American Toussaints: Symbol, Subversion, and the Black Atlantic Tradition in the American Civil War
2007; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01440390701269814
ISSN1743-9523
Autores Tópico(s)Caribbean and African Literature and Culture
ResumoAbstract During the American Civil War, Toussaint Louverture was for African Americans the touchstone of a transatlantic identity, which joined their violent struggle for freedom and equality to a black revolutionary tradition that was deeply rooted in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. White abolitionists reinforced the construction of this identification, for when they saw armed and uniformed black men, they likewise imagined American Toussaints, committed, disciplined, and talented slave soldiers who were eager to both die and kill for freedom. The men and women who seized upon the revolutionary symbols of Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution at this critical moment in the history of the American republic advanced a subversive ideology that undermined the white supremacist ideas that buttressed both the institution of slavery as well as the republic itself. Acknowledgements Space does not allow me to fully acknowledge the institutions that made this article possible, though I am greatly indebted to each of them: University of West Florida, American University, American Antiquarian Society, Cosmos Club, Gilder Lehrman Institute, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Library Company of Philadelphia, Massachusetts Historical Society, and Virginia Historical Society. I am also grateful to those who read drafts of this article in various forms and stages, particularly my mentor and advisor Karin Wulf, and Gad Heuman, Jay Clune, Ira Berlin, Alan Kraut, Andrew Lewis, Joshua Greenberg, and those who offered comment at the 2005 AHA annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. Notes 1. Purcell, Sealed with Blood. 2. Furstenberg, 'Beyond Freedom and Slavery.' 3. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, 230; Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 171; King, 'Toussaint L'Ouverture before 1791,' 68; Debien et al., 'Toussaint Louverture Avant 1789.' 4. Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 242–46. 5. Stanley Harrold's and John R. McKivigan's collection of essays, Antislavery Violence, highlights the militancy of abolitionists on the eve of the Civil War and details their growing commitment to violence to end slavery. For discussions of masculinity in the nineteenth century, see: Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women; Leverenz, Manhood and the American Renaissance; Rotundo, American Manhood. 6. Following the Civil War, Douglass served as the first American Minister to Haiti. For one of Douglass' lengthiest treatments of Toussaint, see 'Toussaint L'Ouverture,' Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress, Container 31, Microfilm reel 19; David Turley describes British reactions to Douglass on a visit to England in 1846 and the subsequent comparisons to Toussaint in 'British Unitarians, Frederick Douglass and Race,' 12. 7. Douglass, 'The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men,' 291. 8. 'A Trip to Hayti,' Douglass' Monthly, May 1861. 9. 'Men of Color, to Arms!' Douglass' Monthly, March 1863. 10. It is likely that like other abolitionists, Douglass refrained from invoking the black republic explicitly to avoid conjuring images of race war and the failed experiment of black national independence that contemporary Haiti provided. Dain, 'Haiti and Egypt'; Kachun, Festivals of Freedom; Kachun, 'Antebellum African Americans.' 11. Elliot, Heroes are Historic Men, 14. 12. Beard, The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, 107; Redpath, Toussaint L'Ouverture, 99. 13. The Union veteran and black historian George Washington Williams wrote, 'the black troops charged, singing "La Marseillaise"' (History of the Negro Troops, 50); Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, p. 51; 'Flag Presentation in Baltimore,' Weekly Anglo-African, 29 August 1863. 14. De Lamartine, Oeuvres Poetiques Completes, 1401. In 'Toussaint Louverture', Lamartine repeats a black version of the Marseillaise slaves sang in revolutionary Haiti, 1264–65. 15. 'Aux Armes!' L'Union, 2 June 1863. 16. 'The Colored Regiments of Massachusetts,' Weekly Anglo-African, 19 December 1863. 17. 'Letter from Washington,' Weekly Anglo-African, 1 August 1863. 18. 'Editor's Book Table, Toussaint L'Ouverture,' New York Independent, 4 February 1864. 19. Blatt et al., Hope and Glory. 20. Redkey, 'Brave Black Volunteers.' 21. Liberator, 6 November 1863. 22. The New Bedford Mercury used 'Toussaint Guards' when referencing the regiment throughout the spring of 1863. For example, see 23 and 27 March and 20 April 1863. For examples in other papers, see: 'Letter to the Editor,' The Christian Recorder, 4 April 1863; 'Reception of the Toussaint Guards,' Liberator, 15 September 1865. 23. 'The 54th Regiment,' New Bedford Mercury, 23 March 1863. 24. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 245. 25. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 178. 26. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, 243–45; Frederick Douglass Papers, vol. 4, 232. 27. Letter to the Editor, Pine and Palm, 20 June 1861. 28. 'Volunteers for Hayti,' Pine and Palm, 29 June 1861. 29. 'Speaking of the San Domingo Spanish Imbroglio,' Weekly Anglo-African, 4 May 1861. Douglas's story is remarkable. A light-skinned former slave from Virginia, Douglas served in the early years of the war in the all-white 95th Illinois Regiment. In 1863 he relocated to Chicago where he recruited black soldiers. A year later, he enlisted as a captain of the black Kansas First Heavy Artillery. Soon after joining this black regiment, Douglas died due to illness. 'Mournful News,' Weekly Anglo-African, 16 November 1865; Harris, 'H. Ford Douglas.' 30. Adams, On the Altar of Freedom, xxx; Ploski and Williams, The Negro Almanac, 834. 31. 'The Flag Presentation at Chelton Hills,' Weekly Anglo-African, 12 September 1863. 32. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America, viii. 33. Williams, Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 40, 45–46, 54; Franklin, 'George Washington Williams, Historian.' 34. Adams, Historical Gazetteer, 989–90. 35. For colonists returned from Haiti and recruited for enlistment, see 'Letter from Teachers of the Freedmen,' National Anti-Slavery Standard, 16 April 1864. For reports of Africans in the Union Army, see 'Native Africans Enlisting,' Douglass' Monthly, April 1863; Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, 41. 36. 'The Colored Troops,' Newark North American, 12 June 1863. 37. 'The Siege of Vicksburgh,' New York Times, 9 July 1863. 38. 'Anniversary of the Association for the Relief of Contrabands in the District of Columbia,' The Christian Recorder, 22 August 1863. 39. Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 33. 40. Ibid.; 'The Schooner S. J. Waring,' Harper's Weekly, 3 August 1861. 41. 'A Black Hero,' Douglass' Monthly, August 1861. 42. 'Hon. Owen Lovejoy,' Weekly Anglo-African, 25 January 1862. 43. 'A Rival of Toussaint L'Ouverture,' New York Times, 24 March 1862; 'A New Toussaint L'Ouverture,' Chicago Tribune, 27 March 1862. 44. 'Visit to the Twenty-Ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers,' Weekly Anglo-African, 13 February 1864. 45. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 44. 46. 'A Sunday at Port Royal,' National Anti-Slavery Standard, 26 July 1862. 47. Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 198. 48. 'The Slaves of Maryland,' Chicago Tribune, 18 September 1863. 49. 'Conversation with Gen. Thomas,' New York Times, 20 July 1863. 50. 'Capacity of Blacks,' National Anti-Slavery Standard, 20 September 1862. 51. 'Toussaint L'Ouverture,' Commonwealth, 9 June 1866. 52. War of the Rebellion, series I, 15, 566. 53. 'Haytian Ideas Adopted in America,' Pine and Palm, 5 June 1862. 54. Litwack, Been in the Storm so Long, 86. 55. Rollin, Life and Public Services of Martin Delany, 143. 56. 'Haytian Ideas Adopted in America,' Pine and Palm 5 June 1862; 'A Sermon Preached at Music Hall,' Weekly Anglo-African, 20 April 1861. 57. Delany, who is often referred to as the father of black nationalism, came to appreciate Haiti during the Civil War more than previously. While in the 1850s thousands of African Americans preferred Haiti over alternative sites as a location for colonization, Delany steadfastly preferred West Africa. Nonetheless, during the Civil War, he declared before the United States Congress that Haiti was 'peopled by as brave and noble descendants of Africa as they who … constructed the everlasting pyramids and catacombs of Egypt – a people who freed themselves by the might of their own will, the force of their own right arms, and their unflinching determination to be free'. Stuckey, The Ideological Origins, 205. 58. Levine, Martin Delany, 222. 59. Rollin, Life and Public Services of Martin Delany, 169; Delany's positive response from Lincoln may be the result of selective memory. Nell Irvin Painter, in Sojourner Truth (207), posits that leading African Americans, including Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, reported being respectfully received by the President, for 'When Lincoln patronized them, he violated Truth and Douglass's self-presentation as people commanding respect.' 60. Up to this point, Delany had served in the 104th United States Colored Troops as a recruiter and medical officer. Holt, Black Over White, 74. 61. 'Special Notices. Maj. Martin Delany, U.S.A.,' Weekly Anglo-African, 19 August 1865. 62. Fahs, The Imagined Civil War; Kaser, Books and Libraries in Camp and Battle. 63. Camp, Closer to Freedom, 114–16. 64. 'Letter from Reverend Daniel Forster,' Liberator, 12 June 1863. 65. 'The Freedmen. Education Among the Colored Soldiers,' Commonwealth, 5 November 1864. 66. 'The South and the Negro,' National Anti-Slavery Standard, 9 September 1865. 67. Weekly Anglo-African, 26 March 1864. 68. 'The Army and the Negroes,' National Anti-Slavery Standard, 8 November 1862. 69. Bolster, Black Jacks; Scott, 'The Common Wind'; Horton and Horton, In Hope of Liberty. 70. Thanks to Phillip Lapsansky at the Library Company of Philadelphia for bringing the story of this edition to my attention. 'Afro-Americana,' The Annual Report of the Library Company of Philadelphia (1989), 1989. 71. 'Will The Contrabands Fight,' Washington National Republican, in Weekly Anglo-African, 15 February 1862. 72. 'Colored People of the District of Colombia,' Weekly Anglo-African, 19 April 1862. 73. 'The Haytiens and John Brown,' New York Times, 8 August 1860. 74. 'The Contrabands at Port Royal,' Liberator, 20 December 1861. 75. 'An Aged Negro,' National Anti-Slavery Standard, 27 June 1863. 76. Weekly Anglo-African, 30 March 1861. 77. Bartlett, Wendell and Ann Phillips, 131–34. 78. Civil War newspapers are filled with accounts of survivors of the American Revolution. For example, see 'Nimium Ne Crede Colori,' Liberator, 9 October 1863. For an example of a contraband claiming to remember George Washington, see: 'About Contrabands,' Weekly Anglo-African, 24 January 1863. For a discussion of the tradition, see: Reiss, Showman and the Slave; Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party. 79. The best synthesis of Haitian refugees to America remains Hunt, Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America, chapter 2. More recent accounts are: Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies; White, '"A Flood of Impure Lava".' 80. 'The Government and the Negroes,' New York Herald, 6 January 1863. 81. Berlin et al., The Black Military Experience, 652 and 683. 82. Ira Berlin in his seminal work on free black southerners states incorrectly that unlike the North, 'No Southern city had … a "Hayti".' Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 257. 83. African Americans spelled Toussaint's name variously, as a cursory glance at antebellum black newspapers reveals. 'William Lambert,' Detroit Free Press, 29 April 1890; Boykin, A Hand Book on the Detroit Negro, 117. 84. Langston named his son Arthur Dessalines Langston. John Mercer Langston, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capital, 157. 85. Anderson, Biographical Souvenir Volume, 138–39. 86. Mather, Who's Who of the Colored Race, vol. 1, 150–51. 87. From Frederick Douglass (Bailey) and Sojourner Truth (Isabella) to Malcolm X (Little) and Martin (Michael) Luther King, Jr., the naming practices of African Americans signify an important transition. Blassingame, The Slave Community, 181–83; Stuckey, Slave Culture, 194–98. 88. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic; White, 'Yes, There is a Black Atlantic.' 89. Duganne, Camps and Prisons, 92–94. 90. Bulfinch, Honor, 122–24, 131–34, 204–29. 91. Kirke [Gilmore], Among the Pines, 19–21. In the summer of 1863, Americans bought more than 30,000 copies of Among the Pines, which first appeared as a serial in the Continental Monthly. Writing under the pen name of Edmund Kirke, James Gilmore assured readers of the veracity of his work, promising only a 'record of facts'. He continued, 'the characters I have introduced are real. They are not drawn with the pencil of fancy, nor, I trust, colored with the tints of prejudice. The scenes I have described are true' (33). Northern critics hailed Among the Pines as 'one of the most readable books of Southern life we have ever seen', and 'a striking and truthful portraiture of slave society'. Kirke [Gilmore], My Southern Friends, advertisement. 92. 'Among the Pines.' 93. Fahs, Imagined Civil War, 160. 94. 'Among the Pines,' 534. 95. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 767–68; Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, 419, 423–24, 431, 535. 96. 'An Intelligent Contraband,' Commonwealth, 8 November 1862; 'Views of an Intelligent Negro,' Douglass' Monthly, January 1863.
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