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The first twenty minutes | |
------------------------ | |
Originally posted on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 | |
Yesterday was the first day of class for the Introduction to U. S. | |
History that I am teaching this fall. (Here's the | |
[syllabus](https://jshare.johnshopkins.edu/wmcdani2/public_html/syllabus205.pdf) | |
I'm using; suggestions for future iterations are welcome!) | |
In all of the classes that I've taught so far, I've tried to follow this | |
rule of thumb: On the first day of class, do not pass out the syllabus | |
until halfway through the period. It's my belief that for those first | |
twenty or thirty minutes, the attention and engagement of my students is | |
about as undivided as it is ever going to be. But I know that the moment | |
I pass out my syllabus, that attention will immediately be divided and | |
diverted: red-tape questions about requirements for the course, poring | |
over the syllabus to see if there's a paper. That's what most students | |
expect for the first day of class, but that's another reason why those | |
first twenty or thirty minutes are so potentially precious: they are | |
some of the few minutes of the semester where I am virtually guaranteed | |
the element of surprise. | |
The first twenty or thirty minutes of the semester are fertile soil for | |
planting seeds of The Big Idea that I want students to leave the course | |
with. By their nature, the first twenty minutes aren't good for going | |
over minutiae; they are good for making a case to the students that what | |
we will be doing is important and interesting. As I've talked about | |
before in a [post about my philosophy of | |
teaching](http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/12/notes-for-philosophy-of-teaching.html), | |
one of The Big Ideas I want any student in my class to leave with is an | |
understanding that talking about history is always a matter of | |
[selective | |
emphasis](http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/07/selective-emphasis-in-history.html). | |
It doesn't take long to realize this on reflection: it is impossible to | |
write a history that includes everything that just happened in the world | |
in the last five minutes, much less in the last five or fifteen | |
centuries, so when historians sit down to write a narrative of the past, | |
they are always forced to make hard choices about what to include, | |
choices guided by the problem they are trying to solve and by the | |
boundaries of their subject (also chosen) that they have laid out. | |
But while that point may seem obvious on reflection, I don't want to | |
take for granted that my students have so reflected (since I know there | |
was surely a point in my life when I didn't reflect on these things much | |
either). And I don't want to even begin a history course with the | |
impression possibly floating around in some student's mind that this | |
class will cover Everything You Need to Know about American history, | |
that the boundaries placed on this course by the semester are somehow | |
absolute. ([New Kid on the | |
Hallway](http://newkidonthehallway.typepad.com/new_kid_on_the_hallway/2005/08/what_is_the_wor.html) | |
has also recently talked about the importance of dispelling this idea.) | |
In an effort to convey these points in the first twenty minutes of | |
class, here's what I did yesterday. After introducing myself and letting | |
students know that I would be passing out the syllabus later in the | |
class, I asked everyone to get out a sheet of paper. You have two | |
minutes, I said, to write a history of the last five years. In response | |
to any questions about what should be included ("our personal history? | |
American history?") I simply say that there are no limitations: just a | |
history of the last five years in two minutes. These won't be handed in | |
so there's no need to worry about complete sentences: just write as much | |
as you can or think you should. (I modified this from a similar drill | |
that my wife, a brilliant high school social studies teacher, has used | |
to great effect in her own classroom.) | |
After the two-minute drill is up, I make a list with students on the | |
board of the kinds of things that made it into their histories--which | |
events? which places and countries? what kinds of people? I make the | |
list as exhaustive as possible, but then point out that it usually | |
includes mostly the headline news of the last five years. If I'm lucky, | |
a few events in students' personal lives make the list, along with more | |
local connections to the headline news--the Olympics is mentioned, for | |
instance, but since we're in Maryland, so is local hero Michael Phelps. | |
The point of this exercise, of course, is then to notice how much didn't | |
make the list, and couldn't make the list, given the constraints of time | |
that I placed on the students. But then I ask students whether | |
everything could have made the list if I had made other rules for the | |
drill--given them twenty minutes, for instance, or two years; limited | |
the assignment to the history of the United States; asked them to write | |
the history of the last fifty years instead of the last five; etc. | |
After this I talked a little bit about the required textbook for the | |
course, which is America: A Narrative History, Brief Sixth Edition, by | |
George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi. When I signed on to teach this | |
course, I was at first unhappy to learn that all of the students taking | |
U. S. history in the department would be using the same textbooks, and | |
that the books had already been ordered so that I could not choose which | |
one I wanted to use (or indeed, whether I wanted to use a textbook at | |
all). But now I'm starting to think having a textbook for the | |
class--perhaps especially one that would not have been my first | |
choice--can be pedagogically useful. Just as [Timothy Burke has | |
advised](http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=63) against using | |
airtight monographs in history classes, perhaps it's good to use a | |
textbook precisely because it's possible to point out to students the | |
necessary gaps and gaffes that a textbook includes, and to get them | |
thinking about the contingency of historical writing. | |
So I pointed out that even textbook writers have to make difficult | |
choices to boil down the past into the simulacra of a book. I asked | |
students to get out their textbooks and I drew their attention to the | |
cover. The title declares that this is a history of "America." But how | |
is "America" defined? (Geographically? Then why not South America too? | |
Politically? Then what about "America" before the "United States of | |
America"?) The title also specifies that this is a "narrative" history. | |
(Are there other ways of telling history? How would the book be | |
different if it were a "documentary" history, for instance?). Narratives | |
include characters, settings, turning points--all elements that a | |
narrator has to select when constructing a particular story. Finally, I | |
even have students notice that this textbook is a "sixth edition" (why | |
would we need new and multiple editions for a book about stuff that | |
happened centuries ago?) and that it is a "brief" edition. | |
That means what we have is an abbreviation of two historians' | |
abbreviation of the past--or that part of it that they have carved out | |
as their subject matter by using words like "America" and turning points | |
like the Columbian contact with the "New World." (The "textbook | |
analysis" idea I've cribbed from a favorite English professor as an | |
undergraduate, who did something similar on the first day of a | |
Shakespeare class by making us think about what it meant to be reading | |
the "Norton" edition of Shakespeare, "based on the Oxford edition." I | |
remember it being eye-opening to actually look at the cover of the | |
textbook as if it were a bearer of meaning too, instead of just | |
something to hold pages--the real bearers of meaning--together.) | |
Only after all this did I pass out the syllabus. That allowed me, too, | |
to help give the assignments for the course a pedagogical rationale. For | |
example, for the major writing portion of the course, students will be | |
selecting one book from a list of six works of history that I have | |
selected. Over the course of the semester, they will be reading that | |
book and writing about it in some discussion boards I've set up on | |
Blackboard for the course. Had I passed out the syllabus first, that | |
would have just looked like hard work. (And I realize that to many of | |
the students it probably still does.) But now that I've talked a bit | |
about The Big Idea of the course, I can make the case that this | |
assignment reinforces that. If all historians make choices and | |
selections when telling narratives of the past, then that means we need | |
more than a textbook. Subjects or people that receive a sentence in the | |
textbook (or, of course, no sentences at all) have entire narratives | |
written about them, a point worth stressing with students. I also like | |
the fact that students have to make a choice about what to read, leaving | |
the other books unread; hopefully that reinforces, somewhere, that in | |
choosing to read this historian's narrative, there are still many | |
narratives to be read, and many more stories to be told. | |
There is no end to the narratives that we can choose to tell about the | |
past. Our choices will be constrained, of course, by the sources left to | |
us (there are some stories that cannot be told) and by what the sources | |
themselves tell us. But there will still be more stories that can be | |
told, even after we've spent our entire lives telling stories about the | |
past--in part because by the end of our lives there will be more "past" | |
to tell about. It's possible to make this point in a dour way, by | |
emphasizing the futility of it all (why attempt to write or teach | |
history if you can't "get it all in"?) or by being cynical about | |
historical writing (if all historians make choices, then how can I trust | |
what any one narrative tells me?). But what excites me most about | |
history is precisely the knowledge that we will not run out of | |
narratives to tell. One reason I'm a fan of jazz is because I know that | |
I will never reach a point where I have heard all the jazz there is to | |
hear: there is always another album, another take, another rendition to | |
keep my mind awake. I'm a fan of history, I think, for the same | |
reasons. | |
(Cross-posted at [Cliopatria](http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/14893.html).) | |
The lives of Douglass: Part I | |
----------------------------- | |
Originally posted on Monday, December 13, 2004 | |
Revised 14 December 2004 | |
Many Americans are familiar with the [Narrative of the Life of Frederick | |
Douglass](http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/), | |
published in 1845; it is certainly the most famous personal narrative of | |
slavery ever written. (Two years ago, the City of Baltimore sponsored a | |
[city-wide | |
reading](http://www.ci.baltimore.md.us/news/press/020807.html) of the | |
Narrative, which the mayor lauded as an "example of perseverance and | |
determination.") But fewer readers are aware that Douglass wrote another | |
autobiography in 1855, entitled [My Bondage and My | |
Freedom](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DouMybo.html). | |
Probably even fewer are aware that a third autobiography was published | |
in 1881, [The Life and Times of Frederick | |
Douglass](http://docsouth.unc.edu/douglasslife/menu.html). | |
In an [earlier | |
post](http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/12/notes-for-philosophy-of-teaching.html), | |
I alluded to the value of teaching the Narrative and My Bondage and My | |
Freedom side by side. By email, a reader asked for some elaboration on | |
the two texts. So I offer this, even at the risk of it being a boon for | |
[online | |
cheaters](http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/08/online-cheating.html) | |
in history classes. (Don't cheat. If you used Google to get here, your | |
professor can easily do the same.) | |
The most notable feature of the second autobiography is that by 1855, | |
Douglass had more "bio" to "graph." Seventeen years had passed since his | |
escape from slavery in Maryland, and ten years separated him from the | |
book that made him a celebrity. In that decade, he had established | |
himself as a lecturer on the antislavery circuit, toured Great Britain | |
to much acclaim, received funds from British friends to purchase his | |
freedom, and founded his own newspaper in upstate New York. My Bondage | |
and My Freedom covers these new events as well as most of the same | |
episodes that were in the Narrative. But these episodes in Douglass's | |
life as an enslaved Marylander are almost always embellished with | |
greater detail in his second book. More detail was partly a retort to | |
skeptics who doubted the authenticity of the Narrative. But the richer | |
detail of the second book is even more important as an example of | |
Douglass's incisive and innovative thinking about the problem of | |
slavery. | |
The Narrative had a mostly propagandistic function: it was intended as | |
an exposé of slavery’s brutality. My Bondage more directly exposed | |
Douglass’s inner experience in slavery. And it illuminated the | |
connections between that experience and his thought. If the narrative | |
logic of the first book assumed that readers would infer antislavery | |
conclusions from the episodes it related, the second book complicated | |
and multiplied the possible conclusions that a reader could reach. For | |
one thing, it corrected what some readers might have perceived in the | |
Narrative as an antislavery argument based primarily on the poor | |
treatment of particular slaves. My Bondage and My Freedom made more | |
explicit what the Narrative had implied: that it was not just cruel | |
treatment, but the idea of slavery itself that repulsed Douglass and | |
provoked his desire to escape. | |
In the second book, for example, when discussing the kindness of Mrs. | |
Auld, a Baltimore mistress who helped teach him how to read until | |
rebuffed by her husband, Douglass emphasizes that the slave-master | |
relationship corrupted whatever kind feelings existed between him and | |
Auld. (Compare | |
[this](http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/07.html) | |
and | |
[this](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=DouMybo.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=11&division=div2).) | |
Her treatment of Douglass was incidental to the problem of slavery. | |
“Nature had made us *friends*,” he wrote in My Bondage, “slavery made us | |
*enemies*. ... It was *slavery* -- not its mere *incidents* -- that I | |
hated. I had been cheated. ... The feeding and clothing me well, could | |
not atone for taking my liberty from me.” In the first place, then, My | |
Bondage and My Freedom contains subtle but significant differences in | |
Douglass’s recounting of his experience in “bondage.” This book was not | |
a litany of “mere incidents” -- it was a meditation on “slavery” and why | |
Douglass hated it. | |
The second autobiography also extends the story of Douglass’s “bondage” | |
into the story of his “freedom.” Douglass’s life as an abolitionist | |
after 1845 goes a long way towards explaining why he felt a second book | |
was needed by 1855. Today, My Bondage and My Freedom interests | |
antislavery historians mainly for what it tells us about Douglass’s | |
conflictual relationship with radical white abolitionists like William | |
Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. | |
Garrison and his allies -- usually known as the Garrisonians -- played a | |
crucial role in launching Douglass’s career as a professional | |
abolitionist. Conversely, Douglass's fame as a speaker and moral | |
authority as a fugitive lent credibility to the Garrisonians as | |
antislavery leaders. As Douglass recounted in both the Narrative and My | |
Bondage and My Freedom, he was introduced to the world of Northern | |
antislavery in the late summer of 1841, while living in New Bedford, | |
Massachusetts and working as a day laborer. In August, at an | |
abolitionist meeting in Nantucket, Douglass delivered a rousing speech | |
that greatly impressed Garrison. Soon afterwards, Douglass was hired by | |
the Garrisonian American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) as a lecturer, and | |
it was this association that also helped bring the Narrative into print. | |
Both Garrison and Phillips wrote introductory letters to the 1845 | |
edition, vouching for its author's credibility as well as associating | |
themselves with this powerful new voice. And when the Narrative | |
attracted attention and seemed likely to endanger Douglass, the | |
Garrisonians’ contacts with British abolitionists gave Douglass an | |
entrée into the United Kingdom, where he toured throughout 1846 | |
addressing large audiences. But it was during this trip abroad that | |
Douglass’s relationship with the Garrisonians began to fray around the | |
edges, a strain that worsened in 1847 after Douglass returned home, now | |
a legally free man who was intent on becoming his own editor. | |
The reasons for strain between Douglass and the Garrisonians were both | |
personal and ideological. On a personal level, Douglass sensed a | |
patronizing tone among many of his patrons, a mistrust of him that in | |
many cases bordered on or crossed over into a malicious bigotry. While | |
touring in Britain, for instance, Douglass learned that Maria Weston | |
Chapman, a leading Boston Garrisonian, had corresponded with some of | |
Garrison's friends in Ireland and warned them to keep an eye on | |
Douglass's management of his money. Incensed by this and other letters, | |
Douglass reacted vehemently in a letter to Chapman that foreshadowed his | |
eventual break with the AASS. But those personal conflicts cannot be | |
separated from the ideological disagreements that increasingly divided | |
Douglass from the Garrisonians -- disagreements about the wisdom of | |
"buying" slaves in order to free them, for instance, or about the | |
position of the Constitution on the issue of slavery. At any rate, by | |
the early 1850s, both faultlines -- the personal as well as the | |
principled -- had opened into a complete fracture, with both parties | |
sniping at each other and crying foul. Douglass repudiated the | |
Garrisonians; the Garrisonians likewise repudiated Douglass. These new | |
circumstances, in Douglass's mind, called for a new autobiography, and | |
My Bondage and My Freedom was the result. | |
Many scholars blame this fracture primarily on the persistence of racial | |
prejudice among white Garrisonians, which explains why some of them | |
(like Chapman) treated Douglass with a condescending paternalism. Many | |
Garrisonians failed to see past “Douglass the Fugitive” to Frederick | |
Douglass himself. For example, in My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass | |
recalled that at the Nantucket meeting, Garrison followed Douglass’s | |
speech with one of his own, “taking me as his text.” This was a | |
revealing aside. In the early years of their acquaintance, white | |
Garrisonians often referred to Douglass as if he were mainly a Walking | |
Counterexample, a living rebuttal to the argument that black people were | |
degraded by nature. And his life was first and foremost a “text” to | |
which they could turn for proof that former slaves could “rise," just as | |
the Narrative was a text they could use to prove the cruelty of Southern | |
bondage. | |
This was a strategy whose intention was to combat Northern racial | |
prejudice rather than to condone it. But it was understandable when | |
Douglass lost patience with constantly being gestured *at*, rather than | |
being freed to gesture in whatever direction he chose. Moreover, in | |
driving the point home that Douglass had risen from degradation to | |
dignity, the Garrisonians often lingered a little too long on the | |
degradation and not as long on the dignity. In early 1842, while | |
introducing Douglass to an antislavery meeting at Faneuil Hall in | |
Boston, Garrison said, “It is recorded in holy writ, that a beast once | |
spoke. A greater miracle is here to-night. A chattel becomes a man.” | |
Such analogies -- which seem to suggest that Douglass's transformation | |
from slave into orator was as miraculous as Balaam's donkey learning to | |
speak -- are rightly galling to our ears. But it is possible to | |
exaggerate the extent to which they were galling then, even to some | |
black abolitionists. In his early years as an abolitionist, Douglass | |
also used himself as an example of the extraordinary transformation from | |
chattel-hood to manhood that only freedom could effect. In My Bondage | |
and My Freedom, he excerpted a letter that he wrote to Garrison shortly | |
after he set foot on British soil, where legal proscriptions and social | |
discrimination against free blacks were less pronounced than in the | |
Northern states. "I breathe," Douglass exulted, "and lo! the chattel | |
becomes a man." | |
Douglass and many other black abolitionists used such masculine language | |
to imagine the passage from slavery to freedom as a passage from | |
childishness and ignorance into manliness and respectability. Statements | |
like theirs and Garrison's were rhetorically strategic: they confronted | |
the terrible fact that Southern slaves *were* legally bought and sold as | |
if they were beasts of burden. In antebellum newspapers, advertisements | |
announcing rewards for the return of fugitive slaves were routinely | |
printed directly adjacent to advertisements that announced rewards for | |
the return of runaway horses. Given such pervasive visual iconography, | |
it was radically subversive to suggest that Douglass had been changed | |
from a "chattel" to a "man." | |
In short, Douglass's breach with the Garrisonians had less to do than | |
one might think with the fact that they viewed black abolitionists as | |
respectable and black slaves as degraded. Douglass himself held the same | |
view. Rather, what bothered Douglass was the way that Garrisonians | |
expected Douglass to play the role of the degraded slave, to straddle | |
the chasm they both saw between bondage and freedom. For example, white | |
Garrisonians often advised Douglass not to be *quite* so eloquent, | |
fearing that Douglass's excellence on the platform would give ammunition | |
to skeptics who doubted that he had ever been a slave. And since they | |
viewed Douglass's life as a propagandistic "text," they encouraged him | |
to stick to the story. In My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass singled | |
out this kind of advice as insulting, constraining, and above all, | |
boring: | |
> During the first three or four months, my speeches were almost | |
> exclusively made up of narrations of my own personal experience as a | |
> slave. 'Let us have the facts,' said the people. So also said Friend | |
> George Foster, who always wished to pin me down to my simple | |
> narrative. 'Give us the facts,' said Collins, 'we will take care of | |
> the philosophy.' Just here arose some embarrassment. It was impossible | |
> for me to repeat the same old story month after month, and to keep up | |
> my interest in it. It was new to the people, it is true, but it was an | |
> old story to me; and to go through with it night after nights, was a | |
> task altogether too mechanical for my nature. 'Tell your story, | |
> Frederick,' would whisper my then revered friend, William Lloyd | |
> Garrison, as I stepped upon the platform. I could not always obey, for | |
> I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were | |
> presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to *narrate* | |
> wrongs; I felt like *denouncing* them. | |
That last line can be read as a thinly veiled critique of the Narrative | |
itself and an apologia for its sequel. It was also an indictment of the | |
Garrisonians' attempts to direct his life story in the way they saw fit. | |
There certainly were elements of racial prejudice in some of these | |
efforts to "pin" Douglass to his Narrative. (But there is still much | |
ambiguity on this point. Since many freed people took new surnames as | |
signs of their independence -- Douglass changed his from "Bailey" to | |
"Douglass" -- we may be meant to see Garrison's whispering to him as | |
"Frederick" as an insult. But it might equally be seen as evidence of | |
the real intimacy and friendship that existed between Garrison and | |
Douglass prior to their parting of the ways.) | |
Racial prejudice, at least, was the interpretation offered by James | |
McCune Smith, the black abolitionist and medical doctor who wrote the | |
preface to My Bondage and My Freedom, assuming the role that Garrison | |
and Phillips had claimed in the Narrative. Such gentlemen, Smith said, | |
> although proud of Frederick Douglass, failed to fathom, and bring out | |
> to the light of day, the highest qualities of his mind; the force of | |
> their own education stood in their own way: they did not delve into | |
> the mind of a colored man for capacities which the pride of race led | |
> them to believe to be restricted to their own Saxon blood. Bitter and | |
> vindictive sarcasm, irresistible mimicry, and a pathetic narrative of | |
> his own experiences of slavery, were the intellectual manifestations | |
> which they encouraged him to exhibit on the platform or in the lecture | |
> desk. | |
It is also accurate to say, however, that Douglass's growing | |
dissatisfaction with the white Garrisonians had as much to do with his | |
pride in respectability as it did with their "pride of race." As | |
Douglass read and thought, he understood himself to be moving farther | |
and farther away from his former life on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. | |
The white abolitionists' advice to adopt the persona of Frederick Bailey | |
seemed like an attempt to deprive him of what he understood as "freedom" | |
-- the freedom not to act in what he perceived to be a "slavish" way. In | |
short, although race was at issue in the breach between Douglass and the | |
Garrisonians, so was respectability: Douglass did not disagree that | |
"freedom" meant the education and uplift of black Americans. He too | |
believed, with them, that escaping slavery meant elevating oneself from | |
a degraded state. What he disliked was the way they encouraged him to | |
mimic that former state. | |
Personal conflict with white Garrisonians, then, was one seed of which | |
the fruit was Douglass's second book. The roots of that personal | |
conflict were entangled with weeds of racial prejudice that sprung up | |
even in the soil of radical white abolitionism. But there were other | |
seeds of discontent sown between Douglass and his former friends, and | |
their eventual rift also had to do with severe doctrinal disagreements. | |
I'll save those disagreements for a [second | |
post](http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/12/lives-of-douglass-part-ii.html). | |
The lives of Douglass: Part II | |
------------------------------ | |
Originally posted on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 | |
As I explained in [Part | |
I](http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/12/lives-of-douglass-part-i.html), | |
Frederick Douglass's | |
[*Narrative*](http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/) | |
marked the highpoint of his collaboration with the radical abolitionists | |
who identified with William Lloyd Garrison, the fiery editor of the | |
*Liberator*. Both Garrison and Wendell Phillips, another prominent white | |
abolitionist, wrote glowing prefaces for the *Narrative*, which they | |
rightly identified as a powerful new weapon in their armory of | |
antislavery polemics. The *Narrative* also catapulted Douglass to fame, | |
first as a Garrisonian lecturer but then as a celebrity in his own | |
right. As James McCune Smith put it in the introduction to Douglass's | |
second autobiography, [*My Bondage and My | |
Freedom*](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DouMybo.html), | |
"It is not too much to say, that he formed a complement which [the | |
Garrisonians] needed, and they were a complement equally necessary to | |
his 'make-up.'" | |
Yet by the time *My Bondage and My Freedom* was published in 1855, both | |
complements and compliments had given way to open conflict between | |
Douglass and the Garrisonians. Part of the blame belongs to the | |
persistence of racial prejudice among some white Garrisonians -- a | |
condescension of which Douglass became acutely aware while he toured | |
Great Britain in 1846. Yet prejudice alone does not explain the rift | |
between Douglass and his former friends. Nor should we patronize | |
Douglass with the condescension of posterity by assuming that he was but | |
a passive victim, who played no active role in the rift. As McCune Smith | |
also suggested in his foreword to *My Bondage and My Freedom*, one of | |
Douglass's own personality traits may have been an extreme sensitivity | |
to any hint of patronization -- a trait that certainly would have been | |
understandable in a man with his history and in his circumstances. "The | |
same strong self-hood," wrote Smith, "which led him to measure strength | |
with Mr. Covey," (the slave driver immortalized by [the famous fight | |
scene](http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/10.html) | |
in Douglass' *Narrative*) "and to wrench himself from the embrace of the | |
Garrisonians, and which has borne him through many resistances to the | |
personal indignities offered him as a colored man, sometimes becomes a | |
hyper-sensitiveness to such assaults as men of his mark will meet with, | |
on paper." | |
It may be impossible, however, to judge finally whether Garrisonians' | |
insensitivity or Douglass's sensitiveness was most to blame for the | |
complex personal friction between the two parties. What *is* clear is | |
that the friction only encouraged Douglass's desire for independence. | |
And however justified or understandable that desire might have been, it | |
is also clear that Douglass framed his break with the Garrisonians in | |
the most provocative of ways by publishing *My Bondage and My Freedom*. | |
The title itself was edgy. It claimed Douglass's narrative, his life, as | |
his own property: "*My* Bondage and *My* Freedom." In the introduction, | |
Smith's implicit comparison between Covey and the Garrisonians also | |
suggested that Douglass's "Freedom" from *Southern* "Bondage" would not | |
be the book's only plot. The book would also conclude by framing | |
Douglass's relationship with the Garrisonians as itself a kind of | |
"Bondage," and his decision to found his own newspaper in Rochester as a | |
new birth of "Freedom." | |
Sparks flew in the closing chapter of the book, when Douglass recounted | |
the objections that many Garrisonians had to his newspaper. These | |
objections were interpreted by Douglass as accusations that he was | |
"ambitious and presumptuous." Such words certainly had not been unknown | |
in Garrisonian circles when the subject of Douglass's new venture came | |
up. Although he tried hard to convince his former allies that he knew | |
what he was doing, Douglass wrote that he was "not sure that I was not | |
under the influence of something like a slavish adoration of my Boston | |
friends." Douglass knew that the Bostonians would be pricked by the word | |
"slavish," no matter how carefully it was swaddled in awkward syntax | |
(the double negative that began the sentence) and qualifications | |
("something like" ... "adoration" ... "friends"). The inflammatory word | |
was "slavish." And in the years after 1855, Douglass fanned the flame. | |
In 1857, he declared: | |
> I know, my friends, that in some quarters the efforts of colored | |
> people meet with very little encouragement. We may fight, but we must | |
> fight like the Sepoys of India, under white officers. This class of | |
> Abolitionists don't like colored celebrations, they don't like colored | |
> conventions, they don't like colored Anti-Slavery fairs for the | |
> support of colored newspapers. They don't like any demonstrations | |
> whatever in which colored men take a leading part. They talk of the | |
> proud Anglo-Saxon blood, as flippantly as those who profess to believe | |
> in the natural inferiority of races. Your humble speaker has been | |
> branded as an ingrate, because he has ventured to stand up on his own | |
> right, and to plead our common cause as a colored man, rather than as | |
> a Garrisonian. I hold it to be no part of gratitude to allow our white | |
> friends to do all the work, while we merely hold their coats. | |
> Opposition of the sort now referred to, is partisan opposition, and we | |
> need not mind it. [From "West India Emancipation," in The Life and | |
> Writings of Frederick Douglass, ed. Philip S. Foner, vol. 2, pp. | |
> 436-37.] | |
Comparing Garrisonians to the colonial officers of the British empire? | |
These were strong words indeed, especially when one considers that they | |
were uttered in the year of the "[Sepoy | |
Mutiny](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepoy_Mutiny)" in India. (That | |
quote was for you, | |
[Sepoy](http://www.chapatimystery.com/1857blog.html)!) But Douglass's | |
1857 speech also brings us to a second important dimension of the | |
Garrisonian rift, for it suggests that the break had to do not only with | |
personal offense, but also with "partisan opposition." Douglass's break | |
occurred at the same time that the antislavery movement as a whole was | |
fracturing, and not just along faultlines dividing white and black | |
reformers. | |
In the 1840s, many white abolitionists, like Gerrit Smith, James Birney, | |
and Lewis Tappan, increasingly disagreed with the Garrisonians about | |
major strategic and dogmatic issues, like the question of whether | |
violence could be used in the service of antislavery goals. Many black | |
abolitionists also broke with Garrisonians on precisely this issue. | |
Another major disagreement revolved around the Garrisonians' opposition | |
to forming political parties to run antislavery candidates for local and | |
national offices. Some Garrisonians opposed politics because they were | |
near-anarchists who believed that all human governments were sinfully | |
coercive. A larger number opposed antislavery parties because they | |
believed the Constitution itself was a proslavery document, a "covenant | |
with death" as Garrison put it. Any political action within the existing | |
framework -- even voting, according to some -- was corrupted before it | |
began. Beginning in 1842, Garrison and many of his supporters carried | |
this logic to its fullest extreme by calling for "disunion" between the | |
North and the South. | |
In 1854, a year before *My Bondage and My Freedom* was published, | |
Garrison dramatized the radicalism of these positions by publicly | |
burning a copy of the Constitution at a Fourth of July picnic for | |
abolitionists. Long before that act, however, Douglass had already | |
dissociated himself from such incendiary views. Against the | |
Garrisonians, he agreed with Gerrit Smith and others that the | |
Constitution was not necessarily proslavery, but had only been made so | |
by misinterpretation. He believed that political action was not only | |
justified on behalf of abolition, but positively required if it could be | |
effective. In *My Bondage*, Douglass spelled out his change of opinion | |
on these subjects. Even after he had moved to Rochester to start his new | |
paper, Douglass continued to be "on the anti-slavery question, a | |
faithful disciple of William Lloyd Garrison, and fully committed to his | |
doctrine touching the pro-slavery character of the United States, and | |
the *non-voting principle.*" But in 1851, following the passage of an | |
even more stringent Fugitive Slave Law by Congress, Douglass "became | |
convinced that there was no necessity for dissolving" the Union, and | |
"that to abstain from voting, was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and | |
powerful means for abolishing slavery." Douglass also concluded that the | |
Constitution, far from being a pact with the devil, as Garrison called | |
it, was "an anti-slavery instrument." | |
These conclusions placed Douglass firmly on the side of the | |
Garrisonians' opponents within the antislavery movement, and they | |
reopened the wounds of earlier schisms. Douglass's close friendship with | |
McCune Smith and Gerrit Smith and his complicated relationship with John | |
Brown (see [this | |
book](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674006453/qid=1103690594/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-8045739-2839148?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)) | |
made the wound wider. By 1853, Garrison wrote to his friend, Samuel J. | |
May, that "with Douglass, the die seems to be cast. I lament the schism, | |
but it is unavoidable." It was made unavoidable partly by Douglass's | |
commitment to positions on which Garrison could admit no compromise. And | |
as the years wore on, the wounds only festered. By 1860 Garrison wrote | |
in another letter to May that Douglass's plans to be at an upcoming | |
meeting "powerfully repel me from attending. I regard him as thoroughly | |
base and selfish, and I know that his hostility to the American | |
Anti-Slavery Society and its leading advocates is unmitigated and | |
unceasing. ... In fact, he reveals himself more and more to me as | |
destitute of every principle of honor, ungrateful to the last degree, | |
and malevolent in spirit. He is not worthy of respect, confidence, or | |
countenance." | |
Garrison is notorious for his unflinching positions, and his tendency to | |
impute false motives to anyone who disagreed with him. In that sense, he | |
was an equal opportunity offender. His public reproaches of white | |
enemies within the movement could be as harsh as those that he uttered | |
privately against Douglass in 1860. So what should we make of such hard | |
words? We might turn again to what Douglass made of them in the | |
concluding pages of *My Bondage and My Freedom.* | |
> Here was a radical change in my opinions, and in the action logically | |
> resulting from that change. To those with whom I had been in agreement | |
> and in sympathy, I was now in opposition. What they held to be a great | |
> and important truth, I now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very | |
> painful, and yet a very natural, thing now happened. Those who could | |
> not see any honest reasons for changing their views, as I had done, | |
> could not easily see any such reasons for my change, and the common | |
> punishment of apostates was mine. | |
How, then, should we settle the question of what caused the rift between | |
Douglass and the Garrisonians? Were the causes as simple as racism among | |
white abolitionists? Or did Garrisonians prove that they thought of | |
Douglass as equal to their white opponents by dignifying him with "the | |
*common* punishment" that they meted to all "apostates"? As I suggested | |
before, these are the kinds of questions I want to raise and keep | |
provisionally open in [my | |
classes](http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2004/12/notes-for-philosophy-of-teaching.html). | |
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