Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:33:00 +0000

In this superb book, Edlie Wong analyzes the territorialization of freedom and slavery in the antebellum Atlantic. While reading it, I frequently recalled Martin Luther King, Jr.’s warning that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Yet Wong’s work also suggests the converse is true: the existence of free blacks threatened institutionalized slavery on practical and moral grounds, while the continuation of legal slavery in any jurisdiction challenged core notions of freedom, including freedom of movement and travel. This conflict played out in courtrooms and the court of public opinion as slaves sued for legal emancipation—a strategy fraught with its own contradictions.

Wong considers not only American struggles, but also how freedom on European soil and slavery in the West Indies influenced and was influenced by American slavery. Slave narratives, novels, popular press, and legal documents are the material from which Wong makes a dialectical critique of pro- and anti-slavery thought as it crystallized around legal cases. As befits her topic, she organizes the book locally rather than chronologically.

Chapter one deals with nationalistic British abolitionism, which championed freedom while confining it within British borders. Chapter two moves across the Atlantic to northern American free states, which offered southern slaves traveling there a choice: sever social ties and gain individual freedom, or return to home and slavery. Chapter three focuses on the Dred Scott decision and examines legal emancipation in the southwest U.S. Chapter five and the concluding chapter again take a transatlantic standpoint. The former examines the criminalization and de facto enslavement of free blacks—both American and foreign-born—who traveled into southern slave states as sailors. The latter briefly treats the question of American citizenship after emancipation and travel abroad.

Throughout, Wong sharply analyzes the rhetoric of pro- and anti-slavery literature. Whites on both sides generally acceded to the “chattel principle” that slaves are an extension of their masters' wills. Thus, unlike fugitive slaves, American slaves brought by their masters onto free soil might sue for their freedom precisely because the masters had made the decision, effectively consenting to their emancipation. Paradoxically, the movement onto free soil instilled slaves—now to be considered free agents—with their own wills, and any who returned with their masters to slave territory were argued to have chosen re-enslavement. Slaveholders, thus, saw their slaves as will-less objects, at the same time considering their enslaved status was the slaves' own choice. On the other side, White abolitionists constructed a rescue narrative in which they heroically spoke for slavery's helpless victims. Slaves whose active resistance challenged this gallantry were censored in the liberal media, or left out altogether.

Not surprisingly, Wong finds this paternalist viewpoint particularly strong where Black children and women are concerned. In the case of six-year-old Med, both lawyers claimed to speak for the girl, one presuming her desire to remain in free Massachusetts while the other argued her best interest was returning to Louisiana and her enslaved mother. Slaveholders vilified abolitionists for tearing apart families whose members were not all emancipated, while abolitionist literature suppressed the difficult decision of emancipated or escaping slaves to leave still-enslaved kin.

Wong seeks to restore the Black actors missing from these accounts. Some slaves turned the legal principle partus sequitur matrem (“the offspring follow the mother”) to establish emancipation for themselves and their children. Harriet Scott, for instance, wife of Dred, simultaneously sued for her own freedom and in so doing also established the legal emancipation of her two daughters. Thus matrilinear arguments could subvert paternalistic slave laws.

A foreknowledge of antebellum history and law would be helpful to the reader, but isn’t prerequisite. Including a timeline might have been useful, but that hardly detracts from the intelligence of the argument and the important recovery of overlooked source material. Though Wong refrains from drawing explicit connections to modern racial profiling, incarceration, migration, and an evermore tightly entwined global economy, the parallels lie on the page for any modern reader to draw.

Written by: Charlotte Malerich, October 26th 2009

Mrs. Lincoln: A Life

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:53:00 +0000

By Catherine Clinton

Harper Collins

Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton, is a fascinating account of this very complicated and very misunderstood woman. I knew little about Mary Todd prior to reading this book and what I did know was mostly based on my own mythical ideas about Honest Abe and his wife Mary. Catherine Clinton’s work had me shaking my head many times; it was quite astonishing to see what this woman endured as the wife of the man who was probably our most beloved president.

The book opens dramatically with Abraham Lincoln lying on his deathbed, while close by, his wife sobs uncontrollably. She is eventually taken from the room, never to be summoned again before Lincoln passes away. And from this you are forewarned of the difficult life of Mary Todd because she lost both her husband and the position of first lady.

Both Mary and Abraham were born and raised in Kentucky, but their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different. Lincoln is famous for his poor, humble beginnings in a log cabin, whereas Mary Todd grew up in a family that was well-connected both politically and socially. As a result of these familial associations, she received a good education. Mary Todd craved recognition and prestige; she was also headstrong, and these traits would often have extremely negative effects during her stay in the White House.

The one thing that surprised me was that even in 1860, politics were politics and the public press was ruthless in their reporting of the first couple. These “Westerners” were not well received and not well liked among the Washington high society and political community. Mrs. Lincoln was shunned by many women in the prominent social circles, which was a severe blow. She craved the respect that should have gone along with being the first lady.

Because of the Lincolns' position in favor of abolition, the president received death threats during the Civil War, creating severe stress for Mary. She also experienced the loss of many close relatives during her time at the White House, which contributed to the incredible obstacles that she faced on a daily basis.

However, in presenting these facts, Clinton is not trying to garner sympathy for Mary. She shows the reader a complicated woman who gives her political advice to Lincoln’s cabinet. She could be unpleasant in public situations, but she also had the compassion to visit wounded soldiers in the local hospitals, and fought for abolition.

The friendships that Mary developed with other women were an essential part of how she coped with her day to day living. They were an integral part of her life until her later years. There is still controversy over the mental state of Mary Todd. In 1863, on her way back to the White House, she was thrown from a carriage causing her to hit her head on a rock which might have contributed to her mental state. She was also prone to depression, and Lincoln scholars continue to debate on her mental health.

When the last page of Clinton’s Mrs. Lincoln: A Life is read and the book is closed, the reader cannot help but sympathize with this underappreciated woman.

Written by: Su Lin Mangan, April 29th 2009