The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (76 page)

38.
Cunliffe,
Chattel Slavery and Wage Slavery,
39 and passim.

39.
Ibid., 51–67.

40.
Blassingame,
Frederick Douglass Papers,
Series One, 1:341–52.

41.
Ibid., 342–43. Critics of Douglass could have stressed that the 1834
Poor Law also allowed families to be torn apart. “When families went to a workhouse, husbands, wives, and children were segregated into separate wards. Moreover, the poor, including children, could be sent away from their own parishes to work.” In 1848 the radical Chartist
Joseph Barker even “declared that the British upper classes made brutes of workers just as surely as did American slaveholders” (Betty Fladeland, “ ‘Our Cause Being One and the Same’: Abolitionists and
Chartism,” in
Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846
, ed. James Walvin (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 71, 95.

42.
Ibid., 352, 407.

43.
For some of the key works on the antislavery debates, see David Brion Davis,
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1775–1823
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Thomas Bender, ed.,
The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Betty Fladeland,
Abolitionists and Working-Class Problems;
Seymour Drescher, “Cart Whip and Billy Roller: Antislavery and Reform Symbolism in Industrializing Britain,”
Journal of Social History
15, no. 1 (Autumn, 1981): 3–24; Drescher, “Paradigms Tossed: Capitalism and the Political Sources of Abolitionism,” in
British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery,
ed. Barbara L. Solow and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 191–208; Davis, “Capitalism, Abolitionism, and Hegemony,” in Solow and Engerman,
British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery,
209–27. In the Bender volume I try to answer the
criticisms of
Thomas Haskell, which are quite different from those of Drescher and
Fladeland. The last mentioned essay deals more with their argument and should make clear that I have always held that British abolitionism performed both “hegemonic” and progressive functions, depending in large part on time periods. I have learned much from Drescher’s and Fladeland’s deep research on the connections between British abolitionism and domestic reform, which I underplayed in the
Western Culture
volume that evoked all this debate. I also now see that my use of the Marxist terms “hegemony” and “hegemonic” proved to be a red flag that led to much misunderstanding and misinterpretation of my main argument. But, as I indicate here, I still stand by my thesis regarding the dual functions and ultimately progressive legacy of antislavery in Britain.

44.
See especially Fladeland, “ ‘Our Cause Being One and the Same,’ ” 69–99; Fladeland,
Abolitionists and Working-Class Problems,
passim; Drescher, “Cart Whip and Billy Roller,” 3–24.

45.
Fladeland,
Abolitionists and Working-Class Problems,
49.

46.
Fladeland, “ ‘Our Cause Being One and the Same,’ ” 69; Patricia Hollis, “Anti-Slavery and Working-Class Radicalism in the Years of Reform,” in
Antislavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey,
ed. Christine Bolt and
Seymour Drescher (Folkestone, UK: Wm Dawson & Sons, 1980), 295–96.

47.
Fladeland, “ ‘Our Cause Being One and the Same,’ ” 84–87.

48.
William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879, The Story of His Life, Told by His Children,
vol. 2,
1835–1840
(New York: The Century Co., 1885), 398, 400–401.

49.
Walter M. Merrill,
Against Wind and Tide: A Biography of Wm. Lloyd Garrison
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 172.

50.
Henry Mayer,
All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 293–95.

51.
William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879
, 2:399–400; Fladeland, “ ‘Our Cause Being One and the Same,’ ” 90. Thompson clearly had a good bit of influence on Garrison’s and then
Douglass’s support of
Chartism.

52.
William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879
, vol. 3,
1841–1860
(New York: The Century Co., 1889), 173;
The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison,
ed. Walter M. Merrill,
No Union With Slave-Holders, 1841–1849
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973), 161.

53.
Fladeland,
Abolitionists and Working-Class Problems,
49–73; Blassingame,
Frederick Douglass Papers,
Series One, 1:95–96n8; Fladeland, “ ‘Our Cause Being One and the Same,’ ” 89.

54.
Fladeland, “ ‘Our Cause Being One and the Same,’ ” 80, 84, 89, 94; Fladeland,
Abolitionists and Working-Class Problems,
63–73; Riva Berleant, “Joseph Sturge (1793–1859),”
http://brycchancarey.com/abolition/sturge.htm
.

55.
Blassingame,
Frederick Douglass Papers,
Series One, 1:96n8, 249, 269–70, 295, 483n8; ibid., 3:614.

56.
Ibid., 1:394–95.

57.
While a number of historians have written that Douglass “called himself a Chartist,” his actual statement, printed in his newspaper
North Star,
was part of an attack on the Chartists who had resorted to and defended violence in a great demonstration on April 11, 1848. After praising the British state for its many examples of peaceful reform, Douglass wrote as follows:

58.
Seymour Drescher,
The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in
British Emancipation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 200–201.

59.
Blassingame,
Frederick Douglass Papers,
Series One, 2:1847–54, 430, 435–36.

60.
David S.
Reynolds,
Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), 117–28.

61.
Ibid., 117–32. As Reynolds observes, Stowe increased the appeal of her book by stressing the importance of black honor, the strength of racial prejudice even in New England, and the fact that it was the slave system that was evil and that corrupted even Northerners like Simon Legree who went to live in the South. She was able to advance antislavery principles while dissociating herself from abolitionist rhetoric.

62.
Amanda Foreman,
A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American
Civil War
(New York: Random House, 2010), 26–27.

1.
[J. S. Mill], “The Slave Power,”
Westminster Review,
n.s., 21 (1862): 490; David Brion Davis,
Slavery and Human Progress
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 244–50.

2.
The Times,
Jan. 15, 1863, in
Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait,
ed. Herbert Mitgang, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 332–33.

3.
The Times,
Oct. 7, 1862, quoted in Amanda Foreman,
A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War
(New York: Random House, 2010), 319. This diatribe was in response to Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

4.
James M. McPherson, “What Drove the Terrible War?”
New York Review of Books,
July 19, 2011,
www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul14/what-drove—terrible-war/?
[n.p.] I do not agree with McPherson’s critique of Foreman’s stress on the importance of some “progressives” who attacked the Lincoln administration’s approach to slavery.

5.
Foreman,
World on Fire,
xxiii.

6.
Ibid., 317–19, 861; David Brion Davis,
Slavery and Human Progress,
248.

7.
James M. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 383–86; McPherson, “What Drove the Terrible War?”.

8.
Foreman,
World on Fire,
215, 743.

9.
Ibid., 19, 180–82, 295, 741.

10.
McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom,
554; Foreman,
World on Fire,
295.

11.
Foreman,
World on Fire,
320–26. Napoleon III remained interested in intervention even after Britain postponed any thought of action.

12.
Ibid., 319–20, 326–30, 395–97.

13.
Brian Jenkins,
Britain and the War for the Union,
vol. 2 (Montreal: McGill–Queens University Press, 1980), 214 and passim. Given the evidence recently presented by
James Oakes that the Republican leaders in Lincoln’s administration were dedicated from the start of the Civil War to undermine and abolish slavery, it is surprising to learn from Foreman that no effort seems to have been made to inform the British regarding the effects of the First Confiscation Act, which freed thousands of slaves. See James Oakes,
Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2013). On the contrary, according to Foreman, “[Secretary of State] Seward’s interdiction against calling the conflict a war for abolition was so strict that [America’s minister Charles Francis]
Adams was placed in the invidious
position of having to turn away Northern supporters who wanted to help.” When a deputation from the
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society visited the American legation in April 1862, “expressing interest and sympathy with our cause,” Adams “could only say a few platitudes about voluntary emancipation after the war.” Visitors were not satisfied and wanted to hear him promise abolition (Foreman,
World on Fire,
221). The only explanation I can think of would be the desire to help convince the Border States that the Union was not trying to “interfere” with slavery in the states where it existed—the so-called “federal consensus,” which was undermined by the Second Confiscation Act in the summer of 1862.

14.
Walter Johnson,
River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 5–17.

15.
Ibid., 5–17, 330–94.

16.
Ibid., 321, 393.

17.
Ibid., 307–22. In addition to overinvestment, by the 1850s the Mississippi system was losing trade to canals and railroads, cotton was increasingly being transported eastward instead of southward, and according to the Southern press, the acquisition of
Cuba would increase
New Orleans’s trade tenfold and convert the Gulf of Mexico into the New World’s Mediterranean.

18.
Ibid., 15, 304, 366–94.

19.
From
Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia.

20.
Johnson,
River of Dark Dreams,
15, 366–94.

21.
Ibid., 14–15, 366–94.

22.
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
11th ed., vol. 19 (1911), 344. While Britain and other Western European nations would have set an example of extensive imperialism, Britain would almost certainly have tried to block any major attempt to restore the African
slave trade. Recognizing this, and desiring British recognition, the Confederates specifically prohibited any opening of the slave trade in their Constitution.

23.
Seymour Drescher brilliantly examines the “reversion” to slavery in Soviet and Nazi Europe in the 1930s and 1940s in his masterful
Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 415–55. No other book offers such valuable material for a comparison of traditional chattel slavery with modern forms of coerced servitude.

24.
Oakes,
Freedom National.
In part 3 I have copied many parts of my review of Oakes’s book: “How They Stopped Slavery: A New Perspective,”
New York Review of Books,
60, no. 10 (June 6, 2013): 59–61.

25.
Eric Foner,
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 108–9.

26.
See especially David M. Oshinsky,
Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
(New York: The Free Press, 1996).

27.
David Brion Davis,
Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 328.

28.
Since writing
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
which does contain some claims regarding the economic decline of British West Indian slavery, I have been convinced on this point by the writings of Seymour Drescher, Robert W. Fogel, and Stanley L. Engerman, among others.

29.
Drescher,
Abolition,
415–55.

30.
I am much indebted to Professor John Stauffer for sending me an impressive list of such examples.

31.
I am indebted to Harold Brackman for this suggestion.

Page numbers beginning with 345 refer to notes.

Aaron (biblical char.)

AASS,
see
American Anti-Slavery Society