Mary Harrell
Professor McKinney
History 205
Due 29 September 2014
The “Irrepressible
Humanity” of the Middle Passage and Beyond
One
linear history of slavery in the New World that does not waver is the steady
maintaining of slaves’ humanity in their own ways. Dealing much more heavily on
qualitative data than quantitative, the narrative that exists over and over
again is that of resistance. Be it in the form of petitions of African
Americans who had fought in the Revolutionary War, the self-emancipation of
slaves that took fate into their own hands, or the continued beliefs and ties
of kinship that remained even on the passage to America from Africa, slaves in
America continued to retain their “irrepressible humanity.” This term of Stephanie
Smallwood’s from her book “Saltwater Slavery” flows through and allows one to
follow the narrative of slavery in the New World with a connecting thread. The
exhausting business of enslavement was continually thwarted by those with an
irrepressible need for kinship and for some kind of human compassion.
In
Professor Smallwood’s look at the Gold Coast in Africa, she goes through the
grisly process of turning persons into commodities in the movement of slaves
from Africa to the New World. Stripping them of their spiritual beliefs
dehumanized the Africans placed on ships for sale in the Americas. Smallwood
describes the importance of burial (which obviously was not possible whilst at
sea) and the intense stress the inability to practice their beliefs caused in
the people transported. The story of Olaudah Equiano, which Smallwood includes
in her book, is striking.[1]
His record of what he believed to be happening at the time gives a rare look
into the mind of one being put through this process of dehumanization.
Equiano’s questioning of “where were their women?” and “how comes it in all our
country we never heard of them?”[2]
portray that of a mind of a typical teenage boy, and his expression of the ship
as a “hollow place” is an everlasting image of the spiritual emptiness present
in the slave ship at sea.
Equiano’s
story as well as Smallwood’s overview of the beliefs that were not left behind
in Africa give a piece of the narrative of a much larger expanse of slaves in
the New World that remained even after dehumanization. Notably, the De Marees,
also quoted by Professor Smallwood, describes the beliefs of the natives in
Africa, stating that they “did not know him,” meaning the Christian god, but
instead believed that they came “from the earth” and that all the great many things
“come from the earth and the sea.” [3]
Smallwood also notes later that the deaths of those on board in the ships were
seen as “an unfulfilled journey to the grave” and “a tormented soul, trapped…
among them because its migration to join the ancestors had been thwarted.”[4]
Even with this spiritual torment, as those on board were unable to bury their
kin (or who they recognized as another’s kin) they continued onto the New World
and retained their beliefs, even in this vicious system, and were still strong
enough to take their fate into their own hands.
One
of the ways that slaves attempted to take fate into their own hands is noted by
the petitions written by enslaved men who had fought in the Revolutionary War.
A specific example of this was by a slave named Saul who petitioned for his
freedom in 1792,[5] again
continuing this thread of resistance and of the “irrepressible humanity” of slaves
in the New World. Albeit a large jump in time from Olaudah Equiano’s account,
the same theme runs throughout, and in Saul’s request to “not suffer... any
longer to remain a transferable property” it is evident.
Likely
the first thought of means of resistance is self-emancipation. This occurs over
and over again in many forms, all solidifying this notion of irrepressible
humanity of people put into slavery in the New World. One account of this is
the slave revolt, which can be viewed specifically in a revolt in Stono, South
Carolina. In this instance, a slave named Jemmy led others through the area,
fighting to maintain the freedom that they had decided to take for themselves.[6]
This event, along with many others, is another example of enslaved people
deciding upon self-emancipation, even if ended in their own death.
Lastly,
and most hauntingly perhaps, is another form of self-emancipation that slaves
committed. Even with their beliefs of a lack of a resting place if one was to
die onboard, there is at least one written account of a slave taking his own
life aboard in order to maintain his own control over his life. Professor
Smallwood references an agent who describes a man who “had not been ½ an hour
in irons” who committed suicide.[7]
While unexplained, the answer is seemingly that he simply refused to be taken
through the process that plagued the others in his place. This stirring example
is yet another one of the many episodes of resistance by slaves in the New
World and in this new form of slavery. The irrepressible humanity of those who
were taken can be seen as ongoing and connecting the whole of those who were
placed and who fought the commercialization of their own selves.
[1] Stephanie
Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery (Harvard
University Press, 2007). 123-124
[2] Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery 123
[3] Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery 130
[4] Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery 141
[5] Willie Lee
Rose, ed., A Documentary History of
Slavery in North America (1976) 61-62
[6] “The Stono
Insurrection, South Carolina, 1739,” in The
Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, ed. Allen D. Chandler (26 vols.,
Atlanta: Charles P. Byrd, 1913)
[7] Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery 63
No comments:
Post a Comment