Libérti, égalité et fraternité Essay Four

Liberté, égalité et fraternité

In Sue Peabody’s Peabody’s book “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Regime, the reader was introduced to the French policy that were no slaves present in France. According to a royal edit of 1315, King Louis X emphasized a tradition of no slavery amongst Frenchmen. King Louis X legislation was understood, but entirely appreciated. This remarkable legislation of the “freedom from slavery” would be revised in a 1716 ordinance, as a result, of court case revisions to this 1716 ordinance (Peabody, 234) Does Peabody’s claim that, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, “members of France’s intellectual and judicial elite appropriated the symbol of the slave to criticize perceived excesses of royal authority” (p. 10). The author might have helped herself on this score had she considered how politically and ideologically the blacks’ struggle for freedom related to the growing contemporary debate on Louis X social and economic relations?

 An instance of the cort case revision of the 1716 ordinance, was a case created by Verdelin vs. Boucauex.  The Boucauex versus Verdelin  case was between “slave” (Boucauex) and Verdelin(owner) was based upon the suit of false captivity and lack of wages for nine years of labor. Not just imprisonment, but captivity. Peabody summates the course of the case resulting in Boucauex’s freedom from Verdelin.  But the reviewing court, named the Paris Admirality court,  granted freedom but restitution for Monsieur Boucauex’s hard labor. 

Peabody notes in her analysis, that this case was a moment of plain compromise of the clearly set legislation of the admirality court and the successive legislation of the French people since Louis X policies. This was not being enforce by the Frecnh legislation. The legistion by 1738 turned it legislative enforcement in the “Ploice de Noir” which enforced imprisonment for those were slaves and/ or interracially married without proper identification of their French citizenship .  The enforcement of the “Police de Noir” came to a head upon the false imprisonment of 150 slaves. These slaves challenged the French admirality court and its statutes. The governing French Parliment released 150 initial slaves the case was based upon,  and numerous that had been arrested since the beginnins of the case. Peabody argues,  they fought their case based upon color distinctions not the coined term “slavery”. Their color distinctions granted freedom to proper registration for citizenship, marriage certificates, identification that will permit them to become eventual land owners.

In conclusion, these two court cases that were boldly and judiciously approached the Parisien admirality court enforce harsh legislation of the “Police de Noir” until 1777. Peabody concludes, the use of racial language and distinctions became

legal commonplace by the late eighteenth century, because it preserved the myth that all Frenchmen were free—to which all parties, the monarchy included, subscribed—while protecting society against the potentially costly impact of its universal application; even the advocates of slave emancipation used racial language when it was of benefit to clients for whom a case could be made that they were of nonblack ancestry. Thus, by 1782, “the notion of racial purity was firmly entrenched in the minds of even the staunchest defenders of freedom” (p. 135).However,  after much bitterness and loss, the French peoples of the Second Republic would  grant counsel and  successfully filed and heard many instances where slaves who were living in France sued for their freedom . Thus the new legislation, based upon King Louis X compassionate legislation of the Middle Ages, permeated the people of France into a whole people outlawing slavery.

Final Paper

THE FOLLOWING POEMS were written originally for the Amusement of the Author, as they were the Products of her leisure Moments. She had no Intention ever to have published them; nor would they now have made their Appearance, but at the Importunity of many of her best, and most generous Friends; to whom she considers herself, as under the greatest Obligations.  1   As her Attempts in Poetry are now sent into the World, it is hoped the Critic will not severely censure their Defects; and we presume they have too much Merit to be cast aside with Contempt, as worthless and trifling Effusions.  2   As to the Disadvantages she has laboured under, with Regard to Learning, nothing needs to be offered, as her Master’s Letter in the following Page will sufficiently show the Difficulties in this Respect she had to encounter.  3   With all their Imperfections, the Poems are now humbly submitted to the Perusal of the Public.  4

The following is a Copy of a LETTER sent by the Author’s Master to the Publisher.

PHILLIS was brought from Africa to America, in the Year 1761, between Seven and Eight Years of Age. Without any Assistance from School Education, and by only what she was taught in the Family, she, in sixteen Months Time from her Arrival, attained the English Language, to which she was an utter Stranger before, to such a Degree, as to read any, the most difficult Parts of the Sacred Writings, to the great Astonishment of all who heard her.  5   As to her WRITING, her own Curiosity led her to it; and this she learnt in so short a Time, that in the Year 1765, she wrote a Letter to the Rev. Mr. OCCOM, the Indian Minister, while in England.  6   She has a great Inclination to learn the Latin Tongue, and has made some Progress in it. This Relation is given by her Master who bought her, and with whom she now lives.

JOHN WHEATLEY.

Boston, Nov. 14, 1772.  7

To the PUBLICK.

AS it has been repeatedly suggested to the Publisher, by Persons, who have seen the Manuscript, that Numbers would be ready to suspect they were not really the Writings of PHILLIS, he has procured the following Attestation, from the most respectable Characters in Boston, that none might have the least Ground for disputing their Original.  8   WE whose Names are under-written, do assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page, 1 were (as we verily believe) written by PHILLIS, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them.  9     His Excellency THOMAS HUTCHINSON, Governor,

  The Hon. ANDREW OLIVER, Lieutenant-Governor.

The Hon. Thomas Hubbard,
The Hon. John Erving,
The Hon. James Pitts,
The Hon. Harrison Gray,
The Hon. James Bowdoin,
John Hancock, Esq;
Joseph Green, Esq;
Richard Carey, Esq;
The Rev. Charles Chauncey, D.D.
The Rev. Mather Byles, D.D.
The Rev. Ed. Pemberton, D.D.
The Rev. Andrew Elliot, D.D.
The Rev. Samuel Cooper, D.D.
The Rev. Mr. Saumel Mather,
The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead,

Mr. John Wheatley, her Master.  10   N. B. The original Attestation, signed by the above Gentlemen, may be seen by applying to Archibald Bell, Bookseller, No. 8, Aldgate-Street.  11 [i]

The present scholarship about Phillis Wheatley has been about the poetry not the life of the poet.  Wheatley’s intellectual and aesthetic developments must be investigated in this thesis. She has been more easily recognized in England and Europe than in America. In the previous century, many scholar thought of Phyllis Wheatley’s poetry was indifferent to racial cause of slavery in the United States of America. However in the past few years, many scholars have found more poems, facts and letters about her life and relationships with those that were trying to abolish slavery in the 18^th Century.  Now in the last few years, historical and literary opinions are starting to change about Phillis Wheatley. According to scholar Sondra O’Neale, her essay on Wheatley’s experimentation with poetry portrayed the current “social, political and religious culture of eighteenth century, and to see her grasp of biblical myth, language and symbol permit her conducive vehicle to make subtle, yet effective statements against slavery.”[ii] O’Neale goes on about Phillis Wheatley, “ used her talents and her success” as a writer “ to wage subtle war against it”[iii]. Her methodology in the war against slavery, maintains O’Neale, “include biblical language and allusions” whose implications were to turn “from the practice of slavery” the “biblical knowledgeable” of her day.[iv] 

Her superior African intellect- with talents that were subjugated by Enlightened intellectuals for “scientific commentary”, evangelical Christians to promote a Christian witness amongst blacks and others in the developing Abolitionist movement to prove Blacks were not merely deaf, dumb or blind animals will be discussed in this paper. 

When she was only seven years old Wheatley was forcibly leaving her homeland in Gambia, Africa. She found herself to be up for auction to be sold into bondage in Boston, Massachusetts on July 11, 1761. By the age of eleven, she had acquired knowledge and skill of the English language.[v] Thus by the age of fourteen in 1767, Phillis Wheatley became a published, public poet, in the event of her poem, On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin, being published. Which would be her purpose for her entire life. Her education had advanced, and at this time she began to be tutored by the “Harvard graduate, minister of the Old South Church, one-time prolific poet, and encourager of young poets, Mather Byles. Wheatley soon became an excellent student of Latin, as her superb version of Ovid’s Niobe episode from Book VI of the Metamorphoses ably attest.[vi]

Now from the fatal place another flies,
Falls in her flight, and languishes, and dies.
Another on her sister drops in death;
A fifth in trembling terrors yields her breath;
While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain,
Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain.
One only daughter lives, and she the least;
The queen close clasp'd the daughter to her breast:
"Ye heav'nly pow'rs, ah spare me one," she cry'd,
"Ah! spare me one," the vocal hills reply'd:
In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny,
In her embrace she sees her daughter die.
* "The queen of all her family bereft,
"Without or husband, son, or daughter left,

Wheatley evidently has acquired the language skills, as it may be read here, for its proper classical content. This excerpt from the poem depicts Noibe experiencing the lost of her children. . Perhaps Wheatley depiction of Ovid’s very popular play, Metamorphoses, may portray an account of Wheatley’s life in Gambia with her family. In her correspondence with her friend, Obour Tanner, can anyone find any kind of manuscript memories of her home in Africa?  Under further view of this poem, according to scholar Sondra O’Neale, Wheatley is constrained to the subject’s proper authentication of Ovid’s vision; furthermore, in language and symbol, Wheatley used these constraints to conduct a subtle statement against slavery. She eloquently portrays the African queen clasping the hand of her daughter. This allusion moves the reader to sense her touch in their hands. You can feel the embrace, and then her daughter dies.

According to scholar, Carole Chandler Waldrup, “Susannah Wheatley was impressed by the young girl’s poetic ability. She assigned only light household work to Phillis and became an ardent promoter of the publication of her poems.”[vii]  Despite her woeful drawbacks of her enslavement, she was able to meet different Enlightenment intellectuals that were friends or acquaintances to John and Susannah Wheatley. For example, Wheatley began a life long communication Mohegan Indian minister and graduate of Dartmouth College, Samson Occom. She would have the enormous pleasure of meeting her life-long friend, Obour Tanner on the slave ship that brought her to America.  Wheatley would keep a very long correspondence between Obour Tanner and herself, as seen in a letter she wrote, “let us rejoice in the wonders of God’s infinite love in bringing us from a land semblant of darkness itself, and where the divine revelation (being obscur’d) is darkness. Here the knowledge of the true God and eternal life are made manifest; but there, profound ignorance overshadows the land”[viii] Thus Phyllis Wheatley urges her beloved friend and confident that the conduct of crude slaveholders, or the slave trade is wrong and un-Christ like behavior.  Why did she write about this? According to Carole Chandler Waldrup, Phillis was in contact with Susannah Wheatley and her erudite, cultured, Christian residents of the Boston society, and it was foreseeable that she would accept Susannah Wheatley’s views and theology.  Moreover, “it was to her credit that Phillis did not take advantage of her unique position, but rather regarded Wheatleys as true friends and benefactors. She did not become self-important because of her difference. Although she was invited to dine in homes of wealthy people, she learned to refuse to seat at the family table and to request that a sidetable be set up for her to dine apart”[ix] Thus she views it all together, and she consider her new friends embracing the Christian faith, which she learned from Susannah Wheatley, the end of slavery was to come.  

In the following year, Wheatley would compose enough poems for the publication of a book. And by August 1771 she would be baptized minister and advisor, Samuel Cooper. Then by September 1773, she had a publisher from London, England to publish her book of poetry. The publisher was the Countess of Huntington, Selina Hastings. She and Wheatley would meet several dignitaries, including the Earl of Dartmouth. While in London, she had an informal reception with Benjamin Franklin, an avid spokesman for equal human rights under God-given natural laws. He wrote to his cousin about his meeting with Wheatley. “Upon your recommendation I went to see a Black poetess and offered her any services I could do for her”[1] When she returned back to Boston in 1773, Wheatley was to become public figure. According to Frank Shuffleton, “her connections with Countess Huntington were primarily defined by religious concerns, they never the less always seem to been, on Wheatley’s side at least, entangled in complex ways with discourses about slavery and freedom.”[x]  The paradigm of the antislavery assessment allowed Wheatley’s writings to grow in more maturity throughout her artistic achievements. According to the critical literary opinion of Phillis Wheatley, many have reprimand her for insensitivity to her fellow slaves and racial issues; as a result, she developed a reputation for being comfortable with Colonial living. Recall, when she went to London for the publication of the book, it would be published at the height the antislavery debates in Boston. And her previous writings, she had written with classical political and theological themes. She maintained friendships with several prominent clergy members that knew of her slave owners. Phillis Wheatley, like so many other slaves and indentured servants that would listen to, patriotic reverend George Whitefield, as he preach out in the streets of Boston. One of her revered published poems was the Elegy for the Death of George Whitefield. She may have sat down at the church and listened to his words of divine illumination that God’s children are created equal. He ministered to her spiritual needs and many others.

But when Susannah Wheatley died suddenly, in 1774, Wheatley, as a slave, continued to live at the Wheatley mansion and write verse.[xi]  According to Carole Chandler Waldrup, “Wheatley took the death of ‘beloved mistress’ very grievously. Wheatley said she felt ‘like one forsaken by her parent in desolate wilderness,’ and praised Mrs. Wheatley for ‘her uncommon tenderness for 13 years and unwearied diligence to instruct me in the principles of the true religion’. Surprisingly, Susannah Wheatley did have the opportunity to live long enough to view a copy of Phyllis’ book, Poems on Various Subject, Religious and Moral. [xii] But Wheatley maintained her attendance at Old South Church in Boston with the Wheatley family. According to Frank Shuffleton in a Wheatley’s letter to Samson Occum, she hailed the glorious privilege of “civil and religious Liberty… there is no enjoyment of one without the other.”[xiii] By the year 1778, Phillis Wheatley had made her departure from the Wheatleys in British occupied Boston.  Upon invitation, she visited future American President, George Washington upon his stay at Cambridge in 1776. And in 1778, Phillis Wheatley would marry John Peters, a free black man. After becoming a wife and mother, thus Phillis Wheatley had no acceptance from publishers of her poetry. It presumed that the British occupation prevented the occurrence. But many of her friends did not care for her choice in a husband. According to scholar Carole Chandler Waldrup, “they described him as a shopkeeper, ‘who wore a wig, carried a cane, and felt himself superior to all kinds of labor.’ But John Peters abandoned her with their third child on the way. She found work as a maid in a boarding house, and in few months later, in 1784, three poems were published… It was published under her married name”[xiv]

Now in the last few years, historical and literary opinions are starting to change about Phillis Wheatley. According to scholar Sondra O’Neale’s essay on Wheatley, her experimentation with poetry portrayed the current “social, political and religious culture of eighteenth century, and to see her grasp of biblical myth, language and symbol permit her conducive vehicle to make subtle, yet effective statements against slavery” (145). O’Neale goes on about Phillis Wheatley, “ used her talents and her success” as a writer “ to wage subtle war against it”(157). Her methodology in the war against slavery, maintains O’Neale, “include biblical language and allusions” whose implications were to turn “from the practice of slavery” the “biblical knowledgeable” of her day (157).[xv] 

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[1]

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[i] Wheatley, Phillis. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London : A,Bell, 1773 ; Bartleby.com, 2010. http://www.bartleby.com/150/100.html. 5/05/2011

[ii] O’Neale, Sondra. 2001. A Slave's Subtle War: Phillis Wheatley's Use of Biblical Myth and Symbol. Source: Early American Literature, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall, 1986), p. 145

Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable

[iii] Ibid. page 157.

[iv]  Ibid. Page159.

[v] The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. 1997. Page 770.

[vi] The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. 1997. Page 770.

[vii] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. 1999. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Page 81.

[viii] Wheatley. Poems and Letters. Page 23-4.

[ix] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. 1999. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Page 81.

[x] Carretta and Gould. Genuis in Bondage. Excerpts: Shuffleton, Frank. “On Her Own Footing”. 2001. 176-78.

[xi] Oxford Companion to African Literture. 197. Page 771.

[xii] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Page 84.

[xiii] Shuffleton, Frank. “On Her Own Footing”. 2001. Page 181.

[xiv] Waldrup, Carole Chandler. More Colonial Women: 25 Pioneers of Early America. Pgs. 85-86.

[xv] O’Neale, Sondra. A Slave's Subtle War: Phillis Wheatley's Use of Biblical Myth and Symbol. Source: Early American Literature, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall, 1986), pp. 144-165

Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable

My Bibliographic Review

        The Atlantic Slave Trade forged the abolition movement of the 1770s in England and in its colonies.  As a result, a repressed, silenced community of black readers and white readers in Boston, Massachusetts would be energized by antislavery debates in the streets and churches there, yet a soft voice with a patriotic heart, named Phyllis Wheatley, would be heard and gain worldwide acclaim. As different countries vied for monopolistic control of the slave trade venture, enslaved Africans, like Phyllis Wheatley made up the centerpiece of the then emerging Atlantic economy. My bibliographic review calls attention to the infamous Phyllis Wheatley, an early writer and poetess of the Black Atlantic, whom effectively brought together diverse populations of people. As author Henry Louis Gates Jr. argues, in the wake of the Cartesian or John Locke philosophy, the subject of black writing was used as an argument for the intellectual enslavement of contemporary blacks. Writers like Phyllis Wheatley became test cases for antislavery and pro-slavery movements as well as monogenic and polygenic racial positions. While former United States of America president, Thomas Jefferson’s disparaging comments on Phyllis Wheatley’s artistic creativity echoed such a claim, the English antislavery writer Thomas Clarkson’s Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1786) refuted it by defending Wheatley’s work. These early encounters in black literature can be seen as an ongoing process of cultural encounters with Anglo-American languages and ideologies. My essay will trace the rhetorical processes by which black writers, such as Phyllis Wheatley, shape and are shaped by Anglo-American discourses, between black and white writers in the late eighteenth century.

Many writers have collaborated to bring a developing paradigm of thought on the rise of the slave narrative. Paula Bennett similarly considers the shifting nature of such boundaries for Phyllis Wheatley. In Phyllis Wheatley’s Vocation and the Paradox of the ‘Afric Muse’, she articulates the increasing complex position, the coming of the American Revolution placed upon Wheatley. Creatively, it has everything to do with “conservative” and “radical” readings of Wheatley’s poetry, Bennett argues that this political crisis in the British Empire actually disrupted the alliances she had built upon in England during her stay there in the early 1770s.  This forced Phyllis Wheatley to create in her later work a “more complex, pluralistic sense of audience” than before. In Wheatley’s poems she repeatedly alludes to her African origins of present-day Senegal-Gambia.  Yet according to the reading by Bennett, Phyllis Wheatley redeems her oppressive state by making it her source of a religious response to God, and by making God identified as her freedom and sublime (Shields, “Struggle” 230-31; 252-67). It gives her the power to liberate her speech, as she uses her religious beliefs to authorize her pursuit of her vocation.  

Consequently, as poetess she argued against the slave trade and slavery itself when she resided in Boston, Massachusetts of the 1770s. There was much less difficult than overcoming racist failure recognize the fundamentally equal humanity of its African residents, like Phyllis Wheatley. Author, Muhktar Ali Isani agrees, that Wheatley’s arrival back to the American colonies, thus had made extraordinary usage out of being a poet and slave to attract attention to her work. Like some of her contemporaries, such Oladuah Equiano, her poetry was utilizing public opinion of overcoming tyranny. But as Mr. Isani points out, the outbreak of revolution, had “shifted the arena of the cultural crisis from the public sphere of print discourse and polite conversation to the battlefield, and in so doing brought forward old gender barriers”(187). In agreement, Bennett tells us that  “in spite of the demurrers of writers like Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren, the American Revolution understood as a military crisis gave priority to masculine heroics; it did so by reconstructing a separate sphere for women and women’s expression”(17). I believe it resulted in the feminized understanding of virtue.

In conclusion, the world of cosmopolitan friendship envisioned by authors Paula Bennett and Muhktar Ali Isani display her soft, gentle heart of revolutionary poems. But as a woman poet, she is undoubtedly restrained but hopeful for her country. She does not know what her future will give her, and she is diplomatic in her friendships with her friends of England and her friends in the Colonies, but she was also keenly aware of the limits of friendship amid the contingencies of nature and history. It matter little that Phyllis Wheatley may in fact have had few memories of her life in Africa, but her poetic construction of recollection, her validation of the power of memory for the Afric muse, may have in fact energized her prophetic voice. Her declaration of African origin, coming as a rhetorical disruption of the conversation of the British tradition, enabled her consequent post-colonial skepticism about “British Glories”. Phyllis Wheatley: Christian, poetess, mother and wife used her spiritual transformations for the rhetoric of her faith in her people.

My Bibliographic Review will have the following readings and more:

1. "Gambia on My Soul": Africa and the African in the Writings of Phyllis Wheatley

Author(s): Mukhtar Ali Isani

Source: MELUS, Vol. 6, No. 1, Oppression and Ethnic Literature (Spring, 1979), pp. 64-72

Published by: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/467520 .

Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:25

2. Phyllis Wheatley's Vocation and the Paradox of the "Afric Muse"

Author(s): Paula Bennett

Source: PMLA, Vol. 113, No. 1, Special Topic: Ethnicity (Jan., 1998), pp. 64-76

Published by: Modern Language Association

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463409 .

Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:18

3.

 Re-membering America: Phillis Wheatley's Intertextual EpicAuthor(s): Robert KendrickSource: African American Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 71-88Published by: Indiana State UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3042095 .Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:23

4. Author(s): Hilene Flanzbaum

Source: MELUS, Vol. 18, No. 3, Poetry and Poetics (Autumn, 1993), pp. 71-81

Published by: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468067 .

Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:19

Continuation of a thought from essay 5

Equiano's contemporaries often labeled him a black genius positioning him as unique within his race rather than necessarily a representative of his potential of his achievement. It was important then and now, to acknowledge, and to celebrate Equiano's genius. Do you think of those that thought of him as a genius, avoid having to acknoledge the shifting class basis of racial formulations during this time?

essay 5

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

(Jefferson, Declaration of Independence).

           Happiness, safety, free worship of one’s choice to worship God and good government are forms of freedom? The spiritual climate of the late Eighteenth Century was dictating the climate of the intellectual sensitivities of the century. The French Revolution was grappling these climates into the declared voice of “public opinion”, opening an entirely new voice of one not heard before. “In the Enlightenment world of ’noble savages’, indigenous noble descendants of Aztecs and Incas were overdue for an re-evaluation of their nobility”(Falola&Roberts, pg. 182). The desire of independence from tyranny  was in the will of the new American peoples and many of those that would call themselves Europeans. One such man was Oulaudah Equiano.
    Upon reading The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Oulaudah Equiano, my eyes were open to who he really was.  Oulaudah Equiano was a slave involuntarily, but his life as a sailor was not. He was able to handle himself at any task once on board. There are many similarities between the two, but one difference between them is that slavery involved men and women.  Given that violence has occurred through history, it was the scholarly publication and popularity of a freed slave turned Christian,  that would be the event that would be best fought with civil disobedience. Mr. Equiano’s charge was earned and respected to him. 
According to text’s Sources of Antislavery Thought by Maurice Jackson, “the state of slavery… is neither useful to the master nor the slave, but not the slave because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master because he has unlimited authority over his slaves” ( Faoloa & Roberts, pg. 217). This relationship between slave and master was understood by most Europeans and Africans. Yet was it acceptable?  No, it was not humanely acceptable, but it was a common practice to anyone that could afford a hired hand.

Next, Mr. Equaino’s idea of freedom grew out of this notion. Every Christian understands ultimately what it means in being a Christian, Oulaudah Equiano, embraces in some fashion, necessarily, that he was an evangelist of the Faith. By summation, you want to trace back here, the notion of Christian autobiography, you can trace it back to the Confessions of Saint Augustine. In that text what you have is a historical account of an individual who sort of lives an intellectual life and a phenomenal Christian life. He is tempted and suffers at the deceptive desires of this world. Saint Augustine comes to a moment in his life to be not anxious for this world but for the needs and will of God. In comparison, Equiano, according to his autobiography and many readers,  has  steps in his life that were directed by God, hence could his physical freedom necessitate his spiritual freedom? I believe he was a believer in the faith of Christ Jesus, and he became understanding and had patience to stop the slaughter of human suffering. Consequently, Mr. Equaino professes, in his autobiography, his experiences as human chattel chained to another slave was inhumane and unnatural. “Ideas concerning freedom knew no national or geographical boundaries”, according the Jackson article(pg. 218).
The providence of Jamaica has had a long history of rebellions since the Sixteenth Century. The Jamaican inhabitants caught the attention of most prominent abolitionists in Europe. The European abolitionists were concerned with Christianising the Africans and Jamaicans. European commitment to the abolition of slavery, “to promote the most important interest, the Kingdom of Christ”(pg. 231).  So, according to the new public opinion of the late Eighteenth Century, the institution of human slavery was beginning to fissure under the pressure of abolitionists in Europe and those saved by the prayers of the missionaries who witnessed Christ Jesus’ love for them. But unfortunately these changes would have not occurred until more blood was shed on the battlefields of the American Civil War.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Library of Congress.” Library of Congress. www.loc.gov (accessed 04 14, 2011).
Roberts, Toyin Falola and Kevin D. The Atlantic World 1450-2000. Vol. 1. Indianapolis, ID: Indiana University Press, 1984.

Essay 3

Since olden times, the narrative of Blacks at sea has been tightly strung on the cusp of slavery. Yet has the narrative been true? I believe it to be and according to historian Jeffery Bolster’s Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, men of descent from the African and Latin American states have been encapsulated in the narrative. These men had sailed the Atlantic Ocean from the times that many Europeans just began to travel to Africa and the New World. Hence were African Americans different from Africans and African Latinos that were discussed in Thornton and in McKnight and Garafalo books? Yes, but the emphasis of this paper is to discuss men of African descent, which were “creole” sailors of the golden age of piracy, which would strengthen the seafaring bonds of many future African American men of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century. And the new African American sailor or seaman would establish the driving force of freedom for all men and their families, thus the growth and stability of a new nation would begin with the help of the sailor of African descent.
In Jeffery Bolster’s book, he makes the case that African American sailors and seamen should be perceived as Americans first, African "creoles" second. During the golden age of piracy, many men from different countries who wanted to live by their own rules became privateers of merchant vessels. As the treatment of seamen was often cruel and not always certain of a trip back home then these privateers became freedom-fighting pirates. Most pirates lived up to the merciless reputation that was placed upon them. Most would steal and fight for a pirate booty of pieces of eight from the wealthy Spanish Armada, but their system of order or codes had developed into a democratic vote amongst the entire crew of the ship. African and European sailors of the Americas are portrayed in Bolster’s book working “ ‘In honest service quipped Captain Bartholomew Roberts, ‘there is thin Commons, low wages, and hard labor; in this Plenty and Saiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power’ “(14). Sailors from Coastal Africa had knowledge of how to work a sailing vessel or smaller sailing craft; so many African men were kidnapped and enslaved by others. Pirates that marauded the Caribbean or Latin America could treat these talented seamen with unkindness, yet it would behoove the captain of a pirate ship, like Black Bart or Bartholomew Roberts, to have an unworkable crew. How could they raid another ship or island for the wealth of its contents? Thus to keep the civility of the ship and gain a pirate booty, in effect, all of the crew had the freedom to choose which task they would complete and they would all vote upon it. The vote of the crew was an amazing concept. This vote of a common man was not permitted in the society of the age, because an official vote had to be made by a gentleman whom was a property owner too. Thus Jeffrey Bolster’s argument of African American “Americanism” is the perception of liberty, as a vote on a pirate ship was the first displayed, repeated behavior of men of African descent. The men of African descent had a strong sense of the sea as a second home. Recall that many tribesmen thought of the spiritual world of the land but the sea- the Kalunga line. The Kalunga line was an invisible line of the distance of one’s soul could travel. Now the sea gave these men of African descent a broader world to discover. New possibilities had became accessed. The possibilities became new power for the men of African descent. No longer the voice unheard. Men like Olaudah Equiano, grew strong from the belly of a sailing vessel. But these new Black Jacks would be the voice crying out in the wilderness to the lost.

Yanni - Reflections of Passion - Enjoy

essay 2

Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, dedication to traditions of scholarship and literary production has ensured that knowledge of the past has survived for hundreds of years. Historian John Thornton argued for Africa’s reputation as self-sufficient, fervent bands of tribes that were keen as free countries or states, who were able to maintain an autonomous financial system, armed services and ethos. These African tribes had no real need to make contact with any European countries. Any relations between the Europeans was an act of charity exhibited by the African leaders and landlords (proprietors). And in the event of war, “judicial enslavement was one way of obtaining slaves, and judges… Jesuit observers believed that this was a common in Ndongo as early as 1600”(Thornton, 99). HThis leads to a very concise question: were Thornton’s views factual of the entire continent of Africa and Africans? In comparison to Thornton’s research, a historical investigation by Garafola and McKnight, was conducted as case studies in their book, Afro-Latino Voices. Their book analyzed sources of investigation of human enslavement of African and Latin American peoples. Garafola and McKnight reviewed and made accesible the letters of an infameous African queen- Nzinga (Dona Ana de Souza), Queen of Ndongo, in their book, Afro-Latino Voices.
According to Garafola and McKnight, the Portugese would establish several settlements, forts and trading post along the coastal strip of Africa. For example, on the island of Mozanbique, the Portugese had created a permenant settlement; as a result, they built the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte by the date of 1522. The chapel was built upon the labour of slaves. “Africans responded to the increased demand over the centuries by providing slaves…slavery was wide spread in Africa, and its growth and development were largely independent of the Atlantic trade” (Thornton, 74). Thus Thorton argues that slavery had internal interactions ingrained in the hierarchies of African tribal societies. Directly, trade caused extended slavery and was changed in the large quantity of people becoming enslaved. In agreement, “if it did not take place, might just as been the result of economic growth in Africa, perhaps stimulated by commericial opportunity from overseas, perhaps growing in domestic economy” (Thornton, 91). Considering the associations between Portugese and Africans, as obtained in the case of Queen Nzinga Dona Ana de Souza, a rather self-sustaining African state of tribes is mobilizing away from the Portugese traders and settlers. “African legal systems did ensure security of tenure for petty cultivators”(Thornton, 84). Similar to the sharecroppers of North America, trade between African and Portugese permitted farmers to progress into a form of private labor ownership but not land. This concept of slavery as a humanized investment was equalivalent to landownership in Europe. As noted in Queen Nzinga letters, the kingdom of Ndongo was under constant attack from both the Portugese as well as neighboring agressors. Queen Nzinga realized that, to remain a viable African royal, Ndongo had to reposition itself as an intermediary rather than as a supply zone in the Atlantic slave trade (Thornton, 96-98). In order to achieve this success, she rallied Portugal with Ndogno, in chorus, by acquiring a partner in its fight against its mutual enemies and ended Portugese slave raiding in the Ndongo Kingdom. At Queen Nzigna’s baptism, with the Portugese governor serving as godfather, selaed the the relationship between the two countries. But according to Queen Nzinga’s letters, by 1626, the Portugese would force the Queen out of her government and flee to the state named Matamba, well beyond the reach of any Portugese. Queen Nzinga offersed sabctuary to run-away slaves. To boost the morale of her armed services she adopted a form of military discipline called Kilombo, in which youths renounce family ties and were raised communally in militias. Queen Nzinga, served as governor to Luanda, and created political relationships with allies in the Netherlands. These friendships proved useful as their combined forces were not imsufficient in creating a commericial state that could deal with the Portugese colony on equal footing. According to Garafola nad McKnight, the 1633 trade negoitations, Queen Nzinga offered slaves as a peace offering of future trade between Portugal and Luanda-Matamba. In her letter she states,” accept them as my offering to mollify Your Lordship” (McKnight and Garafola, 51-52). From this point on, Queen Nzinga focused on developing Matamba as a trading power by capitalizing on its position as the gateway to the Central African interior.

Hmm, I wonder

I was thinking about the new topic for essay two. How did you all do on your readings?

Essay One

Prior to 1680, Africa’s involvement with the Atlantic world was not a victimized narration of slavery. It’s fantastic how unimportant many historians have not written about the African cultural, religious and social origins of the New World slave trade populations have not been researched until recently. As the story of slavery goes, historian John Thornton argues for this undressed research, Africa’s role and influence upon a more realistic and agency asserted for the culture in Africa and in the New World. According to historian John Thornton’s book: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1600-1800, the military and elitists of many African countries were able to control their trade negotiations and supplies with European nations for awhile; however, the Africans would loose control of trade negotiations as an increase for demands were made by new European colonizers. In this essay, I will discuss how historian John Thornton described the culture of Africa as it operated in Africa, identify Thornton’s idea about African culture as Africans maintained it in the New World and then compare these two perspectives of what these two ideas had in common or did not have in common.
First, the culture of Africa as it operated in Africa during 1600 until the later 1800s has been debated as a continental homogeneity. “The development of self-sustaining families, reproducing themselves demographically and creating and transmitting a culture” can best describe the African culture as it operated in Africa (Thornton, pg. 168). Family life is composed of the daily routine that includes chores done around the house, preparing meals and having time spent together in play and prayer. Not all culture in Africa had the same family dynamics, but most families were able to remain in stable environment to express themselves aesthetically in their spirituality with similar language that was spoken in their homes, villages and around others that these people would interact with outside of their homes and villages. “”Even in religion beyond the pale of Islam, the people of the region shared broad philosophical concepts received together in the cursed sect of Muhammad”(Thornton, pg. 186). But if cultural homogeneity could not be agreed upon by the current academia, what would an African country identify itself as? According to Thornton, “ in its primary form, the nation was recognized by language… but it also included other marks of group identity, such as scarifications”(Thornton, pg. 185). The African culture of language and religion was believed to be instrumental in the development of the African labor force and its economic system. In areas, such as, the Congo, Sierra Leone and other areas along the Gold Coast, the export of slaves that were either taken forcefully from their villages had created a economic homogeneity by each nation’s linguistic and religious similarities that permitted commercial networking for quality labor.
Second, historian John Thornton’s idea about African culture as Africans maintained it in the New World was analyzed as, that Africans may have been linguistically diverse, there were only three known different cultures that would contribute to the New World. The language and religion of Africans were used in the New World and would be rooted in the new American culture. African culture as diverse as it could be was able to adapt throughout the hardships of forced enslavement. As argued by historian John Thornton, the essential structures of the cultural elements retained by Africans in the New World were derived from Africa, while the incidentals were derived as the results of a cultural contact with the Europeans. The slave trade and subsequent transfer to the New World plantations were not at all random. As Thornton argues, “through the process on enslavement, sale, transfer, shipment and relocation on the plantation was certainly disruptive to the personal and family lives of those people that endured it, its effect on culture may have been much less than many suggest. Slaves, although no longer surrounded by their familiar home environment, village, and family, were nevertheless not in a cultural wilderness when they arrived in America”(pg. 204-05).
In conclusion, the ideas argued by Thornton for the cultural perspective of Africa as it was operated in Africa can be compared to the perspective of culture of Africans in the New World were able to survive enslavement of their family language and spirituality. For a while African nations were strong enough to repel efforts of economic dominations by new European colonizers. As Thornton argued, that neither European nor African would control the slave trade, most African and Europeans just created the trade situation at their own advantage. For example, in Africa the 17th Century kings of Congo would inconsistent with their political appropriations as they rose in power, which would dissolve political relationships but not the spiritual stability of the family structures in Africa. In comparison, the African culture in the New World the culture was more material- as in the constructing of buildings, homes, tools even artwork that was now constructed to be singular and dependent on a particular environment to create these things to build the “material culture”. As argued by Thornton, “ language, aesthetics, philosophy, family structure, and political systems all coexisted, and moreover, are harmonized with each other”(pg. 209). In the New World the African culture could interact with one another without the use of feudal system, as in Africa. The slave trade was maintained its power through the control of violence by an African submission to their capturers and the slaveholder. Conquest of slaves happened when a more distant elite, like the European monarchy, overpowered a regional elite, like a king of Congo. Both states of culture, in Africa and the New World were changing but gaining new power in a new commodity from the human slave trade.

All about Me

Good Evening
 I am  a student of HST 300 with you all. I am so happy to be part of the class and wish everyone well . I hope that your semester goes well for all of you as we learn together historical methodologies. My historical have been based in European, Medieval and Renaissance Arts.