The Heroic Slave

by Frederick Douglass

  The Heroic Slave develops this argument by asserting that the Virginia of 1841, now an immoral and deteriorating society, differs dramatically from the Virginia of the founders. At the beginning of part 3, the narrator describes the following scene:

  Just upon the edge of the great road from Petersburg, Virginia, to Richmond, … there stands a somewhat ancient and famous public tavern, quite notorious in its better days…. Its fine old portico looks well at a distance, and gives the building an air of grandeur. A nearer view, however, does little to sustain this impression…. The gloomy mantle of ruin is, already, out-spread to envelop it, and its remains, even but now remind one of a human skull, after the flesh has mingled with the earth. (47)

  The “fine old portico” with its “air of grandeur,” actually decays at the core, no more than a covering for a fleshless skull. This condition results, one learns several pages later, from a change in the state’s economic interest, since “almost all other business in Virginia [has been] dropped to engage in [the slave trade]” (50). By juxtaposing past and present, this image undercuts the authority of those present-day sons of Virginia who trade in human flesh, while simultaneously renovating the memory of the revolutionary fathers. This description metaphorically represents the festering contradiction at the heart of the republic, the result of slavery in a supposedly free society.

  Although Douglass self-consciously characterizes The Heroic Slave as created from “marks, traces, possibles, and probabilities” (25–26)—all that the Creole archive provides him with—he also presents the story as more trustworthy than the annals of history because it more accurately mirrors the text’s notion of the founders’ true ideals. The text describes the tavern’s inhabitants, for example, as “hangers-on” and “corrupt tongues” whose stories are not recorded because they only tell “of quarrels, fights, recontes, and duels,” and are full of “vulgarity and dark profanity” (52). The text’s reference to these unrecorded stories asserts simultaneously the irrelevance of the tavern’s inhabitants’ stories and the greater significance of the one the text tells. Rather than a reason to question the validity of the narrative presented, this self-consciousness indicts dominant systems of record keeping and history making, thereby undermining systems of evaluation that separate Madison Washington from James Madison and George Washington. Taken altogether, the tavern passages and the references to the scarcity of historical data represent Madison Washington as a more rightful heir of the legacy of Old Virginia than those currently in power; the demise of the tavern and its inhabitants makes space for, even calls for, the emergence of a new order.

  Works Cited

  Douglass, Frederick. The Heroic Slave. In Autographs for Freedom. Ed. Julia Griffiths. Boston, 1853, 174–239. Rpt. Three Classic African-American Novels. Ed. William L. Andrews. New York: Penguin, 1990. 23–69.

  Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

  Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government [1689]. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.

  Wiegman, Robyn. American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.

  Yarborough, Richard. “Race, Violence, and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Heroic Slave.’” Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 166–88.

  1. From Maggie Montesinos Sale, “The Heroic Slave (1853),” in The Slumbering Volcano: American Slave Ship Revolts and Rebellious Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 173–97; the selection is from 186–88. Republished by permission of the copyright holder, Duke University Press (www.dukeupress.edu); all rights reserved. The footnotes have been renumbered and, unless other indicated, are the author’s.

  2. Richard Yarborough was the first to analyze manhood as a central feature of The Heroic Slave. His assessment and mine differ on the importance of the representation of violence and the effects of Douglass’s use of normative masculinity. Also see Wiegman 71–78 on gender in The Heroic Slave.

  3. See David Leverenz for a different view of the interrelations among gender, class, and status in Douglass’s work, principally his first two autobiographies. In my view, Leverenz’s class-based notions of manhood are provocative but insufficiently nuanced in terms of race.

  4. As I argued in relation to the Amistad, this formulation unfortunately limits the inclusionary potential of natural rights theory to those who have already successfully rebelled against unjust oppressors; it reproduces as a rule of inclusion the willingness to die for liberty, thereby marginalizing those whose other concerns, such as the security of their children, may outweigh that of liberty. See chap 2 above [“‘The Amistad Affair’ (1839),” in Sale, The Slumbering Volcano, 58–119. Eds.].

  CELESTE-MARIE BERNIER

  from “‘Arms like Polished Iron’”1

  In a self-conscious manner, Douglass’s The Heroic Slave challenged characteristic abolitionist tendencies towards using the slave’s body as the sole marker of authenticity. He offered a critique of white interpretations which positioned the black male slave body as the most accurate measure of individual experience by emphasizing the additional importance of language in representations of black male consciousness. Douglass’s structural composition of The Heroic Slave demonstrates the complex narrative processes by which he displays and (re)presents the black male body. Overall, he resists its straightforward appropriation as an object for consumption by a white audience by reclaiming the importance of the black male body as symbolic, rhetorical figure. He juxtaposes the physical spectacle of the slave with a superlative performance of black male intellectual prowess in Madison Washington’s exemplary command of language.

  While Madison is conventionally feminized in his rhetorical speech, ‘I neither run nor fight, but do meanly stand, answering each heavy blow of a cruel master with doleful wails and piteous cries’;2 upon his decision to have ‘Liberty … or die in the attempt to gain it,’3 his stature immediately assumes heroic and exaggeratedly ‘masculine’ dimensions: hence Douglass’s introduction of Washington in sculptured proportions, emblematic of a classical model. Variously characterized throughout The Heroic Slave as ‘our hero,’ the ‘strong man’ and ‘a sort of general-in-chief among them [the slaves],’4 Douglass’s description of Washington reads:

  Madison was of manly form. Tall, symmetrical, round, and strong…. His torn sleeves disclosed arms like polished iron. His face was ‘black, but comely.’ His eye, lit with emotion, kept guard under a brow as dark and as glossy as the raven’s wing. His whole appearance betokened Herculean strength; yet there was nothing savage or forbidding in his aspect…. His broad mouth and nose spoke only of good nature and kindness. But his voice, that unfailing index of the soul, though full and melodious, had that in it which could terrify as well as charm.5

  Douglass’s references to Hercules confirm Washington’s statuesque and monumental significance, while his evocation of ‘the raven’s wing’ communicates racial difference. Douglass’s physical representations of the archetypal black male heroic figure in his written material on the Creole revolt resist conventions of minstrelsy. His emphasis upon black physical prowess, ‘arms like polished iron,’ is qualified by a preoccupation with rhetorical persuasion, as contained within Washington’s ‘full and melodious’ voice, which undermines associations of black slave heroism with ‘savagery.’ Furthermore, Douglass’s construction of the male slave figure contains conventionally feminized motifs. For example, such references as ‘A child might play in his arms’6 introduce maternal considerations in The Heroic Slave’s depiction of the black male slave model, which complicate any strict definitions of Douglass’s narrative design as prescriptively masculine.

  Douglass’s descriptions of Washington throughout The Heroic Slave are in direct contrast to those provided in his speeches, including for example his earlier address, ‘Slavery, the Slumbering V
olcano’ (1849). Given before a black audience in New York to protest against the American Colonization Society, this speech considers Washington’s heroism along diametrically opposed lines: ‘Suiting the action to the word … in a very few minutes Madison Washington, a black man, with woolly head, high cheekbones, protruding lip, distended nostril, and retreating forehead, had the mastery of that ship.’7 Upon first reading, it would appear that Douglass subscribes to the conventional markers for black representation provided by racist discourse and minstrelsy caricature: ‘woolly head’ and ‘protruding lip.’ However, he ultimately subverts white racist stereotypes as they are used positively in order to situate the black male body within an explicitly separatist framework. His use of an exaggerated, unambiguous and highly stylized form draws attention to debates surrounding Douglass’s manipulation of theatricality, minstrelsy and varied positioning of audience. In contrast to The Heroic Slave, in which he seeks to convince a white readership of black equal manhood by ignoring racial difference, in his oratorical material Douglass celebrates the black male body even as represented by racist discourse, in order to produce generic black role models for a black audience. Indeed, the key phrase, ‘suiting the action to the word,’ confirms Douglass’s explicit connection between moral suasion and political activism, while it articulates his recognition of the necessity for practical efforts by his black audience to secure emancipation.

  Douglass’s incorporation of the black female slave figure into The Heroic Slave is a source of much ambiguity and accounts for much of the critical controversy surrounding this text.8 His explanation of Washington’s return to the South to rescue his wife from slavery borrows heavily from contemporary speculation in the abolitionist press. Both The Liberator’s ‘Madison Washington: Another Chapter in His History’ (1842) and the National Anti-Slavery Standard’s similarly titled ‘Madison Washington’ (1842) focused upon the unnamed figure of Washington’s wife as stimulus to black male rebellion. The first argued that ‘This grave Creole matter may prove to have been but a part only of that grand game, in which the highest stake was the liberty of his dear wife,’ while the second summarized the public consequences of domestic relationships: ‘We would give much to learn whether she was on board the Creole. It would be curious indeed, if this little sub-plot of domestic love should set in motion a great game of nations, with England and the United States for actors.’9 This interest in the possible existence of Washington’s wife not only encourages sensationalism by adding romance to an already adventurous tale but also confirms abolitionist preoccupations with domesticity and their interests in convincing a white audience concerning the sanctity of the black domestic unit and the extent of its violation by slavery.

  Thus, Douglass extends the evident preoccupation in the abolitionist press with writing Washington’s wife into the historical record by naming her into being in The Heroic Slave as Susan Washington. He characterizes her in passive terms: as the black hero’s ‘Poor thing!,’ ‘my good angel’ and ‘my poor wife, whom I knew might be trusted with my secrets even on the scaffold.’10 The fact of Douglass’s authorship confirms the significance of this text for documenting black male narrative strategies for representing the black female body. Thus, Washington’s account to the white abolitionist Listwell of his failed rescue attempt betrays Douglass’s ideological emphasis:

  My wife … screamed and fainted … the white folks were roused…. It was all over with me now! … Seeing that we gave no heed to their calls, they fired, and my poor wife fell by my side dead, while I received but a slight flesh wound. I now became desperate, and stood my ground, and awaited their attack over her dead body.11

  The preferred critical interpretation of this moment argues for the invincibility of the black male body, set against the vulnerability of the black female slave.12 However, it is possible to argue in support of the different view that Susan Washington’s body facilitates Madison’s physical liberation in this text. The Heroic Slave offers a clear discrepancy between Susan as Madison’s property, ‘my poor wife,’ and authorial interest in the symbolic importance of the black female slave’s body, ‘her dead body.’ Douglass questions and extends the available conventions within which black male and female slave bodies are presented and defined.

  1. From Celeste-Marie Bernier, “‘Arms Like Polished Iron’: The Black Slave Body in Narratives of a Slave Ship Revolt,” in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 23, no. 2 (2002): 89–106; the excerpt is from 94–97. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC (http://www.tandfonline.com). The footnotes have been renumbered and, unless otherwise indicated, are the author’s.

  2. F. Douglass, The Heroic Slave, in J. Griffiths (ed.), Autographs for Freedom (Boston, MA: John P. Jewett, 1853), p. 177. All subsequent quotations are referenced by the abbreviation HS.

  3. Ibid., p. 178.

  4. Ibid., pp. 178, 180 and 217 respectively.

  5. Ibid., p. 179.

  6. Ibid., p. 179.

  7. See Douglass, ‘Slavery, the Slumbering Volcano: An Address Delivered in New York, on April 23, 1849,’ in J. W. Blassingame (ed.), The Frederick Douglass Papers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979–92), Vol. 2, p. 155. [An excerpt from the speech is included in this volume under the title “Address at the Great Anti-Colonization Meeting in New York.” Eds.]

  8. For an analysis of representations of Susan Washington in this text, see, for example, the following essays: R. Yarborough, ‘Race, Violence, and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass’s “The Heroic Slave”’ in E. J. Sundquist (ed.), Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), M. M. Sale, ‘Critiques from Within: Antebellum Projects of Resistance,’ American Literature, 64.4 (December 1992), pp. 695–719; R. Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995); P. G. Foreman, ‘Sentimental Abolition in Douglass’s Decade: Revision, Erotic Conversion, and the Politics of Witnessing in “The Heroic Slave” and My Bondage and My Freedom,’ in H. B. Wonham (ed.), Criticism and the Color Line: Desegregating American Literary Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

  9. ‘Madison Washington,’ National Anti-Slavery Standard, 28 April 1842.

  10. HS, pp. 180, 192, and 190 respectively.

  11. Ibid., pp. 219–20.

  12. For example, see R. Yarborough, ‘Race, Violence, and Manhood,’ p. 176, and R. Wiegman, American Anatomies, p. 76.

  IVY G. WILSON

  from “Transnationalism, Frederick Douglass, and ‘The Heroic Slave’”1

  One of the ironies, or tragedies, of “The Heroic Slave” is that while Douglass wants to impress on his readers the intrinsic eligibility of African Americans for citizenship, the protagonist can find refuge only in another country. This irony makes the work an eerie precursor to James Baldwin. Yet for Douglass to appeal to his audience, he must privilege 1776 and the Declaration of Independence as constitutive elements of American nationalism. He therefore has both Tom Grant and Washington position the events aboard the Creole as similar to those that inspired the American Revolution. Despite Grant’s earlier admission that Washington and company were motivated by the “principles of 1776” (163), Washington, while laying no less a claim to the national narrative, is more conscious that the cultural apparatus that shapes the narrative is usually regulated by those in possession of political authority.

  God is my witness that LIBERTY, not malice, is the motive for this night’s work. I have done no more to those dead men yonder than they would have done to me in like circumstances. We have struck for our freedom, and if a true man’s heart be in you, you will honor us for the deed. We have done that which you applaud your fathers for doing, and if we are murderers, so were they. (161)

  Douglass knew that the underlying impulses of both 1776 and the Declaration of Independence were global. A year earlier in his Fourth of July speech, he admitted that while he drew “encouragemen
t from the Declaration of Independence,” his spirit was also “cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age” (128). Hence, one of the tasks of “The Heroic Slave” is to make manifest and ubiquitous what the Declaration says is self-evident. Philosophically, he may feel that all people are born equal or that they all possess the same right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but he recognizes that such ontological presuppositions must be politically guaranteed. As author, he uses contrast to underscore his position: what is only property in the United States is recognized as a person in British Canada. What should be self-evident in America is truly self-evident in the British Commonwealth.

  Notwithstanding his frequent appeals to the Declaration of Independence throughout “The Heroic Slave,” ultimately Douglass is not convinced of its proper implementation in the United States and must instead depend on the laws of another nation. The closing scene of part 4, in which Grant details the events aboard the Creole when they land at Nassau, illustrates that one’s rights must be legally inscribed by a nation. At the marine coffeehouse in Richmond, Grant informs a company of sailors that after a storm on the high seas, Washington leaned toward him and stated, “Mr. mate, you cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The ocean, if not the land, is free” (162–63). The debate between state law versus natural law is articulated in a conversation between Grant and Jack Williams. Williams maintains that the events aboard the Creole were the result of mismanagement by the white crew. Grant’s retort discloses the violent apparatuses that support the institution of slavery: