Anthem for Doomed Youth

Wilfred Owen wrote this poem for the soldiers of World War I. It serves just as well for the fallen of the Civil War.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?


Only the monstrous anger of the guns,

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle


Can patter out their hasty orisons.


No mockeries now for them, no prayers nor bells,


Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells


And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?


Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes


Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.


The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;


Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,


And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Because He is a Man

The below essay was written in 1858. The writer believed that slavery should be abolished but that Negroes were inferior and, therefore, should serve and obey the White race. I wonder how many Americans still believe this, even subliminally? And does it become a self-fulfilling prophesy?

"A slave is not property, because he is a man. A man cannot be the subject of property, though his labor may. He is not a thing. Even in the lowest forms of humanity, he has intellect, passions, sentiments, conscience, which establish his brotherhood with all men, which establish the theoretic equality of man as man, and separate him from the lower animals and material things. To man, to the race of men, the earth was given as an inheritance. Whatever he can make, or modify, or add value to is property.

"But man was not given to man to possess. He is not a product of industry, but himself a producer. It is a proposition so plain, it is difficult to make plainer by argument. Its truth is self-evident. No man can imagine himself to be property. Every instinct and impulse of his nature revolt at the idea. But the idea of subjection to a superior nature, of obedience and service in return for protection and care, of looking up to another for guidance and direction, is natural; it arises at once from inequality of intellectual force, and pervades, in a greater or less degree, all the relations of life.

"[Although the Negro is inferior] what degree of inferiority confers the right to own a man? The Indians are an inferior race. Are they property? The Irish are inferior to the Anglo-Saxon. Is he property? What would be thought of any State that should declare him a chattel? Is the Negro the only race who can be the subject of property? With his capacity for improvement, his courage, his warm feelings, is he so low in the scale of being that he cannot be recognized as a man, but must be regarded as one of the lower animals?"

 

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Part I

   

For the next several blogs I will quote portions of a 24-page review (yes, 24 pages!) of Uncle Tom's Cabin: The Possible Amelioration of Slavery which was published in The North American Review in 1853. Besides its length and sharply critical review of the book, it is an amazing political diatribe about slavery and “abolition parties”, some of it considerate of beliefs and opinions we hold today, some of it completely unacceptable in light of the emancipation of slaves, the Civil War, and all that has happened since. It’s fascinating to read what a man of the times had to say about Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the sensibilities of his day. Today’s blog is the opening of the review and the author’s comments on the Eva and Tom characters.

The enthusiastic reception of Mrs. Stowe’s novel is the result of various causes. One is the merit of the book itself. It is, unquestionably, a work of genius. It has defects of conception and style, exhibits a want of artistic skill, is often tame and inadequate in description, and is tinctured with methodistic cant; but, with all its blemishes, thought, imagination, feeling, high moral and religious sentiment, and dramatic power shine in every page. It has the capital excellence of exciting the interest of the reader; this never stops or falters from the beginning to the end. The characters are drawn with spirit and truth.

[The author then describes what he thinks of each of the main characters ending with Eva and Tom.] Eva and Tom are dreams; the one is a saint, the other an angel. But dreams are founded on realities, and we are all such stuff as dreams are made of. These characters are both exaggerated; but to color and idealize is the privilege of romance, provided the picture does not overstep the modesty of nature or contradict nature. There are no Evas or Uncle Toms, but there are some who possess, in a lower degree, their respective virtues.

North American African-American Communities in the 19th Century

Surviving original home at Elgin Settlement

There were many African-American communities in the United States, a particularly successful one in Michigan. The richest man in town built a mansion on the lake. But the most famous North American black enclave in the 19^th century was the nine-thousand-acre Elgin Settlement in Kent County, Ontario, Canada, not far from Detroit. 

In the 1800's Kent County became known as a place of refuge for fugitive slaves who escaped from the South, but it enticed both free blacks and slaves to settle along the Thames River. The land was rich in natural resources and far enough away from the border that it was relatively safe from slave hunters.

The people of the Elgin Settlement swore off liquor, soaked up Greek and Latin, planted flower gardens, and made their own tools. The settlers raised corn, wheat, tobacco, hemp, maple sugar, cows, sheep and hogs and had black walnut orchards. They put up picket fences and built homes with at least four rooms set 30 feet back from the road. They had a school, a sawmill, brickyard, rope factory, and gristmill. There were grocery stores, churches, a meat market and a tiny candy store. 

Anti-slavery lectures and other meetings took place in the grocery stores, which were the “humping, pulsing, laughing, story-sharing, neighbor-helping” heart of the town. After dark, people sat on the porch and told stories about the old times in the South and the family members they’d lost. The Elgin Settlement was quoted as being called “the coloured man's Paris”.

Rev. William King of Louisiana is credited with establishing the Kent County community that included the Elgin Settlement. He had moved from Ireland to Louisiana as a young man and married into a family that owned slaves. King did not believe in slavery, but he could not free his slaves in Louisiana, so he traveled to Canada and bought a large tract of land on which to start a settlement. Despite government objections, he pursued his goal to create a Utopian community where blacks and whites would be treated equally.

Although the black settlers in Elgin knew they might be captured and returned to slavery, when the Civil War started, many black men from the Settlement went to fight.  Several of the black officers who fought in the war were from the Settlement. After the war some of the black settlers returned to the U.S to find lost family and to help with reconstruction. But many stayed in Canada and continued to contribute to the area’s wealth.

Woman Soldier and Spy

Emma Edmonds disguised herself as a man at the outbreak of the Civil War and enlisted in the Union army under the name Frank Thompson. While stationed in Virginia at the beginning of the Peninsular campaign, Edmonds volunteered for a mission inside Rebel lines at Yorktown.

Edmonds decided to infiltrate Rebel lines disguised as a black man. She bought clothing from a fugitive slave, obtained a wig "of real negro wool", and colored her head, hands, and arms with silver nitrate. She slipped past Rebel pickets at night and the next morning joined slaves who were returning to Yorktown after taking breakfast to the pickets. At Yorktown Edmonds and the slaves were put to work with picks and shovels on fortifications. After a day of hard labor, Edmonds recorded that her hands were "blistered from my wrists to the finger ends."

That evening, Edmonds talked one of the slaves into exchanging duties with her. For the next two days she carried buckets of water around the camp, a job that enabled her to gather intelligence about the fortification and its armament.

The evening of her third day inside Rebel lines, Edmonds was sent with her group of slaves to carry supper to the picket lines, where she was surprised to find that some of the pickets were black men. Edmonds reported that as she was talking to one of the black pickets, an officer came up, gave her a gun, and ordered her to take the place of a picket who had recently been shot. Taking advantage of her position, she slipped away during the night and returned to the Yankee lines with the captured weapon and information about Confederate fortifications.

"Irregulars" in the Civil War

The below two paragraphs are from my novel, The Silence of Sorrowful Hours. They explain a little bit about how "irregulars" operated during the Civil War.

Captain Henderson heard about the arms and dynamite near Carpentersville through an intricate system of communication. Irregulars kept track of troop and supply movements by intercepting telegraph transmissions and interviewing sutlers who moved easily among the armies of the North and South. Sympathizers in the Border States passed along conversations overheard in the fields, at campfires, in general stores, and at church. Irregulars spread information about troop movements, supply shipments, and firepower by opening or closing window shades or hanging wash on the line on one day and not another.

The Confederate Army used slaves to serve them in their camps and those slaves had no interest in helping the Southern cause. Slaves who worked in government buildings and the homes of politicians and Confederate officers sometimes had access to maps and secret documents. Slaves served refreshments during military planning sessions. With the valuable information they provided, the Union Army avoided disasters and created havoc.

My next blog post will be about an actual young woman who posed as a man to join the Union infantry. On one of her spying missions for the Army, she used silver nitrate to darken her skin and infiltrated a Confederate camp posing as a slave in order to glean information about their troop movement plans.

Slaves on a Cotton Farm

From Africa to Georgia

This post is an excerpt from The Silence of Sorrowful Hours.

Ethan’s grandmother Sukey was brought to Amer­ica from West Africa in 1781. She had a black earth complexion and round features, and the auctioneer de­scribed her as “good-looking enough” and an “ordinary size”. When she arrived in Savannah, she was thirty pounds lighter than when she left her home. Sukey never regained the weight, and she never recovered from the grief and rage she breathed in when she was sold from the auction block along with kegs of brandy, bales of cotton, and furniture. 

Master James Cartwell, the owner of a cotton plantation thirty miles west of the port, had his foreman take her from the market along with twelve other Africans. As they rode away, she felt sadder than the day her mother died, her proud mother, stronger than most men and better looking than any woman. The farther the wagon took them, the more she suspected she would never see the ocean again. The smell of salt water had been in her nostrils all her life.

Sukey didn’t mind the plantation except for the sum­mer heat with no ocean breeze to give relief. Once she got used to it, she didn’t mind picking cotton; it wasn’t the worst way a person could spend her time. At first it tore up her hands, but after a month, they were as tough as a puma’s paw. She wasn’t chained like some or branded like a slave who’d been brought from South Carolina, and some of the folks she worked with spoke a dialect close to hers.

Although she could have had an easier life as a house slave – she had the comport­ment and intelligence for it – she didn’t want to speak English, she didn’t want to become a Christian, and she didn’t want to work close to White people. She preferred life with people like herself. Even in the inclement seasons, Sukey would rather be outdoors under the camphor tree than in a cabin or barn. People would leave her alone when she sat under that tree; its seeds were poisonous and most people had a bad reaction to it. 

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest

The Silence of Sorrowful Hours is in the mix for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. It's a complicated submission process, and there are several levels it must "pass" to get to the final stage of judging. I'm praying I'll make it all the way. I'll let you know, of course!
Preparing all the parts of the submission was daunting. Waiting until the contest opened - literally watching the computer screen as it counted down to one minute past midnight Eastern time - was hair-raising. I wanted a shot of bourbon and I can't stand the taste of it!
It was important to be among the first to submit because it's an international contest for English-language novels and they only accept the first 5,000 entries.
I won't know if "Silence" has made it to the second stage until February 24th. Glad I have a stack of valium on hand. :-)
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Women Abolitionists

The above engraving, “Am I not a Woman and a Sister?”, appeared in an 1837 tract by George Bourne. It highlighted the connections between the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements and became ubiquitous in leaflets, posters, and pamphlets.

As white and black women became more active in the abolitionist movement in the 1830s, they took key roles as lecturers, petitioners, and meeting organizers. They knew illustrative representations were more likely to draw support for their cause, so, in appealing for interracial sisterhood, they used a variety of images portraying the female activist theme in newspapers and broadsides, as well as on handicraft goods sold at fund-raising fairs.

The abolitionist and women's rights advocate Isabella Baumfree was born around the turn of the nineteenth century. Enslaved until she was an adult, she was freed in 1827 by the New York Gradual Abolition Act. She worked as a domestic for eighteen years. Then, in 1843, she came to understand that God was calling her to travel around the nation – sojourn – and preach the truth of his word. She became Sojourner Truth. Her calling cards read:

Ye wives and ye mothers, your influence extend--
Ye sisters, ye daughters, the helpless defend--
The strong ties are severed for one crime alone,
Possessing a colour less fair than your own.

  

An abolitionist as well as a suffragist, Susan B. Anthony referred to Harriet Tubman as a "most wonderful woman". Tubman escaped slavery and helped to establish the Underground Railroad.

A biographer of Tubman wrote, “Harriet was now left alone, . . . She turned her face toward the north, and fixing her eyes on the guiding star, and committing her way unto the Lord, she started again upon her long, lonely journey. She believed that there were one of two things she had a right to, liberty or death.”

After making her own escape, Harriet Tubman returned to the South nineteen times to bring over three hundred fugitives to safety, including her own aged parents.

Next blog will continue the subject of 'Women and Abolition".

Slave vs. Enslaved

From the beginnings of slavery in British North America in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 enslaved Africans to the Virginia colony at Jamestown, nearly 240 years passed until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution officially ended slavery in 1865.

Although some Quakers held slaves, no religious group was more outspoken against slavery from the 1600’s until slavery's end. Quakers were among the earliest to protest the African slave trade, the perpetual bondage of its captives, and the practice of separating enslaved family members by sale to different masters.

Anthony Benezet (Antoine Bénézet), 1713 - 1784, a Quaker of French Huguenot descent, emigrated with his family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1731, four years after he had joined the Religious Society of Friends. In Philadelphia, Benezet urged that the British ban on slavery should be extended to the colonies (and later to the independent states) in North America. Using the Biblical maxim, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," Benezet worked to convince his Quaker brethren that owning slaves was not consistent with Christian doctrine.

In 1742 Benezet began teaching at the Friends' English School of Philadelphia. During this time, he came to realize that the emancipation of slaves was not enough, but that education to prepare them to lead independent, productive lives was required. In 1850, he added to his schedule night classes for slaves. While continuing his classes for slaves, in 1754, Benezet set up his own school, the first public girls' school on the American continent. Then, in 1770, he founded the Negro School at Philadelphia.

Benezet founded the first anti-slavery society, the “Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.” Reflecting on the name of Benezet’s society, it’s interesting to note that many 21^st century African Americans no longer refer to their ancestors as slaves, but as people who were enslaved. To me, a slave is not an individual human, but chattel; it is a state of being as perceived by the slave owner. An enslaved person is a free individual who has been forced into a position where he is alleged to be chattel, a position he does not accept as his being. Before Abolition, the great majority of Africans in America were not slaves, but were enslaved.

Support for Abolition in Churches

Although the Church of England was united in its denunciation of slavery, the American Anglican (Episcopal) Church showed affability toward slavery interests consistent with its support of existing social and economic conditions. When the British Parliament resisted abolition, the Church of England pressured the government, and slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833. The French government followed suit in 1848. The American Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t signed until September 22, 1862, one-and-a-half years after the start of the Civil War.

In the American South the religious defense of slavery was vigorous and widespread.  What is not generally known is that slavery had many supporters in the North, too. Some Northern religious writers defended slavery, but support for abolition inevitably made it onto the agendas of meetings of most official church bodies. However, antislavery resolutions passed in church assemblies tended to be symbolic and lukewarm.

The strongest religious support for the abolition of slavery was in the Congregational, Methodist, Presbyterian and Quaker churches along with some Baptists – less so in Unitarian, Episcopalian, or Catholic churches. Quakers were the strongest in their support for abolition, but they were torn between their objection to slavery and their pacificism. While they didn't produce firebrand preachers speaking out against slavery, they were active in the Underground Railroad.

In the case of the Baptists and Methodists, the Northern and Southern churches were in opposition about the legitimacy of slavery. In 1844, the Methodist Church passed a resolution requesting Bishop James O. Andrew of Georgia to step down while he remained a slave owner. When he would not, the church split between Northern and Southern conferences. At the 1845 General Conference of the Baptist Church, Northern members opposed the appointment of missionaries who held slaves, which resulted in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention.