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<i>Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century</i> (review)

1989; Kent State University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cwh.1989.0044

1533-6271

William S. McFeely,

Race, History, and American Society

266CIVIL WAR HISTORY Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Leon Litwack and August Meier. (Urbana and Chicago: University ofIllinois Press, 1988. Pp. 360. $24.95.) This is a curiously sad book. While its title, Black Leaders ofthe Nineteenth Century, suggests stirring tales of struggles against adversity, what you hear are the voices ofdisillusioned old men quarreling. On reflection, this is not surprising. The book is a series ofbiographical sketches and the scrupulous authors are not at liberty to stop while the going is good. In biography, triumph can be outlived. When late in the nineteenth century or on into the twentieth, the old men died, they were far away from the exhilarating days of escapes from slavery, the winning of the Civil War, the participation in the bright promise of Reconstruction. The revolution had gone backwards. In order to hold onto the eminence they had achieved, they had to adjust to an America that would take the vote away, encourage lynch law, and submit a proud people to the insult ofJim Crow segregation. In fact, America was not even listening to them, though they were some of our greatest orators—speakers like Frederick Douglass, Henry McNeal Turner, and Henry Highland Garnet—who had once thrilled huge audiences. In frustration , they were forced to carp at each other. The sadness aside, all ofthe voices in this book have a great deal to say to us. Not all were male and not all old; Nat Turner was still a young man when he was silenced, and he, like Bishop Richard Allen, was from a far earlier era. Some ofthe foremost scholars ofthe field address themselves to interpreting these complex, intriguing Americans in this volume. Not surprisingly , the authors, several of them distinguished voices for social change in their own right, are often troubled by the leaders' distance from the people they sought to lead, people who were perhaps the least "elite" in the nation. In the days of their most effective leadership, that distance seems not to have been as great as these authors fear. August Meier, once again performing his unique service to black history, provides an introduction. Leon Litwack has written a bibliographical essay that will steer the reader new to the field in the right directions. More knowledgeable readers will lament the absence of source notes. Albert Raboteau gives us a splendid portrait of Richard Allen, the first bishop ofthat mighty fortress, the African Methodist Episcopal church; Peter Wood presents fascinating new biographical information on the white lawyer whose deposition gave voice to Nat Turner; Benjamin Quarles, in the most beautifully written of the sketches, tells of the historical "coming through" of Harriet Tubman; Waldo Martin once again insists persuasively on the intellectual range of Frederick Douglass; Jason Silverman gives us a fascinating picture of the fugitive community in Canada for whom Mary Ann Shadd spoke; William and Aimee Lee Cheek make us eagerfor the biography ofJohn Mercer Langston that they are writing; Sterling Stuckey gives BOOK REVIEWS267 us Henry Highland Garnet, with his wonderful father, at his militant best; NeII Irvin Painter is pungently honest as always dealing with Martin Delany; David A. Gerber tells of perhaps the most tormented of the lot, Peter Humphries Clark; Harold Rabinowitz and Eric Foner focus realistically on politics during Reconstruction with sketches, respectively, of Blanche K. Bruce, Robert Brown Elliott, Holland Thompson and "Leaders at the Grass Roots"; Alfred Moss incisively inquires into Alexander Crummell's confusion between high culture and a people's own sense of civilization; John Dittmer is equally discerning with his look at Henry McNeal Turner, the "deeply religious man with the instincts of a street fighter"; George C. Wright tells ofperhaps the most obscure ofthe leaders, the Kentuckian William Henry Stewart; Janet Sharp Hermann, with an apt phrase, tells of Isaiah T. Montgomery's "balancing act"; and Sharon Harley closes the volume with a fine piece on Mary Church Terrell that best suggests the carry forward of the struggle into the twentieth century. William S. McFeely University of Georgia Soldiers Blue and Gray. By James I. Robertson, Jr. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Pp. x, 278. $24.95.) The "real" Civil War...