America
Page 40
25 Compare this description with that of the historian Joseph G. Tregle, Jr., who has written that “The whole behavior of the Negro toward the whites, as a matter of fact, was singularly free of that deference and circumspection which might have been expected in a slave community. It was not unusual for slaves to gather on street corners at night, for example, where they challenged whites to attempt to pass, hurled taunts at white women, and kept whole neighborhoods disturbed by shouts and curses. Nor was it safe to accost them, as many went armed with knives and pistols in flagrant defiance of all the precautions of the Black Code.” “Early New Orleans Society: A Reappraisal,” in Journal of Southern History, XVIII (February 1952), p. 33.
26 “B.A.P.” is clearly Phillip A. Bell and the Detroit minister is the Rev. William C. Monroe. See text, pp. 155-157.
27 Placido was the pen name of Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes (1809-1844), a freeborn mulatto of uncertain ancestry. After receiving a limited formal education, he was apprenticed to a portrait painter and then, around 1823, as a typesetter in the shop of Jose Severino Boloña, a printer and poet and later publisher of the Diario de la Marina de la Habana. Shortly thereafter, Placido became known as a poet although he had replaced typesetting with the more remunerative trade of carving tortoise shells. In the late 1830s, Placido, then living in Matanzas, published poetry in the local daily. In 1843 he was arrested on suspicion of plotting an insurrection but was released. He was again imprisoned in early 1844 and was condemned to death on the charge of high treason–partly because many of his poems appeared seditious and partly because it was believed that prominent blacks such as Placido were capable of inciting insurrections. He was executed by a firing squad June 28, 1844. See Frederick S. Stimson, Cuba’s Romantic Poet; The Story of Placido (Chapel Hill, 1964). Delany had previously recognized the heroic proportions of the Cuban poet in The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (Philadelphia, 1852; reprint ed., New York, 1968), p. 203. William Wells Brown also wrote about Placido; however Stimson claims the sketch of the Cuban poet-rebel in Brown’s The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (New York, 1863) confused Placido with the full-blooded black poet, Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1854) who had been born into slavery. Stimson, p. 100. William G. Allen, a black professor at New York Central College at McGrawville, apparently did likewise. See his sketch in Autographs for Freedom, edited by Julia Griffiths (Boston, 1853), pp. 257-263.
28 Delany used this poem–which he may have written himself–at the close of an article, “Annexation of Cuba,” in The North Star, April 27, 1849, p. 2.
29 The advantages of employing the American flag on slave merchants has been confirmed by both contemporary and historical accounts. See “The Slave Trade in 1858,” in The Edinburgh Review, CVIII (July and October 1858), p. 294; Arthur F. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886, (Austin, Texas, 1967), p. 94; and Lawrence F. Hill, “The Abolition of the African Slave Trade to Brazil,” in the Hispanic American Historical Review, XI (May 1931), pp. 179-181, 184-186. See also Hugh G. Soulsby, The Right of Search and the Slave Trade in Anglo-American Relations 1814-1862 (Baltimore, 1933).
30 This was undoubtedly one of many bitter parodies of patriotic songs. For instance, the 1843 Anti-Slavery Almanac contains a song beginning “Oh, Hail Columbia, happy land!/The Cradle Land of Liberty/Where None but Negroes Bear the Brand/Or Feel the Lash of Slavery . . .” (My appreciation to Dorothy Sterling for calling this to my attention.)
31 It was not uncommon for European merchants on the coast to have African wives. See, for example, Thomas J. Bowen, Adventures and Missionary Labors in Several Countries in the Interior of Africa, from 1849 to 1856 (Charleston, S.C., 1857; reprint ed., London, 1968), p. 86.
32 Delany’s companion on his African trip, Robert Campbell, also described this slaver. See Campbell’s A Pilgrimmage to My Motherland . . . (New York, 1861), p. 133.
33 Mendi or Mendeland was a portion of the African coast that was then adjacent to the Colony of Sierra Leone. In 1839, a group of Mendi blacks on the slaver Amistad traveling from Cuba to Puerto Rico, overwhelmed their captors and took charge of the vessel. Attempting to sail back to Mendi, the blacks followed the advice of the Spaniards whose lives they had spared and finally sailed to the New England coast where they were captured and jailed in New Haven, Connecticut. After lengthy litigation (including a successful argument before the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams), the Africans returned home in early 1842, accompanied by missionaries sent by the Amistad Committee which had been formed to defend the liberated slaves. The committee eventually merged with two other groups to form the American Missionary Association which, in addition to many other activities, conducted a Mendi mission until 1883. C. P. Groves, The Planting of Christianity in Africa (London, 1954), II, pp. 64-67. Interestingly, the Mendi was the barque which carried Delany to Liberia in 1859.
34 This is consistent with Herbert S. Klein’s observation that “Given the dark complexion of most Spaniards, it was often enough to be a moderate mulatto to be considered physically white, especially when the cultural and economic roles demanded such a definition.” Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba (Chicago, 1967), p. 195n.
35 The banjo developed from the African bango. Delany was conscious of other African survivals as his borrowed account of the Congo Dance indicated. See text, pp. 300, 302.
36 Delany made many of these points in a letter in which he expressed his clear preference for African emigration as opposed to Haytian emigration. See The Weekly Anglo-African, February 1, 1862, p. 2.
37 Blake is referring to William Murray (1705-1793) first Earl of Mansfield and chief justice of the King’s bench for thirty-four years. In the Somersett case of 1772, Murray ruled that slaves were free the moment they set foot upon British soil.
38 This may very well have been written after Delany returned from Africa and England and during a period when he was cooperating with the African Aid Society of England, which was committed to aid Delany in establishing a colony of Canadian blacks in the Niger Valley. See the introduction to this edition, pp. xv-xvi.
39 This reflects Delany’s more moderate views at the time of his African trip. See, for example, The Colonization Herald (Philadelphia), July 1860, p. 478 (erroneously numbered p. 476).
40 The British consul here probably was patterned after David Turnbull, an abolitionist who served as the British consul to Cuba from November 1840 until June 1842, when he was recalled at Spain’s request. As superintendent of liberated Africans, Turnbull returned to Cuba in October 1842 with some British free blacks. He was soon charged with plotting rebellion. The blacks were shot, and Turnbull, after being imprisoned, was eventually deported. Arthur F. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886 (Austin, Texas, 1967), pp. 75-77. Cuban officials believed Turnbull and Placido were close friends; this, however, has never been adequately documented. Frederick Stimson, Cuba’s Romantic Poet: The Story of Placido (Chapel Hill, 1964), p. 79.
41 Historians as diverse in their views as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ulrich B. Phillips have testified to the illicit importation of slaves after the trade had been outlawed in 1808. See Du Bois The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870 (New York, 1896), pp. 180-183; Phillips, American Negro Slavery (paperback ed., Baton Rouge, 1966), p. 147. A contemporary account can be found in The Cotton Supply Reporter (Manchester, England), October 15, 1860, p. 282. In addition to smuggling slaves, there were efforts in Louisiana in the late 1850s to legalize the foreign trade. See James Paisley Hendrix, Jr., “The Efforts to Reopen the African Slave Trade in Louisiana,” in Louisiana History, X (Spring 1969), 97-123.
42 William Wells Brown has vividly depicted the New Orleans Congo Dance in My Southern Home: Or, The South and Its People (3rd ed., Boston, 1882), pp. 121-124.
43 Narciso Lopez, a native of Venezuela, came to
the United States in 1849 as a Cuban exile intent upon overthrowing the Spanish regime. After centering his headquarters in New Orleans in the summer of 1849, he soon received the backing of Southerners dedicated to the annexation of the Spanish island as well as other groups interested in the liberation of Cuba. In late summer, 1851, he led an assault on Bahia Honda on the west coast of the island but was captured and garroted. Lester D. Langley, The Cuban Policy of the United States: A Brief History (New York, 1968), pp. 26-31; see also this text, p. 306, for a reference to Lopez’s execution.
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