"Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now."
January 18, 2016 10:16 AM   Subscribe

After much criticism and some defence, A Birthday Cake for George Washington has been pulled by Scholastic Press.

Although the author of the book, Ramin Ganeshram, included a note describing the true story of Hercules' life, and its illustrator, Vanessa Brantley-Newton, likewise explained her decision to render Hercules and the other household slaves as happy and proud of their work, wide-spread condemnation led to the book's withdrawal.

The children's book describes Hercules (born 1755, date of death unknown), a slave and chef to the kitchen of George Washington in Philadelphia in the 1790s. In the story of the book, Hercules bakes a cake for Washington's birthday with the help of his daughter. However, Hercules probably did not bake cakes, and escaped from Washington's Virginia estate on February 22, 1797—Washington's Birthday. Hercules had been sent there to perform hard labor digging clay.

Louis-Philippe, who would eventually become the king of France in 1830, was visiting George Washington at the time, and met Hercules' six-year-old daughter, whom he had left behind upon his escape. When he asked her if she was sad that her father had left, she replied, "Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now."

A painting attributed to Gilbert Stuart may depict Hercules in Chef's whites.

Previously on Metafilter: Run, Hercules, Run!
posted by Stilling Still Dreaming (70 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
How could I forget: Ask a slave.
posted by Stilling Still Dreaming at 10:28 AM on January 18, 2016 [11 favorites]


I read about this book on Twitter today and thought it was some historically significant book being pulled from a museum exhibit.

But no, it was published this month.

*sigh*
posted by suetanvil at 10:29 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


It seems like the book is designed to glorify the idea of what Malcolm X called the House Negro.
posted by graymouser at 10:35 AM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Thank you for posting this- I had wanted to after I saw the headline, but I'm at work and couldn't really flesh it out like your post is doing.

How we talk about slavery is really fucking important, because most of our history we've just flat-out ignored it. We need to be open and we need to take responsibility for our past, and we need to stop this shit when it happens. (Like the mother called out a text book company for referring to the slave trade as "immigration" and slaves as "workers". )


I read the author's letter because I wanted to know her justification for the tone of the book, but she never really gives one. Not only that, she continues to be problematic in her framing:
"Whether or not slavery was wrong was a question that Washington could not answer for himself".
No. There is no question here, slavery is wrong. The people who owned slaves knew it was wrong. Washington overlooked the evilness of the act because the people who were exploited could not speak up. He took advantage of the fact the he could not be held accountable for his evildoing. Framing it that he might not have known he was doing something wrong is just disgusting.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:39 AM on January 18, 2016 [61 favorites]


> #1 Best Seller

Hmm.
posted by Leon at 10:42 AM on January 18, 2016


It amazes me that such a weird dynamic could ever become "a thing" in publishing.

Relatedly, there's an episode of Roy Underhill's The Woodwright's Shop where, in the opening, he discusses the house carpenter/cabinetmaker responsible for many of the archetectural details in Jefferson's home...a slave named John Hemmings. As the main link says, complicated.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:44 AM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


#1 Best Seller

Hmm.


Principle of scarcity. As soon as it was pulled, everybody wants a copy.
posted by prepmonkey at 10:45 AM on January 18, 2016


There's probably a decent children's book to be had in the story of Hercules escaping on Washington's birthday, and his daughter's response.
posted by Gelatin at 10:48 AM on January 18, 2016 [32 favorites]


Isn't this the second poorly depicted slave cookery book in less than a year? When did this become a thing?
posted by Karaage at 10:49 AM on January 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


"Whether or not slavery was wrong was a question that Washington could not answer for himself".

It's important to understand that the slaveowners lived in constant mortal fear of a slave revolt. The South was built on the backs of its slave population, which was something between a third and half of the population of each state. The idea that the enslaved masses would take violent revenge on their former masters was not entirely unreasonable (especially after the massacre of whites in 1804 in Haiti), and this created a paranoia among slaveowners. They lived lives of luxury but on the basis of human misery and knew that the house could come tumbling down at any moment. In a very real way the slaveowners took up the motto "Après nous le déluge" until it finally came in the Civil War.

(This is not justifying the slaveowners. They were hypocritical monsters. I just want to point out a major thread in their thought that I don't see discussed enough.)
posted by graymouser at 10:57 AM on January 18, 2016 [12 favorites]


From the Artist's Note in the back of the book:

"While slavery in America was a vast injustice, my research indicates that Hercules and the other servants in George Washington's kitchen took great pride in their ability to cook for a man of such stature. That is why I have depicted them as happy people."

Look, if you're going to explain, ostensibly to adults, why you chose the mode of depiction you did, perhaps you should at least demonstrate an adult-level understanding of the subject matter?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:57 AM on January 18, 2016 [24 favorites]


Washington overlooked the evilness of the act because the people who were exploited could not speak up.

I don't know. I think Washington,Jefferson, et al overlooked the evilness of slavery because it was economically important for them to do so. There were certainly people speaking out against slavery (sometimes even freed or fugitive slaves), and it seems really unlikely that people as widely read as the Founding Fathers and as steeped in Enlightenment thought would be ignorant of these arguments. They equivocated because the economy of their colony depended on slavery.

I'm not defending them; I go back and forth, but I generally feel that enslaving people because it's to your economic advantage is slightly worse than enslaving people out of a deeply-held conviction that they are inferior, since hypocrisy, but it's not exactly a wide moral gulf between the two stands. Of course, John Brown of Providence defended his right to practice the slave trade (even though he made little, if any money at it) because he seemingly couldn't stand to have anyone tell him what he could and couldn't do as a businessman, which might be even worse.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:03 AM on January 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


Even with glossing over the worst of history... obviously the Samantha books I grew up with had much of the horrors of Victorian poverty reduced in detail and severity. But Nellie O'Malley starts the first novel as a nine-year-old servant who has already previously worked in a factory. She gets a happy ending, including getting out of poverty, eventually, but it's clearly portrayed as being a remarkable thing, not the normal way her life would have gone. And it takes six books for that to happen. This book was billed as being for ages 7-10, according to Amazon. Meet Samantha was billed as "8 and up". So, virtually the same age range.

It's one thing to say that you probably don't need to explain slavery properly to three-year-olds, but by this age range, kids can handle that the world isn't always a perfect place. American Girl had a series that touched on slavery, too, but I'd aged out of the books by the time it came out so I haven't read it. Still, Meet Addy came out in 1993. It was a book about the lives of slaves, written by an African-American woman, and appropriate for children. This is not a weird new thing that nobody's ever tried before that's bound to be a bit weird until we work out how to do it well. This never should have been given the okay in the first place.
posted by Sequence at 11:15 AM on January 18, 2016 [12 favorites]


Washington overlooked the evilness of the act because the people who were exploited could not speak up.
"I don't know. I think Washington,Jefferson, et al overlooked the evilness of slavery because it was economically important for them to do so. There were certainly people speaking out against slavery (sometimes even freed or fugitive slaves), and it seems really unlikely that people as widely read as the Founding Fathers and as steeped in Enlightenment thought would be ignorant of these arguments. They equivocated because the economy of their colony depended on slavery."


The sentence directly after the one you quoted is my real point- that Washington knew that slavery was an acceptable evil (not that it wasn't evil), and used that in his favor in order to uphold his lifestyle. I was not trying to say that slaves literally couldn't say words about the subject, just that their position made their voices invalid.

You seem to be trying to counter an argument I never made (economics vs ??? ). I wasn't trying to say why George kept slaves or ignored the wickedness of it, just how he was able to do so.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:18 AM on January 18, 2016


However, Hercules probably did not bake cakes, and escaped from Washington's Virginia estate on February 22, 1797—Washington's Birthday

Yeah, this is a troll. There's no doubt in my mind that this was a cynical and deliberate attempt to milk controversy for sales, the irony is too on the nose for it to be anything else.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 11:30 AM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


I would so love to have heard the pitch meeting for this, for it is either the greatest pitchman ever, or the dumbest publishing exec ever, that got this dreck approved. I picture James Caan, Andy Richter, and the dude from Tenacious D pitching the grey-haired harrumph-y guy from Elf on the virtues of a book about a happy slave.
posted by prepmonkey at 12:01 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]




A Birthday Cake for George Washington- the story of America's first president and his property.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:27 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


American Girl had a series that touched on slavery, too, but I'd aged out of the books by the time it came out so I haven't read it. Still, Meet Addy came out in 1993. It was a book about the lives of slaves, written by an African-American woman, and appropriate for children.

Yeah, Meet Addy was *intense*. I read it to my 5 year old and might have held off a bit if I'd vetted it first - In just the first half of the book, Addy's dad and brother get sold, she gets whipped, she and her mom run away (but they have to leave the baby behind because she's too much of a risk), and her mom nearly drowns at a river crossing in the middle of the night. She's a good heroine - a strong, brave kid who gets into, and then out of, some scrapes, but there's no risk you'll come away from it thinking slavery is ok.
posted by telepanda at 12:30 PM on January 18, 2016 [17 favorites]


In 2015, of the 3,000 books published for children ages 8 and above, only 32 were identified by Campbell and author Zetta Elliott to be written by African American authors.

Frig, that's an order of magnitude lower than I would have guessed. I hope this series of events galvanizes more African-Americans to write children's books - it's clear there's a niche that needs filling.
posted by LSK at 12:34 PM on January 18, 2016


I should be amazed at how unreconstructed nostalgia for slavery was happily published by a major house, but depressingly I'm not. Horrified, yes, but not surprised.

Kind of reminds me of picking up a copy of one of Cherie Priest's Boneshaker books. Had them recommended to me, and took a look at one only to find it dripping with neo-confederate nostalgia. Would have thrown it against a wall if it wasn't a library book. Yet literally never in any comment I saw on it did anyone seem to even notice the creepiness of that.
posted by tavella at 1:02 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


[LAURENS]
Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom

[WASHINGTON]
Not. Yet


From a Genius annotation (co-signed by Lin-Manuel Miranda) from "The Battle of Yorktown":

"In the mouth of Chris Jackson, a black actor playing Washington, his two-word reply takes on a variety of meanings: it’s a warning (the war’s not over until we’ve negotiated a peace), a challenge (America will have to keep fighting for freedom after the war is over—just look at Act II!), a lament (it will take almost another hundred years before slavery is abolished in the U.S.), and a hesitation (Washington was a slaveowner himself, he emancipated his slaves in his will—only granting them freedom slowly and gradually)."

I can list many things I love about Hamilton, but the way it destroys the myth that opposition to slavery just hadn't been invented yet is so important especially when people like Ganeshram think this is a swell way to depict the master/slave relationship.

i mean jesus christ lady what the hell?
posted by bibliowench at 1:12 PM on January 18, 2016 [21 favorites]


Washington overlooked the evilness of the act because the people who were exploited could not speak up.

I don't know. I think Washington,Jefferson, et al overlooked the evilness of slavery because it was economically important for them to do so.


It's possible that they didn't overlook it as much as feel completely helpless in the face of its integration in society at that time. What to say? Whom to say it to? What would happen?

I mean, you go to a party, there are slaves there, you're trying to make America happen -- your life and family are at stake -- you need people to get along. What do you do?

You're working in congress, you have to travel a lot, you have the system you have -- could you realistically get everything done that society needed if you had only paid servants? If you did that, would other people judge you? Jefferson inherited a bunch of slaves, I believe -- if he just set them free, what would have happened to them? Would they have been able to get jobs? Would Jefferson have been able to do his work? Would all his friends and extended family have started treating him as that weird stuck-up guy?

What do you do, now, when your friends want to show off their new SUV to you, or when they think it's just fun to decorate their house at Christmas with cheap blower-inflated decorations made in China, where all that cheap manufacturing has made their air unbreathable and there aren't all that many trees left? How do you personally address the wastefulness of cell phone manufacturing processes, the fact that you don't know whether your food was delivered with exploited people, the fact that most of your clothes are probably made from petroleum, the fact that your neighbors are educating their own kids and nobody else's?

It's not just economics; it's not just courage that's required to solve these problems. It takes creativity, brilliance, perseverance, and a some way to allow leaders to be _safe_ from social consequences (money helps, health care might help) if they do take the lead.
posted by amtho at 1:23 PM on January 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


Its possible that they didn't overlook it as much as feel completely helpless in the face of its integration in society at that time. What to say? Whom to say it to? What would happen?


There were plenty of founding fathers who opposed slavery tooth and nail. Alexander Hamilton (mefi's fave) was staunchly anti-slavery, and founded and funded a major New York abolitionist society. John Laurens, the founding father who almost was, dedicated his entire life to trying to destroy slavery despite being born and raised in a rich slaveholding family in South Carolina. There was plenty of opposition there, no matter how steeped they were in it.
posted by Itaxpica at 1:41 PM on January 18, 2016 [29 favorites]


Reading this is jarring because I keep hearing HERCULES MULLIGAN in my head whenever I read Hercules.
posted by pxe2000 at 1:49 PM on January 18, 2016 [15 favorites]


"Whether or not slavery was wrong was a question that Washington could not answer for himself".

Yeah, what? There were a number of thinkers, politicians, writers, etc. who were openly speaking out against slavery, including some of Washington's associates. The assertion in the Declaration of Independence of "all men are created equal" was pointed out as hypocritical AT THE TIME, not just in historical hindsight. If many of his contemporaries could decide that OWNING PEOPLE was wrong, then why not him? I call shenanigans on that quote.
posted by chainsofreedom at 1:49 PM on January 18, 2016 [13 favorites]


It's possible that they didn't overlook it as much as feel completely helpless in the face of its integration in society at that time. What to say? Whom to say it to? What would happen?

I get what you're saying here, and I don't doubt this was a part of the question in plenty of individual cases, but I have a real hard time letting dudes who literally overthrew their government off the hook for being unwilling to face the social risks of freeing their own slaves. I mean, these were people with the courage and capacity to demand and win for themselves a radically altered model of government, and they synthesized a whole bunch of political theory and ideology in the course of doing so. If anybody should have known better...
posted by brennen at 1:54 PM on January 18, 2016 [13 favorites]


It's important not to oversell it though. Hamilton, along with John Jay, was a founder of the New York Manumission Society, but that organization spent a good amount of its early meetings trying to come up with a policy for what to do with the slaves owned by its own members (apparently, freeing them as slowly as possible was favored). The laws they promoted freed slaves over exceptionally long periods of time, requiring that the children of current slaves serve until well into their 20s. And a good number of the most influential founding fathers were clearly unrepentant fans of slavery.
posted by zachlipton at 1:56 PM on January 18, 2016 [6 favorites]


Here's a recent examination of how George and Martha allowed order to be kept: "lower her spirit or skin her back". So yeah, not so much with the benvolence.
posted by TwoStride at 1:57 PM on January 18, 2016 [7 favorites]


Reading this is jarring because I keep hearing HERCULES MULLIGAN in my head whenever I read Hercules.

So the funny thing is that the other half of the HERCULES MULLIGAN (a tailor spying on the British government) story is his slave, Cato, who was able to spy and pass on messages across British lines, because who suspects a slave? Unfortunately, we don't know a ton about Cato's story or where he wound up after the war, because I bet it would make one heck of a musical if we did.
posted by zachlipton at 2:03 PM on January 18, 2016 [14 favorites]


I just picture Jami Ramin Ganeshramn doing lunch with S.T. Joshi, the fervent defender of all things Lovecraft. I have a feeling the two would get along well together.
posted by happyroach at 2:04 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've written some about the myths of slavery. One of them was the belief that slaveowners who chose to, could grant their slaves their freedom. Every slave state had laws limiting the granting of freedom. In several slave states it took an act of the legislature to grant freedom.

The decennial censuses counted how many slaves were freed during the most recent year. During the year 1850, one out of 2181 slaves were given freedom.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:24 PM on January 18, 2016 [12 favorites]


Jefferson inherited a bunch of slaves, I believe -- if he just set them free, what would have happened to them? Would they have been able to get jobs? Would Jefferson have been able to do his work? Would all his friends and extended family have started treating him as that weird stuck-up guy?

Jefferson is maybe the worst example for this question -- what can you say about a guy who not only kept his mistress and their children enslaved for the duration of his life, apparently did not even free her at his death, leaving his daughter to do that.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:29 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]




When Jefferson took his "mistress", she was his 14 year old property and he was legally entitled to do whatever he pleased with her.

In some respects, these slave holding founding fathers weren't much better than Boko Haram.
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:00 PM on January 18, 2016 [13 favorites]


I can imagine that Hercules' pride in his work remained even as his horror at being a slave dominated his emotions and actions. "I am able to create f'ing awesome cakes, and even the most powerful people around recognize me for that. Can't deny it. On the other hand, I would like the ability to say, no, I don't want to create a cake for you. I want to be free."

Fascinating story, could be great if it was told well.
posted by clawsoon at 3:12 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I imagine that a lot of Hercules' "enthusiasm" had to do with self-preservation. Look happy or face the whip.

Similar to Uber drivers. Reassure your passengers of the delights of the Uber business model or you get a 4.0 rating and face the Uber ax.
posted by JackFlash at 3:35 PM on January 18, 2016


Maybe we can not equate slavery to being an uber driver.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:38 PM on January 18, 2016 [28 favorites]


The idea that the enslaved masses would take violent revenge on their former masters was not entirely unreasonable (especially after the massacre of whites in 1804 in Haiti), and this created a paranoia among slaveowners

...not to mention the fact that US slave revolts did happen and were violently suppressed (heads of rebels on pikes, etc)
posted by eustatic at 3:55 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wonder to what extent those decisions -- cynical as they were -- influenced the abolition of slavery in the British Empire during the 1830s and 40s. Is it a case where wartime expedience paved the way for permanent progress, or is it truly just that the Empire had less of an economic dependence of chattel slavery and therefore had an easier time passing an abolition act through Parliament?
posted by tobascodagama at 5:14 PM on January 18, 2016


I love these threads. As a person who went to more or less 12 grades of public school in the U.S. and then studied no American history at private university, I am always excited at the history people are able to reference (with linked sources even!) in threads about very early U.S. history, particularly with regard to the practice of slavery. We just don't teach our history here, not with any nuance or accountability for our errors and I always appreciate the opportunity to be guided toward stuff I should know.

So, thanks again, mefi!
posted by crush-onastick at 5:17 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


Related NYT (2015/02/16): George Washington, Slave Catcher
During the president’s two terms in office, the Washingtons relocated first to New York and then to Philadelphia. Although slavery had steadily declined in the North, the Washingtons decided that they could not live without it. Once settled in Philadelphia, Washington encountered his first roadblock to slave ownership in the region — Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.

The act began dismantling slavery, eventually releasing people from bondage after their 28th birthdays. Under the law, any slave who entered Pennsylvania with an owner and lived in the state for longer than six months would be set free automatically. This presented a problem for the new president.

Washington developed a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny. Every six months, the president’s slaves would travel back to Mount Vernon or would journey with Mrs. Washington outside the boundaries of the state. In essence, the Washingtons reset the clock.
The point of the NYT article, I think, is that while Washington himself may have felt personal conflict about slavery, in the end he these conflicts were not sufficient for him to actually do anything (personally or politically) about it.
posted by mhum at 5:41 PM on January 18, 2016 [12 favorites]


Further information about Washington's attitude about Oney Judge, one of his (other) escaped slaves, can be found in this Philadelphia Inquirier article ("A slave's defiance The story of rebellious Oney Judge..." 2008/07/01):
Washington was both angered and perplexed by what he saw as Judge's ingratitude. He asked his Treasury secretary, Oliver Wolcott, for assistance in finding the runaway.

"I am sorry to give you, or any one else trouble on such a trifling occasion, but the ingratitude of the girl, who was brought up and treated more like a child than a Servant (and Mrs Washington's desire to recover her) ought not to escape with impunity if it can be avoided," he wrote.

[...]

Judge tried to negotiate with the president - the promise of her ultimate freedom in exchange for her return - but he angrily refused. Even after leaving the presidency he continued to seek her return, and in 1798 sent his nephew to New Hampshire with instructions to bring her back.

By this time she had married a sailor, Jack Staines, was the mother of a young child, and had no intention of returning to bondage. Warned that another kidnapping initiative was brewing, she went into hiding. Washington's nephew returned to Mount Vernon empty-handed.
By this account, George Washington is portrayed as being personally affronted by Judge's escape. At this time, he wouldn't even accept her eventual freedom in exchange for her return to immediate bondage.
posted by mhum at 8:03 PM on January 18, 2016 [9 favorites]


Is it just me, or is a common theme developing in these where Martha Washington seems annoyed at best, and father-of-our-country Town-Burner just wanted to punish and obsess?
posted by corb at 9:13 PM on January 18, 2016


All night I've felt the need to bring up sweatshops, particularly in the U.S. Mariana Islands, not to equivocate those conditions to African chattel slavery in U.S. history, but to make a point about something of which we are all at least vaguely aware, but almost none of us really strive to do anything about, no matter our moral compunctions.

I don't really know what my point is in bringing up the comparison, except that, say, Hamilton was an abolitionist, but still stood behind the slave-owning Washington due to loyalty and certainly a sense of career advancement. Many framers, including slave-owning ones, understood that the issue would come to a head and was a moral wrong, but weren't willing to cut that knot themselves.

I wonder how much having the people subjugated being right in front of them all the time helped to keep the issue at the forefront? Or, rather, I wonder how much never having to really look at it keeps it out of our national conversation.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:01 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


Jefferson knew it was wrong. It originally was in the Declaration--and a very clear and trenchant indictment of it. But of course he axed that part.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:29 PM on January 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


tobasco: we can't be certain, but I strongly suspect that the fact the Brits had no direct economic stake in slave labor made it much easier to abolish. See, also, the abolition of slavery in northern industrial states.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:35 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Washington did do *something* about it--his slaves were freed at Martha's death.

Now, obviously that isn't good enough.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:38 PM on January 18, 2016


Not only isn't it good enough -- it's the most chickenshit "good" act he could have possibly done there.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:49 PM on January 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


Agreed. I wasn't defending him!
posted by persona au gratin at 11:28 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Navelgazer: there are some interesting papers from the Sewards about their shock at seeing slavery in VA, and there is reason to think it made them more adamant in their abolitionism.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:31 PM on January 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Whether or not slavery was wrong was a question that Washington could not answer for himself".

Washington signed the fucking Fugitive Slave Act making it illegal to aid an escaped slave or to interfere in his or her capture in every state in the Union.
posted by shakespeherian at 5:27 AM on January 19, 2016 [9 favorites]


we can't be certain, but I strongly suspect that the fact the Brits had no direct economic stake in slave labor made it much easier to abolish

This is, I think, the reason why outright slavery was more or less abolished in the British Isles as early as 1700, while being allowed to continue in various colonies for another 150 years. Economics had already made slavery uninteresting at home; it took the constant bleeding wound of slave rebellions in the Caribbean to make it clear that the institution was more trouble than it was worth (although the systems that replaced slavery weren't materially much better in most places, showing that the concern was a lot more economic than moral).

I have a friend who is researching the early history of the Quakers and Abolition. While we tend to think of the Quakers as being very anti-slavery, they were always very pro-business, and this made disentangling slavery from their members' business ventures (especially in sugar and molasses) awkward, especially early on. Once they sorted that out (my impression is that members with strong slave-owning businesses left the sect), the Quakers had to deal with the question of whether they wanted freed slaves in their congregations or not, which led to another round of awkwardness, defections, and compromises. The racial nature of Early Modern European slavery makes it a much more socially toxic problem than, say, slavery in the Roman Empire, which was no picnic, but had a clear path to exit slavery and integrate into Roman society (even if this path was practically limited to very well-placed slaves).
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:13 AM on January 19, 2016 [4 favorites]


George Washington & Slavery: The Legacy of His Silent Condemnation and George Washington: His Troubles with Slavery give two different, conflicting views.

Washington signed the fucking Fugitive Slave Act making it illegal to aid an escaped slave or to interfere in his or her capture in every state in the Union.

Which had terrible repercussions. With the signing of the Act, slave hunting and capturing became a major industry. Bounty hunters didn't restrict themselves to escaped slaves, either. They began kidnapping those who had either been freed or born free and selling them into slavery. (Solomon Northrup, protagonist of Twelve Years a Slave is a prominent example.) Eventually, Northern states had to make laws that protected runaway slaves and free African Americans.
posted by zarq at 7:25 AM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


i don't even understand how someone can fix their mouth to refer to sally hemings as a mistress.
posted by nadawi at 7:28 AM on January 19, 2016 [8 favorites]


Jefferson is maybe the worst example for this question -- what can you say about a guy who not only kept his mistress and their children enslaved for the duration of his life, apparently did not even free her at his death, leaving his daughter to do that.

That he was a rapist.

By law, Hemings was his property and therefore had no power to consent. She was a woman he owned and raped and fathered children on. On, not with. 'With' would imply she had freedom of choice.
posted by zarq at 7:31 AM on January 19, 2016 [8 favorites]


Mod note: Couple of comments deleted. "I don't want to seem to minimize" isn't a great start for an entree into this topic.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:46 AM on January 19, 2016 [5 favorites]


By law, Hemings was his property and therefore had no power to consent. She was a woman he owned and raped and fathered children on. On, not with. 'With' would imply she had freedom of choice.

Woman? When the relationship started she was 14. Jefferson was 44.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 9:21 AM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


Ugh.

Good point.
posted by zarq at 9:24 AM on January 19, 2016


"Which had terrible repercussions. With the signing of the Act, slave hunting and capturing became a major industry. Bounty hunters didn't restrict themselves to escaped slaves, either. They began kidnapping those who had either been freed or born free and selling them into slavery."

Coincidentally, I just ran into this in the library's local archives, printed in a local newspaper (Daily Journal) in 1881. The kidnapping would have been in 1851; Illinois was a free state.
Calvert, Texas, May 14, 1881 -- To the Mayor of Peoria, Ill: Please condescend to read this letter, and then give it to some colored minister of any church. My name is Charles Borzezar, and I was born about three miles from Peoria, Illinois, and when I was about nine or ten years old, I was stolen away from my home and brought south and sold into slavery. My father was a farmer and his name was Borzele or Borzezar, and I never spoke a work [sic] of English until I was sold into slavery. I had one sister, younger than myself, named "Maria." When I was stolen I think it was on a Saturday evening, and I had been to a horse race. My mother was named Julia, but she was dead before I was stolen. I also had once uncle named "Sharco," and his wife was named Maria. My aunt and uncle had two sons, via, [sic?] Charlie, and Henry. Mr. Mayor, please condescend to drop me a postal card, acknowledging the receipt of this letter, and give me the name and address of some colored man in Peoria, and you will very greatly benefit the oppressed.

You [sic] very humble servant,
Charlie Borzele

Send my card or letter in the car of J. B. Raynof, Calvert, Robertson county, Texas.
I believe my people spoke French. I am now thirty-nine years old.
I have not yet been able to discover whether his search was fruitful. (I don't know if the "typos" are original to the letter or are the fault of the newspaper typesetters.)

I don't think anyone's mentioned yet -- while George's attitudes towards slavery changed over time and with his exposure to New England abolitionists during the Revolution and the early years of the Republic, his evolving ideas about slavery (that it was probably bad) ran into his love for Martha and his desire to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed (i.e., with lots of slaves) after he died. So, brilliant idea, he freed all his slaves (but not the Custis dower slaves, which he was legally forbidden from doing) in his will ... upon the death of MARTHA. Contemporary sources indicate that Martha, who was no dope, was not best pleased when she found this out after George's death, as she immediately realized she was now surrounded by and dependent upon 100 slaves who only had to kill a little old lady to gain their freedom. She freed them within a year because the whole prospect terrified her.

(We don't know whether she thought George should have just freed them outright upon his death -- she still had the dower slaves she couldn't free to help her maintain her lifestyle -- or just left well-enough alone, but we do know that she discussed it with Abigail Adams and Abigail urged her to free them ASAP.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:27 AM on January 19, 2016 [8 favorites]


I saw this recently via Twitter. So ... yeah. Lots of work to do on this front.
posted by graymouser at 10:33 AM on January 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


How we talk about slavery is really fucking important, because most of our history we've just flat-out ignored it.

or whitewashed it, viz. margaret mitchell (altho i guess she secretly funded a scholarship for medical students at morehouse college!)[1,2], cf. walt disney
posted by kliuless at 11:06 AM on January 19, 2016


I saw this recently via Twitter. So ... yeah. Lots of work to do on this front.

Ugh. All the requisite trauma of being owned as property and worked nearly to death, and then at the end of the day the delicate white people who owned them and had the power of life and death over them were like "you LOVE us, right?? We're all FAMILY!" and they had to paste on a smile and say "YES OF COURSE." And then the owners' stupid descendants spend the next 200 years crying over the confederate flag and bragging about how much their family's slaves loved them. It's so completely disgusting and pathetic.

Also, probably part of why this person wrote this garbage book! NO, LOTS OF SLAVES LOVED THEIR OWNERS, REALLY, THE BAKED GOODS MADE UPON PAIN OF DEATH DEFINITELY PROVE THAT.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 1:31 PM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm still trying to figure out the "very distant grandparents" comment on that Facebook post. Even my grandparents' grandparents were kids or teenagers in the 1860s (And I should know, as my grandfather's grandfather, for whom he is named, left home at the age of 14 to fight for the Confederacy). Does she mean "great-great-great-etc." when she says "very distant"? Because, uh, no one alive today has grandparents (aka, their parents' parents) who owned slaves.
posted by chainsofreedom at 2:15 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


yeah, she's trying to invoke "a very long time ago..." to further remove any culpability from her family.
posted by nadawi at 2:21 PM on January 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Eventually, Northern states had to make laws that protected runaway slaves and free African Americans.
posted by zarq

Another myth about slavery. If a slave escaped from the Southern states to the Northern states, that slave was free.

No. Federal law trumped state law. If a slave escaped to the North, that slave was deemed a criminal, North and South. This was written into the Constitution. It read:

No person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due. (Note: the terms "slave" and "slavery" were not used in the Constitution.)

This Constitutional decree was written into several federal laws, most notably The Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. In the former, anyone who hindered the capture and repatriation of a slave could be fined $500. In the latter, Northern law enforcers were required to assist in the tracking and capturing of runaway slaves or else be fined or jailed. This extended to any citizen who could be deputized on the spot as a part of a posse (or if they refused, jailed). The word of slave-catchers was sufficient to legally identify the fugitive.

In part, because these laws were so severe, they were generally not followed in the North. The 1850 Act became a prime catalyst of the Civil War. However, whether because of geography and the difficulties of getting to the North, or whether due to the Fugitive Slave Acts and the ongoing fugitive status once the slave arrived, the North harbored few escaped slaves.

In the year 1850, one out of 3,165 slaves escaped their masters. In 1860, this number was down to 1 in 5000 page xvi.

The escaped slave, Frederick Douglass, became the foremost 19th century anti-slavery orator. In spite of having written and spoken about the horrors of his years of captivity, as his fame grew, he had to meet with his owner and arrange his own purchase to prevent capture and re-enslavement.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:46 PM on January 19, 2016 [7 favorites]


From my Revolutionary War reading of late, it's been pointed out in every book I read that the "rich" Virginia planters weren't rich enough to maintain plantations without slaves, and this was pretty much why the founding fathers were all, "uh......" on the topic. Knew it was wrong, were all perpetually broke, couldn't afford to just free them all and run the place with paid employees.

And then there's Jefferson. From what I recall there: (a) technically when he brought Sally and James to France, they could very well have been legally free there and could have chosen to run off without Jefferson being able to do shit about it, (b) it seems generally presumed that he and Sally made some kind of arrangement that she'd return home and her kids would be freed at age 21. Of course (c) the two oldest surviving ones pretty much had to "run away" but were NOT pursued to come back home*, and then the youngest two were freed in his will. With some cagey language in the will along the lines of "they're being freed to assist this other guy," but it seemed pretty clear that he was trying to make the Hemings boys not look like special favorites. Meanwhile, (d) if he freed Sally, it would make all the rumors look true/like she was a special favorite, and legally anybody he freed would have to leave Virginia immediately unless they got some special dispensation. So if he didn't want to uh, break up with her, she had to stick around. Hence why presumably Martha freed her on his behalf afterwards so it didn't look so bad.

* Annette Gordon-Reed points out in particular that Jefferson was on record saying that female slaves were more valuable, and yet he didn't track down Harriet Hemings--supposedly she got $50 and a ride out of there. He usually tried to track people down.


As for the Hercules story, it's covered in the Chernow book (note: self-link to notes I made while reading it here) if you want to check out more.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:22 PM on January 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


You're working in congress, you have to travel a lot, you have the system you have -- could you realistically get everything done that society needed if you had only paid servants? If you did that, would other people judge you? Jefferson inherited a bunch of slaves, I believe -- if he just set them free, what would have happened to them? Would they have been able to get jobs? Would Jefferson have been able to do his work? Would all his friends and extended family have started treating him as that weird stuck-up guy?

This is a subtler illustration of why books like this or Facebook posts like the one greymouser linked get written, how white supremacist propaganda about slavery--not only (maybe not even primarily) what existed at the time, but also post-Civil War revivals by the KKK and their ilk from the Jim Crow era through to the Civil Rights Amendment--still influences how we think and talk about the history of slavery.

Abolitionist fervor reached a high coinciding with the American Revolution. Even in Southern states that didn't pass abolitionist laws, there was a spike in manumission in the decade or so immediately following the American Revolution. People at the time understood perfectly well that the rhetoric of liberty and natural rights could be applied just as much to slaves; it's just that enough people chose the economic advantage that slavery gave to prevent it from being abolished.

Hell, John Adams bragged that he had never owned a slave in his life, was married to an outspoken abolitionist, and still got elected president. In fairness, he was also reluctant to codify that into law in fear of conflict with the south, so it's not like political expediency never came into play--but it definitely wasn't the case that expressing a personal belief in abolition was verboten. As another example, Ben Franklin owned slaves through a significant part of the colonial era, but had freed them all by 1770, and it doesn't seem to have been much skin off his nose.

But the most odious part of this paragraph is the implication that freed slaves would've been helpless. Free black society, with attendant social structures to help recently freed people existed throughout the colonial period-- the excellent Philadelphia Inquirer articles linked in the OP point out that one of the things that made the Washingtons so nervous about Hercules was that he was getting a glimpse of what that society looked like in Philadelphia. In places where manumission was more common and with fewer racist laws explicitly oppressing free blacks (e.g. many of the French colonies before the code noir), free black and mixed race families managed to accumulate significant wealth/influence/land within a generation or two--because the main obstacle for former slaves wasn't that they were babes in the woods who couldn't function outside of slavery, it was that there over the years, more and more obstacles (such as the assorted Fugitive Slave Acts, anti-miscegenation laws, restrictions on owning property or moving between states, etc.) were deliberately created to hinder free black people from enjoying all of the rights and privileges afforded to white citizens.

The PI articles also point out one of the fundamental contradictions faced by wealthy white owners like Washington who moved between free and slave jurisdictions--namely, that they were legally obliged to pay the slaves that they brought with them to free states. Same people, same era, same work being done; the only difference was that here it was illegal to treat your workers as your property, and there it was not. Justifications that hiring free, paid servants was economically unfeasible or that it was somehow unseemly to not own slaves rings pretty hollow in the light of that.

tldr the idea that slavery was so entrenched in antebellum American society that people couldn't even recognize that it was wrong or that it was somehow kinder/easier than freedom is fiction and it is a fiction that has been deployed time and again to downplay one of the most horrific institutions
posted by Krom Tatman at 9:28 AM on January 20, 2016 [9 favorites]


I have read Ben Franklin's autobiography multiple times -- either I completely missed where he talked about owning slaves, or he omitted it, or editors took it out. I will have to look into that.
The escaped slave, Frederick Douglass, became the foremost 19th century anti-slavery orator. In spite of having written and spoken about the horrors of his years of captivity, as his fame grew, he had to meet with his owner and arrange his own purchase to prevent capture and re-enslavement.
posted by dances_with_sneetches
I also never knew about this re-purchasing and must learn more!

tobascodagama, I recommend Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains for a history of abolition in Britain -- it's gripping and it helps the reader understand how many of our current activist tactics (e.g., merch with slogans, petitions, boycotts) got started or used. (MetaFilter fans of the concept of emotional labor note: he's married to sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild who pioneered much of that research.)

The Drunk History episode about Oney Judge.
posted by brainwane at 6:14 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm kind of with Proofs and Refutations here: I'm having trouble believing this was the usual blindness to the truths of slavery. Most slaves are silent to history, so it's possible for a weak-minded person to delude themselves into thinking they were happy. And people being what they are, there are no doubt some who considered themselves so. But this particular slave made his opinion of slavery very easily known: he escaped it at considerable risk. And the darling daughter of the book, well she made her opinion very well known (to a future king of France!) as well. These are literally the best known anecdotes about these particular people.

And yet these are the subjects the author chose for their jolly slaves. So it suggests a deliberate attempt to rewrite their story and silence them, erase the fact that Washington was quite a nasty slave-owner.
posted by tavella at 9:45 AM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


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