To the king of Port Dauphin

Dear Abraham,

I write to you in reverence and humbleness, as I am quite impressed by you. You have garnered much notoriety amongst fugitive slaves for your anomalous achievement.

I would first like to introduce myself - I am Cuffy, alias Billy Farrell, a former slave of Richard Swan of Philadelphia. I abhor the life of a slave, and have attempted escape twice - the first was unsuccessful, and the second, well I am writing to you now so at the moment I am safe, but as you very well know, the life of a fugitive slave is precarious, to say the least.

We have heard murmurs of your achievements here in the mid-Atlantic region. Our White owners are appalled and afeared of you, and us Black slaves, and even some indentured servants, are inspired and impelled to turn to a life of seafaring because of you.

The freedom of the sea is so attractive to many of us fugitive slaves, but for me, I believe the life of a pirate is more suited for me. Whereas I may enjoy the limited freedom of embarking on a seafaring voyage to skirt the horrors of slavery for a set number of years, the life of a pirate is the most intensely attractive for me. Our lives are short. We are worked to the bone, suffer miserably, and are denied the basic rights of humanity, amongst other horrors - all of which lend themselves to a short life for a slave. Therefore, I want to be able to live my life the way I choose to lead it, even if it ends in a violent and bloody death. I cannot believe that a fellow runaway West Indian slave achieved the ranks of quarter master on a pirate ship and became the King of Port Dauphin on Madagascar. What I wouldn't give to have slaves, wives, and trading profits at my disposal! You truly are an inspiration.

The life of a pirate appeals to me also because of the relatively color blind aspect of it all. While I am a mulatto, with the blood of a terrible White master running through and poisoning my veins, allowing me to pass as a White man, I believe that the pirate life is the only way of life that allows me to actually achieve my innate potential - which can only be realized amongst fellow men of color. I can only hope that my cleverness, my cunning, and my knack for outsmarting unassuming White men could lend itself to me achieving half as much as you have.

I want freedom, I want notoriety, I want to thrive as a person out of the confines of the shackles of slavery. Therefore, the seafaring life is the only one for me. If this letter ever reaches you, I can only hope that you could put a kind word in for a fellow brother, and I hope to meet you someday on the shores of Madagascar.

With admiration,

Cuffy

QUESTIONS

(1) The concept of seafaring is discussed in detail in "Black Sailors in Plantation America" and briefly discussed in "Reading the Runaways." Do you think that seafaring as appealing to a mulatto, or someone capable of passing as white, as it was for someone who could not?

Ackermann to Bolster

W. Jeffrey Bolster,
Although the fundamental mark of race in America has been skin color, the history of race as a form of perception shows that the mark of race can be almost anything. In America as the sexual exploitation of slave women by their masters produced a mixed "mulatto" population, the old norms of identifying race by skin color often became impossible. Instead race identificaiton drifted away from skin color to personality characteristics and genetic claims. I believe that you significantly oversimplify your analysis of the discussion of 'black sailors.' While color indicated a likelihood of servitude, it was not guarantee of slavery. Ship owners were notorious for giving jobs to runaway slaves without asking questions about their background. The boats became an extraordinary mix of black and white free people, indentured servants and slaves (both working legitimately for their masters or runaways). Taken together, identificaiton of sailers as whites or blacks and as free or slaves was impossible. As described in your article by Frederick Douglass, sailors had an 'old salt' way of talking. Compared to the rest of segregated America, sailors were remarkably integrated. The shady markers of black/white at sea quickly and easily gave way to sailor/non-sailor. The American social norms of race was lost in the open ocean where the true identities of people were unknown and unimportant. I believe this forged somewhat of a unity of experience between sailors that would make it impossible to discuss the experiences of 'black sailors' from 'white sailors.'

-Robert John Ackermann (From the "Reading the Runaways" reading)

Questions:
The article Reading The Runaways makes a big deal about the 4 attributes that were described in runaway slave advertisements "clothing, trades, linguistic ability and ethnic identity." The point was to show that slaves were often characterized by things other than their skin tone. The article makes it appear that often slaves could pass as free men. Yet I wonder whether this was that widespread? I seem to remember that I learned growing up that the Northern railroad ended in Canada. How easily could a black person pass as white? What did those slaves do when they couldn't pass as white?

Dear Thomas Holt,

You can control print, by producing a newspaper and taking out advertisements against your slaves. You think this gives you control over other people and allows you to write the narrative and reshape men into commodities. I am here to tell you you are wrong.
I, too, was able to create stories and spread my view. My stories, however were in the grand tradition of "African raconteur[s]". I did not just tell recount my journeys on both sides of the Atlantic but instead "rewrote the history of the Middle Passage".
Do not think that your accusations against Charles Roberts were effective. Your attempts to change his substance through various advertisements have failed in the eyes of time. We both have our own stories and have had our own audiences. Despite your power, your print, your skin color, both of our narratives have stood the test of time.

Sincerly,
Money Vose


Questions:
1)Do you think that Benito Cereno is racist, pro-slavery or abolitionist, anti-racist? Does it matter? How does its ambiguous presentation affect its meaning?

2) Both "Reading the Runaways" and "Black Jacks" rely heavily, as historical papers, on written documents. Both also contain an understanding and discussion of the limits of access to writing for Black people, especially slaves. How does reliance on text hinder our understanding of history?

Dear Editor of the Connecticut Gazette

My name is Sir William Thompson III. I would like to place an advertisement for a runaway slave who goes by the name of Buck. I believe that he fled my estate early Thursday morning before dawn and is headed to New York. This slave of mine is about 5’11, very well built, and is a fairer skinned negro. Buck is extremely duplicitous in nature and character; he has the tongue of an Englishman and Frenchman. He may be wearing a stolen pair of brown wool trousers with the initials WTIII embroidered on the waistline and a chiffon French-tailored blouse. On his personhood may also be a set of craftsman tools that he has stolen from me. This damned negro, with the help of the devil himself, may have forged a traveling pass. I would greatly appreciate your assistance in helping me recover my property.

Q1: What elements, both performative and through props, did slaves use to pass as free people, in manipulating their class and racial identity?

Q2: How does the black sailor narrative and runaway slave advertisements challenge the power structure of slavery?

Letter from Joshua Blue to his enslaved brother

My Dear Younger Brother,

I write to you from the vast Atlantic Ocean. Here I am, aboard a vessel bound for some faraway European port. I feel freedom here such as I have never felt before – sure, I work hard and the white folks aren’t much nicer at sea than they are on land, but I am able to spend the evenings breathing the fresh ocean air and counting the brilliant, bright stars. I even have time to work on my reading and writing. I’m fixing to write a book about my life—about our lives, dear brother. Every night as I sleep I remember the look on your sweet face as those white men bought you and dragged you away from our mother. I remember the way your body ached as you toiled away under that hot Southern sun, the way your sweet face turned to stone after only a few days in slavery. I know that I ran from you, brother, and I know that the salty sweat from your back has flown into the water that carries me across the world. But please understand that I someday you will thank me. I will publish this account of our lives and your resentment will melt away under the heat of freedom, the heat of peace. Until then, do not forget that I am your brother, and that it is your strength that compels me to carry on.

Yours,

Joshua Blue

Questions:

1) 1) I’m interested in the relationship between the African Americans on the plantations and those involved in the maritime trade. Weren’t the black men working on the ships working for an industry that was essentially fueling the industry of the plantations that exploited the black men on land? Though the black seaman “fired the opening salvo of the black abolitionist attack and fostered creation of a corporate black identity” (141), didn’t this identity inherently exclude the black slaves that were not fortunate enough to be on the seas?

2) 2) This next question is inspired from my thoughts on all the readings about slavery. I wonder if there has been any exploration of the homoerotic element of slavery? This notion of these white men taking so much pleasure from purchasing the bodies of strong black men seems to me to be laced with homoeroticism…I know this might seem like a stretch, but I feel that there is so much writing about the slave trade that evaluates the master/slave relationship as one that is all about power, but I wonder about the sexual power that exists as well.

A Mirror to Your Mirage: Letter to Holt from Roberts

Dear John Holt,

Ah bet yew wuz espect’n meh ta towlk like dis, I rekun? I’d hate to infuriate, but your old servant is a literate, genteel citizen (or so some believe). I write to you because there is some serious personal consensus that must be made, because I fear you will lose yourself trying to find me. Here is the truth.

I am free and not to be fooled: I was the backbone of your printing enterprise and I have never stole a single item in that lottery foolishness because I earned my own meager wages. I will say that any monies I may have from you are really my own, as I most basically was a partner for your now failing and indebted print business. ‘Tis a good thing I had the chance to work so intimately with you because I know how you operate.

You must know that I regularly see your caricatures of me as the “villainous” smooth-talking, thief of your “amazing confidense” in the papers. You project onto me exactly what is in yourself. You are very good at narrating a trickster about me because you understand how to trick. I must admit, the stories about me are far more fantastic than I would have imagined of myself. At my core, I am just a Black man with a free soul. But I thank you for allowing me to realize something far more implicating: I am a valuable commodity.

We both know that because you molded me to your best interests, showed me how to operate machinery, read and write the papers, and even allowed me to keep another “lesser” language, that I have much more traction in “passing” these days. I have a useful trade and tongue. These experiences all have allowed me to fashion a life for that you will never hold down and an identity you can never rein in. This print shop is much like the labor you allowed me to do, while I am getting paid and living as a freedman.

The primary thrust for my letter is a sentimental and philosophical one. I write this to you to flash a mirror to this mirage of me you have conjured for the Mid-Atlantic public. Most importantly, I pray that the Lord have mercy on your soul for the slander you have erupted.

Sincerely,
Charles Roberts

Questions:
1. How did print culture reinforce and undercut the slave system? Explain some of the ways that it served and disserved the system of oppression for the owning and owned class.
2. What kind of agency what most effective for the runaway slave? Describe some traits that an ideal runaway possesses to be permanently free.

Jenni Ockelmann - assignment 2

Dear Charles Roberts,

We do not know each other, but I see from your former master's advertisements that you are a runaway slave, searching for some place where you can be free in a way you currently are not. I write, not so much to encourage you to adopt a lifestyle such as mine, but to inform you of what I have learned in my years as something similar to what you currently are – neither wholly enslaved nor wholly free. I am a sailor, and though I am also a slave, I spend my daily life much freer than many free black men who live in fear of capture on land.

The life of a sailor, and particularly of a black sailor, is not necessarily something to be envied. It is difficult work, and you will face many challenges that you would face were you to live as a free man at shore – you will be treated poorly for your color, beaten, given the worst jobs and the least rations. You may encounter pirates and the accompanying temptation to join them. It will be alternately bleak, dull and dangerous.

And yet despite all of this, despite the differential treatment among shipmates and unfairness of jobs, you will in some ways be just one of many sailors on board the ship on any given day. You will, along with white shipmates, be told what to do and how and when to do it, but you will not be subject to the physical and intellectual chains that you encounter on land. You will see new places and people, and you will freely exchange ideas among the communities you visit. You have already re-fashioned yourself as a free black after your escape from your master, and at sea you can again take on a new identity, this time as a sailor among many others. You may even become skilled as a seaman as you became skilled as a printer, thus once again outwitting the system and attaining a status – as a skilled member of society with a valuable and useful skill – that remaining on land could not afford you.

With these words, I simply inform you of your possibilities should you choose to join the ranks of Africans at sea. Though you will be a slave to your captain and to the sea, it is an enslavement that you may find comes with enough freedom and bodily liberty to make it worth the while.

Best,
Briton Hammon

Questions:
1.In Black Jacks, Bolster discusses that the prevailing social system continued to relegate black sailors to lower or “stereotypical” positions such as captain's servant, cook, or musician, but he also says that some blacks achieved the status of officer, while others gained some authority through their various skills and positions. How did these blacks challenge the social system set in place by whites, and what were white sailors' reactions to blacks who gained authority on board?
2.Runaway slaves and sailors both sometimes utilized specific skills to increase their viability as a free or somewhat free person at land and sea. In what ways did these particular skills – runaways use of skills such as wig making, writing, and reading to achieve their escape, and sailors use of skills to maintain a position on a ship – change the ways in which African Americans and whites viewed skilled and unskilled blacks?