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A History Blog by W. E. Skidmore II
 

“Breathing Thoughts and Burning Words”

In 1852, Karl Marx observed, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx, On Historical Materialism, 120).  Following along similar lines as Marx, Patrick Rael´s Black Identity & Black Protest in the Antebellum North (2002) recasts our understanding of the origins behind black protest.  More specifically, Rael argues that the origins of the black protest movement did not start on plantations in the South, but in the urbanized North, among elite free black intellectuals.

Rael’s study counters the cultural/community studies movement, started in the 1960s and 1970s, which produced works such as John Blassingame’s Slave Community (1972), which argued “slave agency” was not just found in massive uprisings, but also in the creation of African folk culture on slave plantations.  Moreover, many of these scholars criticized and labeled northern free blacks as “integrationists, assimilationists, and accommodationists” (Rael, 283).  Such accusations were based on the fact that northern black elites weaved “their thoughts and words out of the disparate strands of the ideological fabric surrounding them” (8).  In other words, these historians questioned black elites’ commitment to the “freedom struggle,” because they shared many of the same fundamental values and presuppositions as their racist northern white counterparts, and failed to develop a broad critique of liberal-capitalist values (which encouraged the spread of slavery).

One of Rael’s main objectives is to “redeem” the northern free black intellectuals “from the charge that their elitism—whether based on social class, masculinity, or any other measure—rendered them unfit and insignificant spokespersons for the race” (289).  Rael not only achieves this objective, but also demonstrates how free black elites powerfully influenced the creation of “black identity,” “black nationalism,” and influenced future black protests movements.   For Rael, these free black northerners—such as Martin Delaney, James Forten, and Richard Allen—were “among the first and most ardent champions of the rights of the enslaved” (14).  These protesters used racial uplift, elevation, and respectability as tools in their assault on slavery and the belief in African American inferiority.  They also called for black conventions, education, and the amelioration of vices (alcohol, promiscuity, gambling, vagrancy, etc.) to support their cause.  Most importantly, these black elites wrote pamphlets, newspaper articles, and letters to promote their antislavery agenda and abolish slavery once and for all.  As these free blacks were “breathing thoughts and burning words,” they used the fundamental values associated with the American Revolution (freedom for mankind, equality, inalienable rights, etc.) to advance their antislavery initiatives.

Like most other works dealing with African-American resistance during the antebellum period, the issue of agency resides at the heart of Black Identity & Black Protest.  Rael suggests that the primary site for African-American agency was not on slave plantations in the South, but amongst free black intellectuals in the North.  Like Walter Johnson, Rael critiques previous historians who have pushed the idea of slave agency too far.  More specifically, both scholars understand the value of writing the story of American slavery from the bottom-up, but encourage historians to refocus their attention on the material determinations of agency.  In other words, Johnson and Rael support the Marxian aphorism (mentioned earlier): people make their own decisions, but those decisions are limited to the environment in which they reside.  For Rael, northern free blacks crafted a universalistic identity, nationalistic ideologies, and a vibrant protest movement around the mainstream intellectual values of northern white society, which was all they had to work with.

Despite the historiographic importance of this monograph, it has a few shortcomings.  Rael does not really delve too deeply into the backgrounds of the free black elites (Delaney, Forten, James Rapier, Richard H. Cain, etc.).  More information would have been helpful, especially for understanding their ideological positions.  Second, Rael makes the broad argument: “Black protest failed to understand, let alone critique, the nature of the economic order to which it owed its problems” (284).  In my opinion, Rael lets free black elites off easy.  James Forten, for instance, was acutely aware of the liberal-capitalistic order, and benefited greatly from it (he was one of the wealthiest businessmen in Philadelphia).  Therefore, the excuse that black elites did not understand the economic order does not suffice.  Why, then, did James Forten and other black businessmen not address this issue?  Did they value money over freedom?  Moreover, such an argument could easily be contested by an extension of John Egerton’s essay “Slaves to the Marketplace.”  It would be interesting to see how the influence of “cash power” played a role in the northern black protest movement (a topic which Rael avoids engaging).   It would also behoove Rael to take a page from Edward Baptist’s “Toxic Debt, Liar Loans, and Securitized Human Beings,” which illustrates how economics played an important role in both the social and political worlds, especially as slaves were becoming more and more important in the market economy.  After reading Baptist’s and Egerton’s essays, it becomes hard not to wonder how economics and the market influenced the development of the black protest movement.

The issue of agency has dominated the historiographic field of slavery and abolition for the last several decades.  Following the debunking of Stanley Elkins’ “sambo thesis,” historians such as Eugene Genovese, John Blassingame, Peter Kolchin, George Rawick, and Herbert Gutman have clearly demonstrated that slaves actively resisted their oppressors.  That being said, I agree with Egerton’s argument that for historians to fully understand slave rebelliousness, protest, and resistance, they need to come to grips with the “intent” behind slaves’ actions (Egerton, 631).   I have one major criticism for the works we read this week (although Johnson deals with this somewhat), and for other studies on slave resistance: historians continue to look for one or two major reasons why slaves rebelled (economics, retribution, religious, hope, etc.).  I find it hard to explain slave resistance—implicit or explicit, large or small—with just one or two reasons.  In fact, historians have often tried to seek one or two explanatory frameworks for the behavior and actions of slaves (especially with resistance).  A better approach, I argue, comes from historians’ realization that we need different explanations for the different ways slaves resisted, protested, and rebelled.

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