Delia's Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America 9780300163285

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Delia’s Tears Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America

M O L LY RO GE RS

N EW H AV E N & LO N D O N

Copyright © 2010 by Molly Rogers. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Mary Valencia Set in Minion type by Integrated Publishing Solutions Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rogers, Molly, 1967– Delia’s tears : race, science, and photography in nineteenth-century America / Molly Rogers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-300-11548-2 (clothbound : alk. paper) 1. Slaves—South Carolina—Columbia Region—Pictorial works. 2. Slaves— South Carolina—Columbia Region—Biography. 3. Photography—Social aspects—United States—History—19th century. 4. Photography—Political aspects—United States—History—19th century. 5. Racism—United States— History—19th century. 6. Agassiz, Louis, 1807–1873—Political and social views. 7. Racism in anthropology—United States—History—19th century. 8. United States—Race relations—History—19th century. I. Title. e445.s7r64

2010

305.800973—dc22

2009045474

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Peter

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Contents

Foreword by David Blight ix Key Individuals xiii Map of Columbia, South Carolina, 1850 xix Preface xxi PART ONE 1. Introduction: Discovery 5 2. A Dam’d Poor Town 25 3. Cotton 38 4. Transformation 52 5. Humbug 69 6. The Big Fish 91 7. Truth Before All 113 PART TWO 8. Storm, Blood, and Fire 135 9. A Positive Good 157 10. Niggerology 176 11. Opposite Views 195 12. Investigations 215

CONTENTS

13. Evidence 232 14. Scientific Moonshine 253 15. Epilogue: Revolution 272 Notes 295 Bibliographic Note 335 Illustration Credits 337 Acknowledgments 341 Index 345

Foreword

C

an photographs taken in another era in the service of scientific investigation be considered a crime against humanity in a new, more enlightened era? How should we judge, indeed even react to, the remarkable daguerreotypes of seven AfricanAmerican slaves taken in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1850? How should we assess the nakedness of Delia, Jack, Renty, Drana, Jem, Alfred, and Fassena? Is there an ethics to how we view or explain these images and their origins? Do we only perpetuate their exploitation with our gaze, our study, our explanations of their use in these photographs? Do we sometimes unintentionally continue their dehumanization as we reprint them in books or scan them slowly in documentary films? Or can we somehow liberate these several people at last from their humiliation at the hands of the natural scientist, Louis Agassiz, his daguerreotypist, Joseph Zealy, their owners, and all the assorted “polygenicists,” who believed in a theory of the separate origins and therefore the ranking and classification of the races of humankind? Molly Rogers’s stunning book compels us to face these and many other questions. Some theories are not benign or rendered odd simply because they are disproven in a later, more advanced age. The layered notions of black (African) inferiority and white (European) superiority formed the basis of racial slavery all over the Americas and thrived for the nearly four centuries that slavery played a crucial role in building the economies and societies of the New World. The scale of racial slavery in the Caribbean, in Brazil, or in the United States South by the early nineteenth century demanded justification. While slavery’s legions of intellectual defenders employed the Bible, theories of hierarchical social order, conservative-organic conceptions of historical change, and blunt economic claims about power and capitalism, nothing sustained slavery’s defense quite as effectively as arguments from “nature”—the natural, biological destiny of the darker races to labor in the soil. What could be a more important or primal “scientific” endeavor than to explain the origins of man and his division into distinct races and their requisite status over time? And what could ix

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give slavery, the engine of the cotton boom and the dominant economic and political issue in America by 1850, a deeper foundation than to know and “see” the natural inferiority of black slaves in their bodies, or was it in their faces? The trouble for this worldview is that Delia and her cohort were as human as their exploiters. They had dispositions and temperaments; they had eyes that looked at the camera for those long exposures, and they can still look at us today. But the trouble at the heart of these photographs is also that the theories that led to their creation have never really died. In academic circles, we may now know that race is a biological fiction, but do the masses of humankind outside the halls of learning believe it? As artifacts these photographs are “firsts,” and therefore extraordinarily valuable; their discovery in 1976 in the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a significant moment in the world’s long, sordid, and tragic history of mixing “race” with “science.” But as Rogers demonstrates so thoroughly and poignantly here, at the heart of the story of these photographs “is the question of what it means to be human.” Even keeping that question in mind will not liberate the subjects of these photographs, but as readers and viewers, we can at least keep alive the idea of the humanity of the seven enslaved Americans whom Agassiz exploited. In a book that is at once sensitive, bold, and imaginative, Rogers delivers a deep history of the causes, creation, and consequences of these now famous photographs, pictures that have far too often been used as if they were somehow images of typical, damaged, exploited slaves. In one unfolding context after another, and with some creative reinventions of the circumstances of the seven slaves’ plight, Rogers tells an engrossing story. It is a tale of ugly, misshapen ideas and how they grow into unquestioned assumptions that in turn can determine history. It is a narrative of authentic tragedy, of human beings caught in fates they can never completely control. But it is also a story about the idea of humanity and what it takes to find it, preserve it, and advance it even as some of it is destroyed. Rogers shows in detail that in the United States for a very long time a central tragedy running through our history was the fact that “the natural history of human beings became the science of slavery.” She also demonstrates, however, that there were always dissenters from these twisted ideas about the ethnological gradations of humankind. Making slavery into science is surely one of the most dangerous and destructive things Americans have ever done. We are still unmaking that work so hauntingly preserved in these unforgettable photographs. And as we remember these photographs and the real people in them with Rogers as our guide, it is worth contemplating the philosopher Avishai Margalit’s x

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claims about the “ethics of memory.” Margalit is not sanguine about the possibility of a “shared human memory,” a collective remembrance embraced by “the whole of mankind.” But he insists that we must try to imagine one when possible. “The issue for us to sort out,” writes Margalit, “is what humanity ought to remember rather than what it is good for humanity to remember.” In such an admonition we might find the best reasons to engage closely with these photographs—what they meant in 1850 and what they mean now. Not because we may simply feel “good” that we have overcome the theories that fueled the racial sciences. But because if there ever can be a shared humanity with a shared historical memory, perhaps it can emerge only from seeing such evidence of its most brutal denial. David W. Blight Class of ’54 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University

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Key Individuals

Alfred (dates unknown): Alfred was Fulani (also Fula, Foulah, and Fulah, as well as the French Peul), a pastoral, nomadic people who populated a broad region of West Africa and tended to keep apart from other ethnic groups. In Columbia, South Carolina, Alfred was a slave of I. (or J.) Lomas, about whom little is known. Louis Agassiz (1807–1873): Originally from Switzerland, Louis Agassiz emigrated in 1846 to the United States, where he remained to take up a professorship at Harvard University. Internationally respected among his peers in the fields of geology, paleontology, and ichthyology, Agassiz also became a major public figure, inspiring countless Americans to study natural history. He caused a scandal, however, when he announced his support for the theory of separate creations; in 1850 he commissioned the daguerreotypes of slaves to provide evidence for this theory. When Agassiz died in 1873, he was one of the few reputable naturalists to remain adamantly against Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. John Bachman (1790–1874): Pastor of Saint John’s Lutheran Church in Charleston, South Carolina, for nearly sixty years, the Reverend Dr. John Bachman was as devoted to natural history as he was to his congregation. He coauthored The Quadrupeds of North America with John James Audubon and was professor of natural history at the College of Charleston. Bachman despised what he considered false notions of scientific truth, such as the “Feejee Mermaid,” mesmerism, and the theory of separate creations. As the principal adversary of the “American school” of ethnology, he argued for the original unity of human beings on scientific grounds, though Josiah Nott viewed him first and foremost as a representative of the clergy. Charles Caldwell (1772–1853): The physician Charles Caldwell, a Southerner by birth, had a habit of falling out with colleagues owing to the ardor with which he expressed his opinions. Such was the case when he attacked Samuel Stanhope Smith’s Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species (1810). Caldwell was among

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the earliest American scientists to argue that people of different races had been created on separate occasions. Thomas Cooper (1759–1839): The Englishman Thomas Cooper was a friend of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Caldwell. He was president of South Carolina College from 1820 to 1834, during which time he espoused controversial political ideas that came to be known as “The South Carolina Doctrines.” The unconstitutionality of protective tariffs and the right of Southerners to enslave human beings were among his favored principles; he was also unpopular with the clergy owing to his essentially atheistic views. Cooper influenced a generation of South Carolinians, including James Henry Hammond, Robert W. Gibbes, and Josiah Nott. Georges Cuvier (1769–1832): Baron George Cuvier was a major figure in European science during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He played a key role in establishing the new discipline of comparative anatomy, whereby naturalists determined the relationship between organisms by dissecting specimens and comparing their many parts and organic systems. Cuvier was against theories of development, believing instead that different species did not have an organic relationship to one another. He was a mentor to Louis Agassiz, whose own ideas mirrored those of Cuvier in most every respect. Delia (dates unknown): One of the two women photographed by Joseph T. Zealy, Delia was a slave at Edgehill, a plantation owned by Benjamin Franklin Taylor and located just outside Columbia, South Carolina. She apparently worked at Edgehill with the blacksmith there. When Taylor died, the slaves listed in his will passed into the possession of his wife, Sally Webb Taylor. Frederick Douglass (1818–1895): Perhaps the best known of the black abolitionists, Frederick Douglass had been a slave for twenty years before escaping to the North. Douglass was an eloquent public speaker, able to hold an audience spellbound for hours as he discoursed on the evils of slavery and other matters. In 1854 he gave a speech in which he denounced the “American school” of ethnology; some of his speech borrowed from the unpublished work of James McCune Smith. Drana (dates unknown): Along with her father, Jack, Drana lived on one of Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s plantations in South Carolina. Drana, however, does not appear in the inventory of Taylor’s will, and so between 1850, when she had her daguerreotype made, and 1854, when Taylor died, it seems she either was sold, ran away, or died. George Fassena (1776–1870s?): According to the label on his daguerreotype, Fassena was a carpenter, a Mandingo, and a Hampton slave. The Mandingo (or Mandkina) people xiv

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are descendants of the great Mali Empire, which flourished from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries in present-day southern Mali and northern Guinea. After the Civil War Fassena lived alone in Lower Richland County, South Carolina. Robert Wilson Gibbes (1809–1866): Educated at South Carolina College under Thomas Cooper, and also at the Charleston Medical College, Robert Wilson Gibbes was physician to some of the most prominent planters in Columbia, South Carolina. He was also a paleontologist and a practicing mesmerist, but he felt isolated living in the South Carolina upcountry. Samuel George Morton was one of his regular correspondents, providing a vital link to the Northern scientific establishment. In the spring of 1850 Gibbes hosted Louis Agassiz in Columbia for eight days, during which time Agassiz examined slaves from the region and arranged for them to be photographed. George Gliddon (1809–1857): A popular attraction on the lecture circuit, George Gliddon was the foremost Egyptologist in America during the nineteenth century. He provided Samuel George Morton with many of the human skulls examined for his book Crania Aegyptiaca (1844) and was further influential for his contention that ancient Egyptians had been white; the information Gliddon furnished helped Morton to reach the conclusion that the different human races had always been distinct. Together with Josiah Nott, Gliddon edited and contributed to the controversial but highly popular compendium on ethnology Types of Mankind (1854). James Henry Hammond (1807–1864): South Carolina statesman and planter James Henry Hammond rose to political heights despite his relatively humble background. He was educated at South Carolina College—Robert W. Gibbes and Josiah Nott were classmates—and he adopted Thomas Cooper’s teachings unreservedly. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1835, he declared before the House that slavery was “no evil”; he went on to defend slavery as an institution that was beneficial to society, a theme he developed throughout his political life. Hammond was a polygenist, and he learned the latest scientific theories from his friend Nott, yet he refrained from publicly declaring separate creations as the cause of human diversity. Wade Hampton I (1754–1835): From military duty in the War for Independence to playing a key role in establishing Columbia as the state capital in 1786, the first Wade Hampton—like his contemporary Thomas Taylor—was highly influential in the early politics of South Carolina. Hampton was also the first to plant cotton in the Carolina midlands, as well as the first to use Eli Whitney’s new cotton gin to clean his crop of seed. Hampton may have purchased Fassena during the boom years at the turn of the nineteenth century. xv

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Wade Hampton II (1791–1858): Whereas Wade Hampton I played an active political and military role in the affairs of South Carolina, his son, Wade II, preferred to remain in the background and to enjoy the pleasures afforded by the wealth gained from planting cotton. He was related to James Henry Hammond by marriage, but the two men were never easy with each other; when Wade II learned that Hammond had molested his daughters, their mutual unease erupted into full-blown animosity and scandal. When he died in 1858, Wade Hampton II left his family deep in debt. Wade Hampton III (1818–1902): The third Wade Hampton in the dynasty, Wade III followed in his predecessors’ footsteps by undertaking the roles of soldier, politician, and planter. In the Civil War he rose to the position of general, commanding the cavalry; after Reconstruction he was elected governor of South Carolina and later served in the U.S. Senate. Jack (dates unknown): Jack was a slave driver on one of Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s plantations. Drivers functioned as foremen on the plantation, organizing the workers and meting out punishment. According to the label on his daguerreotype, he was a Guinea African, though this term was in fact applied indiscriminately to people inhabiting a broad region of the continent. Records of the First Baptist Church of Columbia suggest that Jack was a member of the congregation. Jem (dates unknown): Little is known about Jem apart from the information provided on the labels of his daguerreotypes: he was enslaved by F. W. Green, and he was Gullah, a term applied to the Creole culture developed by slaves of the Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands. F. W. Green was probably Frederick W. Green, a mechanic from Massachusetts who lived in Columbia and seems to have owned the Red Bank Cotton Factory in Lexington, South Carolina. This information suggests that in 1850 Jem lived in the city rather than on a plantation. Samuel George Morton (1819–1850): Founder of American invertebrate paleontology and author of numerous articles on anatomy and geology, in the 1840s Samuel George Morton was also well known as a craniologist. Louis Agassiz, among others, greatly admired his collection of human skulls, from which he painstakingly took measurements. In 1839 Morton published Crania Americana, and five years later Crania Aegyptiaca; because of his reputation as a cautious man, both works helped legitimize ethnology as a science. It was not until 1846, however, that Morton publicly affirmed his support of original diversity. Josiah Clark Nott (1804–1873): A college friend of Robert W. Gibbes and James Henry Hammond, the physician Josiah Clark Nott was the most outspoken of the American ethxvi

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nologists. Unlike Louis Agassiz and Samuel George Morton, Nott did little original research, but he had a knack for drawing attention to the subject. Nott brought the debate on whether different groups of humans had been created separately to public attention in 1850 when a paper of his was read at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1854 he published Types of Mankind, edited with George Gliddon, which advanced the main arguments for original diversity. Nott was a bitter adversary of John Bachman, and indeed he hated clergymen almost as much as he despised people of color. Renty (dates unknown): According to the label on his daguerreotype, Renty was from Congo, West Africa. Like his daughter Delia, he was a slave on one of Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s plantations. Renty may have been a member of the First Baptist Church of Columbia. On Taylor’s death in 1852, Renty may have passed into the possession of Wade Hampton II. James McCune Smith (1813–1865): The physician and black abolitionist James McCune Smith used his scientific training to satirize the methods and findings of ethnologists. His essay “Civilization: Its Dependence on Physical Circumstance,” published in 1859, influenced Frederick Douglass’s ideas on race, particularly regarding the theory that America would benefit from race mixing or amalgamation, an idea that shocked white Americans and those who advocated segregation. Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751–1819): A clergyman and scientist, much like John Bachman after him, Samuel Stanhope Smith argued for the unity of the human race in his Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, originally published in 1787. Following the release of a revised and expanded edition in 1810, Smith became engaged in a bitter dispute with Charles Caldwell over the subject of human diversity. Smith believed that the environment and “manner of living” had caused groups of human beings to become different from one another. Thomas Smyth (1808–1873): Alongside John Bachman, the Reverend Thomas Smyth was one of the few defenders of monogenesis in the South. In the late 1840s he gave a series of lectures on the subject, which he revised as a book. The Unity of the Human Races includes a critique of Louis Agassiz, whose own position seemed inconsistent. Benjamin Franklin Taylor (1791–1852): The youngest son of Thomas Taylor, B. F. Taylor counted Wade Hampton II among his peers and close friends, their fathers having been instrumental in founding the city of Columbia. Educated at South Carolina College, he was a major landowner in the Columbia region, including his plantation Edgehill, located just outside the city. Delia, Drana, Jack, and Renty were Taylor’s slaves. xvii

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Thomas Taylor (1743–1833): Patriarch of one of antebellum South Carolina’s great dynasties, Thomas Taylor’s only rival in social and political prominence was Wade Hampton I. The city of Columbia was built on his land. His youngest son was Benjamin Franklin Taylor, among whose slaves were Delia, Drana, Jack, and Renty. Joseph Thomas Zealy (1814–1892): A carpenter by trade, Zealy became an expert daguerreotypist in the 1840s. In 1846 the citizens of Columbia invited him to settle permanently in the state capital; his was the first established photographic gallery in Columbia. Zealy received high praise from his customers, and his reputation undoubtedly earned him the commission to photograph slaves for Louis Agassiz.

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Map of Columbia, South Carolina, 1850

Copy of Map of Columbia from a survey by Messrs. Arthur & Moore [1850], drawn by John B. Jackson, 1924. Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

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Preface

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n 1850 five men and two women, slaves from South Carolina plantations, were photographed at the request of a famous naturalist. Why these people were photographed, and what the resulting images meant to the men who made and used them, is the subject of this book. The following pages describe the discovery of the photographs and the invention of photography, the scientific theories the images were intended to support and how these related to the race politics of the time, the meanings that may have been found in the photographs, and the possible reasons why they were “lost” for a century or more. This narrative weaves together the histories of race, science, and photography in nineteenthcentury America to tell the story of the photographs comprehensively, bringing to life the people and events that contributed directly to their making and, more generally, to the circumstances in which they were made. At the heart of this story is the question of what it means to be human. It was an inquiry Enlightenment thinkers had raised many years before the photographs were made but one that became urgent in nineteenth-century America owing to the continuing presence of slavery in the Southern states. Naturalists, slaveholders, politicians, even ordinary citizens were caught up in the debate on human nature that occupied the nation throughout this period. So, too, were the men and women who lived and worked as slaves on the plantations and in the cities of the South; indeed, they were the focus of the debate. These people, the people depicted in the photographs—Delia, Jack, Renty, Drana, Jem, Alfred, and Fassena—are at the heart of the story described here. The story is about them, and yet at the same time they are strangely absent from it. “All things, it is said, are duly recorded,” Ralph Ellison wrote in The Invisible Man, “all things of importance, that is. But not quite, for actually it is only the known, the seen, the heard and only those events that the recorder regards as important that are put down, those lies his keeper kept his power by.” The historical record, Ellison acknowledged with these words, is incomplete. It is incomplete because it favors those with the ability—the power— xxi

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to make and keep records. For this reason it is difficult if not wholly impossible to see Delia except through the eyes of others: she “exists,” she has a historical presence, only because a slaveholder recorded her name when taking account of another slaveholder’s property, and also because in 1850 she twice had her picture made. Were it not for such moments, brief instances in which she was deemed notable by her “keepers,” we would never know of her, just as we know nothing of the great majority of people who lived and died as slaves in America. The keepers of history have rendered them invisible, or very nearly so. History favors the keepers—the slaveholders, politicians, and others who made the documents we now use to write history. And so, even though Delia is at the very heart of the history of the photographs, she is nowhere to be seen. To write history is one way to make her more visible: by placing her before readers, by describing how and why she was photographed, I make her a little more real than she would be otherwise. Certainly I would never have known of Delia had I not come across her image some years ago in Alan Trachtenberg’s Reading American Photographs. But with so little documentary information on Delia to draw from, the stories of the slaveholder, the naturalist, and the photographer invariably overshadow her story. Indeed, to readers of this book it may seem at times that the photographs and the people depicted in them have been forgotten altogether. The problem of how to write about the photographs grows thornier still in that writing about them in this way—that is, in such a way that privileges the history makers—further objectifies the people who were photographed. In other words, depicting Delia through the eyes of others repeats the repressive act that resulted in the photographs. This is not just a game of hide-and-seek played out in words and pictures. This is a political problem. How, then, can we depict Delia as something more than an object of scientific or historical scrutiny? How can we give her a more central place in the story—her story—and so write a more complete history, one that is inclusive rather than exclusive, a history that is more balanced, even if only marginally so? One solution to this problem might be to acknowledge the “humanity” of the people in the photographs, as some writers have done. The naturalist who commissioned the photographs viewed Delia and the other people who were photographed as racial types rather than individuals, while the slaveholders viewed them as a form of property. We, however, know better and so recognize their “humanity” and in this way restore to them what had been taken away. Alan Trachtenberg calls this “imaginative liberation.” By reciprocating the look of the person in the photograph, he writes, “we have acknowledged what the pictures overtly deny: the universal humanness we share with them. Their gaze in our eyes frees them.” xxii

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I do not buy this—or, rather, I do not feel that it is sufficient. First, the metaphor of freedom, when speaking of enslaved individuals, must always be used with care. Looking at a photograph cannot “free” a person—only running away, manumission, or universal emancipation could and did do this, and possibly also moments of resistance. Imaginative liberation is no liberation at all, unless it is the oppressed individual who does the imagining. Looking at Delia’s photograph and seeing there a human being rather than a racial type or a piece of property does not magically restore what was taken from her; it does not redress the many wrongs, the many violations perpetrated against her, including having her photograph taken for scientific purposes. It matters how we regard such photographs because understanding why they were made mitigates somewhat the objectifying gaze, but such regard cannot have any effect on Delia herself. The second reason it is not sufficient to fall back on this idea of a shared universal humanness is that “the human” is far from a universally understood and agreed upon concept. What it means to be human has long been a subject of dispute, but since the eighteenth century it has been a particularly hot topic. What these disputes tell us is that, rather than being a natural category, “the human” is always contingent on the circumstances in which the term is being applied—it is, in other words, a concept steeped in history. This may seem like a strange claim, but as the history recounted in this book shows, the meaning of “humanity” was not always shared, and therefore we must also consider that it may one day change. To subscribe to the idea of a universal humanness in an attempt to ameliorate the wrongs experienced by enslaved peoples is thus to give in to an ahistorical perspective and a poor form of reductionism. As the photographer and art historian Alan Sekula has written, “The celebration of abstract humanity becomes . . . the celebration of the dignity of the passive victim.” I do not wish to portray the people in the photographs as victims. One of my intentions in this book is to celebrate the dignity of human agency and self-determination in the face of adversity, and to do so with historical accuracy. And so I ask the question again, though a little differently this time: Is it possible to escape the pitfall of embodying the master’s gaze when writing about enslaved people? Can Delia be represented without reducing her to a bland abstraction, whether this is as a slave, a racial type, or an example of “universal humanness”? “There are places no history can reach,” Norman Mailer wrote in The Armies of the Night. But of course these are the very places we want to go, and so to reach them Mailer advocated the use of fiction: “The novel must replace history at precisely that point where experience is sufficiently emotional, spiritual, psychical, moral, existential, or supernatural xxiii

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to expose the fact that the historian in pursuing the experience would be obliged to quit the clearly demarcated writing of historical inquiry.” To write Delia—not just write about her, but to write her experiences, to write what she saw, to let her speak for herself—is strictly speaking not possible. History does not reach to that place. But to imagine what she saw, this can be done. Delia’s story could be written as a novel, her life dramatized through the medium of imagination. This approach, however, again takes us away from Delia herself, away from her specific, historic individuality. It may also result in misrepresentation, another form of violation. Fiction offers possibilities but also has its problems. If the story cannot be fully told through either writing history or fiction, then perhaps we should allow Delia’s photographs and the silence arising from them to speak for her, to signify her lack of voice in the historical record. There she stands, mute, not telling us a thing but somehow through her very presence in a photograph saying a great deal. Yet here again we have a problem, for the photograph—as powerful and suggestive as it may be— was not one that she made but one that was made of her by white men seeking to extract particular meaning from her physical being, meaning implicated in the politics of oppression. It is precisely because the photograph does not speak for her, just as the historical record does not, that we must look for ways to access and tell her side of the story. To resolve this problem of how to write the history of the photographs without either excluding the people depicted in them or venturing too far from an accurate record of events, I turn to Toni Morrison, who has perhaps written the greatest account of the slave experience in her novel Beloved. Morrison has said that in her work she draws on “memories within,” a term borrowed from Zora Neale Hurston to describe “the material that went to make me,” the lives of her family and friends, and even those who came before her. “But,” Morrison recognizes, “memories and recollections won’t give me total access to the unwritten interior life of these people. Only the act of imagination can help me.” By moving between what can be known for certain and acts of imagination, the actual and the possible, Morrison crafts a more complete narrative than could be devised from either approach on its own. Not a definitive account, for there is no such thing given the infinite number of possible perspectives, but rather a representation that embodies the richness and depth of lived experience. This is an excellent approach, particularly for telling true stories that are short on documentary information and also disturbing in their content. And so, following Morrison’s example, this book is a work of history and imagination combined. I have sought to be faithful to the historical record, to represent actual people and events accurately by drawing from archives and the work of authoritative writers on xxiv

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various aspects of American history. I have also approached the material imaginatively in an effort to fill some gaps in the record and to situate Delia and the other people who were photographed centrally in this story, if not actually place them at the center. In the absence of Delia’s words, for example, I have employed the words of her contemporaries, writers such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. I have also drawn on the work of Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and other twentieth-century African-American figures who lived many years after the photographs were made but who nonetheless spoke out and wrote against the same attitudes that resulted in the photographs; their words rebut the race prejudice of the nineteenth century no less ably than those of the black abolitionists. I have also woven together the actual and the possible by imagining the perspectives of the people who were photographed. Each chapter begins with a short vignette that seeks to go, if only a short distance, where no history can reach. These passages draw from the few historical facts that are known about the person whose perspective is represented (see the Notes for details), as well as from slave narratives and other texts, but unlike the more conventionally framed suppositions that figure in the main narrative of the book, they are unabashedly works of fiction. In each vignette one or two narratives suggested by factual information are developed into a viewpoint, such as that of Delia in front of the camera, Jack sitting in church, or Fassena as he meets the census taker in the years following emancipation. These viewpoints bring us closer to the person in the image, and so serve both the historical narrative and the project of presenting the subjects of the photographs more fully. Through an act of imagination Delia thus becomes someone in her own story—not because she has been “liberated” but because our own imaginations are freed to consider the possibilities of her experience. This book is therefore an amalgam or hybrid, a blending of fiction with nonfiction writing in order to tell the story of the photographs more completely. This is not to say that Delia’s Tears is the definitive history of the photographs, for no such thing is possible, given the complexity of American history and of the two mediums involved, writing and photography. Rather, what I have attempted here is to mix things up a bit in the hope of making Delia a little more visible, a little more present in the eyes of others.

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Part One

Delia

She was not supposed to be there. Nothing in her life so far had prepared her for this. All those years of working, sweating, laboring in the fields and later in the forge, none of it had so much as hinted at this. Oh, she knew there were places, other places where everything looked and smelled different, where the air seemed lighter and the light less harsh—she knew these places existed, but she was never supposed to be in one. Perhaps she had even seen a photograph, once, in the great house. But she herself was never supposed to have her picture made. This was no place for a slave. This much she knew. The sun beat down on her through the skylight, making her warmer than she had been outside in the sunshine a moment ago. The light here in this place was not less harsh, but more so. She longed to move from the chair where they had told her to sit, to seek refuge from the sun, but she had been told to hold still. Don’t move. Do not move. He seemed a nice enough man, one who might be forgiving if she disobeyed, but everything was different here and so she did not trust her judgment. He seemed to have a kindly disposition, but if she moved into the shadows after having been told to remain in the sun’s bright flame, he might show himself to be otherwise. Her pores pinpricked as they opened. Somewhere in the shadows the Doctor lurked. He had been there when she arrived, or rather when she was brought up the stairs and into these rooms by one of the men from Edgehill. The Doctor had greeted her, greeted her by name, but she did not look at him. When he asked if she was well, she had kept her eyes downcast. “Yes, sir,” she had said to his boots. It was the Doctor’s presence that made her think that this strange experience—the journey into the city and her being there, in those rooms, which were so terribly beautiful, so soft to the eye and (she imagined, for she dared not) touch—that this experience was somehow related to the day when the Doctor and the other man, the man he called Professor, had 3

visited Edgehill. That day, too, had been marked by novelty, but novelty of a different sort. She did not like to remember. Still, there was a relation between the two, the visit from the Professor and now, being here in this place. The Doctor’s presence made that much clear. “Please hold still.” She tried, she tried to be still, but the sun blinded and the shadows beckoned and she wanted to be invisible so that neither would matter. “Do not close your eyes. Open them!” She opened her eyes. “Now remove your dress, just the upper part.” She did not move. “Go on. It’s all right. Just pull it down—without moving from your place.” She tugged at the coarse calico until it was free from her breasts and gathered around her waist. “Yes, that’s good. Now hold still and look here, into this lens. Right here.” She raised her eyes to where he was pointing and saw a tiny picture of herself, upside down. “Yes, that’s good. Now don’t move. Do not move.” She felt herself disappear.

4

CHAPTER

1 Introduction Discovery

I

t was in an old wooden cabinet, tucked into a remote corner under the eaves, that they made their discovery. Lorna Condon, Daniel Jones, and Ellie Reichlin, employees of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were looking for publication materials, documents that had been put away so long ago no one could remember where they were stored. The attic was a likely place, but progress would be slow and a little unpleasant. In the hot and stuffy attic, with no clear pathway through the heaps of assorted objects jumbled together and apparently consigned to oblivion, it would take some time to sort through everything, and even then there was no guarantee that they would find what they were seeking. As they climbed the stairs in the warm summer months of America’s bicentennial year, they had vague hopes of finding the missing files.1 Working their way through disused furniture and souvenirs of past collecting expeditions—African spears and other items no longer considered good enough to be displayed in the galleries—they shifted boxes, lifted dustsheets, and opened drawers. Most of what they found was forgotten again almost as soon as it was uncovered, but then they came across something unusual, a curiosity among the debris of a century-old institution. 5

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Flat and rectangular, and made of leather with an embossed floral design on the front, the object they found measured three-and-a-half inches across by four-and-a-half inches high. As experienced museum staff, they recognized it as a display case dating from the nineteenth century, and they knew that it might contain a miniature painting, the portrait of some well-to-do gentleman or lady. But more likely it held an early photograph, perhaps a daguerreotype or an ambrotype, the fragile image pressed under glass and secured in an elaborate case with a gilt-metal frame and velvet lining. Curious, they unhooked the two small metal clasps on the side and gently, so as not to damage the aging leather hinge, pulled the halves apart. Gazing out from the opened case was a young black woman naked to the waist and bearing an expression of studied detachment. The picture was intensely lifelike, almost like a hologram, and though there was no absolute black or white in the image, every imaginable tone between these two extremes rendered the woman’s body with exquisite precision. The smallest details were visible, including the texture of her hair, flattened on one side as if it had been combed down, and the stiff folds of her dress, gathered around her waist and made from a coarse calico that was probably homespun. Every detail was faithfully represented, creating the sensation that to reach out and touch the image would be to feel the textures there. The precise rendering and warm sepia tones of the picture gave it an unsuspecting sensuality, the light and shadows offering pleasure to the eye as they played against each other. Yet at the same time the image was deeply disturbing. The woman’s state of undress and the picture’s formal mood, created in part by her rigid frontal posture, were stark and peculiar, lacking entirely in eroticism. But there was something else, something about the woman, that was difficult to pin down. She was both “there” and “not there.” Physically, she was fully exposed, every detail of her upper body on display and minutely recorded by the camera, but at the same time there was a complete lack of emotional presence in the picture, as if the woman had put on a mask to conceal her identity. Most unsettling were her eyes, which gazed out from the picture unflinchingly but were blurred in an otherwise sharp image, as if filled with tears. It was this combination of precision and ambiguity, presence and absence, that made the image utterly fascinating.2 Fourteen other miniature cases were pulled from the cabinet that day, all containing photographs of black men or women partially or wholly undressed. There were seven people represented, five men and two young women. Two of the men had been photographed completely naked. All fifteen photographs were exceptionally good examples of daguerreotypy, 6

INTRODUCTION

the first widely used form of photography: the images were clear, the plates were largely free of imperfections, and the cases showed relatively little wear. Yet what made these photographs extraordinary was not the quality of the images but their subject matter. Of the millions of daguerreotype portraits made in America during the nineteenth century, relatively few were of African Americans, and fewer still were of people with their clothing removed. Being daguerreotyped was about putting on your Sunday best and looking as composed and respectable as possible. It was about revealing your true identity, because the camera never lied, but at the same time doing everything you could through posture and dress to influence the representation of that identity. Sitting before the camera to have your portrait made rarely entailed posing half-dressed. “There was a real air of excitement about what we had found,” recalled Lorna Condon, publications editor for the museum. “We recognized the images as being something very special.”3 But what were they? Early in the nineteenth century the idea that you could create an image from life that was as accurate as the reflection of a mirror, but did not involve the hand of an artist, was met with astonishment. It was simply not possible to fix images from nature. This attitude meant that those people who believed it was possible, and who sought a method for making such images, were sometimes thought insane. The painter and inventor Louis-JacquesMandé Daguerre certainly appeared to be possessed by mania. Determined to find a recipe for fixing images, Daguerre would shut himself in his studio for days at a time, refusing both food and sleep and neglecting his family and business. His wife was so disturbed by his behavior that she sought the opinion of respected chemist Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas. “Monsieur Dumas,” Madame Daguerre said, her voice betraying her emotions. “I have to ask you a question of vital importance to myself. I am the wife of Daguerre, the painter. He has for some time been possessed by the idea that he can fix the images of the camera. He is always at the thought; he cannot sleep at night for it. I am afraid he is out of his mind. Do you, as a man of science, think it can ever be done—or is he mad?” Dumas thought for a moment before speaking. “In the present state of our knowledge it cannot be done,” he said cautiously, “but I cannot say it will always remain impossible, nor set the man down as mad who seeks to do it.”4 Daguerre was not alone in his search. At least twenty people in seven countries between 7

PART ONE

1790 and 1840 shared the goal of fixing the camera’s image, and they conducted experiments with varying degrees of success. These people were sometimes in communication with one another, at other times worked alone. Among them were Tom Wedgwood, Henry Fox Talbot, and the astronomer Sir John Herschel in England; Samuel Morse and John Draper in the United States; and Daguerre (see illustration above), Hippolyte Bayard, and the brothers Nicéphore and Claude Niépce in France. These men—and one woman, Elizabeth Fulhame, in late eighteenth-century England—went about their task in different ways, arriving at 8

INTRODUCTION

diverse solutions to solve technical problems, such as which material was most effective for supporting the image. Talbot opted for paper, Daguerre a polished copper plate, and the Niépce brothers glass and, later, pewter. In 1822 Nicéphore Niépce devised a moderately successful process he called “heliography,” and subsequently he worked for a number of years in partnership with Daguerre. After Nicéphore Niépce’s death in 1833, Daguerre continued experimenting on his own. Daguerre was a clever man with a flamboyant, theatrical manner. He had made a name for himself as a master set designer, creating deceptively realistic scenery and lighting effects for the Paris Opéra. Later he collaborated with a partner to invent the Diorama, a popular attraction in major cities around the world during the nineteenth century. The Diorama used specially painted screens and lighting effects to create scenes that unfolded before spectators’ eyes, as if the landscape view or church interior on display had materialized within the theater space. Daguerre pushed this quest for optical realism still further with his photographic experiments, and in 1837 he solved the final technical problem of this pursuit, discovering that he could stop the action of the light and “fix” his images permanently by putting the exposed and developed copper plate in a bath of hot salt water. Photography, as the world first came to know it, was thus born. Although he had “invented” photography, Daguerre now faced the challenge of getting people to accept his invention. Photography did not exist: no one, after all, had ever seen a photograph. Riding around Paris, making pictures of public buildings (see illustration on p. 10), Daguerre demonstrated to passersby the wonder of his process, but the response was disappointing. Mercury, vapors, a plate secreted within a slide, preparations made under cover of a dark cloth—it was all too peculiar, too mysterious, and Daguerre had long ago acquired a reputation as a master illusionist. To ordinary Parisians he seemed to be performing some sort of magic trick, an impression perhaps reinforced by Daguerre’s easy showmanship, the flamboyant demeanor he had cultivated at the Opéra. He simply could not interest a skeptical public. After years of working to promote his invention, Daguerre finally found in FrançoisDominique Arago someone who appreciated the significance of his achievement. A respected physicist, director of l’Observatoire in Paris, permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences, and also member of the Chamber of Deputies in the French parliament, Arago was just the man to vouch for Daguerre’s invention. On 7 January 1839, Arago announced before a public joint meeting of the Académie des Sciences and the Académie de Beaux-Arts at the Institute de France in Paris that a successful process for fixing images permanently on 9

PART ONE

a durable surface had been found by fellow Frenchman Louis Daguerre. Later that same year, thanks to Arago’s efforts, the French government awarded pensions to Daguerre and Isidore Niépce, whose father’s experiments had been crucial to Daguerre’s discoveries, thereby purchasing photography from the inventors and making the recipe available to the public—a gift to the world from the French government. Around this same time the Englishman Henry Fox Talbot’s paper-negative process was brought before the Royal Institute of Science in London. It was, however, Daguerre who was celebrated worldwide as the inventor of photography. The daguerreotype quickly became a global phenomenon but enjoyed its greatest popularity in America, with more images made in the United States than anywhere else. “A few years ago,” a popular magazine noted in 1849, “it was not every man who could afford a likeness of himself, his wife or his children; these were luxuries known only to those who had money to spare; now it is hard to find the man who has not gone through the ‘opera10

INTRODUCTION

tor’s’ hands from once to half-a-dozen times, or who has not the shadowy faces of his wife and children done up in purple morocco and velvet, together or singly, among his households treasures.” A quintessentially modern phenomenon, by midcentury the photographic image could be found just about everywhere. Not only did a great many people own daguerreotypes, but new techniques for reproducing images, cheaper methods of printing, and more efficient transportation networks facilitated the proliferation and dissemination of images in a variety of forms. The era of the image had truly begun. As the abolitionist Frederick Douglass remarked, “Daguerre, by the simple but all abounding sunlight, has converted the planet into a picture gallery.”5 By 1850 more than three million images were made annually in the United States, the majority of these portraits (see illustration on p. 12). But why was portraiture so popular? Why did Americans in particular want to be photographed or to possess images of others?6 It is difficult to imagine from the standpoint of our own era, in which digital photography has made images extremely easy to produce and manipulate, but until the widespread dissemination of Daguerre’s process in the 1840s, practically no one had ever seen a photograph. In this essentially prephotographic world, a person’s experience was firmly grounded in the present tense and in the senses. Unless you had actually visited a place, you would have no idea what the dwellings or monuments there were made of, whether the landscape was flat and barren or lushly forested, or how the people dressed and whether they were short or tall, dark or pale. The only faces you knew were those that belonged to people you had actually met. When someone close to you went away, there was no way to recall his or her appearance except as a mental image or by making a drawing from memory. Perhaps still more difficult to imagine is the fact that you could know yourself only in the present tense— the way you looked as a child was completely lost to you. In this world before photography, a smaller, more intimate world, direct experience was the basis of most knowledge. Of course, images did exist before photography. Paintings, drawings, and prints could bring previously unknown people, places, objects, and events into view, but such images were relatively scarce, and typically they were rather crude depictions. When the daguerreotypist came to town, all this changed. Suddenly—and the transition did have a shocking suddenness to it—the world expanded in both space and time, and this new photographic world was “real” in a way that the world of handcrafted images was not. The Egyptian pyramids and Niagara Falls could now be experienced and their existence confirmed without leaving home. But perhaps of greater value to most people was the fact that your children would recognize themselves as having passed through discrete stages of life, and your great11

PART ONE

great-grandchildren would come to know your face. It was this desire to look upon the faces of others that made the photograph a cherished object. The human face is a remarkable entity. “There is no single object presented to our senses,” a writer noted in 1851, “which engrosses so large a share of our thoughts, emotions, and associations as that small portion of flesh and blood a hand may cover, which constitutes the human face.” Apprehended in a brief moment, the face is both a “badge of distinction” and a “proof of identity.” It has long been the case that we focus much of our knowledge and assumptions about a person on his or her face. Physiognomy, the reading of character in human faces, dates back to ancient times and was common in diverse societies around the world. In the late eighteenth century Johann Caspar Lavater sought to develop a system12

INTRODUCTION

atic approach to physiognomy by studying the human face in relation to the new disciplines of anatomy, physiology, and anthropology. Lavater hoped that by finding correlations between the faces and moral character of individuals he could make physiognomy a reliable method of judging people at a glance. But the human face is complex, with infinitely variable features, making classification extremely difficult. Lavater recognized this and never succeeded in formulating a satisfactory system. He did, however, influence others in their thinking. By the nineteenth century the principles of Lavater’s physiognomy were widely accepted and broadly applied.7 Photography and ideas about the photographic image developed in tandem with Lavater’s physiognomy and shared many of the same concerns. Indeed, daguerreotype portraits were sometimes called “physiognomies.” The daguerreotype operator and the physiognomist were thought to share a special skill, an optic power that enabled them to discern an individual’s true character. The physiognomist endeavored to see past momentary expression, to look beyond the detailed and changeable surface of the face to an underlying, stable structure beneath, where a person’s true character was thought to lie. The operator professed a similar ability. “The whole character of the sitter is to be read at first sight,” one daguerreotypist said of his professional responsibility. He went on to explain, “Nature is not at all to be represented as it is, but as it ought to be, and might possibly have been; and it is required of and should be the aim of the artist-photographer to produce in the likeness the best possible character and finest expression of which that particular face or figure could ever have been capable.” The job was not to simply show what a person looked like, or even to flatter the customer, but to reveal their true nature in its best light.8 This concern with surface and depth, the visible and the invisible, the true and the false, was not limited to photography and physiognomy. There was during this time a widespread fascination with sincerity and deception. Social mobility, population growth, and the expansion of America’s cities were just some of the factors that contributed to people’s sense that the rules of conduct had changed, that a person was not necessarily what he or she presented externally but could perhaps be something else altogether. A cult of sincerity developed to counter, as the historian Karen Halttunen put it, this “problem of hypocrisy in the new world of strangers.” Presenting your “true” self at all times became the ideal, but of course this authentic self was supposed to be “good,” and since no one is without fault, being sincere also entailed a certain amount of deception. The situation was a tricky one, and there was no easy solution so long as society remained in flux.9 13

PART ONE

Victorian society was deeply concerned with “Truth,” with the idea that there were indisputable, universal facts. The daguerreotype seemed a particularly good way to get at this Truth because unlike other methods of representation it combined the visual with the indexical and was effected using a chemical process. All three of these concepts—visual, indexical, and chemical—pointed to something indisputably, verifiably real and distinct from human imagination and interpretation: they pointed toward Truth. In order to be photographed, an object had to have actually been “there”; once photographed, it is now represented “here” having precisely (or at least very nearly) the same appearance. The apparent absence of human intervention in this movement from “there” to “here”—the objectivity of the process—suggested that the photograph was not a representation, a mere copy of the original object, but in fact the thing itself. “The closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented,” Edgar Allan Poe claimed. The American inventor and photographic pioneer Samuel Morse agreed, saying of daguerreotypes, “They cannot be called copies of nature, but portions of nature herself.” A photograph was more than a representation: it proposed a new way of seeing, a new way of understanding the world that rested on notions of universal Truth. This made photography revolutionary.10 The daguerreotype promised to show Americans the Truth about themselves and their nation, but there was a problem with this project of forging identity with the aid of a camera. From the start photography was many things at once, and so it did not lend itself to meaning that was necessarily stable or shared. Photography was a chemical science and a fine art, a kind of magic or conjuring trick, as well as an industry and a craft. A single photograph was a representation and a two-dimensional image; it could “immortalize” a person, object, or scene and also make something or someone appear quite dead. A daguerreotype might have been a cherished memento or souvenir or regarded more coolly as evidence or proof. A single photograph spoke countless languages, a new tongue for each person who happened to look upon its placid surface—so what did a photograph, any photograph, actually mean? And if an image had many possible meanings, how could a photograph possibly tell the Truth? “Photography is an uncertain art,” the French critic Roland Barthes remarked in 1980, adding, “as would be (were one to attempt to establish such a thing) a science of desirable or detestable bodies.” Meaning in a photograph has everything to do with who is looking, 14

INTRODUCTION

for little information can actually be obtained from a photograph—little, that is, beyond what the image looks like, what it resembles visually. When Daguerre’s method for making images was made known publicly in 1839, and not long afterward daguerreotypists began operating in cities around the world, it was sometimes difficult to know how to read an image, and harder still to make sense of the process by which it was made. Our understanding of a photograph, our ability to find meaning in the image, relies on our experience of other images and on a shared understanding of what an image can be about. Initially, at least, photography was simply too new and too strange for people to comprehend fully. The French novelist Honoré de Balzac believed that when something or someone was daguerreotyped, a physical layer or skin was removed from the surface of the subject and transferred to the copper plate. In 1854 the Daguerrean Journal reported on a young woman who wanted her child, dead for three months, to appear, seated on her lap, in the finished image. Elsewhere, a man entered a studio and made a similarly unusual request.11 “Do ye take pictures here?” he asked in a thick brogue. “We do,” the daguerreotypist, Mr. Campbell, replied. “An’ could ye take the picture of my wife?” “Oh, certainly.” “But she is dead and buried, please sir.” “Ah, indeed. Well?” was all the daguerreotypist could muster in reply. When he recovered from the surprise of his client’s request, Campbell went on to explain that although a photograph was a remarkable thing—some might even say a miraculous thing—it was not a window onto another dimension. A photograph of persons deceased was simply not possible. Rather, it was an image of something very much alive or, if not alive, then certainly present in the here and now. The fact was that only material things, people or objects placed before the camera’s lens, could be photographed. This seemed to cheer the man somewhat. “Sir, please tell me, can ye take the picture of anything?” “Oh, yes—that is, if the thing you want a picture of is in existence, and we can get at it,” was Campbell’s careful response. The man then departed. After a time, however, he returned, carrying a basket containing clothing and personal objects. These were the possessions of his deceased wife. One by one and without saying a word he placed each item on the floor. “First came a woman’s bonnet,” Campbell later recalled, “then a shawl, a gown came next, a pair of stockings and a pair of shoes emptied the basket. No, not quite: a small parcel carefully laid on one side was 15

PART ONE

unrolled, and two oranges, one of them half sucked, was laid beside the apparel.” As the man arranged these things, Campbell and his associates looked on in silence. “Now then,” the man finally declared, “ye said ye could take a picture of anything I’d bring. Them’s the old woman’s clothes; it’s all I’ve left of her, an’ if ye can give me a picture of them, I’ll be pleased.” If an image of his wife could not be made, then an image of her possessions would suit his purpose just the same. At a sign from Campbell, the studio jumped into activity and before long had produced two good plates. These were then hand-colored to the customer’s specifications, including an extra dab of orange to the fruit to enhance their appearance. When the work was completed, Campbell presented one of the daguerreotypes to his customer. The other he kept for himself, perhaps as a souvenir of his experience that day. “Thankee, sir,” the old man said with gratitude when he received the desired object. “There’s all I’ve got of the ould woman,” he added, indicating the clothing and other objects he had brought. “They’re sure to get scattered about, but when I look at the photograph, I shall think I see my wife. Thankee, sir.”12 Campbell’s customer, like Balzac and the woman who wanted an image of her dead child, had little understanding of what a photograph was, demonstrating that there is no inherent meaning to such images. But even with experience there is rarely consensus as to the meaning of a particular image. The man who looked upon the daguerreotype of his wife’s possessions could “see” the woman these things represented for him. The same image undoubtedly held very different meaning for other people, people who did not know the dead woman or understand that the picture was a memento mori. Familiarity with what an image resembles is crucial to how the image is understood, but so, too, is desire. More often than not, we find in an image what we are seeking. This is because the knowledge we need in order to make sense of a photograph determines what we see there. Photography is indeed an uncertain art. It is uncertain because it is not an objective medium, particularly when it comes to the interpretive moment, the moment we look at the image and make sense of it. The camera may objectively record everything that appears in front of the lens—though of course choices have been made as to framing, lighting, and other aesthetic concerns—but the photographic image comes to have meaning only when it is viewed, and viewing is an act of imagination. To look at a photograph for the first time requires that we search within ourselves to find what the image resembles in our experience and what it means to us personally. Additional meaning may be added as we learn why an image was made or how it was used, but this consensual meaning does not displace per16

INTRODUCTION

sonal meaning and may in fact may be rejected or modified in light of one’s own interpretation. The idea that a photographic image conveys Truth is thus a highly unstable concept, one that says more about the desire for objective truth than its actual existence. When in 1976 fifteen daguerreotypes of black men and women were discovered in the attic of the Peabody Museum, the question of their meaning and purpose was immediately raised. The images were clearly unusual in that they were not like most daguerreotypes made in America: they did not depict white middle-class men and women posing for the camera, hoping to discover in the resulting image something about themselves, some form of Truth that they and those close to them could cherish. No, these stark and bloodless images were not portraits; they were about something else—but what? Attached to several of the daguerreotypes when they were discovered were handwritten labels. These provided the first clues to uncovering the meaning of the images. The labels give the name of each person photographed, the African ethnic group to which he or she was apparently related, and the name of his or her “owner.” The people in the photographs, this information revealed, were slaves who lived in or near Columbia, South Carolina. The woman who appears to have tears in her eyes was Delia, the daughter of Renty, one of the men photographed. According to the label fixed with a drop of glue to the velvet lining of his daguerreotype, Renty was born in the Congo, West Africa; his daughter was born in America. At the time their pictures were taken they lived on a plantation owned by Benjamin Franklin Taylor, a wealthy cotton planter whose father had helped to found the city of Columbia. Also photographed were Drana and her father, Jack, as well as Alfred, Jem, and Fassena. These are the earliest known photographs of identifiable American slaves. Why, when photography was still a rather new and complicated undertaking—and used almost exclusively for portraiture—did someone bother to photograph slaves, people regarded as having little or no status, people who were not even considered Americans? In her role as chief cataloguer for the Peabody Museum, Ellie Reichlin conducted research on the daguerreotypes and was able to learn something of the slaveholders identified in the labels, but the meaning and purpose of the images remained elusive. She showed them to colleagues and select visitors to the museum in the hope that they might be able to shed some light on the matter. One such visitor, William Sturtevant, director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, remarked that the emphasis on body type evident in the images suggested they had been made for someone interested in physical anthropology. Each subject was positioned parallel to the picture plane and photographed frontally and in profile, 17

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with Jem also photographed from behind; they were also naked, their bodies revealed to the camera’s scrutiny. These were all conventions of anthropological imagery, and they led to the discovery that the Peabody Museum’s daguerreotypes had been made to support a controversial theory of human diversity. As well as being the earliest known photographs of identifiable American slaves, the daguerreotypes are also among the earliest anthropological photographs.13 The daguerreotypes, Reichlin discovered, had been made in 1850 for the Swiss-born naturalist Louis Agassiz. Recognized in Europe as an exceptionally gifted scientist in the fields of geology, paleontology, and ichthyology, Agassiz immigrated to the United States in 1846. Here he became a national figure, beloved of a people keen to learn about the natural world. Agassiz regularly lectured in cities up and down the eastern seaboard and became professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University, where he influenced a generation of naturalists. He also became an important figure in the “American school” of ethnology, an informal group that galvanized the debate on race then preoccupying the scientific community and indeed the nation as a whole. The purpose of ethnology, according to the Société Ethnologique, founded in Paris in 1839, was “the study of human races through the historical traditions, languages, and physical and moral characteristics of each people.” Whereas the European interest in ethnology stemmed from the exploration and conquest of distant lands, in the United States slavery determined the scientific approach to race. The problem undergirding the work of the American ethnologists was how multiple races should coexist and indeed if it was even possible for them to do so. The presence of Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans in North America raised a host of questions about human nature, and answers were needed urgently.14 The “American school” of ethnology developed around several key figures. These men focused on the cause of human diversity, and they polarized the debate into two factions. On one side there were those who believed that all humans shared a common origin, that God had created an “original pair” of whom all people were descendants. Variation among groups of humans was thus believed to be the product of such environmental factors as climate and diet. On the other side of the debate were those who believed that it was not possible for organisms to change significantly—such would undermine God’s role as Creator—and so the different races of humankind were thought to have been created separately, an idea that came to be known as “polygenesis.” What both sides agreed upon was that “race” was rooted entirely in the physical being of an individual and that there existed 18

INTRODUCTION

a natural hierarchy of races, with light-skinned people positioned at the top and darkskinned people located at the bottom. Drawing from the techniques of natural history, the practice of ethnology largely entailed identifying and classifying “types” of human beings based on skin color and other physical attributes. Ethnology was a controversial science because deciding which side to support required a difficult choice. Subscribing to the more conventional theory of monogenesis, or original unity, meant accepting the possibility that people had changed over time, that given the right circumstances an African could become light-skinned or a European dark. This idea was one that most white people found difficult to accept. To support the idea that humans were originally diverse, however, required a reinterpretation of biblical history, something that was not to be undertaken lightly. Slaveholders nevertheless tended to adopt this view, for if black people were physiologically distinct from whites, then slavery was not a moral abomination, as the abolitionists claimed, but a reflection of the natural order of society as God had intended it. After 1850 few apart from slavery’s defenders supported the theory of separate creations. It is important to recognize that this debate took place in the decades before Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection in On the Origin of Species. Before 1859, few people accepted the notion that change was a result of environmental factors. At the same time, discussions about variety in nature were inseparable from religious views. It is also important to bear in mind that “science” in the nineteenth century was very different from “science” today. There is little debate today about what constitutes an appropriate scientific method or about who is qualified to conduct scientific research. University programs, government-funded institutions, professional organizations—these all contribute to a framework that has standardized and professionalized modern empirical science. In the nineteenth century, however, these institutions were just taking shape, and so scientific “Truth” was a matter of continual debate and negotiation. For a controversial topic such as the diversity of human beings the debate only grew more acrimonious with time. Many saw Truth in the claims of the ethnologists, while others denounced this new approach to studying humans as “scientific moonshine.”15 Ethnology was in some respects the science of desirable or detestable bodies that Roland Barthes likened to the uncertain art of photography. From its origins in the eighteenth century, this new science of man sought to answer the question “What is a human being?” In the eighteenth century Enlightenment thinkers posed this question in an effort to better understand the natural world and the place of human beings in it. Aesthetic judgments 19

PART ONE

did come into play, with white European thinkers freely admitting that they found people unlike themselves to be repugnant, but there was yet little argument that dark-skinned people were nevertheless people. By the nineteenth century, however, with the plantation economy now firmly rooted in the North American soil, the terms of the question “What is a human being?” had changed drastically. Bodies were no longer scrutinized and classified to make sense of the world; now they were judged desirable or detestable for the purpose of maintaining the social order. The continued existence of slavery in the Southern states, and the growing sectionalism that resulted from this situation, ensured that any answer to the question would be hotly contested. More proof was always needed. In many ways photography was the perfect tool for generating scientific proof. Images had long been an important part of scientific research, and the camera’s apparent objectivity was quickly recognized as a valuable asset in the search for Truth. Yet with photography an uncertain art, and ethnology an equally uncertain science, combining the two was not at all straightforward. Photography could adopt accepted conventions of scientific illustration—such as the frontal and profile view—but it operated on terms different from previous techniques. The ostensibly objective camera had its own way of seeing, one not easily adapted to the needs of the ethnologist. So it was that few ethnologists employed photography before the 1860s. To turn the camera on an enslaved woman and seek in her picture evidence to support a controversial scientific theory was something new in 1850, an idea that required an extraordinary leap of the imagination. Knowing that the daguerreotypes were intended to prove a theory of human diversity sheds much light on the images, but it does not tell us what they meant to the people who made them. What information did the daguerreotypes actually convey? It is not enough to say that they were evidence for a particular theory—for something to be “evidence” it must confirm an idea, but how does an image do this? And what if the idea is judged to be false, as many considered polygenesis to be, what does the image show then? Is it possible for an image to fail in its purpose, for it not to function properly? As historical objects, the daguerreotypes of Delia, Renty, Jack, Drana, Jem, Alfred, and Fassena are indeed, as the Peabody Museum’s Lorna Condon said, something very special. But understanding why Delia was daguerreotyped and what the resulting images mean requires more than simply knowing who made them and for what intended purpose. The daguerreotypes are implicated in multiple historical narratives—the histories of race, science, and photography in antebellum America—and each of these has its own cast of char20

INTRODUCTION

acters, intellectual underpinnings, and momentous events. The history of the daguerreotypes is therefore not only about the operator who took the photographs, the naturalist for whom they were made, and the seven people they depict. It is also about the South Carolina community in which most of these people lived, a community transformed in the late eighteenth century when cotton became a profitable crop. It is about the ways in which that crop, “King cotton,” divided a nation in two even as it held the parts together. So, too, is it about a people’s desire for Truth and the value of geology, comparative anatomy, and indeed photography to the search for that truth. To understand the meaning of Delia’s photograph requires familiarity with her world, the world of slave community, but also the very different worlds of the naturalist, the slaveholder, and the politician. Exploring these different narratives frequently takes us away from the people in the photographs, from the particular circumstances of their lives, but to truly understand why they were photographed and what the resulting images mean we must consider the broader circumstances of their era. Only by considering what others wanted to see in the images—what they were perhaps looking for and why—can we begin to understand how an uncertain art comes to be useful to a science of desirable or detestable bodies.

21

Renty

The moment his foot touched the floor a spasm shook his body and raised the skin up on his arms. The sensation did not last long, departing almost as soon as it had come, almost as if it had come upon him by mistake, but still he made no motion to counter its effect. He welcomed the chill, knowing he would be warm again soon enough. After slipping out without disturbing the others, he eased himself down onto the cabin steps. It was becoming a habit, this business of rising early. His body seemed to have lost interest in sleep, to have decided without first consulting him that sleep was no longer necessary. This was not to say that he was fit and rested. No, that was not it. Peering into the darkness he looked first up and then down the crude avenue that divided the cabins into two rows, almost—his youngest girl had once said—as if they were commencing to dance. He looked to see who else might be stirring, but the morning was still. He could be the only man alive, he thought as he rubbed his neck, unaware he was doing so. It was in the evening when the Old Man came to his cabin. He called out from the steps but did not wait for an answer before entering. A puff of blue smoke preceded him, like some form of signal or warning, but one good only to those who knew its import. “I’m told you aren’t well,” the Old Man said before returning the cigar to his mouth for another puff. After a pause he took it out again to say: “Is this true?” “Well, sir . . . .” He didn’t know what to say. The Old Man was looking at him hard, and it made him nervous. “Well?” “I ain’t been sleeping much.” He stopped there, hoping it was enough. “Ah.” The Old Man clenched the cigar between his teeth, then rolled it around to the front and inhaled deeply before removing it again. “We can do something about that, I’m sure. Was worried it was something else, something more serious. Word is you been slow, not picking your share, not even close.” “Just tired, sir.” 23

“I know, I know. So are we all.” He had come no more than two steps inside, and now he turned to leave. “You come up and get something to help you rest. Should do the trick.” “Yes, sir.” “But if it don’t, then we got ourselves a problem—understand?” Without waiting for an answer, he departed, leaving a cloud of smoke to punctuate his final word on the matter. The sky was noticeably lighter. Soon he would no longer be the only man alive. Before long folks would raise themselves up to brush the sleep from their heads. The brightening sky said as much, and the birds were noisy in agreement. He had heard the tchew tchew tchew of the small red bird calling to its mate first, but others soon joined in the song, causing him to wonder whether the many different kinds of bird understood one another or simply added their piece to an incomprehensible whole. He took great pleasure in their music, fair compensation for rising early. A motion caught his eye. Here and there others were stirring from their cabins. Moments later the great bell hollered down the hillside, shrill and mean and having the effect of silencing every last bird on the Old Man’s estate, if only for a moment.

24

CHAPTER

2 A Dam’d Poor Town

A

s Henry Brayne piloted his vessel into a natural harbor and up a river way, his view was arrested at the water’s edge by rampant vegetation. Every inch of land was covered with growth of one kind or another. Marsh grass and rushes were plentiful along the shore, while farther inland great oaks extended their moss-draped limbs in all directions and pines stood tall in discrete clusters. There were also walnut and fruit trees, and here and there palmettos gave a showy display. Brayne could not see far into the landscape as he steered the two-hundred-ton frigate Carolina up a creek on the larboard side and maneuvered toward a low bluff. He could, however, hear the songbirds secreted in the wilderness as they hailed his party’s arrival. With Brayne on the vessel were ninety-three passengers, many of whom had endured a voyage of nearly seven months. On board with Brayne were a colonel and two captains, a naval surgeon, twenty-five men of property and other “free” persons, sixty-three indentured white servants, and—though this is not known for certain—one African slave. The skills they brought with them included carpentry, blacksmithing, planting, and surveying; their numbers included a gunsmith, a bricklayer, a preacher, and, of course, the doctor, who had spent time among the Indians on previous journeys and so knew several of their languages. 25

PART ONE

The Carolina’s cargo was equally varied. Hoes and nails were collected in the hold, as were beds and pillows, flour, tons of beer and gallons of brandy, fishhooks, scissors, and medical instruments. This variety of goods had been selected, as the passengers with their sundry skills had been, with a view to ensuring a successful enterprise. Originating in England but stopping in the West Indies to take on additional passengers and fresh cargo, Brayne’s vessel was financed by the True and Absolute Lords Proprietors of Carolina, a legal entity formed by eight wealthy Englishmen in possession of a charter from the Crown. Every one of the Carolina’s passengers had come to the New World to enjoy religious freedom and seek prosperity; each had been promised 150 acres of land. In the spring of 1670, when Brayne deposited them on the low bluff now known as Charles Towne Landing, situated at a slight remove from modern-day Charlestown, they were thankful to have survived the voyage; two other vessels in the expedition did not. They were also anxious about what this next phase of the adventure held for them.1 Whether judged “an oppressive beauty” or Garden of Eden, there is no denying that Carolina was, as it is still today, a lush and bountiful land. It is, moreover, one greatly varied in its natural history. Falling into five distinct regions, South Carolina consists of the Blue Ridge and Piedmont to the north, with the coastal plain and coastal zone to the south. Between these lie the sand hills, also called the midlands. Evidence of time’s passage is visible everywhere in South Carolina, the action of wind, rain, and ocean having brought change to the earth’s surface, sometimes with swift violence, more often imperceptibly over the course of millennia. The soil of the Blue Ridge contains remnants of the earth’s oldest rocks, while the sand hills belie the presence long ago of an ancient ocean. The relentless lapping of waters twenty million years ago formed the gentle, seaward slope of the coastal plain. Nature’s history is everywhere writ in the language of sand, stone, river, and tree. The sand hills are noted for poor soil and drainage, long giving the region a reputation as unsuitable for agriculture, but scrub oak, yucca, prickly pear, and longleaf pine grow here in abundance, while the rivers deposit nutrients along their shores, making these parts ripe for cultivation. The coastal plain is more varied in its topography, and therefore more plentiful in the life it sustains. Here can be found maritime forests, salt and freshwater marshes, and the Carolina Bays, elliptical wetlands that some say were caused by the impact of debris from a meteor. White-tailed deer in herds a hundred strong used to roam this country, while panthers, bears, bison, and countless other creatures also walked, swam, or flew in Carolina, truly rendering the landscape a “Fertile and Pleasant Land.” It is little wonder that South Carolina’s destiny lay in agriculture.2 26

A DAM’D POOR TOWN

When the expedition underwritten by the Lords Proprietors of Carolina disembarked from Henry Brayne’s vessel, English planters from Bermuda set about re-creating the slave economy of the Caribbean. Despite hunger and hard times in the early years, the enterprise was a success. Charles Towne became a rowdy port as the English colonials established rice plantations on the West Indian model along the coastal plain, guaranteeing that the unnamed passenger from the Carolina was not long in being the only black man in the region. Indentured servitude continued as a way to lure white settlers to the colony, but as one governing body noted, “Blacks [are] the most useful appurtenances of a Plantation and [also] perpetual servants.” From the 1730s until the War for Independence, rice cultivation made the Carolina planters some of the wealthiest people in the colonies; it also made Charles Towne a profitable destination for English slave ships. Between 1700 and 1775, 40 percent of all African slaves brought to North America passed through the port. To one Southerner it seemed that almost overnight South Carolina had become “more like a negro country than like a country settled by white people.”3 The geology of South Carolina helped to render the state into two distinct economic, political, and social provinces. Rich and fertile soil along the coast together with the profitability of planting on a large scale ensured that the region’s wealth and power were concentrated along the sea. The hilly upcountry, meanwhile, remained a lawless frontier. This was Cherokee territory, and the farmers and tradesmen who crossed into Carolina from the north seeking prosperity forged good relations with the Native Americans, trading and living in close association with them for the most part without incident. The hardscrabble life suited the upcountry settlers. It also distinguished them from the plantation grandees on the coast, who cultivated their aristocratic pretensions and maintained close ties with England. When in the late eighteenth century the American colonists fought for independence from Great Britain, the upcountry tended toward loyalism—not because the settlers there loved the English, but because they hated the lowcountry planters more. The American Revolution effectively resolved the conflict between loyalists and patriots, but differences between upcountry farmers and the coastal planters continued to fester. By 1786 the men who ranched and farmed in the Piedmont had had enough. The population upcountry had grown significantly in recent years, and representatives from the northernmost portion of the state were now in a position to make demands, one of which was to move the capital from the port of Charleston to a location that was more “centrical.” Yes, Charleston was a sophisticated, bustling hub of commerce, and one of the new nation’s 27

PART ONE

great cities—it was in many respects an ideal place for a governing body—but upcountry lawmakers wanted a capital city that was closer to home, and now they had the political clout to challenge their lowcountry colleagues. Debate in the legislature was heated as senators and representatives took turns proposing a new location for the capital, each suggesting a site in which the gentleman speaking held an interest. In 1786 an end to the deadlock seemed possible when Senator John Lewis Gervais submitted a bill that not only identified a site that was truly central, and one in which he held no interest, but also outlined an ingenious plan to effect the move. The proposed site was “Taylor’s Hill,” named for one of the more prominent settlers there. Located in the midlands, it was about as close to the center of the state as could be hoped for. The senator’s plan called for the state to purchase a tract of land on the granite plateau at the confluence of the Broad and Saluda Rivers, lay out a city of two square miles, and begin selling off parcels immediately. Once one-fourth of these had been sold, the legislature would then have the ready cash to begin constructing public buildings, and once those were finished, it could move its offices from Charleston to the new site. The best part of the plan was that it would not cost the citizens of South Carolina a penny. Senator Gervais’s proposal sounded good, but not everyone was convinced. The land was worn out and the region lawless, some said; judges had been run out of the district. Others claimed the country was unwholesome owing to the proliferation of waterways. Much of the terrain was damp or boggy, surely signifying the presence of yellow fever and other disease. Yet Thomas Taylor, who was said to have acquired his land in trade for an old mare, a long rifle, and a jug of whiskey, had been sickly until he moved to the site in 1763, but it was said that he had “enjoyed pretty good health ever since.” All agreed that Taylor’s health had indeed improved following his removal to the midlands. After further debate, and much modification to the terms, a bill to acquire the land at Taylor’s Hill was passed. On 29 March 1786 the city of Columbia was incorporated as the capital of the state of South Carolina.4 If Taylor actually did acquire his land in exchange for a horse, a gun, and a jug of liquor, he sold it with no less cunning. The bill to establish Columbia in the midlands was proposed by Senator Gervais, but it was Taylor, Wade Hampton, and the men they could influence—principally their relations—who were behind the deal. Tall, with hazel eyes and hair that took on a reddish hue in the sunlight, Thomas Taylor produced twelve children with his wife, Ann, in their sixty-six years of marriage, founding a dynasty that was sur-

28

A DAM’D POOR TOWN

passed only by the Hampton family in wealth and social importance. Both Taylor and Wade Hampton were born in Virginia, their families migrating farther south when they were young boys. Both men were also closely involved in events that changed the region from a frontier colony to a politically vital member of the United States of America. From his commission to collect signatures of those settlers willing to bear arms in defense of the region, to his opposition of the states’ rights argument on the grounds that the Union was sacred above all else, Taylor was unwavering in his patriotism. Hampton, for his part, rose to the rank of general over the course of two wars and twice served as a United States congressman. One contemporary described Hampton as “not very striking,” but appearances were of little concern to a man whose hand could be detected in just about every social, political, or economic movement that affected the state. When in 1791 George Washington toured the South, then two years into his term as the first president of the United States, it was Wade Hampton and Thomas Taylor who escorted him from Augusta, Georgia, to the new capital of South Carolina.5 At the time of the debate to decide where the capital would be located, there were two Taylors and four Hamptons in the state legislature, all of whom represented districts near Taylor’s Hill and so had an interest in developing the area. The commission charged with purchasing the property included Thomas Taylor and Richard Hampton as members, and of the ten property owners who sold land to the state, two Taylors and two Hamptons, including Wade, were among the top vendors in terms of acreage. They also owned land skirting the city limit, which they later sold at a handsome profit—property values were said to have risen 150 percent just months after the city was incorporated. Senator Gervais had been a front man enlisted to give the impression that those proposing the bill were acting in the interest of the state, not personal gain.6 Moving a state legislature from an established city, with its transportation and communication links, economic, and social infrastructure, to the middle of densely forested wilderness was a new idea altogether in 1786. Four years later the federal government would do the same, moving from Philadelphia to swampland provided by Maryland and Virginia, and other cases would follow, but in no instance was the transition easy. The city of Columbia was soon laid out in a grid, ten streets to the mile, and at first plots sold quickly, but then the market sagged. Perhaps Thomas Burke’s experience put other investors off. Burke purchased fifty lots in the initial boom, only to discover that many of them were under water, the Congaree River’s unceremonious dip into the west side of the city defining Columbia’s

29

PART ONE

true shape. Burke refused to pay for land that was impossible to develop, except perhaps as a fishery, and rightly so, but the city commissioners saw things differently and sued him for breach of contract. Not an auspicious beginning for a capital city by any measure.7 When lawmakers arrived in Columbia early in 1790 for their first session, the contrast between urbane Charleston and their new home deep in the Carolina pine barrens was not overlooked. They had been assured that local merchants would be in place to meet their needs, that food and shelter would be available if not abundant, and indeed businesses sprang up in the sand. “Saw mills are building on every stream within [Columbia’s] vicinity,” a Charleston newspaper noted just weeks after incorporation. The native pines, a symbol of frontier backwardness, were “every day diminishing in number.” But even so, the disappointment on first arriving in Columbia was felt keenly. Housing was insufficient and there were no churches or schools, rendering the region largely unfit for families. Lowcountry representatives were especially unhappy when they were taken to a wooden building in a clearing and told that this was the new state house. Used to the grandeur, beauty, and sophistication of Charleston’s streets and buildings, lawmakers were nonplussed by the primitiveness of their new place of work. Only the necessity and importance of the legislature, and the commercial activity brought about by the presence of South Carolina’s lawmakers, seems to have saved Columbia from being abandoned as a bad idea.8 Thomas Taylor, when asked what he thought of Columbia, was reported to have said, “They ruined a damn fine plantation to make a dam’d poor town!”9 Columbia grew steadily but slowly. Edward Hooker, tutor to Wade Hampton’s children, complained that the buildings were rickety wooden structures in danger of collapse and that “not more than one-third of the streets are yet opened, and of those, several have not more than two or three buildings to them.” But Hooker was from the North and so, rather like the legislators who had arrived fifteen years before him, he expected Columbia to resemble places he knew from his travels, established cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. He expected to see a great number of stately buildings, ornate shop fronts, and crowds of people milling about—he expected a modern city. But in Columbia the frontier persisted with dogged determination. “That part of the town which is not put into streets,” Hooker complained, “is mainly a wilderness of pines.” Yet Hooker also remarked with some pride that the courthouse, a two-story brick building, was a handsome structure. There was a fair bit of complaining in Columbia during the early nineteenth century, but equally there

30

A DAM’D POOR TOWN

was a burgeoning pride as the city gradually swelled to meet the needs and pleasures of its inhabitants.10 Columbians were of course not the only people to see their city or town grow during this time. As the nineteenth century turned, European and American society experienced tremendous economic, political, and cultural change, affecting both local populations and peoples worldwide in myriad ways. Overseas exploration and colonialism had opened up new sources of raw materials, as well as new markets in which to sell goods made from those materials. The worldwide demand for manufactured items increased with time and led to radically new ways of working, traveling and communicating. Small, localized economies eventually linked up with other commercial centers, gradually expanding into global trade networks. Here and there the landscape steadily altered—what it looked like, what it was for, and who could possess it—as fewer people made their living from agriculture and towns grew into cities, becoming hubs for communication and transportation. Industries flourished and national economies became interdependent. For the first time, money became a desirable end in itself, valuable for the power that came with it. Alongside industrialization came revolutionary politics, which both carried democracy into the modern era and dispossessed vast numbers of people. Migration, forced and voluntary, took place on an unprecedented scale, along with an increasing stratification of society. Native Americans who were not killed for refusing to assimilate to European norms were corralled into ever smaller and more remote reservations, while the descendants of Africans who had survived the “middle passage” were marched westward to work the fertile land of the Mississippi delta, territory recently “acquired” from the Indians via the French. The freedom to expand national borders was at every turn given priority over human rights, especially when the humans in question were dark-skinned. The New World also swelled with arrivals from the Old World. European immigrants in ever-increasing numbers disembarked in America’s port cities and fanned out across the land in search of a better life. Most found little more than the tenement and factory. How and where people worked changed drastically. In mill towns such as Lowell and Lynn, Massachusetts, new types and new rhythms of work were learned, much of it repetitive and compensated with subsistence wages. Human movement was rendered subservient to both manager and machine as workers increasingly played a supporting role, feeding raw materials to the gins and spindles that powered the economy. Schedules and timetables, consumption and production—these determined the rhythms of work. Under this new regime

31

PART ONE

a great many toiled, but at the same time people had more leisure, particularly the managers, bureaucrats, and businessmen, those belonging to the new and growing middle class. It was an era of promenades along the boardwalk and curiosities at the local museum, the penny press and historical novels describing in graphic detail how primitive lands and peoples had been conquered and heroes made. In this new, modern era, nearly every aspect of life was altered in some way, from a person’s work and social status to the use of a curious eating utensil called the split spoon, later renamed “fork.” The railroad was a potent symbol of this change. The mania for laying track started in the 1830s and reached its peak in the following two decades; by 1880 more than fifty thousand miles of railroad track traversed the North American continent. Traveling by railroad was noisy, dirty, and dangerous, but people were willing to endure such hazards for the convenience of relatively rapid transit. A transcontinental journey took six or seven dangerous and uncomfortable weeks by stagecoach but after 1869 could be completed in less than seven days by railroad. This was an improvement that everyone could appreciate. Less easily understood was the actual experience of being catapulted across a landscape within the confines of a massive wood-burning machine.11 Longtime residents of Columbia seemed particularly fond of looking back at century’s end and noting how drastically their world had changed. Compared to the modern era, one Columbian noted, life at the beginning of the nineteenth century was like living on another planet. “When I came here in 1817,” wrote Edwin Scott, “the use of steam in moving railroad cars, steamboats and machinery for manufacturing purposes, with its ineluctable effects on trade, travel and products, was utterly unknown.” Also unknown, at least until midcentury, was the telegraph. Communication relied wholly on existing transportation networks for the delivery of messages. In the first decades of the nineteenth century planters had to wait between three and six weeks for news from England to reach them via sailing vessels that docked at Charleston harbor. The papers then had to make their way upcountry via the waterways or stagecoach, the latter making do with roads that were no better than a network of sandy ruts and deep muddy holes, like the one that was a permanent fixture outside Jimmy Hall’s grocery on Main Street. By the time the news finally arrived in Columbia, everything had changed.12 There was no steam power or telecommunications at the turn of the nineteenth century, but neither was there gas- or waterworks. Candles were kept burning to ensure a fire could be lit quickly, whether for heat or cooking, and water had to be carried into buildings once it had been drawn from a pump located outside the courthouse. In the early part of 32

A DAM’D POOR TOWN

the century letters were written with a quill pen, a vital tool that took some skill to make. Envelopes, however, did not yet exist—letters were folded so as to conceal the message and provide a space for the address. Time was told by the cries of a policeman shouting out the hour from a street corner. And, of course, before the 1840s there were no photographs. The invention of photography was momentous. Daguerre’s great achievement was that he discovered a technology that could reflect upon its own conditions of invention. Photography was developed at a time when people were leaving behind an age of craftsmanship, of tactile experience and the immediate physical encounter, and entering an age of mechanization. The daguerreotype both embodied and documented this transition. By stopping the clouds as they traversed the sky, arresting the small town even as it erupted into a city, or capturing a face before it passed from memory, the daguerreotype stopped time itself. This allowed people to hold onto the moment in an effort to understand what was taking place before it all changed again. At a time when the impossible was daily becoming possible, when change occurred at a dizzying pace, millions of people desperately needed to make sense of a rapidly modernizing world. But even as it documented change, photography itself changed the world. The photograph removed people from direct experience by elevating images to a new level, bestowing on them tremendous value as objects capable of conveying truth and reality. The daguerreotype, no less than the steam engine, hurled people into a new era. It was a remarkable time. Discovery, innovation, and invention brought about a wide assortment of conveniences hailed as evidence of humans’ superior intellect. “Surely the witness or co-temporary of these great and numerous novelties and mutations may claim that he has lived in an age of progress,” Mr. Scott wrote in 1884. From the passenger train to the photograph, the forward thrust of civilization was everywhere apparent.13 Something had happened. Change was no longer simply a matter of geology, of natural events occurring unnoticed over millennia or in a moment of catastrophic devastation, such as had created the Blue Ridge, sand hills, and Carolina Bays of South Carolina. Change was now quick yet productive, apparently drastic and yet long-lasting. Change in this new era was understood as staged movements toward improved circumstances. It was also man-made. Change was now equated with progress. “We are accustomed to regard the age in which we live not only as the most enlightened which the world has known,” the South Carolina politician James Henry Hammond said in 1849, “but one of unprecedented progress. The rapidity with which ideas and events 33

PART ONE

disseminated by the press, fly on the wings of steam and electricity around the globe, lead us to suppose that the sum total of human knowledge is far greater than it ever has been, and the discoveries in art and science which are continually announced induce the belief that human improvement is advancing at a pace beyond all former example.” It was not just the present era that had contributed to this rapid and pronounced advancement. All of history— back through the Upper Silurian and Carboniferous ages, back to the Creation itself—had led to this moment. “It has required every event of the past, every teaching of philosophy in all its forms—every discovery of science, every work of art—every experiment whether in physics or morals, in politics or religion, on individuals or societies, to bring our race to its present improved and enlightened condition.”14 And yet, despite all the many and wondrous inventions of the modern age, the symbol of progress for the people of South Carolina was neither the railroad nor the factory, the daguerreotype or the split spoon. To be sure, both North and South benefitted from industrialization, but there were significant differences between the two regions. Communities in the North followed the British model, copying and even improving on the factory system, manufacturing goods for sale on an open market. In the process, networks for the exchange of goods and specialized services on both the local and regional levels developed, and with them came new complex patterns of social relations. Something very different happened in the South, something that led the region to hang on to its agrarian ways, which in turn limited the development of transportation and communication networks, causing cities like Columbia to grow more slowly, long remaining overgrown towns rather than becoming vital urban centers anchoring regional markets. Social relations in the South were also different. There was change in the South, but it never took the region far from its colonial, agrarian past. The symbol of this variant form of progress was a small and sensitive shrub, one that sprung gladly from the soil of the Carolina midlands and that produced a material in great demand around the world. Change in the South came not from the steam engine but from a cotton boll.

34

Alfred

He was no longer aware of his body. His hands worked fast, moving among the delicate branches with graceful dexterity to snatch fiber from the bolls and stuff it into a sack in one easy gesture. But he was unaware of his actions all the while. As he moved from plant to plant, his mind had slowly loosened its grip from his body to take in aspects of life quite apart from the one in which he now found himself. It was a kind of dream, yet one more vivid because his eyes were open and the images familiar. He still saw the cotton plants around him as he searched out the ripened bolls for harvesting, but so too did he see other things. “Come here.” “What?” “Come here and hold your son.” Her radiance humbled him. She had always been the one place where he could rest, but now she was far more to him than refuge from his troubles. The sleeping child enveloped in his arms held both their attention, but he felt her presence more keenly. Traveling with the child would be difficult, but one woman’s trial would not determine the fate of them all. It was time they drove the herds towards higher ground, and so they must. Once a suitable place was found, one of the guides would venture into the nearest village to speak with the elders there. If the meeting went well, they would settle; if not, they would continue onward. For her sake, he hoped it would not be a long journey. There had been many journeys, some pleasing to recall, others sooner forgotten but for the impression they had made upon his soul. It was not always possible to choose which he would revisit in these periods of reverie. The stench always came to him first; then he felt the ground swell and heard the cries, desperate cries for mercy. Finally, he saw the faces. He could recall each in great detail, though he had never known their names. “You dwell on the past too much.” He did, it was true. She knew him better than he knew himself. 36

“But the past is where I find you,” he said to her. She lifted her eyes to meet his, and in them he found great solace. In her eyes he saw himself embraced by her attention—in her eyes he saw himself as he wished to be. The sound of the locomotive caused him to glance up from his work, but he did not see the train so much as note its presence, just as he would have followed the motion of a bird had it taken wing from the field, capturing his attention but ultimately meaning little. His fingers continued moving, skillfully performing their work. He did not live in the field at that moment in time. He lived in a great many places, but he did not live in that field.

37

CHAPTER

3 Cotton

T

“

here are few sights more pleasant to the eye than a wide cotton field when it is in bloom,” a Southerner once observed. Stretching clear across the landscape and embracing the full breadth of the horizon’s easy curve, in row upon row the wiry shrubs clung to the earth and drew from there the prosperity that made men heavy with power. In the late summer and early autumn months, when the bolls burst open into soft white blooms, the immense cotton fields of South Carolina had the “appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow.” The sight was more than simply pleasant; it was truly dazzling.1 So vast were the cotton fields of South Carolina that it seemed nothing else was allowed to grow, every inch of soil given over to the crop. “The fields were destitute of everything that deserved the name of grass,” noted one visitor upon entering the state in the summer of 1806; “and not a spear of clover was anywhere visible.” With no land devoted to fodder, cattle and other livestock were forced to go “browsing on the boughs of the trees, in the woods.” It seemed clear, the visitor observed, that the owners of South Carolina’s cotton plantations were little concerned with growing food, instead seeking to raise as much of the 38

COTTON

staple fiber as the land could sustain. But, he wondered, without planting such crops as corn or barley, how did the planters feed the men and women who cultivated the fields? Cotton’s reign over the landscape was not as complete as appearance suggested. Corn, barley, and other grains were grown here and there alongside the fiber, as were sweet potatoes and assorted vegetables. But these were raised on a much smaller scale for the simple fact that food could always be purchased, whereas growing cotton was as good as growing money itself. Yet despite the wealth to be had from cotton, the men and women who worked in the fields were often grossly underfed: plantation owners typically used the profits to stock their own larders, not to feed the slaves any more than was necessary to keep them alive. Treatment of slaves varied greatly from one plantation to the next, but on some estates the mainstay of a slave’s diet was just a peck of corn a week, a measure equal to about eight quarts, together with some molasses and maybe a piece of fatback pork. Folks might have other sources of food to supplement this meager ration, such as hunting game and fishing, or they might be allowed to spend Sundays working a patch to raise vegetables for their own consumption. A few might even be allowed to work on neighboring plantations to earn money for salt and other “luxury” items. But not every slaveholder was generous with his slaves’ time, and so in the midst of prosperity a great many people went hungry. “It was manifest that I was now in a country where the life of a black man was no more regarded than that of an ox,” Charles Ball, the visitor from the North, observed, “except as far as the man was worth more money in the market.”2 It was a strange form of logic that made growing corn undesirable while field hands were starving. To outsiders, the South was a strange place, fascinating and worthy of study if only to record the many contradictions that seemed to hold land and people together as one. More than a few tourists who traversed the region kept a diary to record how odd, or progressive, Southern culture was, depending on the writer’s point of view. Visitors were especially curious about the conditions under which the enslaved men and women lived and worked. The buying and selling of human beings as property had been gradually abolished in the North following Independence, and although this did not rid the region of prejudice against black people, it did lead to the perception that slavery was an unusual way to go about business in a modern republic. Charles Ball entertained a greater curiosity than most. He wanted to know what sort of existence the enslaved men and women led and whether their master was at all considerate of their needs. Though some slaveholders were thought to be more humane than others, as a group they had a poor reputation, and many viewed South Carolina as the seat of slavery’s 39

PART ONE

most cruel practitioners. Ball, lodging as a guest on a cotton plantation situated about three miles outside Columbia, wished to determine whether this reputation was justified. After finishing breakfast one day he decided to get a closer look at how Southern plantations were managed. He had seen a gang of workers head off at daybreak, presumably in the direction of the fields. Following them, he soon found himself in a cotton field, where men, women, and children of all ages hoed the mounds of soil around cotton plants. The plants themselves were about two feet tall, with coarse, wiry branches sticking out in all directions. The shrub’s ungainly shape and fragile boughs prevented a plow from passing between the rows without causing damage. Human labor was required to chop at the weeds and otherwise tend the shrubs. Ball ventured to speak to one of the men, politely asking if he might converse with him. The man replied that he should like to become acquainted, but “Master Tom” did not allow him to talk to people while he was working. The visitor asked where his master was, but before the man could reply, a voice called out. “Mind you work there, you rascals,” Master Tom admonished from the shade of a sassafras tree. Ball, aware he was guilty of trespassing, approached Master Tom with due courtesy and asked if he might join the people in their work. This, he thought, would allow him to speak with one or two of the slaves without disrupting their hoeing and getting anyone into trouble. After a brief and rather tense exchange of words, Master Tom grudgingly permitted him to work with the field hands a while, so long as he did not talk too much and keep them from their tasks. Returning to the field, Ball took a hoe from the hands of a small girl and commenced chopping and digging at the hard soil. Working alongside the slaves under Master Tom’s supervision, he first spoke with the foreman of the gang, a man of about forty years of age. When asked what sort of food his master provided, if he ever received meat or anything else besides cornmeal, the foreman replied that at Christmastime they each received about three pounds of pork, but that was all. From September to March, the visitor was told, they also received an allowance of sweet potatoes, but for the rest of the year they survived on their weekly ration of corn. Ball also learned that every year the foreman received two shirts made of coarse linen, two pairs of trousers, a woolen jacket, and one blanket. Shoes to protect him from the winter frosts and a hat to shelter him from the brutal heat of the summer sun, as well as any additional clothing, he had to provide for himself by working Sundays. Clothing for his children, who did not receive any from the master, he also had to provide. Looking around the field, Ball noticed that many of the children were entirely naked. 40

COTTON

More horrifying than this evidence of neglect, however, was the punishment that came with certain attempts to obtain necessities such as food. Theft, second only to running away in the hierarchy of grievances against plantation order, could earn the thief a severe beating. The foreman told how not long ago he had stolen a sheep to supplement his meager rations, cooking it at night when he felt sure he was safe. “I have not tasted meat since last Christmas, and we had to work uncommonly hard this summer,” he explained, as if apologizing to Ball for his transgression. When the crime was discovered, the man was tied to a mill post and left there for the night. The next day, after much deliberation, it was decided that he should be whipped across the back and a hot pepper tea applied to the wounds to cause further anguish. This was to be performed before an audience of people, black and white, so that they might be deterred from similar wrongdoing. When the sentence had been carried out, the hungry foreman had received ninety-six lashes, each treated with the hot pepper solution. To prove he was not lying about the severity of his punishment, the man lifted his shirt. “The man’s back was not yet well. Many of the gashes made by the lash were yet sore, and those that were healed had left long white stripes across his body.” When asked why he did not run away, the foreman replied that he could not. “His spirit was so broken and subdued,” Ball judged, “that he was ready to suffer and to bear all his hardships; not, indeed, without complaining, but without attempting to resist his oppressors or to escape from their power.” Besides, although he had known many a slave who had run to the North, every last one had been caught and treated still more cruelly in the days following his or her return. Ball returned to his lodgings. From his interviews that day he had gained an idea of what it would be like to be a slave in South Carolina. Tending cotton was certainly unpleasant work, but more distasteful was the treatment the people received from their putative masters. It was little wonder white people considered blacks a degraded race. Dressed in rags, denied education and even basic autonomy, they had few opportunities to demonstrate their potential as individuals, as human beings. Certainly some slaveholders were more cruel than others, but a man who would keep another man in perpetual servitude and use violence to obtain his loyalty, as all slaveholders inevitably did, such a man was no better than even the most despicable of his kind. There was in the end only one variety of “master.” The life of a Carolina slave was certainly not a life Ball wished to experience, but it so happened that he had no choice. A trader was just then transporting him and others from the state of Maryland to the slave market in Columbia, slave-trading center for the upcountry. 41

PART ONE

He and the men and women soon to be sold at auction remained on the plantation outside Columbia just long enough to regain their strength following the long march southward. Ball was permitted to wander about the estate because it was thought the light exercise would do him good. Charles Ball was a bondsman and had been so since birth. As a child he had been sold away from his mother and then subsequently shunted from one slaveholder to the next as circumstance required them to buy or sell. This itinerant life included two years at sea working as the cook on a large frigate. Charles Ball had lived a varied life. Nothing, however, had prepared him for work as a Carolina field hand.3 In the Southern states of America, cotton was king—but it had not always been so. Before cotton there had been tobacco in the upper South, and then rice and indigo in the lower South. Going back still further to the seventeenth century, before plantation agriculture, there had been smallholdings typically worked by a group that might include paid laborers, white indentured servants, and slaves of many colors. Such workers may have toiled alongside the landowner, and they could become skilled in carpentry, the maintenance of machinery, or some other area useful to the farming community. Small-scale production also allowed for open interaction between a landowner and the men and women who worked for him. As a result, enslaved people enjoyed certain privileges. Typically they could venture past the boundaries of the farm and develop relations with other members of the community, whether based on affection or some manner of business. A separate slave economy thrived as slaves earned money by “jobbing” or by selling handicrafts made on their own time. Numerous enslaved men and women were even able to negotiate with their masters to purchase their freedom or the freedom of a relation. Servitude in this period was a varied practice, one largely based on a negotiated relationship between individuals. The era of the yeoman farmer came to an end in the late seventeenth century as plantation culture dug its heels firmly into the soil and societies with slaves hardened into slave societies. It started with tobacco in the Chesapeake region of Virginia, and then, in the eighteenth century, rice transformed the lowcountry of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida. These crops proved highly lucrative, which meant that landowners could expand into neighboring tracts, allowing them to cultivate more of their chosen crop and thus realize still greater profits. With this growth they were no longer simply farmers but managers of vast estates requiring a huge labor force to maintain production levels. Slaves were compelled

42

COTTON

to work harder and for longer hours, drastically reducing the time they could devote to their own needs. Field labor became the only work most people knew. More closely supervised and regimented in their work, bondspeople were given no opportunity to leave the plantation and were forced to submit to the master’s ultimate authority in every instance. The relationship between a slave and his or her unseen, all-powerful master was now based solely on the threat of violence. Plantation culture dehumanized the practice of slavery to the extreme, and the monopoly of a single crop on the land became a sign of the slaves’ maltreatment, of their very enslavement.4 The Revolutionary War slowed the spread of plantation culture, but only temporarily. Fields lay neglected throughout the war for want of workers, yet later, when it came time to restart production, indigo was abandoned both for the inherent difficulties of its cultivation and the fact that it was produced more cheaply elsewhere. Restoration of rice plantations was slow, and although demand for tobacco increased, the Virginia soil was exhausted; agriculture in the state never really recovered. The situation following the Revolution led one English traveler to comment, “The staple of America at present consists of land.” The cotton boom of the late eighteenth century changed this.5 Cotton itself was not a new crop—two of the fifty known species are native to the Americas—but from 1607, when British colonials transferred commercial operations from Asia to North America, cultivation on the mainland was limited. Sea Island or long-staple cotton, so named for its long and silky fibers, grew along the coast and islands of South Carolina and Georgia, but it grew slowly and produced a relatively low yield. Separating the seeds from the fiber, a process called ginning, was also difficult. Even using a simple machine called a roller gin, in which two rods turned against each other to pinch the smooth, black seeds from the fiber, one could clean only twenty to twenty-five pounds of long-staple cotton in a day. Short-staple cotton, which could be cultivated across a broader inland region, was even harder to gin because the seeds had a furry, green coating that clung to the fiber. Under such circumstances, South Carolina was able to ship only three thousand pounds of cotton to Britain in 1768, a meager supply in light of the rapidly increasing demand for manufactured cotton goods.6 There was money to be made in cotton, lots of money. In many ways cotton was the Industrial Revolution. Grown around the world, cotton was typically shipped to Great Britain, where it was cleaned and carded, drawn, roved, spun, and finally woven into textiles. It was an industry worth millions to the British, even in the day of small-scale production

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methods. The advent of industrialization in the middle of the eighteenth century, however, made the manufacture of textiles cheaper and faster, fueling a global demand for cotton goods and thereby increasing the value of the raw staple many times over. With so much money to be made, and both land and labor plentiful, Southern planters wanted a greater share of the market. All they needed was a machine that could clean short-staple cotton of its sticky seeds quickly and efficiently. Gins had been around for centuries, but it was Eli Whitney’s wire-toothed gin, patented in 1794, that made cotton a cash crop in America. The son of a Massachusetts farmer and town official, Whitney demonstrated a knack for making things at an early age. He became skilled in the forge, manufacturing nails when they were scarce, and switching to hatpins when demand changed and fashion suggested a new opportunity. But a bright young boy was not supposed to make a living from his hands, not in this spanking new republic where social advancement was considered the birthright of every white male. Opportunity lay in the application of intellect, and so Eli’s talent was set aside, placed upon a shelf alongside the lathe and the plane. After years of home schooling, and later prep school and college, Whitney’s future as a teacher seemed certain. In 1792 Whitney traveled to the South to take a job tutoring the children of a wealthy Carolina planter. He was not happy about going south. Expressing the same concerns held by South Carolina lawmakers a few years earlier, he wrote to his brother Josiah that “perhaps I shall lose my health and perhaps my life” owing to the poor climate in the South.7 Whitney made the journey, but he did not become a teacher. While in Savannah, Georgia, he heard talk of cotton and the difficulty of removing its seed. “There were a number of very respectable Gentlemen . . . who all agreed that if a machine could be invented which would clean the Cotton with expedition, it would be a great thing both to the Country and to the inventor.” Using a misunderstanding over pay as an excuse to abandon his job as a tutor, Whitney set about solving the problem, and he did so with characteristic diligence. It took him just ten days to complete his design.8 When held up against the old foot-powered gin, Whitney’s wire-tooth gin did not appear revolutionary. It looked very much like the old model, but it operated on a new principle that, though simple in design, made all the difference when it came to the amount of cotton that could be processed. Instead of pinching seeds from the fiber, as the roller-gin had done, Whitney’s machine used wire teeth to pull the seed cotton through a narrow, metal grate that allowed the fiber to pass through but left the seeds behind. The process was rough on the fiber, but it could clean vast quantities of seed cotton with relative ease—ten 44

COTTON

times the amount of a roller-gin, fifty times if horsepower was used. In one day Whitney’s gin did the work of two thousand men, and this meant that more—much more—cotton could be planted. In 1794 the wire-tooth gin was patented and quickly went into production. Improved models soon followed. In the decade between 1790 and 1800, South Carolina’s annual exports of cotton rose from less than seventy thousand pounds to more than twenty million, most of which came from the upcountry region. By 1840 the South was producing more than 60 percent of the world’s cotton. The craze for planting cotton inspired one observer to remark of the South: “The people here live in cotton houses and ride in cotton carriages. They buy cotton, sell cotton, think cotton, eat cotton, drink cotton, and dream cotton. They marry cotton wives, and unto them are born cotton children.”9 Eli Whitney’s wire-tooth gin revolutionized the Southern economy and brought farreaching transformation to the nation as a whole. The success of cotton contributed to capital investment, attracted foreign investors and immigrant labor, and fueled the industrialization of the North by supplying raw material for the mills. At the same time, cotton contributed to the growing conflict between North and South, particularly over the issue of whether slavery should be allowed in newly acquired territory. It was clear that as the nation grew, so must agriculture, but less clear was whether agriculture necessarily meant slavery. The Southern states were adamant that westward migration required the expansion of slavery, while the North was just as determined that slavery should not take root in the new territories. Cotton, or rather the profits to be had from the cultivation of cotton on a large scale, held the nation together and at the same time drove it apart. The new gin made cleaning cotton easy, but picking still had to be done by hand because it took strength and dexterity to pull the fiber from the boll without damaging the plant. It also took practice. According to Charles Ball, “It requires some time to enable a stranger, or new hand, to acquire the sleight of picking cotton.” Cotton does not ripen all at once, but carries on putting out new burs until frost or cool weather arrests its growth. Picking thus began late in August and continued through December, and the field hands— known by the part of their body worth most to planters—had to pick with care or face a whipping.10 The cotton revolution created two figures on the Southern landscape: the planter and the slave. Both had existed previously, with the cultivation of tobacco, rice, and indigo, but the cotton slave and the cotton planter belonged to another order of being altogether, 45

PART ONE

one marked by extremism—extreme wealth for the planters and extreme privation for the slaves. Of course, the planters did not regard their position in this way. “Planting in this country is the only independent and really honorable occupation,” claimed the South Carolina planter and politician James Henry Hammond. “The planters here are essentially what the nobility are in other countries. They stand at the head of society and politics.” Members of this elite class were identifiable by name—the Taylors, Rutledges, Singletons, Prestons, and Hamptons, to name but a few—and they measured their status in land and slaves and the amount of cotton the two could produce.11 During the nineteenth century few people outside the Southern aristocracy regarded planters as honorable. They were, to borrow the words of the African-American sociologist W. E. B. DuBois, “arrogant, strutting, quarrelsome kinglets; they issued commands; they made laws; they shouted their orders; they expected deference and self-abasement; they were choleric and easily insulted. Their ‘honor’ became a vast and awful thing, requiring wide and insistent deference.” Charles Ball felt they had “nothing upon which they can pride themselves, except that they are white men, and are not obliged to work for a living.” Another man, when asked what he thought of the South, described the situation more succinctly: “Massa, every body work here. Man work, woman work, child work, horse work, cow work, all work but hog; hog walk about and do nothing, just like a gentleman.’”12 In 1806 Ball was purchased by one of the South’s most honorable or notorious slaveholders, depending on your point of view: Wade Hampton. Working with Thomas Taylor to establish Columbia as South Carolina’s new capital city was just one of the shrewd deals in which Hampton had played a part. During the Revolutionary War, he had made money by combining his military duties with personal business, and with this he acquired land and further consolidated his wealth through speculation. The war had freed up of millions of acres along the eastern seaboard, territory that had belonged to Native Americans and loyalists. Seized in the wake of British defeat, this land was soon made available for purchase by the newly formed states, each eager to encourage settlement within their borders in order to stimulate local economies much depleted by war. Huge tracts of land were thus offered at extremely low prices. In addition to owning property in Louisiana, Hampton eventually owned a twelve-thousand-acre tract along Garner’s Ferry Road, a few miles outside Columbia.13 Having achieved moderate success with indigo, hemp, barley, and corn, Hampton was eager to plant cotton. Following the news of Whitney’s invention, he wasted no time in purchasing several of the new machines. Late in 1799 he received his new gins and as an 46

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experiment rigged one to the millpond on his property. With his water-powered gin, the first of its kind, he was able to introduce cotton culture to South Carolina on a grand scale. In his first year of planting Hampton produced six hundred bales of cotton from six hundred acres, which sold for ninety thousand dollars. He went on to produce fifteen hundred bales of cotton annually in subsequent years, prompting a Charlestown merchant to declare Hampton at that time “the most extensive planter in the U. S.”14 With more than a touch of irony, Ball recorded the date on which Hampton purchased him as having been the Fourth of July—Independence Day, the “day of universal rejoicing.” Of course for Africans and their descendants no such rejoicing took place, and indeed in the early years of the new republic the first national holiday was a day of protest. “What to the slave is your fourth of July?” the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked in one of his most famous speeches. It was, he answered, “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” In the account of his sale Ball drew a sharp contrast between the intoxicated patriots who throughout the day “sang and shouted in honor of free government, and the rights of man,” and the people held in bondage with iron chains and dubious laws.15 The sale began at five o’clock, when “the jailer came and stood at the front door of the jail, and proclaimed, in a very loud voice, that a sale of most valuable slaves would immediately take place.” As the heat of the day began to recede, Ball and the others were examined and inspected like livestock, each man and woman viewed solely as a possible means to achieving greater productivity. Once purchased, their “owners” would refer to them using the more circumspect term of “servant,” but here, on the block, their purpose was discussed without nicety. “These three fellows are as strong as horses, and as patient as mules,” said the jailer, who served as auctioneer. “One of them can do as much work as two common men, and they are perfectly honest.” The price for such fine specimens was to be nothing less than six hundred dollars apiece. “This one,” the jailer said of Ball, “can cut five cords of wood in a day, and put it up. He is a rough carpenter, and a first rate field hand. This one,” he said with his hand on the shoulder of another man, “is a blacksmith; and can lay a ploughshare; put new steel upon an axe; or mend a broken chain.” The next was an able cobbler. In this way, moving from one man to the next, extolling virtues derived principally from his imagination, the auctioneer sold off the most valuable of the fifty-two slaves the trader had transported from Maryland, including Ball.16 47

PART ONE

That Ball was facing an existence of hunger and hard labor was without question regardless of who purchased him at the auction block, but he was doubly unfortunate in having Wade Hampton as his master. Though highly respected among his peers, Hampton’s treatment of slaves was “a matter of notoriety,” according to one visitor to the South. “He not only maltreats his slaves, but stints them in food, overworks them, and keeps them almost naked.” At a dinner party Hampton once told of some experiments he had conducted with his slaves in which he fed them cottonseed mixed with corn, presumably in an attempt to reduce the amount of corn he had to grow or purchase to feed them. When he gave them one-half corn, the slaves “seemed to thrive tolerably well.” When he increased the amount of cottonseed, however, Hampton “declared, with an oath . . . they died like rotten sheep!” A number of Hampton’s overseers “left his service because they would no longer assist in the cruel punishments inflicted upon his slaves.” Quite a few slaves sought to leave Hampton’s service for the same reason by running away.17 When Ball arrived at the Hampton estate with his new master, he was left standing at the entrance to the property. “In a few minutes,” Ball recalled, “two young ladies, and a young gentleman, came out of the house, and walked to the gate, near which I was with the horse.” The Hampton children had come to see “what kind of boy” their father had brought home from the capital. One of the girls flattered Ball with kind words, saying he was a “very smart looking boy.” This pleased him and made him think he would be treated well in the coming days. The interest taken by the young master in this newest addition to the family’s slave population, however, was more serious. The boy, possibly Hampton’s namesake, Wade II, questioned Ball on his experience as a field laborer. Did he know the ways of cultivating cotton? Was he skilled in picking the precious fiber, and had he ever worked a saw-tooth gin? Perhaps the boy even inspected the hands of his father’s new purchase, seeking evidence of his ability there like a fortune-teller. The boy’s line of questioning shows he had learned his father’s lessons well, adopting the attitudes of a Southern gentleman without hesitation. The value of a black man, young Hampton had learned, lay in his ability to pick cotton.18

48

Jack

The earth was hitting back, each blow to the ground coming back on him hard up through the hoe shaft. It felt like doing the work of two men while another beat on you. He continued chopping as if expecting matters to improve, but with each strike he managed only to dent the ground or behead the offending growth. Embedded in the soil, out of sight from man and beast, the weeds meanwhile continued their work of choking life from the cotton plants. There was another world beneath the surface of this one, a world no less brutal in its ways. He straightened up and looked around. They had not yet finished the row, and it was nearly midday. Soon the overseer would pay them a visit. They would have to quicken their pace. Calling out, using words familiar to them alone, he urged them on, the strength of his voice a reminder that those who fell behind would see the lash come nightfall. But this was not enough, and so with his hoe still in hand—perhaps carried as a reminder that he was one of them after all—he walked the length of the row offering words of encouragement. None acknowledged him, whether by word or gesture, for this was a timeworn routine. When the overseer arrived, they met at the edge of the field. The sun was in his eyes as he looked up at the man on horseback, but still he held his hat firmly in his hands. He quickly explained the reason for the slowness of their work. The overseer then nodded and rode on to get a better look. The crack of the whip made him look up. He had been trying to wipe the blindness from his eyes when the sound reached him. His vision now cleared, he saw the overseer riding calmly toward him. “Got a delinquent at the end of the row. See to it.” With that he rode off in the direction of the next field. The girl was sobbing quietly when he reached her. The overseer’s whip had not in fact struck the child, but the force of its sound had frightened her, just as it was meant to do. The others were waiting to see what might transpire. 50

She was kneeling on the hard ground, her face in her hands. He hauled her up and pulled her hands from her face. Then, with a sudden movement, he brought his opened hand hard against her cheek. Without saying a word or waiting to see if she had stopped crying, he passed his hoe to her and then took her tool from where it lay on the ground. They worked alongside each other in silence for the remainder of the day.

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4 Transformation

T

he cotton boom that occurred at the turn of the nineteenth century made men rich in both the North and the South, but reliance on a single crop also put them in a precarious position, and they felt their vulnerability keenly. As a writer for an Alabama newspaper noted, “The slaveholder dresses in Northern goods, rides in a Northern saddle . . . reads Northern books. . . . In Northern vessels his products are carried to market and on Northern-made paper, with a Northern pen, with Northern ink, he resolves and reresolves in regard to his rights.” The North and South were linked in this new era of production and consumption, for the North purchased cotton from Southern plantations and in return sold manufactured goods to the South. A dip in the market could have a devastating effect on the nation as a whole.1 The South’s position, however, was marked with greater uncertainty. Planters generally lived off the profits of their next crop, making a steady market necessary and an expanding one ideal. But cotton was hard on the soil, quickly depleting it of nutrients and causing crop quality to decline. Westward expansion at first promised to resolve the problem by opening up territory with rich, robust soil—territory that would eventually become

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the slave states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama—and many planters began operating in these areas. But not everyone could afford to continue expanding simply to maintain a profit margin, and those who did expand found they had a larger and more costly enterprise to sustain. More money was always needed, but this was difficult to achieve as the better-quality cotton grown in the new territories glutted the market, causing prices to fluctuate wildly. In 1826 cotton reached a low of eight to twelve cents a pound, down from thirty cents ten years earlier. By 1850, relatively poor crops in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee and the demand for laborers in the west led many planters to sell slaves in order to supplement their income.2 After the initial cotton boom, economic development in the South slowed appreciably, with investment in canals and railroads lagging far behind the North. Railroad mileage in the South dropped from 44 percent of the country’s total in 1840 to just 26 percent a decade later. Manufacturing capacity also fell behind the North. Southerners were making money, but they were spending it on imported goods rather than using it to develop local economies and a secure infrastructure.3 There were other problems, too. With westward expansion came the question of whether slavery should be allowed in the new territories and, indeed, whether it should be allowed at all. The South had become dependent on slave labor, and nothing put a slaveholder on the defensive more than calls for the immediate and unconditional emancipation of all enslaved people, as the abolitionists were beginning to make. Nothing, that is, except perhaps slave insurrection. The slaves themselves were a problem, or could be if they got a mind to rise up and seize the power denied them by their masters. Slaveholders linked the two, uppity slaves and abolitionists, for why else would otherwise happy and contented servants turn murderous if not for the insidious influence of men and women apparently hell-bent on destroying the South? Between the ups and downs of market prices, the high cost of living, the growing political conflict between the North and South, and the increasingly bitter debate over the status of black people in American society, the nineteenth century was looking to be a difficult time. It was fast becoming apparent that change might not in fact mean progress. Newspapers publicly aired many of the concerns occupying the minds of citizens across the land, but they were also sources of entertainment, distraction from life’s many hardships. The papers were full of information, wit, sarcasm, and more than a little humbug.

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Each page was a patchwork of news and advertisements, letters to the editor and stories cadged from other papers. Lists of unclaimed letters held at the post office, the shipping news, and obituaries extolling the virtues of those whose misfortune it was to be newly dead rubbed easily alongside mixed opinions about the proposed admission of California to the Union as a free state. Page 4 might feature a notice on the services of a Swedish astrologist in town for only two weeks, while tucked in among legal notices was an invitation to attend a public lecture on recent geological discoveries. The Masonic Hall was featuring a superbly realistic panorama of the gold mines of California, and there were Negroes for sale at low prices to raise money; apply at no. 10 State Street. As for the cotton markets, well, there was rarely good news of late—a quick glimpse down the column revealed the words “unsettled,” “depressed,” and “drooping.” Turn the page, however, and you would find a long and rather humorous piece about the sea monster recently spotted in South Carolina’s Broad River, near Beaufort on the coast, the reading of which was certainly a more enjoyable way to pass the time than contemplating the economy’s dismal state.4 Peculiar events such as the sighting of a sea monster seem to have been rather common during this period. In upstate New York it snowed worms one winter, prompting the good people of Boston to cry out, “Who now denies that we once had a shower of squids on the Mill Dam?” The following spring a more gruesome form of precipitation, a shower of flesh and blood, fell from the heavens in Sampson County, North Carolina. “During the time it was falling there was a cloud overhead, having a red appearance like a wind cloud,” the papers reported. “There was no rain.” A similar storm fell in Hanover, Virginia, several weeks later.5 Not one but two showers of flesh and blood. This could hardly be the work of an imaginative newspaperman—but what could account for such peculiar phenomena? The Tri-Weekly South Carolinian suggested the shower had been caused by nothing more unusual than a turkey buzzard that had overloaded its stomach and then, “on mounting into the air, finding the load too cumbrous, it disgorges a part of the same, and thus produces a shower of the kind described; real flesh and blood.” Mystery solved, or so it seemed. Another newspaper engaged the services of “scientific men” to explain the shower. They concluded that it was the product of “counter-currents of wind meeting at an irregular angle,” which, similar to a waterspout, had picked up some dead fish, transported the decaying stuff from its original location, and then deposited it again upon the earth. Mystery solved—again. But the lack of consensus on the shower’s cause was worrying. If the experts could not agree, then how was one to know the truth?6 54

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More common than freakish weather, but no less mysterious, were the many assorted monsters that inhabited the New World. Sea monsters were common enough (it seems to have been a matter of pride for each community to have its own resident leviathan), but more interesting was the chicken with a human face rumored to be living in New Orleans. “We paid no attention to the droll stories which we heard,” one report began. “But at length we were so pressed that we determined to see for ourselves.” Sure enough, the rumors were true. “At the place mentioned we saw a chicken, having instead of a beak, a nose and mouth exactly conformed to those of a human face; the nostrils, the separating cartilage, the lips, tongue, chin, all are there.”7 Elsewhere, an extraordinary child was born. “The new born child has nothing human about it but the head and arms; the rest is literally a tortoise, the back and belly covered with a hard shell, and the feet perfectly resembling the paws of the amphibious animal.” The limbs and head could be retracted within the shell, “like the tortoise.” The parents were at first unable to accept the child into their lives, “but having consulted their priest, they resigned themselves, and the child received baptism and is likely to live.”8 Antebellum newspapers frequently printed reports of hybrid creatures seemingly caught in the act of changing from one form into another, from chicken to human, or perhaps the other way around. These stories were undoubtedly about actual beings, not phantasms or mythical beasts, but real animals and humans that because of congenital deformities appeared to resemble other creatures. Popular interest in “monsters” in Western culture goes back to antiquity, when along with other natural phenomena they were viewed as prodigies or portents, signs to warn sinners of God’s terrible wrath. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they came to be regarded less as displays of God’s terrible will than as natural wonders. Celebrated in broadsides, displayed in public houses, and discussed by philosophers in works on natural history, monstrous beings were now viewed as evidence of nature’s fertility and God’s playfulness. But during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attitudes toward human deformities further changed. As monsters entered the age of comparative anatomy and embryology they were pathologized by medical discourse and exploited by canny showmen—both doctors and show business entrepreneurs found profit in the peculiarities of nature. From portent to natural wonder to sideshow freak, natural anomalies have long given focus to ideas and anxieties about change and variation in nature.9 People looked to the scientists to explain peculiar phenomena, and naturalists were indeed grappling with the question of diversity in nature at this time, particularly diversity among humans. How had there come to be so many varieties of human being? A later 55

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generation would accept natural selection as the process by which variation occurred gradually, over the course of centuries, but in the decades before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, a time when change was everywhere apparent and the stability of self, community, and nation no longer seemed certain, change was a matter of great concern. It was not clear how, when, or why variation in nature occurred, causing human beings to be increasingly worried about their place in the cosmos. Scientists were expected to provide answers, but the scientists did not always agree with one another, and this was worrying. They did not always agree because science itself was undergoing a profound change. Modern science has its origins in the eighteenth century, when Enlightenment thinkers pursued a series of questions that galvanized European culture and contributed to a revolutionary age. Science during this time was not a separate undertaking from other forms of thought or inquiry. Philosophy, ethics, botany, theology, poetry—we now regard these as discrete disciplines, but at that time they functioned together seamlessly in the search for knowledge. Indeed, the words “science” and “scientist” as we understand them were not used in the English language until the 1830s. What we call “science” was during the eighteenth century called “natural philosophy,” an examination of God’s creation in order to discern his purpose and better comprehend man’s place in the cosmos. Most difficult perhaps for us to grasp now is this close association of scientific inquiry with theology. Nature was not something apart from God, something to be understood as having its own laws and principles. Rather, it was the material expression of God’s will: to speak of a being’s “nature” was to speak of its particular, God-given qualities and how that being fit into an ordered, moral world. The study of nature, however, gradually came into conflict with the objectives of theology. As research into the causes of various material phenomena continued apace in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the findings did not always sit comfortably alongside religious doctrine. In the absence of clear disciplinary boundaries, there was also a great deal of debate among thinkers. A particular theory might be plausible on its own terms, but when held alongside another devised from a different conceptual perspective, it seemed less so. Scientific inquiry was thus not a unified program of research but a negotiation between differing and increasingly secular points of view: it was a search for Truth in a world of many truths. This pursuit of knowledge was also a highly public undertaking. It was during this time that Europe’s great museums were founded, places where anyone could wonder at the 56

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sight of rare fossils, stuffed birds and animals, rocks and minerals, paintings, the skeletons of deformed creatures, rare jewels, elaborate metalwork, ethnographic artifacts, and the supposed horn of a unicorn. Human beings were also put on display. “Exotics” transported from distant lands and people judged unusual due to disability or deformity were routinely paraded before a curious public. Tahitians, giants and dwarves, “wild” children, Pygmies, and others were exhibited in public houses and town halls, touted as marvelous specimens that must be seen to be believed. Such spectacles were a common form of entertainment, but they were also staged in the name of science—that is, as examples of God’s creation in all its variety. Enlightenment thinkers regarded human beings as a subject of special interest. The scientific revolution of the preceding century had revised Western understanding of the natural world and also laid the foundations for a new approach to human nature. Some three hundred years of global travel and exploration, during which time Europeans had come into contact with diverse peoples around the world, had also made difference an intellectual problem to be solved. People clearly came in all shapes, colors, and sizes, but why should it be so? Were all people truly of a kind, or did the variations between peoples indicate more profound differences? Such questions had been around for some time, but during the eighteenth century they became more nuanced. When Europeans “discovered” the New World in the fifteenth century, the question they asked themselves was whether or not Native Americans were actually human. In the eighteenth century, it was the apparent contrast between “civilized” Europeans and the “primitive” peoples of the recently explored Pacific islands that absorbed Enlightenment thinkers. They pondered which of the two was man’s natural state, and how the other had come about. Were these other cultures perhaps an earlier version of our own? During this period, European thinkers formulated a “natural history” of human beings. It started with the development of classificatory systems that for the first time included humans. Paradoxically, the new approach to man involved treating him like an animal. The anatomy of “man” was studied alongside that of primates and other creatures in order to create classificatory systems from which an understanding of the “nature” of humans could be derived. Another group of scientists considered the “history” of the human animal by looking at peoples in relation to the material world, to the time and place in which they lived. This science of man, precursor to modern anthropology, was further revised and expanded as new information gathered from remote corners of the world was incorporated into existing systems. This formation of a natural history of human beings, however, was 57

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not a simple process. Throughout the eighteenth century there was little consensus as to how humans should be studied and what the evidence actually meant.10 The Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, better known by his Latin name, Linnaeus, is associated with the first phase of this new science of human beings, the development of classificatory systems. In his Systema naturae, first published in 1735, Linnaeus sought to make sense of collected data on the natural world. He sorted specimens—living things of all kinds—into groups based principally on easily observable, physical traits or characteristics. Humans were included in this taxonomy, making Linnaeus the first to classify human beings using principles of natural science. He identified five varieties or taxa of Homo sapiens (from the Greek word meaning “the same” and the Latin word for “to know”): Africanus, Americanus, Asiaticus, Europaenus, and Monstrosus. The characteristics he used to define these groups were geographical region, skin color, hair, and physiognomy; he also assigned behavioral characteristics to the four main groupings. (The fifth, Monstrosus, which applied to human anomalies such as giants and dwarfs, eventually lost its currency because these specimens could be incorporated into the other categories.) Homo Americanus was labeled obstinate, contented, and free, while Homo Asiaticus was thought grave, dignified, and avaricious. Europaenus was fickle but also keen and inventive, and to Homo Africanus Linnaeus assigned the traits of cunning, laziness, and carelessness. These links made between continent, race, and character would become enduring associations. With the Linnaean system, myriad organisms could now be studied, identified and understood against the classifications assigned by other naturalists, leading to a comprehensive picture of the natural world. His system was highly influential, but it was not without its critics. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, a wealthy and flamboyant French naturalist, found Linnaeus’s system too inflexible, too contrary to nature itself. Nature did not in fact fit into Linnaeus’s neat categories: it was far more dynamic in its processes and complex in its relations. Buffon believed that as well as studying the physical structure of individual specimens, one also had to consider an organism’s history, its habits, life cycle, and habitat—in other words, the material relation of the specimen to other organisms and to the environment. Where Linnaeus isolated specimens from each other and elevated each to an ideal, Buffon sought to place them in the real world. “The species is thus an abstract and general term,” he wrote, “for which the thing exists only in considering Nature in the succession of time, and in the constant destruction and renewal of creatures.” Buffon’s approach emphasized succession. A species was defined not by the fact that organisms looked similar but because they were related to one another through reproduction. This was a 58

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natural history of humans, not simply a system of ordering the known facts. It was also, however, a history not under God’s direct influence but one arising from physical forces.11 Although Linnaeus’s and Buffon’s approaches were in many ways opposed, they were not wholly independent of each other. Both relied on the idea that all organisms were in some way connected, and both relied on classification to create order out of a mass of information. The differences between them, however, came into sharp focus over the subject of variation among human beings. Buffon was the first to propose a theory of race formation, as well as the first to use the term “race” in the context of natural science. He concluded that humans comprised one species and that, through migration and the effects of climate, an original type had degenerated to form six varieties or races: Laplanders, Tartars (also called Mongolians), southern Asiatics, Europeans, Malays, and Ethiopians. This idea countered the Linnaean system, which was based on the idea that a species was a singular, fixed category: degeneration, or change of any kind, was not possible. If one being could change into another, then how could you be certain of its classification? The whole classificatory system would be rendered useless, the natural world revealed as having no order or meaning. The Linnaean tradition implied original diversity, that different species had always been distinct because they had been created separately, a theory later called “polygenesis.” And yet, if all creation was fixed, how had humans come to be so diverse? Buffon’s system, in contrast, explained variations as the result of environmental conditions. His approach affirmed the unity of humankind, but the actual mechanism of change remained largely unexplained, and for many the concept of such variation was hard to swallow.12 Although there was much discussion in the eighteenth century about “race,” for the Enlightenment thinkers, variation among humans was not specifically the issue so much as a route into the question of what constituted human nature. The debate addressed the cause of diversity, but it did so for the purpose of understanding the place of all humans in the cosmos. White people were typically elevated above all other peoples in such discussions, but nonwhites were not condemned outright. When the subject was pursued in America, however, the terms of the discussion were very different. A static, Linnaean conception of species was still opposed to Buffon’s view of nature as dynamic and creative— monogenesis versus polygenesis—but race itself was the object of interest. Here, in the United States, the place of humans in the cosmos was studied in order to determine whether Africans and their descendants were more suited to hard labor than Europeans. Here, the scientific debate had a direct bearing on the lives of many thousands of people. In America, the natural history of human beings became the science of slavery. 59

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Henry Moss was a second-generation African American. Originally from Virginia, he had served in the Continental Army during the War for Independence. He was apparently very dark-skinned; at least he was until 1792. In that year, at the age of thirty-eight, Moss began to turn white. It started in February. First he noticed a change of complexion in his fingers, beginning at the cuticles, but soon this extended down to the joints. Two months later a light patch of skin appeared on the back of his neck, and that, too, spread, down his body and around his torso. With time the brightening of his skin gained in pace, so much so that by 1796 friends who came to visit after an absence of just a few weeks were astonished by the transformation. According to one contemporary account, “The lines dividing the black from the white, are not regularly defined, but indented and insulated, the borders appearing as islands and peninsulas, as are represented on the chart of a sea coast. The whole of his breast, arms, and legs . . . were of a clear European complexion.” Within four years of first noticing the change in his fingertips, Moss was almost entirely white.13 Henry Moss’s transformation was probably due to vitiligo, or leukoderma, a condition related to albinism that today affects about 1 to 2 percent of the world’s population. There were several celebrated cases in the eighteenth century, but for most people the condition was unknown, and for everyone the cause was a mystery. The rarity of his experience made Moss a celebrity. In 1796 he moved to Philadelphia and there exhibited himself at a tavern in town as “A Great Curiosity,” charging a quarter of a dollar for a glimpse of the white man who had once been black, with children admitted at half price. Business was apparently very good. According to one contemporary, “Moss procured a comfortable subsistence by exhibiting himself as a show” and was considered to be as famous as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.14 Doctors and naturalists found Moss’s condition interesting but also troubling. Certainly his case highlighted the difficulty of using skin color as a sign of racial difference, but his transformation also undermined the very principle of scientific classification, just as the chicken with a human face and the child that was “literally a tortoise” would do fifty years later. Here was a man who did not fit the existing categories; who called into question the idea that white and black people were different; who seemed to suggest that beneath the surface all humans were essentially alike. The possibility that anyone could experience a similar transformation was still more unsettling. A number of distinguished scientists paid

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to have a close look at Moss, hoping to penetrate the mystery of his condition. They quizzed him about his habits, changes to his diet, or other actions that could have resulted in the disappearance of his “African complexion,” but nothing seemed to account for the change. This of course did not prevent them from forming theories. The Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush decided that a form of leprosy caused skin to be black and that Moss had had the good fortune to undergo a spontaneous cure. If true— if variations in complexion were the result of disease—then “blackness” could be treated medically. “Let science and humanity combine their efforts, and endeavour to discover a remedy for it,” Rush said. He offered a few suggestions for inducing the cure, including bleeding, purging, and the application of the juice of unripe peaches. He also suggested pressure on the skin, which was thought to cause pigment to be absorbed into the body. Fear was another possible remedy. Rush pointed out that fright caused “a similar change in the color of the negroes,” though this was temporary. More research was needed.15 Dr. Charles Caldwell, one of Rush’s students, also took an interest in Moss. “Anxious to know as much of his case as possible,” Caldwell recorded in his autobiography, “I took him in some measure under my care, procured for him suitable lodging and accommodation, induced many persons to visit him, kept him under my own strict and constant observation, and, by his permission, and for a slight reward, made on him such experiments as suited my purpose.” Caldwell’s paternalistic attitude towards Moss is tempered somewhat by the fact that Moss, clearly having an idea of the value of his condition, extracted a “reward” from the doctor. Caldwell, who regarded Moss as “a highly finished African,” conducted a number of experiments on him. One entailed inducing Moss to sweat profusely by exercising in hot weather. This was done while Moss still had some remaining patches of dark skin. Caldwell wanted to see whether the blackness from Moss’s skin would come away with perspiration. It did not. Caldwell also noted that Moss seemed in every respect healthy, but he was unusually sensitive to heat, cold, and friction—unusual, anyway, or so he believed, for a black man. “The sunshine of summer readily blistered his skin, the cold blasts of winter chilled it, and coarse linen shirts almost excoriated it,” he remarked. At the time it was widely believed that dark-skinned people were impervious to the extremes of weather, which was linked to the idea that the temperature and geographical location of a place correlated with the color of its inhabitants. Africans were thus thought suited for working in the arid South, their specifically African constitution rendering them fit for such extremes. Moss’s sensitivity may

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have been perfectly normal given the conditions he was subjected to, but given prevailing ideas on racial difference Caldwell did not expect him to react in such a way, and so found in it evidence of a profoundly changed constitution.16 Caldwell, a Southerner by birth, was a polygenist. He believed that people of different races had been created separately and so did not share common qualities. Europeans possessed a superior intellect, he said, which had been bestowed on the white race as a gift of nature at the time of creation, while Africans were an inferior type. Caldwell took pains to demonstrate that in subscribing to the theory of separate creations he did not come into conflict with Christian doctrine—Truth in science, he said, could only ever reinforce God’s Truth. He also warned whites against abusing their position. “The Caucasians are not justified in either enslaving the Africans or destroying the Indians merely because their superiority in intellect and war enable them to do so.” Even though Caldwell undoubtedly regarded nonwhites as inferior beings, he believed that this situation bestowed a duty of care upon whites’ shoulders. “Inferior beings,” he wrote, “[should] become objects of kindness because they are inferior.”17 After several weeks of subjecting Moss to different tests, Caldwell considered himself the definitive expert on his condition. “While thousands visited and gazed at Moss as an object of curiosity and wonder, I alone endeavoured to make him a source of scientific information.” From his experiments and observations Caldwell concluded that Moss had changed complexion because the middle layer of his skin, the rete mucosum, had been absorbed into his body.18 The Reverend Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith disagreed with Caldwell’s analysis. Smith, professor of moral philosophy at the College of New Jersey, and later president of the institution that would be renamed Princeton University, was a very different sort of man from Caldwell. Where Caldwell was a vain and pompous individual, one who loved the sound of his own voice and was prone to instigating disputes with colleagues, Smith was shy and averse to confrontation. The two became bitterly opposed over the subject of human diversity, with Moss a focus of their dispute. Smith began researching the natural history of human beings for the purpose of defending Christianity; a belief in the unity and equality of all human beings firmly underpinned his science. In his view all humans shared common ancestors, as was written in the Bible, but external forces had changed the fundamental characteristics of certain populations —it was the environment that had caused physical variation among humans, not an act of God. “I am inclined,” Smith wrote, “to ascribe the apparent dullness of the negro principally 62

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to the wretched state of his existence first in his original country, where he is at once a poor and abject savage, and subjected to an atrocious despotism; and afterwards in those regions to which he is transported to finish his days in slavery, and toil.” Smith went so far as to say that given the right conditions a black person could become equal to a white person, but only by ceasing to be black in every respect.19 In 1787 Smith published a book on human diversity, with a second, expanded edition issued in 1810. Smith’s Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species was a response to the work of the Scottish philosopher Henry Home, Lord Kames, an early proponent of polygenesis who claimed that in the course of history God had changed or altered groups of humans to better suit them for the environment in which they lived. Many people found Lord Kames’s ideas on human diversity an astounding reinterpretation of the Bible. Smith was one such critic. In the Essay, Smith argued that humans had originated in Asia and subsequently dispersed around the globe. Through dispersal, different groups of humans had degenerated from a civilized state into barbarism. The cause of this downward turn was attributed to the environment, but particularly heat and “the state of society.” A white man removed to Africa would not inevitably turn black, as if he had been permanently suntanned; nor were American slaves guaranteed to become white, as Moss had apparently done. In Smith’s view the human environment, or “manner of living,” was a crucial element to any such transformation. “The great difference between the domestic and field slaves,” he wrote, “gives reason to believe that, if they were perfectly free, enjoyed property, and were admitted to a liberal participation of the society, rank and privileges of their masters, they would change their African peculiarities much faster.” Whether or not consciously, Smith overlooked the fact that domestic slaves were frequently the offspring of white slaveholders—it was not the “manner of living” that “whitened” them but the genes passed down from their fathers. According to Smith, however, given a sufficient amount of time in the United States, but particularly in the cooler, less sunny North—and under the right social conditions—all the black people in America would turn white.20 Smith’s assertion was not exactly original. Benjamin Rush had reached a similar conclusion, and both men echoed the work of Buffon and others. But Smith was writing at the turn of the nineteenth century, a pivotal time in American history. The war for independence from the British had been won, and democratic ideals were fast taking root in the new republic. But as Northern states were abolishing slavery, Southern states were importing greater numbers of Africans to pick cotton, and consequently black skin was increasingly 63

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associated with permanent servitude across the nation. Given the economics of cotton, North and South had become invested in the idea that one group of people were entitled to oppress another based solely on the color of their skin. The question of race had taken on new importance. As for Moss’s physiological change, Smith claimed that certain conditions led to an excess of bile in the rete mucosum layer of skin, which turned black on exposure to the air. “The vapours of stagnant waters with which uncultivated regions abound; all great fatigues and hardships; poverty and nastiness, tend as well as heat to augment the bile.” It was this accumulated bile that caused a darkened skin tone. Smith claimed that favorable conditions had therefore caused Moss to revert to the “original” color of his species and that his transformation had been caused by secretion, not absorption. Henry Moss, he declared, was living proof of the unity of human beings.21 Caldwell vehemently rejected Smith’s conclusions. His attack on Smith was so aggressive that colleagues believed it hastened Smith’s eventual demise. Caldwell roundly criticized the revised Essay as “one of the most fallacious productions I have ever perused.” He did not think Smith even qualified to discuss the matter. “As a scholar, a moralist, and a divine, the Reverend Dr. Smith had few equals,” Caldwell wrote. “But he was neither a naturalist nor a physiologist, because he had never given his attention to the branches of science which alone could entitle him to those appellations.” The sun could undoubtedly turn a European man’s skin a dark shade of brown, Caldwell conceded, but to change him into an African was another matter altogether. No amount of time or environmental influence could blur the lines between the races; only intermarriage could do this. Henry Moss’s transformation was pathological, Caldwell insisted, and did not indicate a mechanism by which one organism could change into another. Moss, in other words, was a freak of nature.22 In 1798 a Philadelphia magazine printed an article on Henry Moss, his life, and the meaning of his condition. The journal was bold in daring to articulate precisely that which the white population perhaps found most unsettling about his transformation: if a black man could turn white, then so, too, could a white person turn black. But as well as this possibility, there was the wider social implication of Moss’s experience. “Such is the history, so far as it goes,” the article concluded, “of the change of a negro to a white man—a change, which, had Henry Moss happened to have been a slave, would have furnished an irrefragable argument for annihilating his owner’s claim.” Benjamin Rush had also viewed Moss as the key to a social problem. A cure for blackness, an “artificial attempt to dislodge the color in negroes” and restore them to “a natural white flesh color,” was doubly important, for not 64

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only would it relieve a people of disease, as he considered blackness to be, but it would also bring an end to slavery. A cure would “destroy one of the arguments in favour of enslaving the negroes,” Rush argued, “for their color has been supposed by the ignorant to mark them as objects of divine judgements, and by the learned to qualify them for labor in hot, and unwholesome climates.” If, as Rush supposed, a cure for blackness could be induced, this would “produce a large portion of happiness in the world.”23 As the cotton boom gathered momentum, the puzzle of human diversity grew still more contentious, and the desire to understand the Truth of race became a preoccupation not only among scientific men but of the American public more generally. The terms in which Linnaeus and Buffon had discussed race were a thing of the past. Enlightenment thinking certainly influenced the scientific approach to race of the nineteenth century, but the stakes were completely different. The notion of “race” was changing from a way to discuss differences between humans to an ideology employed in defending policies of enslavement.

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A small crowd stood at the corner of Gervais and Main. He considered crossing the street and taking the long way around to avoid the gathering, but curiosity got the better of him and so he joined the group. Standing back a bit from the others, he listened as a man in fancy dress discoursed on the virtues of a new and potent elixir, a bottle of which he held aloft as if it alone proved the contents’ healing abilities. Many of the man’s words were obscured by the sound of horses clattering by with wagons and carriages in tow, but it was plain enough what he was selling. This man was not the first to venture upcountry selling miracles, and surely he would not be the last. Having seen enough, he turned to continue on his way. “You there, boy—where you going?” The man who spoke had been standing near him but now peeled off from the crowd and stood in his way, waiting for an answer. “Just going about my business, sir.” He looked around to see if this was the beginning of trouble. “Well, now, don’t your business include purchasing a substance that might well bring you health and prosperity?” The man had an elaborate moustache and wore a small hat on his head. These things marked him as a stranger to the region. “No, sir, it don’t.” He delivered these words carefully, evenly, in a tone lacking all sign of aggression but also without deference or apology. It was a chance he felt prepared to take. The stranger looked at him as if calculating the benefits of making a fuss over the impertinence of his reply, but apparently thought better of it. Without a word he returned to his position in the crowd and moments later came to his partner’s aid, claiming with great animation that the elixir on offer had recently cured his entire family of a vile and mysterious ailment. He looked on as the spectacle unfolded before him, the players continuing in their roles, but he was thinking of other things. He was thinking of the sea. He did not wish to be on the ocean, but he wanted to have it nearby so he could feel its movement on the air. The water’s 67

depth and violence frightened him, but standing at the edge of the known world brought to mind the existence of other places. With the sea in view he could almost believe in both a past and a future. These were the thoughts, or rather the shapes, that moved through his mind as he continued up Main Street. Yet by the time he entered Mordecai’s store and responded with polite cordiality to the proprietor’s greeting, he had forgotten the ocean and what it had meant to him just moments ago.

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5 Humbug

D

octor Robert Wilson Gibbes was rarely idle. “One of the most striking features in the character of Dr. Gibbes,” a contemporary noted, “is his untiring industry and indomitable energy. Remarkable for order and system, few can equal him in the amount of his labours.” The doctor cared for the families and slaves of important men, including the cotton planter Wade Hampton, but he occupied himself in other ways, too. During his lifetime he was twice mayor of Columbia, taught chemistry, geology, and mineralogy at South Carolina College, published a newspaper, and started a preparatory school for medical students. Gibbes was also involved with an experimental cotton mill, wrote several books, and undertook serious scientific research—all of which he did while maintaining a successful medical and surgical practice. Hampton once claimed that where another doctor had applied the lancet too liberally to his slaves, thereby bleeding them excessively and so causing many to die, Dr. Gibbes “lifened them” with quinine and in the process saved him five thousand dollars.1 The doctor was also an inveterate collector. Among his scientific collections—which included some ten thousand specimens—he claimed to have “everything fossil yet known in South Carolina.” His collection of documents relating to the Revolutionary War eventually 69

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formed the core of a book he published on the subject, and he also had more than two thousand autographs, many of which he obtained from friends willing to cut up their letters from famous individuals in order to send him the signatures. Over the years he acquired valuable coins, daguerreotypes of famous scientists, and an art collection thought to be superior to any other in South Carolina. Gibbes’s home was essentially a museum, a modern cabinet of curiosities that at one time may even have been open to the public so that the citizens of Columbia could admire his taste and prowess as a collector.2 The doctor (see illustration on p. 71) moved in the small and lofty circles of Carolina society, rubbing elbows with the Hamptons, Prestons, and Singletons, but at the same time he was not of the planter class. It was true that he had been born into a prominent Charleston family, and he did own a few slaves; this, however, did not put him on a level with the cotton aristocracy. He was welcomed in their homes and appreciated as a skilled physician, but he did not raise cotton for a living, and so in some respects he was more like an employee to the planters than a peer. There was also something about the man personally that prevented planters from fully accepting him as an equal, for his contemporaries frequently made fun of him. “When Gibbes dies,” one joker quipped, “he hopes to go to the Hamptons and Prestons.”3 On another occasion, at one of the dinner parties that made Columbia famous, the doctor was asked what he would like to have from the selection of meats placed before him. “As I go for the destruction of the Quacks,” he replied, “I will take some of the Duck.” “Why Doctor,” John Preston interjected, “I did not take you for such a cannibal as to devour your own kind.”4 Doctor Gibbes was fond of puns and riddles, but a joke that undermined his professional standing must have been hard to swallow. Regarded by contemporaries as “a poodle of the Hamptons,” the doctor craved recognition and respect. His many public activities were a bid to become more highly esteemed in the eyes of others, while his interest in collecting further suggests that he wished to be thought of more as a “master” than a “poodle.” By acquiring and learning everything there was to know about a certain type of object—rare coins, for example, or works of art— Gibbes created a small world that he could arrange and rearrange according to his taste and, as his knowledge increased, a world over which he was indisputably the master. By making sense of this world-in-miniature, the doctor was able to make sense of the world at large, or at least to feel that it was similarly capable of being ordered and comprehended. This helped him to feel more secure among the planter aristocracy.5 70

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Doctor Gibbes’s collecting was closely linked with his scientific work. As well as helping him to acquire the respect he craved, the work of collecting fossils, for example, reinforced in him the feeling that he was master of his world—paleontology was, after all, a process of creating order from the scattered relics of nature. There was a problem, however, in that Dr. Gibbes did not live in Philadelphia, Boston, or even Charleston, all major centers of scientific activity. The doctor lived in Columbia, which, despite being an important commercial center and capital city, was provincial and isolated, lacking both a community of like-minded men with whom he could share his expertise and the libraries, museums, and intellectual societies necessary to conduct research. Communication with other scientists was difficult. “I wished I lived where some interest is felt in science,” he once wrote to a colleague in the North. “I am ‘solitary and alone’ in a community who do all they can to discourage any interest in our pursuits.” Doctor Gibbes frequently begged his scientific friends to write or, better yet, to visit, but he had little success luring them to the Carolina midlands.6 The doctor was also “solitary and alone” in that others did not always consider his interests to be legitimately scientific. Mesmerism, the belief that a natural magnetic force flowed through the body and that it could be manipulated, was one such interest. Doctor Gibbes regularly gave lectures and demonstrations on mesmerism to small groups, usually in the homes of friends, but on occasion—and much to the indignation of Mrs. Gibbes—he would entertain guests at his home by mesmerizing his enslaved butler during dinner. On 72

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one occasion he even claimed he could mesmerize the man from a distance. With a wager on the claim, Gibbes and an associate traveled to Charleston while his butler remained at home in Columbia under the scrutiny of a group of friends. From the distance of more than one hundred miles, he was to mesmerize his subject and then stick him in the leg with a pin. When at the appointed time the butler cried out, or otherwise indicated he had been stuck, the doctor was vindicated as an expert mesmerist, or at very least had proved he was capable of exerting complete control over his butler.7 By the late 1840s few physicians took mesmerism seriously, but Dr. Gibbes was convinced of its scientific worth. This made him a subject of ridicule; he was also accused of being deceitful, of fooling the public with his phony demonstrations of mesmeric power. During this period the questions of who was qualified to make scientific pronouncements and what was considered “scientific” were hotly disputed. The honor and reputations of individual men were at stake, and some considered the future of science in America also to be in peril. When in the winter of 1843 Gibbes found himself in the midst of a controversy over mesmerism, a flurry of demonstrations having caused consternation among the city’s intellectual elite, his reputation was very much on the line. It did not help matters that another controversy over scientific truth had just captured the public’s attention and whetted the scientific community’s appetite for vitriolic debate.8 grand exhibition!!! wonders of nature! The words were writ large, but it was the illustration that caught your eye. It was not every day that you saw in the newspaper an image of a voluptuous woman naked to the waist, rising from the sea and holding her long hair up with one arm. She gazed demurely to one side yet at the same time displayed her body unapologetically. She was no ordinary woman, clearly, and indeed she appeared to be some sort of hybrid creation, for continuing beneath the surface of the water and rising up from the sea behind her in a graceful curve that both completed and echoed the woman’s shape was a tail, large and scaled like that of a massive fish. This siren, according to the text below the picture, was not simply a woman. She was, rather, “that most wonderful object of Creation, the real mermaid.” She did not come alone. Other “wonders of nature” then on display at the Masonic Hall in Charleston included a platypus, an orang-utan, various automata, a glass blower, and Mr. Wyman, an accomplished ventriloquist and magician. The mermaid, however, was the main attraction. According to the advertisement in the Charleston Courier, the mermaid had been captured “near the Figee [sic] Islands” and “had utterly dispelled the doubts 73

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of thousands and thousands of Naturalists and other scientific persons regarding the real existence of such an animal.”For five days only in January 1843, the mermaid and her fellow novelties were available to entertain and enlighten the citizens of Charleston for just fifty cents, children half price.9 The mermaid was another of those creatures that challenged the notion of fixed categories in nature. Was it a hybrid brought forth by the sexual congress of human and fish or a being caught in the very process of turning from one type into another? Maybe it was neither of these; maybe it was simply a little-known specimen representing one creation among many on the Great Chain of Being, a popular conception of hierarchy encompassing the whole of creation, from brute creation up through to the angels and other celestial beings. These possibilities all supposed the authenticity of the “Feejee Mermaid,” as it was known, but of course the real mermaid was nothing of the sort. Concocted from the head and chest of a monkey and the body and tail of a fish, the Feejee Mermaid was one among countless such novelties manufactured overseas for sale to gullible sailors. Strictly speaking, the specimen was a hybrid—the product of a union between two different species—but in no sense was it a “natural” curiosity. The Feejee Mermaid belonged to Moses Kimball, proprietor of the Boston Museum, where all manner of oddity could be seen for a small price. For some reason Kimball did not want to exhibit the mermaid himself but instead went into partnership with another showman, a man who possessed a tremendous knack for stirring up a fuss, Phineas Taylor Barnum. The exhibition of natural oddities—the sideshow—was a tradition then more than two hundred years old. It changed greatly during the nineteenth century and reached its gaudy and flamboyant pinnacle with Barnum (see illustration on p. 75), the man who started his career by purchasing and exhibiting a blind and disabled black woman, Joice Heth, who claimed to have been George Washington’s nurse, which if true would have made her 161 years old. Barnum went on to promote General Tom Thumb, Jenny Lind, and other global sensations. Previously such individuals had exhibited themselves, as Henry Moss did late in the eighteenth century; but in the era of mass production and population explosion, the independent exhibit gave way to spectacles orchestrated by a few men gifted in the arts of deception. New heights in the business of exhibiting curiosities were achieved in the nineteenth century, and a new word was coined to meet the outrageous claims of showmen: humbug. Not every exhibit was humbug, a falsehood concocted for the express purpose of drawing cash from the pockets of a curious public, but modern times had made the strange 74

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and wonderful a daily occurrence and at the same time raised doubts about what was possible. From these two conditions the public hoax was born. Was the latest oddity real, or was it a fake? With things changing as fast as they did, it was often hard to tell. Playing on this uncertainty was the showman’s métier, his bread and butter and, if he pulled off a big one, it was also his greatest source of pride. The sideshow also provided a forum for discussing issues that were not generally raised in polite society, issues such as race. Barnum’s descriptions of the Feejee Mermaid and Joice Heth suggest that the two held a similar place in the imagination of nineteenthcentury Americans: he described both as shriveled, diminutive, and rather unattractive. The mermaid was also “black-looking,” suggesting it was comparable to Heth, his “dark subject,” in more than simply appearance. Many of the words used by the press and public to describe Heth also indicate a preoccupation with her age and race, as well as unease over what she represented. She was called “the dark daughter of Madagascar,” “the venerable nigger,” “this rare piece of antiquity,” “the solitary relic of a former age,” and “the living mummy,” 75

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among other labels. So, too, was she called “wonderful,” “extraordinary,” “disgusting,” and “curious.” Joice Heth, with her rigid and bent limbs, was so utterly appalling a sight, the public seemed to say, that she could not possibly be related to them, to the white people who paid to have a look. Yet there she was, a singing, talking, breathing reminder of what America was—she had, after all, been George Washington’s nurse. Seven years later Barnum would similarly thrill and disgust audiences with the Feejee Mermaid, the principal difference between the two being that the mermaid’s race was discussed in terms of “species.”10 When Kimball first showed Barnum the mermaid he had purchased from the son of a sea captain, Barnum was impressed with its apparent authenticity. Nevertheless, he sought a second opinion from a local naturalist. Showmen such as Barnum understood that “Doctors” and “Professors” lent an air of sophistication and specialized knowledge—an air of authenticity—to their exhibits. Endorsement from a scientist was always good for receipts. Yet when Barnum showed the mermaid to a naturalist, the man declared it a fake. The showman was surprised at this hasty conclusion, and so asked the naturalist why he thought the mermaid had been manufactured. “Because I do not believe in mermaids,” he replied. “That is no reason at all,” the impresario reasoned, finding the loophole he was looking for, “and therefore I’ll believe in the mermaid and hire it.” Being the shrewd businessman that he was, Barnum also thought to hire himself a naturalist.11 The role of Dr. Griffin, the British naturalist who accompanied the mermaid on its tour, was first played by Barnum’s occasional partner in humbug, Levi Lyman, and later by his uncle, Alanson Taylor. The use of Griffin as a pseudonym, perhaps like Lyman’s own name, is a marvelous play on the showman’s game. The griffon, or gryphon, was a mythical beast, a hybrid composed from the head of an eagle and the body of a lion, that during the Middle Ages was widely believed to be real. As the guardian of hidden gold mines, the gryphon kept a valuable secret, knowledge that could make men fabulously rich. In the case of Dr. Griffin, wealth was certain so long as the doctor kept the mermaid’s true nature hidden from the public. Barnum first exhibited the Feejee Mermaid in 1842, with Lyman skillfully playing the role of Dr. Griffin, holding public lectures about his life as an explorer and his theories on zoology. These well-attended events benefited from the growing public interest in science, the lecture circuit being an easy source of income for bona fide as well as bogus scientists. America’s appetite for the peculiar was matched only by its desire to know, to obtain knowledge that ostensibly paved the road to mastery—and who did not want to be a master of the 76

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modern world? In the United States, the combination of technological advancement and egalitarian self-confidence made for an opinionated people. By midcentury the “how-to” book was a popular form of entertainment and instruction, and debating clubs and philosophical societies were everywhere giving people the opportunity to hold forth on a subject of their choice. Though many people did not actually understand the scientific theories espoused in public lectures, they nonetheless found the debates and objects of science fascinating. People were learning a new language—the language of modernism—and they wanted to use it. At the sideshow, museum exhibit, public lecture, or demonstration you could test your knowledge, see if you could spot the humbug, and at the same time perhaps have a little fun. In Dr. Griffin’s—or rather Lyman’s—skillful hands, the Feejee Mermaid was an unqualified success throughout the Northeast, attracting a steady stream of paying spectators who were curious to see this remarkable phenomenon and debate the possible explanations for its configuration. When the mermaid traveled to the South, however, Dr. Griffin had a more difficult time of it. In Charleston, Dr. Griffin encountered a group of scientists who did not take kindly to the bogus naturalist and his phony mermaid; in Charleston, he encountered the Reverend Dr. John Bachman. Natural history was John Bachman’s greatest passion. As a boy growing up in Dutchess County, New York, he had studied nature by collecting plants, birds, and animals, but he did so without his family’s knowledge. Science was not considered a serious pursuit for a boy. It did not adequately prepare him for life and so was best left to idlers and the very rich. But adult disapproval could not stifle Bachman’s deep fascination with the forms and processes of nature. By the age of fourteen he had amassed hundreds of specimens in his collection, managing somehow to keep them a secret from his family. Bachman’s public life, meanwhile, was devoted to the church. In 1813 he received his license to preach, and the following year he was ordained as a Lutheran pastor. In 1815, when tuberculosis forced him to relocate to a milder climate, he took responsibility for Saint John’s Lutheran Church in Charleston, where he remained for nearly sixty years.12 Bachman was an able and respected pastor, but he did not neglect his first love. As an adult he pursued natural history with the same ardor that had possessed him as a child, finding time to earn a doctorate from the University of Berlin, conduct research in the fields of zoology and ornithology, and from 1848 serve as professor of natural history at the College of Charleston. He also collaborated with John J. Audubon on The Viviparous Quadrupeds of 77

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North America, a three-volume work published in 1845–1849. Though Audubon was, and still is, the more famous of the two, Bachman’s collections and his knowledge of the habits of American mammals were indispensible to the collaboration. It was Bachman who wrote most of the book’s descriptions of species. The reverend doctor (see illustration above) had an almost childlike quality and was liked as a compassionate and benevolent man. When his views were challenged, however, he could be bitterly petulant and dogmatic in his opposition. A man who devoted his life to both God and science, Bachman simply could not abide blatant and self-serving disregard for tradition and law, the cornerstones of civilization and, to some extent, nature. What was worse, he despised deceit of all kinds. Speaking of Bachman’s involvement in a 78

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later controversy—over the cause of human diversity—one contemporary noted of the reverend doctor, “There was so much acrimony in his writings that I knew not how to reconcile so much bitterness with the apparent genial disposition of the man.” Among Bachman’s first targets was the Feejee Mermaid.13 “Our good natured community of Charleston has always shown a great willingness to be gulled by wonderful narratives and strange sights,” Bachman wrote in a letter to the Charleston Mercury after seeing the specimen. “If after this notice they are so weak as to pay their half dollar to see a fishes tail [sic] attached to the head and shoulders of a Baboon— they are at liberty to do so.” The letter, published under the pseudonym No Humbug three days after the show opened, went on to call the mermaid “a clumsy affair,” further noting, “the seams are not sufficiently covered to conceal the point of union between Fish and Monkey even through a glass case.” No Humbug suggested that the exhibitor of the mermaid should allow naturalists to examine it out of its glass case. If after a scientific examination the mermaid was judged to be truly one of nature’s creations, then they would happily issue a certificate to this effect and send the showman and his unique specimen on their moneymaking way. “If on the contrary it should prove what it is here pronounced to be, a contemptible hoax—[the showman] should allow them to throw the creature into the fire and clear himself from the city as fast as his heels can carry him.”14 Doctor Griffin, now portrayed by Alanson Taylor, responded to No Humbug with a letter to the Mercury, submitted under the name The Man Who Exhibits the Mermaid, in which he cast doubt on No Humbug’s qualifications as a scientist and his status as a gentleman. “Of one thing we are certain,” he wrote of his opponent, “and that is that he belongs not to the scientific and highly respected medical faculty of this city, very many of whom have done us the honor to visit us.” It was No Humbug who lacked authenticity, not the mermaid. The Man Who Exhibits the Mermaid made it clear in his letter that under no circumstances would he allow a “scientific examination” to take place, for this would undoubtedly entail “cutting and defacing” the mermaid. Men of science, after all, were prone to dissecting their specimens, cutting them to pieces in search of hidden knowledge. Taylor almost certainly knew that Barnum, in his lease agreement with Kimball, had promised “to take all proper and possible care of said curiosity [the mermaid] and not allow it to be handled or in any manner injured or abused.” A close examination, scientific or otherwise, would clearly go against this agreement.15 The dispute might have ended there were it not for an editorial that appeared in the 79

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Courier, rival paper to the Mercury, praising the “Wonders of Nature” exhibit as “one of the most attractive, in variety, beauty, curiosity, and comic effect we have ever witnessed.” Here again, the mermaid was singled out as a showstopper. “The appearance is in every respect that of a natural and not an artificial object,” the editor remarked. “It is certainly no compound or combination, as has been supposed, of ape and fish—but is either altogether nature’s handi-work, or altogether the production of art—and if it be indeed artificial, it is the very perfection of art, imitating nature in the closest similitude. We are rather inclined to have faith on the occasion.” The Courier’s editor declined to state whether he believed the mermaid was real, it “not being in our power to apply to it any scientific test of truth,” yet after having handled and examined it “as closely as could be effected by touch and sight,” he judged “that if there be any deception, it is beyond the discovery of both those senses.”16 Apparently not an artificial concoction but in any case—whether real or manufactured —a magnificent specimen. Bachman was incensed by the Courier’s support of the mermaid. He simply could not stand idly by while the public was robbed of its money and sold false notions of scientific Truth. “Let not the cause of science be degraded by the exhibition of a despicable fraud, backed by the recommendations of a public journal,” he fumed in another letter, going on to say of the Courier’s editors that “if they know nothing of a science on which they pretend to write, they should at least preserve a prudent silence.”17 Bachman’s adversary in the increasingly bitter dispute was Richard Yeadon, a lawyer as well as one of the Courier’s editors. The conflict was ostensibly about the authenticity of an object, whether it was a natural or an artificial specimen, yet the parties involved in the mermaid affair were really arguing for their own authenticity, each asserting his right to proclaim the Truth of the mermaid. Ironically this dispute continued for some time with no one revealing his “true” self but hiding behind the mask of a pseudonym. False names were often used during the nineteenth century, a time when public notoriety was considered unseemly. But at the same time, a man who hid behind a pseudonym could be a confidence man, a rogue, or worse. So long as the men involved in the mermaid dispute made their public statements under cover, no one could be certain of the authenticity of their claims. For Bachman the matter turned on the status of the naturalist, on his right to be recognized as a scientific authority. By declaring that Yeadon had an “egregious ignorance of the first principles of science,” he was asserting his supremacy as a man of scientific learning— but, having assumed the identity of No Humbug, he labored to do this. Writing as No Hum80

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bug, Bachman professed “to be acquainted with Natural History,” and he listed the scientific reasons the “pretend mermaid” could not be a natural specimen: it had two abdomens, that of a monkey and a fish; it bore the characteristics of both a warm- and cold-blooded creature, which was not possible in nature; and so forth. “Two such contrary characters cannot exist in the same animal, unless we reverse every law by which nature is governed.” But so long as he remained incognito, Bachman’s opinions meant little. Anyone could make an anonymous claim for scientific Truth in the pages of a newspaper. The information itself held no authority; it was the speaker who made the claim true.18 Bachman believed unequivocally in the authority of the scientist, yet in the nineteenth century this was still contested territory. Yeadon, for his part, believed that as a gentleman of reputation he was perfectly qualified to express an opinion on the mermaid, that his powers of observation and deduction were as good as those of any other man of similar standing. Consequently, he felt that Bachman had launched an “unprovoked civil assault” on his personality. No Humbug’s suggestion that the Courier had backed a fraud meant that either Yeadon was in cahoots with the exhibitor—and was therefore a liar —or he had been duped. Both reflected poorly on him. But unlike No Humbug, Yeadon had actually held the mermaid in his hands and subjected it to examination “by touch and sight.” This experience surely qualified him to hold an opinion. He did not claim the mermaid was authentic but simply stated that he could detect no evidence of deceit. If it was manufactured, then it was expertly done.19 To prove that the Feejee Mermaid was a hoax Bachman enlisted the aid of his fellow Charleston naturalists. Charleston had long been a key center of scientific activity in America. As early as 1748 a group of citizens established the Charles Town Library Society, which functioned as a repository for books and sponsored meetings for the discussion of literary, philosophical, and scientific matters. The Library Society also established the nation’s first museum, in 1773, which found new life in 1815 when the recently formed Literary and Philosophical Society assumed responsibility for the collections. In the eighteenth century the Charleston naturalists Dr. Alexander Garden and John L. E. W. Shecut developed international reputations and corresponded regularly with their European counterparts; Garden, for whom the gardenia is named, was a regular correspondent of Linnaeus. In the nineteenth century this tradition of excellence was continued by the herpetologist John Edwards Holbrook; the country’s leading mycologist, Edmund Ravenel; and Lewis R. Gibbes, cousin of Dr. Robert Gibbes, an authority on astronomy, botany, chemistry, mathematics, and zoology. Together with Bachman, who finally cast off his pseudonymous persona in the dispute 81

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with Yeadon, now also acting in his own name, these men represented scientific authority in the South. On 5 February 1843, a group of naturalists, including Bachman, Lewis Gibbes, and Holbrook, published a certificate in the Mercury stating that each man had examined the mermaid and determined that “this pretended wonder is formed by the artificial union of two very distinct and widely separated species—an ape and a fish.” What was more, the seams joining the two species together were plainly visible to the eye. The matter, however, did not rest there.20 Yeadon accused Bachman and his team of experts of playing with the truth. There was “no science in this great inquiry of ‘seams,’” he declared, because the examining scientists had simply looked through the glass case as anyone could have done. A true scientific examination would have required handling and even cutting into the specimen, but of course Barnum was not about to let this happen. Yeadon, however, had held the mermaid in his hands, and this gave him an advantage.21 “I deny that there is any apparent artificial junction of two skins,” Yeadon wrote, choosing his words carefully. “I further deny that the eye of science is necessary to determine the naked question of fact.” Anyone with eyes could detect a seam on the mermaid if it was indeed there; to do so required no special knowledge. But there was no seam, Yeadon insisted. He went on to suggest that the naturalists who investigated the mermaid had imagined the seam, that their “academic minds” had supplied what was not actually there in order to prove what they already took for granted, that mermaids did not exist. “Your seam then is but a mental conclusion,” he said. The naturalists who published the certificate were “frail and fallible; and indeed, misled by hypothesis, they are often found, and they are peculiarly liable, to substitute fancy for fact.” Others, however, could see with perfect clarity, and in this case they saw nothing.22 “But do you not know that looking is not seeing?” Lewis Gibbes countered in the Courier. “Do you not know, that in the practical concerns of life, and particularly in scientific subjects, the many look but the few see?” Gibbes argued for his elite status as one of “the few” who saw what others missed, who had specific knowledge that augmented sight, not clouded it. Yeadon, by contrast, was “clearly among the many who looked, and not among the few who, knowing how and where to look, saw. To show you that though you may have eyes as good as others, you do not yet thoroughly know the difference between looking and seeing.”23 Given this emphasis on looking and seeing, it is surprising that no photographs were made of the mermaid; none at least are known. Why did no one on either side of the debate 82

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propose to have a daguerreotype made of the thing—an operation that did not entail “cutting and defacing”—and in this way determine whether or not a seam was actually visible? The daguerreotype was universally understood to provide a faithful representation of the object depicted, and so surely would have resolved the dispute. By 1843 several daguerreotypists were operating studios in Charleston—so why were none commissioned to take the Feejee Mermaid’s portrait? Even though photography promised to tell the truth of all things, the camera was not in fact turned on all things; it was not a device for documenting the world simply as it happened to appear in front of an opened lens. With rare exception, such as the New Jersey man who wanted a photograph of his dead wife’s possessions, people generally did not have daguerreotypes made of their belongings or the significant events in their lives, their place of work, or their homes. They used the camera not to record the quotidian facts of daily experience but to construct an idea of themselves and others through portraiture. This undoubtedly had something to do with the practicalities of photography in so far as the process of making daguerreotypes was complex and the materials were cumbersome. But a still greater reason for the limited application of photography was that the conventions of the daguerreotype arose from past forms of image making, particularly painting. Of the three genres of painting that were current in the nineteenth century—history painting, still life, and portraiture—it was portraiture that Americans found most useful and desirable. In science, however, drawing was thought to be the most accurate form of representation. Certainly drawing was cheaper than painting and could easily be reproduced for publication. Between the technical constraints of the daguerreotype and the prevalence of established forms and conventions of image-making, devising a new use for photography was not a simple matter. But perhaps someone did suggest daguerreotyping the mermaid, and Taylor, under Barnum’s instruction, did not allow it. Ending the controversy by exposing the Feejee Mermaid as a fake, or even just showing that it was not the long-haired beauty of the advertisement, certainly would have dampened profits. More likely, however, the idea was never even considered. The conflict was not really about the presence or absence of a seam. It was about who was qualified to see the mermaid—not simply look at it but see its true nature. In other words, the conflict was about identity and authority. The camera did have a kind of authority in that the image it produced was thought to reveal more than the human eye could see naturally, but the camera’s form of vision was never independent of those who looked at the 83

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images it produced. Had a daguerreotype been made of the mermaid, Yeadon and the Charleston naturalists would likely have seen different things in the same image, just as they saw the mermaid itself differently. For a photograph to serve as evidence, there had to be a common understanding of what the image showed. In 1844 Henry Fox Talbot suggested using photography to make pictures of prized objects, such as collections of porcelain, images that could be used as “evidence of a novel kind” should any of the items be stolen. But proving the existence of an object was not the same thing as proving the nature of an object. Photography could easily prove that something once existed, that it had actually been “here” in order to be photographed, but to prove the nature of an object required judgment and consensus—it required a shared vision, which Yeadon and Bachman would never achieve. Put differently, the camera was not a device for settling disputes between gentlemen.24 Eventually, the mermaid controversy died down. The two sides of the argument were

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never going to agree, the mermaid itself was long gone, having continued its tour of the South, and the discussion in the press had reached a level of abstraction that was difficult for most people to follow. There were also other problems for Charleston’s naturalists to contend with, other examples of humbug that needed to be exposed. Bachman had a new battle to fight. As the mermaid controversy dissipated, mesmerism surfaced to take its place. “We are now fairly in for Mesmerism, as well as the Mermaid,” Yeadon wrote, “but we candidly confess that we have more faith in the former than the latter.” Yeadon proved a staunch supporter of mesmerism, promoting in his newspaper both traveling and local mesmerists at every opportunity. For this he further incurred the wrath of Dr. Bachman and others eager to defend True science against the plague of charlatanism. In Bachman’s view the popular interest in mesmerism was just another case of the public’s gullibility. People needed educating, as did those scientists ignorant enough to believe in such foolishness.25 Among the mesmerists who passed through Charleston during the winter of 1843 were a Mr. Learned, Messrs Fisk and Johnson, and Mr. Shelton, “a plain, rough farmer, who nevertheless achieves wonders equal to those of the most scientific manipulator.” When Dr. Gibbes learned that others were exhibiting their skills for the public, he traveled to Charleston to join the proceedings and even appeared on stage with Mr. Learned, giving a demonstration in which he induced one subject to sing a song. Whereas the doctor believed he was exploring a little-understood phenomenon with the potential to cure illness, others— Bachman included—accused him of either being insane or perpetrating a hoax. “I myself am not humbugged,” the doctor protested in his defense, “and therefore not humbugging.”26 Yet the tide was turning against mesmerism, and in the later 1840s, whether due to the public drubbing he received from Bachman or for some other reason, the doctor seems to have given up mesmerism for other pursuits. Perhaps he decided to spend his time on a more securely respectable activity, such as paleontology. He could hardly be accused of pursuing an established discipline out of insanity. Nevertheless, he and Bachman again found themselves trading insults in the daily papers—only this time Bachman picked the wrong side. In 1845 the doctor came by the partial jaw and lower teeth of an unusual animal. Through careful study he determined that the teeth and bone belonged to a new variety of

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water mammal, similar in some ways to whales and dolphins. He named his specimen Dorudon. Gibbes compared his fossil with examples of a creature the paleontologist Professor Richard Owen had named Zeuglodon, and although there were similarities, he believed the differences were significant enough to assign his animal to the same class as the Zeuglodon but to give it its own genus. Both animals had hollow teeth, but Gibbes’s Dorudon had hollow teeth with two roots, not just one. The doctor published his classification and description of the Dorudon, gaining him much-desired respect from scientific colleagues nationwide. His elation was short-lived.27 The Dorudon did not belong to a separate genus, Professor Owen proclaimed, but was simply a small Zeuglodon. This opinion, given by a senior naturalist, devastated Gibbes, especially since the scientific community in America swung toward Owen’s view. The doctor had no choice but to capitulate, although he never gave up hope that further fossil evidence would vindicate his claims. In March 1845, the same year that Dr. Gibbes first came across the fossil bones of his Dorudon, a man in Alabama excavated a giant fossil animal measuring an astonishing 114 feet in length. Doctor Albert Koch claimed that what he had found was the biblical Leviathan, or more simply a sea serpent, but he called it “Hydrarchus.” What he had actually found was another Zeuglodon. It was also pure humbug. Albert Koch—there is no evidence he ever actually earned a doctorate—made a career of digging up old bones and exhibiting them for money. Born in Germany, he immigrated to America in 1835 and soon thereafter set up shop in Saint Louis, Missouri, as a dealer in fossils. Koch found his specimens in the South, exhibited them for as long as the public showed interest, and then sold them to museums, sometimes for handsome fees. Scientists found this commercial approach to paleontology distasteful, but the paying public expressed no such criticism. More seriously, the scientific community took exception to his specimens. The fossils were real enough, but Koch always assembled them incorrectly. Possibly he did this out of ignorance, but he always seemed to present to the public the most dramatic specimen he could create with the parts he had. When he put together the bones of a mastodon he had found in Missouri in 1840, he mounted the beast’s colossal tusks on its head, as if they were horns. “Real” paleontologists easily spotted the mistake.28 Hydrarchus was a different sort of fake. Koch’s sea serpent had been composed of bones collected from various animals at different sites and assembled to make one massive beast. Some of the pieces were not even bones but fossilized shells. “These could not fail to strike the eye at a glance,” the American naturalist Jeffries Wyman claimed, “when examined 86

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by any one acquainted with the forms of fossil nautiloid shells.” Wyman provided the most damning condemnation of Koch’s exhibit in the journal for the Boston Society of Natural History when he wrote, “These remains never belonged to one and the same animal.” Few apart from Koch disagreed, but among those who sided with Koch was the Reverend Dr. Bachman.29 In the year following the debate on mesmerism, Bachman and Gibbes renewed their animosity over the authenticity of Koch’s fossils. At first the doctor had taken Koch for the real thing, a paleontologist like himself hot on the trail of a new creature, possibly a Zeuglodon, but maybe it was a specimen that proved the existence of his Dorudon. This was both exciting—the find could validate his own claims—but also disturbing: “Dr.” Koch could beat him to the prestige of being the first to identify the thing. The opinions of Wyman and others, however, had settled the matter. In a publication on the classification of Zeuglodon, Gibbes listed the various naturalists who had debunked the fossil bones “crowded together by Mr. Koch.” This was not an unreasonable thing to do in an article that sought to clarify taxonomy, but Bachman felt that Gibbes was unfair to Koch and so came to his rescue.30 The dispute over Koch’s Hydrarchus was not unlike the argument over Barnum’s mermaid. Both hinged on the matter of looking and seeing, on the question of who could see more accurately, more scientifically, but with an underlying suspicion of deception. There was, yet, a grave difference to this dispute in that the argument was between two doctors, not a doctor and a newspaper editor. When the Feejee Mermaid exhibit evolved into an argument about seams, Barnum had recognized that “the bubble has burst” and changed his tactics. Instead of declaring the mermaid real, he promoted the debate itself. “Who is to decide when doctors disagree?” his advertising slogan now read. It was because Gibbes and Bachman were both scientific men that the dispute between them was more acrimonious, more technical, and perhaps also less entertaining. It was also considered more damaging to science and the scientific community.31 In what turned out to be his final missive to the Mercury on the Hydrarchus affair, Bachman played down the differences between himself and Gibbes and publicly offered to drop the matter, a magnanimous gesture for one usually desperate to be proven right. His reason was that “there is just now a general jubilee among the naturalists of Charleston, [and] we would gladly encourage a harmony of feeling.” A distinguished visitor, Professor Louis Agassiz, was about to pay the scientific community in South Carolina a visit. It was a very bad time indeed for doctors to disagree.32

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He did not have to treat her that way. It was not fair. She only stopped for a moment, just a moment to catch her breath. She had been distracted, it was true, but she also needed a moment to catch her breath. The ground was so hard that she had worn herself out and needed to rest. Master had understood this—he spared her a whipping, didn’t he? But he—he was never so kind, not with her. It was just like that time— She heard a sound, somewhere off to the left, and pressed deeper into the hedge. A thorn cut into the flesh of her arm, drawing forth a dark bead of blood. Sucking the wound, she watched as three men on horseback passed close to where she hid. They did not see her. They did not stop. Her stomach rumbled. She was hungry. It had been hours since she had eaten and now she was hungry. She would probably die of hunger, and then he would regret having treated her so harshly. They would find her body in the woods picked apart by crows, and he would cry when he was told. They would all cry. Picking a berry from the nearest shrub, she put it into her mouth but quickly spat it out. The bitter taste lingered. It was not fair . . . . When she awoke it was dark. Emerging from the hedge, she yawned and stretched her limbs. The air was cool. She began walking. She did not know where she was going. It just felt good to move. As she passed each tree she ran her hand along its surface, taking pleasure in the rough texture. When her stomach made a noise, she was reminded of her hunger and grew tired. She sat on a fallen tree to rest. At first the sound frightened her; it was so close, almost as if she herself had been the source. She turned. Nothing. Then she heard it again. Looking up, she saw the owl perched on a low branch, watching, eyes blinking crazy—not together like you would expect, but each of its own accord. 89

“Hello,” she said. The owl did not reply, but turned its head away, and then back to face her. It blinked. “I’m hungry,” she said. For what seemed an eternity she watched the bird. She watched it and forgot the forest, forgot her hunger and the reason she had run away. Her eyes brought her closer to the owl than she ever imagined a person could be to such a creature. As she watched it watching the forest the bird became very important to her, though she could not have said why. She observed it closely, its shape and its movements, and gradually the feathers were made known to her, its movements as familiar as her own. When the bird took wing, she rose from her place and went with it, silent and proud, soaring toward home.

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6 The Big Fish

I

t was a fine early October morning in 1846 when a handsome, powerfully built man nearing his fortieth year stepped from the gangway of the Hibernia in Boston harbor. Though travel weary, the newcomer was full of enthusiasm for what he might find in the New World, and immediately he set out to make his way through the city to Pemberton Square, perhaps asking for directions along the way. The autumn foliage was in full display, the colorful leaves standing out brightly against the clear sky in a spectacle unlike any the visitor had previously seen in nature. As he moved through the city he noted no fewer than twelve species of oak, five each of walnut and maple, as well as varieties of juniper and cypress, among others. The rich fall colors brought to his mind the ripening of fruit, and he saw in the autumn foliage a similar phenomenon, the leaves maturing like cherries and apricots into vivid colors. It was a comparison that had never occurred to him in Europe.1 Pemberton Square was a neighborly place, and one ordinarily expected a familiar face on answering the bell. So when John Amory Lowell opened the door and found a stranger on his doorstep, he was perplexed. Then the man spoke. “I am P-r-o-f-es-so-r A-g-a-ssiz.” The words were formed slowly and carefully, the language colored with a thick European accent. 91

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Lowell, realizing his mistake, quickly invited his guest inside and congratulated him on his safe arrival to Boston. Some weeks ago, he explained as the two moved indoors, there were reports that the Hibernia had been lost at sea. The professor was presumed dead.2 The arrival of Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (see illustration above) to the United States was eagerly anticipated. When the spring issue of the American Journal of Science announced that “this distinguished naturalist, who is known wherever science is cultivated,” would soon be visiting, the news caused a stir. Author of more than 175 publications in various scientific disciplines, and first to propose the theory that there had been an ice age, Agassiz was widely recognized as a brilliant naturalist, one sufficiently accomplished to be consid92

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ered the intellectual heir of the great Baron Georges Cuvier. He was also an enormously likable man. “His devotion, ability, and zeal,” the Journal went on to say with justifiable confidence, “his amiable and conciliating character, will . . . secure for him the cordial cooperation of our naturalists, and the favor of the public.”3 Agassiz had crossed the Atlantic to give a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute, an organization founded by the cotton manufacturer, financier, and philanthropist John Amory Lowell to further scientific activity in America. Tickets were free and distributed by lottery. Though decidedly popular, it was a prestigious engagement in American academic circles, and Agassiz had worked his transatlantic connections to obtain an invitation. The professor was an able public speaker, but he was nervous about lecturing in America. Born in Switzerland and educated in Germany, Agassiz was fluent in French and German, but his English was not up to the same standard. During the sea voyage to Boston he had been something of an imposition on the Hibernia’s captain, insisting that the Englishman help him practice his conversation. Despite this tutoring, Agassiz was not wholly confident that he could charm an English-speaking audience. “It is no small matter,” he later said, “to satisfy an audience of three thousand people in a language with which you are but little familiar.”4 He need not have worried. Dispensing with his notes just moments into the prepared lecture, Agassiz delivered his talk with charming enthusiasm, his deportment pleasantly theatrical as he paused for applause and, when a word escaped him, stopped to find the right expression, invariably coming up with some delightful remark to fill the void. Speaking in the Prussian French accent that was considered particularly winning, the professor captivated his audience.5 As he spoke, Agassiz illustrated his words on a portable blackboard, quickly and masterfully bringing the workings of nature vividly to life. The successive phases of an insect’s development were sketched so that the creature appeared to metamorphose before the audience’s eyes. “It was a real treat,” recalled Ernest Longfellow, son of the poet, “to see a perfect fish or skeleton develop under his hand with extraordinary sureness and perfect knowledge, without any hesitation or correcting.” Invariably the completed drawing would be met with vigorous applause, while in the next moment, when the professor consigned the image to oblivion with his eraser, the audience would issue a collective sigh of regret.6 The scientific community and the general public were equally impressed. “He is full of knowledge on all subjects of science, imparts it in the most graceful and modest manner and has, if possible, more of bonhomie than knowledge,” claimed the geologist Benjamin 93

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Silliman, Jr. “It is not yet agreed whether the ladies more liked the Man or the Gentlemen more admired the Philosopher.”7 “[Agassiz] charms all, both popular and scientific!” exclaimed the usually reserved Harvard botanist Asa Gray.8 Julia Ward Howe’s impression was a little more restrained but no less admiring: “The great personal attraction of Agassiz, joined by his admirable power of presenting the results of scientific investigation in a popular form, made a vivid impression upon the Boston public,” she wrote. “In his hands the record of the bones and fossils became a living language, and the common thought was enriched by the revelation of wonders of the visible universe.”9 Word of the professor’s success in Boston traveled fast, and soon he was in demand up and down the east coast. Those hoping to lure him to their society or club meetings referred to him as “the big fish Agassiz,” a prize catch on the lecture circuit by any standard. As he made his way from city to city, Agassiz relished the role of public educator and was greatly encouraged by the public’s voracious appetite for all things scientific. He was also making good money. In six months Agassiz earned approximately six thousand dollars in fees. “I could easily make more than enough by lectures which would be admirably paid, and are urged upon me,” he wrote to a friend, “to put me completely at ease hereafter.” It was a tempting prospect, especially given his troubles back home.10 Like so many young boys of his generation, Louis Agassiz early demonstrated an extraordinary passion for natural history. Growing up in pastoral Switzerland, he was educated at home by his father until the age of ten, an arrangement that afforded him plenty of time for adventuring out-of-doors. He would spend hours happily catching birds, fish, mice, rabbits, and other creatures that became both pets and specimens whose form and habits he could study. Other boys did this, too, but Louis was different in his single-minded conviction that he should become an expert of not just one discipline of the sciences but all of natural history. “I wish it may be said of Louis Agassiz that he was the first naturalist of his time,” he wrote of himself while still a boy. “I feel within myself the strength of a whole generation to work toward this end, and I will reach it if the means are not wanting.”11 The means, as it happened, were always wanting. Louis’s father, Rodolphe Agassiz, was a clergyman, while his mother, Rose, came from a family of shopkeepers, physicians, and merchants. The Agassiz family was not wealthy, but they did represent a secure, respectable segment of society, and they wanted their eldest son 94

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to pursue an equally secure and respectable profession. Natural history was not that profession. Initially they chose for him a career in business, but the boy managed to wear them down as far as obtaining their agreement that he become a doctor—a scientific profession, but a secure and respectable one. Unsatisfied with this compromise, however, Louis rather deviously contrived to get his way. Writing from Munich, where he was studying medicine, Louis foolishly let slip that he found the prospect of a medical career distasteful and that he was taking courses in natural history. His mother was not pleased. She was concerned about both Louis’s and the family’s reputation—natural history would surely render him “an inconsiderate, fickle young fellow”—but she was also concerned about money. He was using precious family resources to pursue a childish pastime. She demanded that he complete his medical studies, “and then, if you have still the same inclination, go on with your natural history; give yourself wholly up to it should that be your wish.” To give himself up wholly to natural history was precisely his wish, but Louis recognized that he had upset his parents, and he moved quickly to appease them. He explained that it was not medicine per se that repelled him but the prospect of practicing it as his livelihood. What he really wanted was to spend a few years traveling the world—“at government expense,” he was careful to note—studying nature in all its diversity, not settling down to a lifetime of treating the minor ailments of aging villagers. But now that his mother had effectively granted that he could study natural history, providing he obtained his medical degree first, Louis was perfectly satisfied. His father, to the contrary, was not satisfied. Louis had “a mania for rushing full gallop into the future,” which the clergyman felt sure would injure his son’s prospects. “If it be absolutely essential to your happiness that you should break the ice of the two poles in order to find the hairs of a mammoth, or that you should dry your shirt in the sun of the tropics, at least wait till your trunk is packed and your passports are signed before you talk with us about it.” Louis’s desire to see the world greatly troubled, perhaps even frightened his parents. They wanted to hear no more of it. First things first, and the first thing was to get his medical degree. In the meantime, he should dispense with all talk of grand expeditions, whether or not they were to be undertaken at government expense. Louis was sorry to have caused his parents distress, but he was determined to have his way. He truly believed that “Natural History may be a man’s bread-winner as well as the delight of his life.” Setting aside the matter of his desire to travel, he made them a proposition.12 95

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“If during the course of my studies,” he wrote, “I succeed in making myself known by a work of distinction, will you not then consent that I study, at least during one year, the natural sciences alone, and then accept a professorship of natural history with the understanding that in the first place, and in the time agreed upon, I shall take my Doctor’s degree?” It was an audacious proposal, and Rodolphe did not know quite what to make of it. It was clear to him that while attractive, natural history offered no guarantee of security for his son, but it was equally clear that Louis had no desire to practice medicine and would object to the suggestion of any other respectable profession “by which money is to be made.” In any case, it was too late for a complete change of course. In his reply, Rodolphe again emphasized the importance of a sure profession, but he gave into his headstrong son’s proposition. Louis had got his way.13 What the Agassizes did not know when they were mulling over their son’s proposal was that he was already well on his way to publishing a “work of distinction,” a study of Brazilian fishes. The idea for the book came from his teacher in Munich, Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, who, together with Johann Baptist von Spix, had explored the Amazon from 1817 to 1821 under the patronage of the king of Bavaria. They had returned to Europe with a collection of fishes, which Spix had been studying until his untimely death in 1826. It was two years later when Martius, recognizing in one of his students a pronounced skill in identifying and describing species, proposed that he take the fishes and use them to write his first book. The student, then only twenty-one, jumped at the chance to do some real scientific work. Brazilian Fishes was published in May 1829 and established the reputation of Louis Agassiz as a naturalist of exceptional promise. In a bold attempt to gain favor with Europe’s greatest living naturalist, Agassiz dedicated his Brazilian Fishes to Baron Georges Cuvier. A formidable figure in European science, Cuvier had arrived in Paris in 1795, and in that same year published three books and was named professor of anatomy at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. He was only twenty-six years of age. Cuvier went on to publish more than three hundred articles and books in his thirty-seven-year career at the Muséum, where he had a number of rooms to himself, each filled with books, live specimens, and the remains of assorted creatures pertaining to a particular question he was then investigating. Cuvier would move from room to room and desk to desk, working at a feverish pace, solving numerous scientific problems simultaneously.

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Here was a man for whom work was always the priority. Agassiz regarded him as “the greatest naturalist of all times.”14 Irritable, grave, and occasionally violent, Cuvier was often regarded as a haughty individual, but toward young, aspiring naturalists he was always encouraging. When Agassiz sent a copy of his Brazilian Fishes to Paris, together with a letter from his teacher Martius, Cuvier responded by indicating pleasure at having such a fine publication dedicated to him, and he encouraged the budding young naturalist in his work. Less than a year after completing his studies, Agassiz himself arrived in Paris bearing letters of introduction from his teachers, and he wasted no time in seeking out Cuvier. On Agassiz’s second evening in Paris the elder naturalist received him in his rooms at the museum, and though Agassiz initially found Cuvier to be formal to the point of rudeness, their association quickly grew more cordial. Soon Agassiz was spending evenings alone with Cuvier, the two men deeply engrossed in matters of natural history. When Cuvier abandoned his own work on fossil fish, turning the entirety of his materials over to Agassiz, including a large portfolio of notes and drawings, it was clear that where Cuvier had gained a disciple, Agassiz had found his benefactor and mentor. According to one contemporary, Cuvier was “the only man who ever exerted a scientific and personal influence over Agassiz.”15 Cuvier had played a key role in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology. Anatomical dissection of cadavers had long been a subject of study in medicine, aiding doctors in their understanding of the human body and thus enabling them to better treat disease. Comparative anatomy opened up this approach to the study of all organisms. By probing the interior of a specimen and comparing the many parts and organic systems to those of other specimens, a naturalist could learn a great deal about a particular creature; he could also determine how different organisms related to one another. When pursued alongside the study of fossil remains, comparative anatomy suggested how life on earth had changed through time, thus providing the means to develop a coherent theory of natural history. Comparative anatomy built on Linnaean classification by taking into account the internal structures of an organism in order to relate it to other organisms. Cuvier believed that all living creatures could be divided into four distinct groups or embranchments: Mollusca, Radiata, Articulata, and Vertebrata. God had created each type of organism just as it was found in nature, and careful study would reveal the specific character and rank of each organism. Stability was fundamental to Cuvier’s approach to natural history, as it had been to

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that of Linnaeus. An organism could not undergo change beyond the limited development or growth that occurred within its lifespan because if any one element changed, the whole organism would be affected adversely. If an animal’s legs shortened or the smallest bone in its ear changed shape, the other parts would no longer fit together or function properly. “None of the parts can change without the others changing, too,” Cuvier said, “and consequently, each one of them, taken separately, indicates what the other parts are.” An organism’s form was unique and uniquely determined by its place in the natural world.16 Not surprisingly, Cuvier was opposed to theories of development. He adhered strictly to a Linnaean understanding of species as real, fixed categories. Yet during his time at the museum, and indeed throughout the nineteenth century, ideas proposing that the environment could alter the generic form of a being over time were not uncommon. Naturalists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire adopted Buffon’s conception of nature as dynamic and organisms as shading one into the other. Lamarck’s theory of transformism, outlined in a course of lectures given at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in 1800, was the first coherent theory of evolution; not only did he suggest that variation was caused by development, but he offered an explanation for how this happened. The giraffe was a favorite example. Lamarck claimed its long neck was the result of repeated straining to reach food in the treetops and that this change had been passed on to its offspring. It was not the animal’s form that determined its habits but habits necessary to survive in a particular environment that shaped its form. Geoffroy also believed that the environment played an important role in determining a creature’s form. His method entailed, for example, comparing a bird’s wing with a mammal’s foreleg to study how they both aided movement—they served a similar function and had a similar structure, which suggested they were responses to similar conditions. Lamarckian transformism and Geoffroy’s morphology went against everything Cuvier believed about nature. Early in his career he had been open to the idea of the mutability of species, but as he pieced together his particular vision of the natural world, and had to defend it to maintain his professional authority, Cuvier increasingly came to disparage theories of development. He was interested in “the positive facts” of nature, as revealed by close anatomical comparison, facts that could be built up into a fixed picture of creation. Change undermined this concept completely. If the facts as he saw them were neglected in favor of “pretended analogies,” as he called Geoffroy’s homology, then true knowledge was not possible. “The world itself would become an indecipherable enigma.” Cuvier brought his con-

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siderable authority to bear against theories of development such that until Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, all forms of “Lamarckism” were widely disparaged.17 Nature was God’s work, not a force in itself. He, the Supreme Intelligence, had made everything with a purpose in mind. The naturalist’s job was to find order in nature, to explain variation as a function of systems and laws that were finite rather than open-ended, fixed rather than evolving. Every living thing had its place, and stayed there. This was Cuvier’s vision of nature, and it would inform Agassiz’s thinking throughout his life, even when other theories became more widely accepted. Agassiz never abandoned the idea that a Christian God had created the natural world with a specific purpose in mind and that species were permanently fixed. When Cuvier died in 1832, less than a year after Agassiz had arrived in Paris, the young naturalist found himself without a protector. The great man had facilitated his work and shielded him from the jealousy of others. Now, however, with Cuvier out of the picture, his position was completely changed. Paris was intimidating, the city itself as much as the tightly knit and highly politicized environment of the French scientific community, where as a Prussian he would always be an outsider. Agassiz desired something more than a career of struggling against the tide of political and scientific infighting, though the alternatives were not much better. In September 1832 Agassiz left Paris and returned to his family in Switzerland, where he braced himself for a life as a provincial doctor. While in Paris, Agassiz had impressed another of Europe’s famous savants, the great scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, and it was Humboldt who saved him from the rural life he detested. Well known as a grandiose and sarcastic man, Humboldt quickly took a liking to Agassiz, softening his manner when met with this keen young naturalist. The two were often found taking breakfast together at the Café Procop in Paris, Humboldt talking expansively of his travels, perhaps describing his discovery of electric fish in Venezuela, while Agassiz sat captivated by both the exoticism of the tale and the magnificence of the speaker. Where most everyone in the Parisian scientific community was cool and distant, Humboldt was accepting and generous, even loaning the perpetually destitute Agassiz money at a crucial moment, explaining simply, “I should wish to be pleasantly remembered by a young man of your character.” Ego married with a gracious manner, this was Humboldt’s way.18 Through Humboldt’s connections Agassiz obtained a professorship at the recently

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established college and museum of natural history in the Prussian city of Neuchâtel, a small but lively town of five or six thousand residents. It was not an illustrious appointment—he would have fewer than one hundred pupils, there were no collections for study, the pay was dismal, and he would have to deliver his lectures at city hall—but unlike Paris, Neuchâtel provided the young professor with a relatively small pond in which to feel his importance.19 Neuchâtel was never quite the same again, springing to life as a center of scientific activity under Agassiz’s care. In addition to his duties in the college, he established a natural history society, helped to develop the city museum, lectured publicly on botany, zoology, geology, and geography, and frequently took citizens of all ages into the surrounding countryside to study nature. Agassiz brought nature to life by showing others how to identify and classify specimens, but he went further in his teaching by explaining how it all fit together, how every specimen in nature came together into a great plan. Godlike himself, Agassiz revealed the mind of the Creator through his works in nature. Where Cuvier had been satisfied with facts, Agassiz wanted those facts to mean something. Agassiz always considered his profession to be that of teacher, but ultimately it was nature itself that instructed. “Go to Nature,” he said to his pupils. “Take the facts into your own hands; look, and see for yourself!” Where many teachers at the time expected their students to learn by memorizing textbooks, Agassiz advocated direct observation of specimens, whether in nature or in the laboratory—looking, above all else, was the key to learning.20 “Take this fish and look at it well,” he would say to a student who had just been given a specimen in a tin tray. “We call it a haemulon; by and by I will ask you what you have seen.” With that, the merest of introductions to the fish—and no comment whatsoever on the subject of ichthyology—he would leave the student alone. “In ten minutes,” one of his students later recalled, “I had seen all that could be seen in that fish.” But the professor was nowhere to be found, and so the student returned to his specimen. “My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish: it seemed a most limited field.” He poked his finger into the haemulon’s mouth and felt its teeth; he counted scales until this bored him, and he drew a picture of the fish. When at last Agassiz returned, he was hopeful that his confinement with the specimen would soon be over. “Well,” the professor said, “what is it like?” The student gave an account of all he had discovered: “the fringed gill-arches and moveable operculum; the pores of the head, fleshy lips and lidless eyes; the lateral line, the spinous fins and forked tail; the compressed and arched body.” He listed everything about the fish he had observed. 100

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“You have not looked very carefully,” Agassiz admonished. “Why, you haven’t even seen one of the most conspicuous features of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish itself; look again, look again!” He left the student alone with his fish. Hours passed and the professor returned. “Do you see it?” he asked. The student did not see it, whatever it was. The fish was returned to a jar of alcohol for the night and the student told to return the next day when he would be quizzed—before retrieving his fish. In the morning, the student said, “Do you perhaps mean that the fish has symmetrical sides with paired organs?” “Of course! Of course!” Agassiz exclaimed. The student had at long last hit upon the all-important feature, but when he inquired about his next task, the professor cheerfully said, “Oh, look at your fish!” and walked away. For three days the student was required to examine the haemulon, to catalogue as many details peculiar to it that he could discern. As excruciating as the experience was, he never had a better lesson in looking.21 Scientific method in the nineteenth century developed in tandem with the idea that direct observation provided access to knowledge. Seeing, above all the other senses, was privileged in this regard. This was particularly the case with natural history, a discipline that relied on classification, which was essentially a project of naming the visible. The naturalist best encountered his subject by looking closely; it was the only way to truly understand how and why species differed—the word “species” is from the Latin specere, meaning “to look.” Agassiz believed this perhaps more than any other naturalist of his generation. He not only illustrated his lectures with chalk drawings on a blackboard, but he also frequently displayed actual specimens under discussion while lecturing. On one occasion he passed around a jar of living insects, waiting patiently as each student took one of the kicking green bugs between thumb and forefinger. There was much tittering as he lectured, but Agassiz was adamant that his students observed in nature the facts upon which he expounded. “There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science,” he once said, “until such methods become general.”22 Among his entourage, Agassiz always retained a number of artists, for he could not publish his research without showing examples of the creatures he described. It was a longstanding convention of natural history that text and illustration worked together to describe and classify, and although image was always subordinate to text in terms of a work’s scientific value, skillfully executed images contributed significantly to a naturalist’s claims and reputation. Agassiz knew this well, and he particularly prized images that were lifelike, 101

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for high-quality design and detail, and skill of execution, reinforced the notion that design in nature could only be the work of God. Even in his student days he endured penury to afford the cost of keeping an artist, the ever-faithful Joseph Dinkel. In Neuchâtel his coterie of artists and illustrators grew to include August Sonrel and Jacques Burkhardt, both of whom followed Agassiz to America and produced some extraordinarily lifelike images. In 1838 Agassiz set up a publishing operation at Neuchâtel, where the new process of lithochromatic duplication was pioneered with the aid of his artists. Agassiz was churning out lavishly illustrated books like a modern scientific factory.23 Agassiz also took an interest in photography, early recognizing its potential value to the naturalist. In 1839, when the English soldier, geologist, and inventor Levett Landon Boscawen Ibbetson saw his first daguerreotype while in Switzerland, he began experimenting with a paper process. Paper, he thought, was a much better way to support the image than a copper plate. Ibbetson apparently had some success with his method, but was discouraged on learning that Henry Fox Talbot had already patented a paper-based process. Ibbetson then turned his attention to finding a technique for making lithographic reproductions from daguerreotype images. Agassiz was keenly interested in this research, for the daguerreotype provided a strikingly faithful image, and an efficient method of creating reproductions would save him both time and money. Ibbetson conducted some experiments using Agassiz’s fishes, but the results were disappointing, and so Agassiz continued to rely on his artists. As one historian has noted, “Agassiz carried [an artist] around with him like a camera.”24 Respected internationally for his research and pioneering methods, beloved by an entire community, and surrounded by a small, familial group of like-minded people who contributed to the pleasure of his work and undoubtedly buttressed his sense of self-importance, Agassiz was in his element. Yet the world he had created for himself in Neuchâtel was far from perfect. As his publishing enterprise grew in size, so, too, did his troubles. Money was one problem; another was the chaos surrounding him. Though a compelling individual, Agassiz lacked the skills necessary to manage such a crew. He often antagonized colleagues and assistants with his arrogance and single-minded determination, but at the same time he was overly familiar with them. Both attitudes eroded his authority. Agassiz could also be strangely oblivious to the way others took advantage of him. This last shortcoming would prove especially detrimental to his marriage. In 1833 Agassiz had married Cecile Braun, the sister of a college friend. A shy, pretty woman, thin, with dark skin and long brown hair, she was also an accomplished artist. The 102

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Brauns were a cultured German family, appreciative of art, music, and the pleasure of learning for its own sake. When her brother brought home a college friend with him one holiday, Cecile took an instant liking to the handsome visitor and convinced him to sit for his portrait. She also proved her talents in executing a number of drawings of fishes, pictures that undoubtedly appealed to the young naturalist. The two grew close despite periods of separation. Yet at that time Agassiz’s plans left little room for the responsibilities that followed romance. He was too single-minded in his professional ambition to commit himself to marriage. With his appointment in Neuchâtel, however, this changed. He could now offer Cecile financial stability and the respectability that came with being a professor’s wife. Life in Neuchâtel was very different from that in the Braun household. The Agassizes resided in a small apartment and were constantly surrounded by assistants, students, and avid amateur naturalists, all demanding the professor’s time. The town meanwhile was decidedly provincial, and money was always tight. Agassiz’s salary could not support both his household and his publishing ventures, especially with the addition of three small children, Alexander, Pauline, and Ida. The honeymoon period of the couple’s marriage was brief. Cecile missed her family in Carlesruhe and felt abandoned by her husband, who spent all of his time working. She was often ill, and making the arrangement still more unbearable, Agassiz’s secretary, Edward Desor, tormented her regularly. A law student before joining the scientific factory at Neuchâtel, Desor quickly learned the rudiments of natural history. He made himself indispensable to Agassiz, overseeing the team of twelve who worked to publish the professor’s findings. As valuable as he was to the academic operation, however, Desor had an unpleasant side, one he revealed to Cecile often enough for her to dislike him intensely. Though he was not the only member of Agassiz’s team that she disliked, Desor, she thought, was particularly crude and untrustworthy. Cecile begged Louis to dismiss Desor on the grounds that he was mishandling funds and taking control of the publishing operation, and Agassiz’s mother joined her in trying to convince him that Desor was not trustworthy, but the headstrong naturalist could not be made to understand the extent of the problem. Wrapped up in his work, he could not see the growing dissent around him. Early in 1845 Cecile left Agassiz, returning to Carlesruhe with their two daughters, while young Alexander remained in Neuchâtel to continue his schooling. Not long after the separation, Agassiz shut down his beloved publishing enterprise for lack of funds. Marital problems and a shortage of cash had at last forced him to recognize that his happy existence was in trouble. 103

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In the summer of 1829, before obtaining the appointment at Neuchâtel, before he had been accepted into Cuvier’s inner circle, and before he had even completed his studies, Agassiz wrote a letter to Cuvier in which he revealed his greatest ambition in life: to undertake a scientific expedition. “Though I have not even a presentiment of any means with which I may one day travel in distant countries, I have, nevertheless, prepared myself during the last three years as if I might be off at a minute.” He went on to list his qualifications: he knew how to skin animals, “even very large ones”; he had experimented with various chemicals used in preserving specimens; he had studied the blacksmith’s and carpenter’s trades; he could use firearms and the bayonet and was a skilled swordsman; and he could walk great distances carrying a heavy bag on his back. “In one word, I seem to myself made to be a travelling naturalist.” Agassiz also added that he had imparted a love of nature to his friend William Schimper and taught him to be a traveling companion: “He is an excellent hunter, and at my instigation has been taking lessons in drawing, so that he is now able to sketch from nature such objects as may be desirable.” Agassiz and his college friends all dreamed of journeying through unknown lands, making discoveries and bringing back to Europe evidence of marvels from across the globe. The great age of exploration was effectively over, yet accounts of tropical discoveries remained spellbinding to aspiring naturalists, and the men who endured hardship to tell such tales were lionized by the younger generation. Humboldt was the exemplar in this regard, his five-year journey through Spanish America described in thirty volumes published between 1805 and 1834 and later summarized in his epic multivolume work, Cosmos. Humboldt’s adventures, discoveries, and cosmology set a powerful example to young naturalists, including Charles Darwin, who once claimed, “My whole course of life is due to having read and re-read as a youth his Personal Narrative.” The same could be said of Agassiz. As a student he read the account of Humboldt’s journey many times over, and on three occasions sought to join an expedition. Yet three times his ambition was frustrated—a situation that only inflamed his desire for travel. “I am so pursued by this thought of a scientific journey,” he wrote, “that it presents itself under a thousand forms, and all that I undertake looks toward one end.”25 Agassiz’s intense desire to travel never diminished, and it may even have increased as his domestic and financial troubles in Neuchâtel grew more pressing. After further failed attempts to organize an excursion, he finally got his wish in 1845 when the king of Prussia, 104

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thanks again to Humboldt’s intervention, agreed to fund a journey to North America, his first big trip in the name of science. Agassiz put his affairs in order, gave one last course of lectures to the people of Neuchâtel, and embarked on the steamship Hibernia. The United States was neither the Amazon, where Spix and Martius had caught their fishes, nor Humboldt’s Venezuela, yet from the moment he set foot in Boston and began counting species of oak, Agassiz loved America. “Ah, quel pays!” he exclaimed. What a magnificent land to harbor such diversity! He soon found he admired the people just as much, though American life was somewhat mystifying. The American manner was friendly to a fault, but somewhat slack morally, he thought, especially among the young women. And Americans were always on the go. “Pell-mell” was a word he often used to describe the American way. For the first month Agassiz traveled constantly, traversing the Northeast to visit leading naturalists, many of whom he knew through years of exchanging letters. The railroads he found somewhat shocking, but he recognized their convenience, especially to a people who were unusually active and mobile. “The rapidity of the locomotion is frightful to those who are unused to it,” he wrote to his mother, “but you adapt yourself to the speed, and soon become, like all the rest of the world, impatient at the slightest delay.” The railroad took him first to New Haven, Connecticut, where he spent several days with Benjamin Silliman at Yale, and then he traveled on to New York by steamboat, captivated en route by the huge numbers of ducks and gulls that flocked in the sound. In Princeton, New Jersey, he met with Professors Joseph Henry and John Torrey and was joined by the Harvard botanist Asa Gray. Together Agassiz and Gray traveled to Washington, stopping first in Philadelphia, where Agassiz took time to peruse the collections of the Academy of Sciences, the Philosophical Society, and other institutions. He was greatly impressed by the scientific community in Philadelphia, but especially by Dr. Samuel George Morton, whose collection of human crania, he said, was alone worth the trip overseas. “Imagine,” he wrote home, “a series of six hundred skulls, mostly Indian, of all the tribes who now inhabit or formerly inhabited America. Nothing like it exists elsewhere.” As he moved from city to city, meeting with scientists and examining their collections, Agassiz was delighted with what he found. He had hoped to venture out into the landscape more, rather than spend so much time in the parlors of the American industrial elite. Blazing trails across “undiscovered” terrain, stopping only to collect samples and observe the sublime majesty of the raw landscape, this was Agassiz’s idealized vision of traveling, not sipping tea with patrons of the local scientific club. But although he sometimes found the 105

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hospitality overwhelming, he could not deny the pleasant welcome he received wherever he went. What was more, the caliber of scientific activity he encountered was everywhere impressive. “I thought myself tolerably familiar with all that is doing in science in the United States, but I was far from anticipating so much that is interesting and important.”26 In early November 1846 Agassiz returned to Boston to give his course of lectures at the Lowell Institute. “The Plan of Creation” summarized everything he believed to be true about the natural world. It was a sweeping statement about science, nature, man, and the Christian God from whom all things had emanated. The Plan of Creation was a Cuvierian narrative that Agassiz would refine throughout his career, with little deviation from its original precepts. It was, in effect, his life’s work, and the widespread dissemination of its ideas was his professional mission. The purpose of natural history, said Agassiz, is to get closer to an understanding of God’s plan or intention for all creation. Nature is more than simply a haphazard “collection of single details.” Through the careful study of God’s creation, a naturalist can know the “design and wisdom of that Almighty Being who controls all things in the Universe.” Geology is an excellent example, he continued. By examining the different layers of the earth’s surface, geologists were beginning to understand that the earth has undergone drastic changes, which must have occurred many thousands of years ago. Paleontology, the study of fossil remains, was leading to similar conclusions. “By following out those facts,” Agassiz explained to a rapt audience, “we have been put in the way of discovering the intention of the Creator in making this world.”27 Following this introduction, the substance of Agassiz’s lectures was to describe in great detail each of Cuvier’s four embranchments. He drew diagrams of specimens from each, and explained their fundamental differences. The organizing principles that he applied in his comparison of the embranchments, though perhaps not with full awareness, were those of hierarchy and progress. Agassiz believed some creatures were more complex than others and therefore more highly developed. This was the progressive development of creation, but not the evolutionary progress of Lamarck’s transformism or Geoffroy’s morphology. It was something far messier. Agassiz believed that over time God had made and destroyed living matter in successive epochs. These epochs corresponded to the geological strata of the earth’s surface, in which fossils of different and in many cases extinct species were found; each epoch ended with a catastrophic event that had wiped out all living matter. The next epoch began as God 106

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created new species, and created them specifically for the geographical area in which they were found. He called these regions “zoological provinces.” An organism living in one zoological province might resemble that found in another, but the two belonged to completely different species because each had been created specifically to suit the region in which it was found. “We can come to no other conclusion,” Agassiz said, “than that they have originated where they exist.” History was thus characterized by “a succession of species which do not descend from each other—which have never been derived from each other.” This explained much about the natural world, including the fact that fossils of a particular species were found in one layer of the earth’s surface but not in others. It explained the appearance and disappearance of species over time and the fact that the most complex creatures populated the more recent epochs. It also suggested that with each successive epoch God was warming up: he was working toward an ever more sophisticated species, Homo sapiens.28 Humans were a singular case in the Animal Kingdom. Not only were they “the highest group in Creation,” according to Agassiz, but they were also the “last object intended.” Indeed: “We can go even farther, and say that this having been the intention of the Creator from the beginning, we can expect no higher progress or new development. The creation of Man is the highest possible development in the progress of Creation.”29 Humans had been created after the most recent great catastrophe, but unlike the lower animals, they were not created in separate groups to suit different habitats. Humans were the one exception to the rule of zoological provinces—only humans were found everywhere on the surface of the earth, and this was so because the world was created for them; or, rather, they were created to explore and master the world. Human beings could be found on every continent. Unlike all other forms of life, Agassiz said, the many races of human beings were “one and the same species capable of ranging over the surface of the globe.” It is our ability to travel and adapt to diverse environments—to make the sorts of voyages Agassiz dreamed of as a young man—that sets us apart.30 Agassiz’s views were a pointed refutation of ideas then widely in circulation. In 1844, the year before he first presented the Plan of Creation to an audience, an anonymously published book appeared in Great Britain and America that brought Lamarckism to an English-speaking public and made theories of development a topic of widespread discussion. Anonymously published, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation synthesized astronomy, geology, physiology, psychology, anthropology, and theology into a general theory of creation. The book was a sensation—more than a hundred thousand people across society read Vestiges, among them Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Vestiges read like a 107

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novel, describing the history of the universe from the creation of planets in a blazing “firemist,” through to the development of man, all told in a riveting narrative that propelled the reader from one revelation to the next. The book was full of fascinating ideas and more than a few surprises, including the notion that humans had evolved from apes. Scientists dismissed such ideas as unscientific—the very popularity of Vestiges seemed to prove that the text was indeed more akin to fiction than a scientific treatise—but theories of development were hard to dispel completely from the public mind. Though distasteful, the possibility that humans were just another kind of animal was difficult to shake.31 Agassiz found it impossible to believe the idea that natural phenomena were the result of purely physical forces. Physical forces to him meant chaos, and he saw in nature nothing but order and design, and so he dismissed as unscientific the idea that one being could change into another. “I think we know enough of comparative anatomy,” Agassiz wrote, “to abandon forever the idea of the transformation of organs of one type unto those of another.” The Plan of Creation offered a more reassuring message. God had made and destroyed innumerable lesser species in an attempt to get it right, and with Homo sapiens he had at last achieved this goal. This view of nature was based on principles of stability and hierarchy: species do not change from one sort into another but are ordered and fixed as God created them—and humans, being among the more recently created species, are the most developed of all living creatures. This was just the sort of thing that people living in an era of great social, political, and economic upheaval wanted to hear. Every society is fearful of disorder, and nineteenth-century America was no different. While ostensibly describing the natural world, Agassiz was actually describing an ideal human world, one that reinforced the view that humans were special in the eyes of God and therefore unlikely to experience catastrophic change.32 Agassiz had given his Plan of Creation lectures in Neuchâtel, just before his departure. When he delivered them in Boston they were essentially the same, except for one crucial element. Since leaving the European continent Agassiz had changed his mind about humans. They were still the exception among God’s creatures—“L’homme seul est répandu sur la surface entière de la terre,” he had said in Neuchâtel—but for Agassiz they were no longer the product of a single creative act. Just as the plants and animals found on different continents had been created on separate occasions, so, too, had humans been created separately, he now claimed. Although Agassiz did not go so far as to assert that people found on different continents constituted distinct species, he did maintain that they “had a distinct origin.”33 108

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Agassiz’s revised remarks on the original diversity of humans caused a stir. The Sunday after his talk in Boston on the zoological provinces he was “attacked in one of the pulpits.” The suggestion that divine creation was programmatic, that God had made different groups of humans to fit well-defined geographical locations, challenged the biblical record. The first book of the Old Testament taught that all people were the progeny of an original couple, Adam and Eve, and so shared common ancestors. This was a fundamental truth to the religions of most Europeans and European Americans, and though it did not prevent the crowning of kings at the expense of an underclass, there was little question that all people shared a common humanity. For hundreds of years there was no cause to challenge the biblical authority on this point.34 Word of Agassiz’s controversial views spread and caused a delay in his delivering the Plan of Creation lectures elsewhere. The Harvard botanist Asa Gray thought that in the course of his lectures Agassiz, the son of a Protestant pastor, had managed, not to refute the Bible, but to reconcile Christian belief with scientific facts. “The whole course [of lectures] was planned on very high ground,” he wrote to John Torrey, “and his references to the Creator were so natural and unconstrained as to show that they were never brought in for effect.” The offending material, according to Gray, consisted of “a few words at the close of his lecture on the geographical distribution of animals.” Gray was careful to state that Agassiz was no materialist: “We may reject his conclusions, but we cannot find fault with his spirit.” And yet, before an engagement in New York could go ahead, Agassiz had to give assurances that he would not say anything that ran counter to “revealed religion.”He had no trouble doing this, for by then he had already resolved the conflict between his science and his religion.35

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Taking pleasure in the feel of the wood, he ran his hand along the surface of the table, his touch firm and the movement evenly paced. After weeks of sawing, shaving, and planing the raw pine, and then many more weeks preparing the pieces for assembly, he was nearly done. All that remained was the wax finish. But this was the moment he liked to judge the quality of his work, to stand back and observe the object’s shape from many angles, and then consider it more intimately through the medium of his fingertips. This was the moment when the change was complete, when tree truly became his creation. His hands, sensitive to the slightest variation in texture, caressed the subtle ripple of the wood’s grain. Yes, he was pleased with the result. N be wasaring ne, he said to himself. I am contented. The pine was from the wood down the hill, a small stand within sight of the river that he had found while cutting lumber for the house. The group of trees he knew at once to be exceptional, and so at his request they were felled and cut, and all but one used to build the additions to the great house. The other he kept for himself. As he was preparing the wax, a boy appeared at the door. “Dukare naa,” he said to the child, and then a few moments later repeated himself in a language the boy would understand: “Please come in.” He never stopped hoping others would take an interest in their native tongue. Daalamaa buka fili, he often told them: One who can speak never gets lost. The boy did not enter, but simply said, “Master wants you at the house.” This was not unusual; he was often wanted at the house. But something about the boy’s manner told him there was more. “What is it?” “The doctor is with him. And another man.” “Who is this other man?” In reply, the boy only shook his head and ran off.

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Slowly he wrapped the wax in a cloth and then once more touched the surface of the table. Ñing mu kaabakuwole ti, he thought to himself as he walked toward the house. This is a mystery. What he dared not put into words was the sense of foreboding that touched his heart. He knew something was about to happen, just as he knew which trees in the wood by the river were exceptional.

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CHAPTER

7 Truth Before All

“

W

e 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.” So begins the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, an unprecedented document in the history of the known world, one that gave birth simultaneously to a new nation and to modern democratic government. In the wake of this audacious assertion of political independence, a declaration with human equality at its core, other peoples would follow the example set by the American patriots, including those of France, Haiti, Greece, Liberia, and Vietnam, among many others. That such declarations were and are still necessary testifies both to the enduring presence of oppression in human affairs the world over and to the everlasting determination of diverse peoples to overthrow those who would deny them their basic human rights. The United States of America is a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and yet from the earliest days of the Republic, and long before Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and members of the Continental Congress put their names to it, great and terrible inequalities have existed here, including institutionalized 113

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slavery on a massive scale and the confiscation of territory from native peoples. Even as America championed the natural rights of all people, millions were being denied those very rights, and much else besides. The truth of the matter was not at all self-evident. Three circumstances of the modern era undermined this faith in the common origin and rights of all human beings. The first was the mixing of cultures on an unprecedented scale, which reached a pinnacle with the colonization of the Americas and the subsequent mass importation of Africans to provide slave labor; mass migration during the nineteenth century further expanded and diversified the population. As the so-called New World became inhabited by people of innumerable distinct cultures, the ensuing struggle for control of the land and its resources was increasingly cast in terms of racial difference—that is, differences between groups of people based principally on physical appearance—and this contributed to the growing perception of race as a natural category or classification for human beings. The profitability of the slave economy was the second circumstance, for the wealth to be gained from plantation agriculture provided strong motivation for maintaining unequal relations between peoples; and the third was the rise of science and its claim as a source of Truth. As scientists edged ever closer to an understanding of ancient history based upon material evidence, evidence that contradicted the biblical record, religious authority eroded. This combination of “race awareness,” the profitability of social inequality, and the need to reevaluate received ideas about the natural world on the basis of scientific information led Americans to question the very principles upon which their nation had been founded. If all people had descended from an original couple, then how had groups of humans come to be so different from one another? How was it that people varied so greatly in appearance and, it was thought, essential character? If all people were created equal, then why had slavery—a distinctly unequal relationship—existed since antiquity? These questions were nowhere more pressing than in the United States, where the nation’s future seemed to rest on the answer. If all people shared a history back to the beginning of time, then surely they could find a way to coexist in the modern era; but if all people did not share a common origin, if the Creator had something different in mind for different peoples, then the future of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans in the New World was very much in question. “The first difference which strikes us is that of colour,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1787. “Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether 114

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it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us.” The author of the Declaration of Independence believed race to be a natural category: he believed that it was a physical reality that separated humans into well-defined groups, even if we did not understand the cause. “It is not their condition then,” he wrote, “but nature, which has produced the distinction” between black and white. He also believed that with this “distinction” came hierarchy: separate invariably meant unequal. Thomas Jefferson believed that Africans and their descendants represented an inferior race—but then he equivocated. “I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”1 A suspicion only, and yet Jefferson repeatedly used language that left little doubt about his convictions. The word “racism” was first used in the early twentieth century, but racism itself had its origin in the early modern period, while prejudice has been around longer still. Racism— the domination or exclusion of one group by another based on perceived differences that are thought to be inherent and permanent—is a modern invention. Racism is not merely thinking that others are inferior but seeking also to establish or maintain a social order on the basis of this imagined inferiority; it is a worldview constructed to maintain a certain world order. Put more succinctly, racism is ideological.2 In the late eighteenth century, as Jefferson was writing his Notes, racism inched toward its status as a fully fledged, normalized ideology. The catalyst for this development was slavery: the benefits of institutionalized racism lay in the profits of tobacco, rice, and indigo. A generation after Jefferson, as cotton rooted the nation still deeper into plantation culture, the defenders of slavery sought to justify their “peculiar institution” on the grounds that Africans and their descendants were innately inferior. Enslavement was no longer a legal condition, as it had been in the seventeenth century, a contract with negotiated terms, but one based on physical appearance and family lineage. Slavery and race had become inextricably linked, but the idea of race was further used to justify myriad forms of discrimination not directly linked with enslavement. All men may have been created equal, white supremacists claimed, but perhaps not all people were men. Their argument that race was a natural category was formulated so convincingly that even abolitionists gave credence to 115

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the ideological concept of race by accepting it as a valid term, one determined not by history but by God.3 In 1791 Jefferson received a letter from the scientist, astronomer, inventor, and writer Benjamin Banneker, who put himself forward as proof that black people were not naturally inferior. Banneker had early demonstrated a knack for mechanics and mathematics. At the age of twenty-two, having seen just two working clocks, a sundial, and a pocket watch in his lifetime, he built a clock out of wood, the first striking clock made in America. He went on to help with surveying the site on the Potomac River that became the nation’s capital. He also wrote an almanac that provided weather forecasts and tables detailing the tides, eclipses, and the rising and setting of the sun and the moon. Banneker sent a copy of his almanac to Jefferson, along with a letter chastising the republican for his views on African Americans as expressed in the Notes. Black people had long been regarded as brutish, inferior beings, but surely Jefferson, the man who had drafted the Declaration of Independence, could see otherwise and would “eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions, which so generally prevails with respect to us,” Banneker wrote. All men were made equal by God: “However variable we may be in society or religion, however diversified in situation or color, we are all of the same family, and stand in the same relation to him.” Banneker went on to point out the sorry inconsistency of Jefferson’s notion of “self-evident truths” and the enslavement of Africans in America. “Sir, how pitiable it is to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.”4 Jefferson responded to Banneker with a letter of his own in which he claimed to want to see black people elevated from their current condition, “as far as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances, which cannot be neglected, will admit.” What these “other circumstances” might be, he doesn’t say. What he did go on to say was that he had sent the copy of Banneker’s almanac to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, “because I considered it as a document, to which your whole color had a right for their justification, against the doubts which have been entertained of them.” And that was it. No acknowledgment that the doubts entertained against black people were fueled by his Notes, and no 116

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recognition of the inconsistency of his peculiar form of democracy. Jefferson could not deny Banneker’s talent, so he dismissed it: he sent the almanac away to Paris almost as if he were banishing it from his sight. Thomas Jefferson did not want a black man to prove him wrong. He wanted a white man to prove him right.5 Jefferson called on scientists to prove true his “suspicion” that blacks were inherently inferior to whites. With orthodox Christianity relinquishing to science much of its hold on people’s imaginations, it was natural history that would explain why things are as we find them, including the apparent existence of different races. “Will not a lover of natural history then,” Jefferson wrote in the Notes, “one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them?”6 Numerous “lovers of natural history” answered Jefferson’s call, including the Americans Charles Caldwell and Samuel Stanhope Smith, who had argued over the cause of Henry Moss’s transformation from black to white. It was Louis Agassiz, however, who caused the greatest stir when he declared African inferiority one of nature’s self-evident truths. When in 1846 Agassiz revised his Plan of Creation lectures, resulting in his announcement before a Boston audience that different groups of humans had been created to inhabit specific geographical regions, he had rendered his theories more consistent, more scientific. For humans to descend from a single pair when all birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, insects, and other beasts had been created here and there, under specific circumstances and to meet particular needs, as he believed they were, went against the principles of natural law. But for Agassiz to change his mind on so important a matter, for him to dramatically reinterpret his religion when there was no imperative to do so, was remarkable. The human animal is exceptional—surely there was ample justification to claim that humans had an exceptional origin. Why, then, between Neuchâtel and Boston, did Agassiz revise his theory to claim that diverse groups of humans had a “distinct origin”? What had moved him to change his mind? “It was in Philadelphia that I first found myself in prolonged contact with negroes,” Agassiz wrote in a letter to his mother on 2 December 1846, just weeks after he had arrived from Europe. “All the domestics in my hotel were men of color.” The experience was profoundly troubling and ultimately influenced his thinking on scientific matters. Agassiz had encountered Africans and their descendants before his trip to America. In Neuchâtel he once participated in a public fencing exhibition led by a “tall and powerful negro fencing master,” a match in which skill, not the race of participants, was of paramount 117

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concern. He had also visited several European cities by the time he crossed the Atlantic, including London and Paris, cities where the legacy of colonialism was visibly apparent in the diversity of the population. He might even have encountered people of African descent as he traveled, fellow passengers journeying on steamships and railroads, by coach and on foot, going about their business just as he went about his. In all likelihood Agassiz had had numerous occasions to meet black people before arriving in the New World. It was, however, this “prolonged contact” in Philadelphia that made a lasting and indelible impression on him and his beliefs and is sometimes cited as his first such encounter.7 As he wrote to his mother about his encounter with the domestics in his hotel: I can scarcely express to you the painful impression that I received, especially since the feeling that they inspired in me is contrary to all our ideas about the confraternity of the human type and the unique origin of our species. But truth before all. Nevertheless, I experienced pity at the sight of this degraded and degenerate race, and their lot inspired compassion in me in thinking that they really are men. Nonetheless, it is impossible for me to repress the feeling that they are not the same blood as us. In seeing their black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth, the wool on their head, their bent knees, their elongated hands, their large curled nails, and especially the livid color of the palm of their hands, I could not take my eyes off their face in order to tell them to stay far away. And when they advanced that hideous hand towards my plate in order to serve me, I wished I were able to depart in order to eat a piece of bread elsewhere, rather than dine with such service. What unhappiness for the white race—to have tied their existence so closely with that of Negroes in certain countries! God preserve us from such a contact.8 Agassiz’s visceral and highly emotive response to the hotel’s domestic staff is telling. The experience was clearly of a very different sort from passing strangers in the street or competing with an acknowledged master of fencing. The letter home clearly shows he feared direct physical contact with black people, and this likely had sexual overtones. Some years later Agassiz claimed that interracial sex was “a perversion of every natural sentiment.” But this personal fear was also mixed up with a concern for what such contact could mean for society, and it was imbued with the notion that black people in America were different from whites.9 In the United States, Agassiz encountered a society unlike those he had known in Europe. In the North, where he spent his first year in America, the democratic ideal that 118

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“all men are created equal” prevailed—this was a defining ideological feature of American culture, and it differed greatly from the social conditions of European nations. In actuality a class system among white people emerged, and discrimination against nonwhites was widespread; however, the contrast created by the presence of slavery in the South suggested that here, in the North, social elevation was open to all. At the same time, the continued presence of slavery in the South led to the association of dark skin with enslavement, such that all black people were considered socially inferior, even those who achieved middle-class respectability in the North. A single attitude of disdain thus unified and belittled a vastly diverse population purely on the basis of race. This combined and in some ways contradictory impression of black people as both inferior and capable of advancing was unique to the social system in America: this was what made Agassiz’s experience in Philadelphia so shocking. The fencing master that he encountered in Europe was not a slave but a master. The American hotel domestic, on the other hand, was perceived as being like a slave—he was not an actual slave, but as a person of color he was associated with the slave condition— while at the same time, theoretically at least, as a free person he could assert himself as the social equal of white people. It was this combination of (apparent) autonomy and (perceived) inferiority that made the hotel domestics a threat to Agassiz personally and to society in general. Agassiz’s physical fear of contact with black skin was thus linked to the fear that contact between the races would harm (white-ruled) society. As Agassiz wrote later in the same letter to his mother: I cannot escape the idea that the state of things that currently reigns in the southern States of the Union will one day bring about the ruin of the United States of North America. Consider the negro in Boston, where he enjoys complete freedom; he remains excluded from everything by the force of things and doubtless also by the effect of a natural instinct of which European man is probably not aware. I find the ideas of both parties in the quarrel over the negroes to be equally false. Those philanthropists who should like to make the negroes citizens of their community always forget that they can offer them neither the African sun necessary to their proper development, nor a home amongst themselves, since they would never be willing to accord them their daughters, nor would any of them ever consider marrying a negro woman. The defenders of slavery forget that, though they may be black, these men have as much right as we do to enjoy their freedom, and all they can see in this issue is a question of 119

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inherited property guaranteed by law, and whose loss would bring about their ruin. By all means establish communities of negroes in the tropics if you are in a position to take an interest in the future of the negroes, but don’t allow yourself to be seduced by a false philanthropy, or to associate the future of the white race with that of the black. That can only lead to a renewal of scenes such as we have seen in SaintDomingue.10 Black people could never be equal to whites, he believed, but at the same time they had a right to their freedom, although better they exercised this right elsewhere. Any system that brought two such drastically different peoples together would only spell disaster. SaintDomingue—where violent slave rebellion had led to the creation of the Republic of Haiti, the first independent nation in the world led by black people—was a case in point. Haiti was a nightmare come true for white Americans. Agassiz’s experience in Philadelphia affected him profoundly, and in writing to his mother he expressed intense anxiety over the encounter. Nevertheless . . . nonetheless . . . — this is the language of internal conflict, of a mind that cannot rest on a single conclusion but instead vacillates between opposing positions. When faced with a person who appeared to be drastically different from himself, Agassiz was unable to decide how he should respond. In this moment of crisis he turned to familiar modes of apprehending something significantly new, those of the stereotype and of science. In his account, Agassiz referred not to separate encounters with individuals but to a stereotype, an amalgamation of racist preconceptions, the purpose of which was to create and justify social distance by dehumanizing the individual. The stereotype validates a dislike; it makes the feared subject into something bigger than it really is, an object beyond controlling, thereby justifying the fear; but the feared object also becomes something completely “other,” and thus distinct from the self. This is a movement in the formation of identity. If the object of fear is drastically different from me, then it serves to clarify and define my own identity. The stereotype makes the “other” so extremely different that it is not at all like me—it is a mirror that shows me what I am by representing what I am not. Yet lurking beneath this complex relationship between self and other is the knowledge that the two are not so very different after all, that in some ways I am like the other before me. This identification with the other threatens the integrity of the self, causing intense anxiety. The stereotype is meant to alleviate this anxiety by creating distance, and in this way provides a sense of mastery or control. As the great twentieth-century American novelist Ralph Ellison 120

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recognized, “The Negro stereotype is really an image of the unorganized, irrational forces of American life, forces through which, by projecting them in forms of images of an easily dominated minority, the white individual seeks to be at home in the vast unknown world of America.” The purpose of the stereotype, Ellison concluded, “is not so much to crush the Negro as to console the white man.”11 Agassiz rendered the hotel domestics into a stereotype by describing the anatomical parts of individuals as if they belonged to a homogenous group: “their” face, hair, teeth, and hand—especially the hand, that instrument of dexterity permitting human industry, intimacy, and autonomy. The possibility of coming into physical contact with one of the black domestics, free men who were in fact autonomous and consequently unpredictable in their actions, this possibility so distressed Agassiz that in place of an individual reaching out to assist him, he saw only “that hideous hand” which “they advanced” toward him. When the American writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston wrote about her first prolonged encounter with white people, the children of her employer, with whom she often played rather than attending to her domestic duties, she, too, focused on the hands. “But the thing that held my eyes were their fingers,” she wrote. “They were long and thin, and very white, except up near the tips. There they were baby pink. I had never seen such hands. It was a fascinating discovery for me. I wondered how they felt.”12 Agassiz and Hurston were both captivated by hands different from their own, but Hurston was moved to wonder what it would be like to touch those other hands, to engage in intimate, human contact with them; not so Agassiz. The possibility of a black man touching him repulsed Agassiz so deeply that he wished to flee and take his bread elsewhere. “God preserve us from such a contact,” he wrote, as if the Creator shared his views. When Agassiz visited Philadelphia, the city boasted a proud African-American community, one of the largest free black populations in the country. As an 1849 civic report stated, the community was “sober, industrious, and independent,” and citizens were “steadily advancing in wealth and social improvements.” Robert Douglass, an affluent barber, and his wife, Grace, supported numerous charitable and religious organizations, provided formal education for their children, patronized the arts, and were active politically. Their son, Robert Douglass, Jr., was a talented artist and daguerreotypist; his sister, Sarah Mapps Douglass, was a teacher, president of a literary society, and an important figure in the antislavery movement. She was also deeply interested in science and had “a well-selected and valuable cabinet of shells and minerals, well-arranged and labelled,” a collection she shared with her students. Families such as the Douglass’s not only achieved middle-class gentility, but they 121

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also worked to improve the position of others. In short, they possessed “all the elements of civil respectability, and social happiness” thought characteristic of Philadelphia’s black community.13 A respectable middle-class family, this was what Agassiz might have found in Philadelphia, and perhaps he did meet such people. But middle-class African Americans, especially those who were politically active, were a threat to white society, and so they were widely derided as “uppity Negroes.” As one Philadelphian noted, if a black man “be inclined to reflection and intellectual conversation, and endeavor to fashion his manners from good models no matter how faithful a hand he is to work or how respected he is to his superiors, he is considered as a saucy, impudent ‘nigger’ who ought to have his head knocked off him.” For educating their children and seeking good jobs, for participating in cultural events and attending church, for holding political meetings and establishing literary societies—in short, for their efforts at betterment and self-sufficiency—members of the African-American community in Philadelphia were daily subjected to abuse by whites. They were ridiculed for dressing, talking, and behaving “like” whites; their actions were deemed not their own but a parody of white culture. This was the case precisely because they had wealth and independence and were politically active, all of which white people regarded as affronts to the current social order.14 In the late 1820s a popular series of cartoons published under the title “Life in Philadelphia,” and later reprinted in Philadelphia and London, graphically portrayed the black middle class as stupid and deluded in their pretensions of respectability. In one of these caricatures a black dandy asks of a grossly overdressed lady, “How you find yourself dis hot weader, Miss Chloe?” to which she replies, “Pretty well I tank you Mr. Cesar, only I aspire too much!” Vicious parodies like this one were on the increase at the time Agassiz was in Philadelphia, both in print and on stage in the form of minstrel shows. In Boston and elsewhere he also likely encountered the cutouts and cartoons regularly displayed in shop windows, images that characterized African Americans as grotesque. Agassiz could not possibly have avoided such stereotypes if he tried.15 “Only the warmly philanthropic view [black people] as men, and treat them with real regard,” remarked the phrenologist George Combe.16 Given the depth of his revulsion on meeting black Philadelphians, it is clear that Louis Agassiz was not warmly philanthropic. The other mode of apprehending something new that Agassiz deployed was science: he framed his experience at the hotel in Philadelphia in terms of natural history. In the letter 122

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to his mother he listed the many physical traits of the waiter as if he were a newly discovered species in need of classification. Just as his students were taught to identify all the characteristics of an alcohol-preserved fish, viewing the one specimen as representative of all those sharing its name, Agassiz devised a catalogue of supposedly shared physical features of “men of color” from a few individuals. But more crucially, the encounter raised for Agassiz the matter of diversity in nature, the puzzling question of variation among Homo sapiens striking him with terrible immediacy. In response, he vacillated between conventional belief in “the confraternity of the human type” and the perhaps equally conventional belief (at least in white society) “that they are not the same blood as us.” A black man, the evidence before him seemed to indicate, was not like him, but significantly different. The degree of this difference suggested that all humans did not share a common origin, yet this conclusion went against the biblical account of human history; but at the same time the material facts in nature appeared to support this conclusion . . . . Nevertheless . . . nonetheless . . . . The men who attended to Agassiz in Philadelphia challenged everything he had been taught as a Christian about the common origin of humanity, bringing his science and his religion into painful conflict. To reconcile the two—which he had to do if he was to go on with his work, if he was to be the man that he himself and many others believed him to be—he would have to revise his position on one point or the other. While he was in Philadelphia, Agassiz spent four days with Samuel George Morton, founder of American invertebrate paleontology and author of numerous articles on anatomy and geology. Seemingly tireless when it came to his work, Morton had earned himself an international reputation through his efforts despite chronic poor health. By the 1840s Morton was also well known as a craniologist. Craniology, the study of human skulls, was founded in the late eighteenth century by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and was one among several techniques developed to measure differences between humans. There was also the Dutch anatomist Peter Camper’s “facial angle,” which measured the angle created by the relation between a person’s chin, nose, and forehead when viewed in profile, and Johann Caspar Lavater’s science of physiognomical perception, which would prove exceptionally useful in the study of race, especially as its principles were widely accepted. Physiognomy, Camper’s “facial angle,” and the measurement of human crania were used to get beyond the awkward surface of race—the color of skin—and attempt to construct racial difference more objectively. 123

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For two decades, and with the aid of colleagues around the world who procured crania for him, Morton collected human skulls of many “kindreds, tongues and peoples.” He took a variety of measurements from each skull, including the capacity, which he calculated by pouring white pepper seed into the cranial cavity and then measuring the amount he had used. With this statistical data Morton classified the skulls into five categories following Blumenbach’s system—Caucasian, Mongolian, Malay, American, and Ethiopian—and he concluded that within the racial groupings there were consistencies in cranial volume: the size of a person’s skull, and by implication the degree of his or her intelligence, was determined by race.17 In 1839 Morton published a handsomely illustrated volume, Crania Americana, in which he wrote: “From remote ages the inhabitants of every extended locality have been marked by certain physical and moral peculiarities, common among themselves, and serving to distinguish them from all other people.” But while Morton referred to “primitive distinctions among men,” and also claimed that “each Race was adapted from the beginning to its peculiar local destination,” he declined to “pursue this intricate question in detail.” With his measurements of crania, Morton provided the theory of multiple creations with its statistical edge, but he was slow in committing himself on the matter of whether humans were originally diverse. Five years later, when he published a second craniological study, Crania Aegyptiaca, he again argued in favor of polygenesis, but still refrained from making the point outright. Morton was an exceedingly cautious and retiring man, one not given to stirring up controversy. He was especially afraid of entering into a dispute with the clergy. In 1846 he finally threw caution to the wind.18 On 1 December 1846 Morton wrote a letter to John R. Bartlett, corresponding secretary to the newly formed American Ethnological Society, in which he stated that different groups of Native Americans “have originated from several, perhaps even from many pairs, which were adapted, from the beginning, to the varied localities they were designed to occupy.” The letter, Morton’s first public and unambiguous declaration of support for polygenesis, was read to members of the society and later published. It was written just days after Agassiz had departed Philadelphia.19 When Agassiz and Morton met in 1846, the two men got along famously, causing one colleague to remark that, excepting Cuvier, “Morton was the only zoologist who had any influence on Agassiz’s mind and scientific opinions.” Agassiz was deeply impressed by the Philadelphian’s collection of crania and equally impressed by this sober, thoughtful man whose work was so painstaking. He had nothing but respect for Morton, and the feeling was 124

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mutual. “I am delighted with his astonishing memory, quick perceptions, encyclopaedical knowledge of Natural History and most pleasing manner,” Morton wrote of Agassiz. “There is no affectation or distrust about him.” Whenever Agassiz passed through Philadelphia, the two would spend time together.20 That Morton and Agassiz each changed or focused his opinion on the matter of human diversity around the time of their first meeting suggests that this encounter was a significant one for both men. Morton had been hinting at original diversity for years; it was only a matter of time before he gathered the courage to come out publicly in favor of polygenesis. Agassiz was equally predisposed to the idea. He had already claimed separate creations in distinct zoological provinces for the rest of the animal and vegetable worlds, and was well known as a “splitter”—someone who tended to identify new species based on minute differences rather than group them together as varieties of the same species. If two organisms were found in different geographical centers or geological strata, no matter how similar the two were anatomically, then by definition according to his views they belonged to different species, and so had been created separately. When Agassiz and Morton met over Morton’s collection of crania, they easily convinced each other that God had created black people separately from whites.21 Agassiz’s encounter with black Philadelphians had thrown him into a crisis, but the time he spent with Samuel Morton helped to resolve the conflict. When he returned to Boston and looked over his lectures on the Plan of Creation, he must have thought back to his recent conversations with Morton and he perhaps closely read the copy of Crania Aegyptiaca Morton had so kindly presented to him as a gift. He reflected on what he had seen of Morton’s collection of human crania, and he remembered what the domestics in his hotel had made him feel “about the confraternity of the human type and the unique origin of our species.” With these impressions in mind, Agassiz concluded that the different human races had also been created in the zoological provinces in which they were typically found, the varieties distinctly aboriginal and fixed. He had, as he believed, placed “truth before all.”22 In his first lectures before an American audience, Agassiz stated that black and white people did not share a common ancestor. He did not go so far, however, as to claim that the varieties of Homo sapiens constituted separate species, instead emphasizing the common humanity among all people. In this way he effectively resolved his science with his religion but also retained an element of the conflict that he had first experienced in Philadelphia. It was only a matter of time before he again revised his opinion. 125

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Doctor Gibbes was beside himself with desperation. “Can you tell me anything of Mr. Agassiz?” he wrote to Morton, one of his principal correspondents. “When will he come here? Tell him not to pass [by] Columbia—my collection has everything fossil yet known in South Carolina and he must see it—let me know when he will be here. . . . I would not miss him on any account—if you see him, say to him to give me notice of his coming that I may meet him on his arrival and take him to my house, where I expect him to be my guest while here.”23 It was early March 1847, and the doctor was so eager to meet the famous Professor Louis Agassiz that he could hardly contain himself. The isolation of living in Columbia was for him frustrating in the extreme. There was little question that Agassiz would eventually visit Charleston, for the scientists there had caught his attention many years back, and he had since developed cordial relations with them through correspondence. Charleston, the scientific capital of the South, was also an obligatory stop on the public lecture circuit—and it was not far from Columbia. A side trip to the capital was a distinct possibility. To have a great savant pass by so close without stopping would have been more than the doctor could take. The Reverend Dr. John Bachman also looked forward to Agassiz’s arrival. He had met the Swiss naturalist briefly in 1838, at a meeting in Freiburg, Germany, and like many before him, he was considerably impressed with the man. He once told a colleague that he valued Agassiz’s opinion more than anyone in America. Bachman hoped that when he came to Charleston they could meet privately and hold “a long conversation in my study.” This would give them plenty of time to discuss a variety of topics, to exhaust the many questions Bachman might ask of the more experienced naturalist. Agassiz’s visit would also do much to raise the profile of the scientific community in the South. If a great man bothered to acknowledge the value of their work, then there was hope that fellow American scientists in the North might hold greater appreciation for their research. Yes, it would be good for the South to have him there.24 So, the famous Agassiz was expected—but when exactly? With the success of his Lowell lectures, Agassiz was much in demand up and down the east coast, and while anxious to get on with some serious research, in the winter of 1847 he graciously agreed to undertake a lecture tour. He had yet to fulfill his desire to undertake a scientific excursion, but America was providing other benefits, and the opportunity to make a grand journey sometime in the future seemed likely enough. Recently he had been appointed professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University’s newly formed Lawrence 126

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Scientific School, extending his American sojourn indefinitely and opening up the possibility of ongoing research into the continent’s natural history. For the moment, however, he would take the Plan of Creation on tour. Agassiz arrived in Charleston late in November. It was a good time of year to visit the South. While Bostonians were dressing warm against the cool New England autumn and anticipating the first snowfall, Charlestonians could still sit on their verandas and enjoy comfortable breezes off the sea. The mild weather was also good for sightseeing. When Agassiz arrived, Charleston’s preeminent naturalists took him to Sullivan’s Island, where he wasted no time in discovering “new fishes, new turtles, new molluscs.” They also took him to the city’s museum, though it was in a state of disarray, because it included a number of interesting specimens among the natural objects and “curiosities.” The fossils had been collected over a number of years, and many would have been new to Agassiz. Impressed with what he saw, Agassiz praised the museum and encouraged those responsible to reestablish it more formally.25 Agassiz found the Charleston naturalists delightful. Having himself once worked in a relatively remote city that possessed more potential for scientific activity than actual accomplishments, he was sympathetic to their circumstances. He praised the endeavors of Edmund Ravenel, F. S. Holmes, and Dr. Gibbes, who not only traveled to Charleston on this occasion but had earlier intercepted him in Vermont, so eager was he to meet the professor. Agassiz gave the Charleston scientific community much-needed recognition and support, and in return he may have received something more valuable than lecturing fees and his rapidly growing celebrity status. In Charleston, Agassiz found a community that was not so different from Neuchâtel, one that made him feel at home but also allowed him to be “the big fish.” For most of his stay in Charleston, Agassiz was the guest of the herpetologist John Edwards Holbrook and his wife, Harriott, a charming, intelligent and socially adept woman with whom Agassiz forged a lasting and genuinely affectionate rapport. Agassiz knew Holbrook’s work before arriving in the South, having encountered his North American Herpetology while in Europe. In his opinion, Holbrook’s book had put American science on the map. Agassiz stayed with the Holbrooks at their Charleston home and at Belmont, their 185-acre estate on the Cooper River, just five miles north of the city. The Holbrooks treated him warmly, more as a member of the household than a visitor. Free to move about the grounds, Agassiz explored, observed, and collected facts as both his profession and his predilections drove him to do.26 127

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It was at Belmont that Agassiz had his first true taste of American slave culture. On days when he was not required to tour some important feature of the nearby cityscape or dine with prominent citizens, Agassiz could be found in the Holbrooks’ cotton fields, carefully observing the men and women at work there. He was fascinated by slavery, a labor system completely unknown in his homeland; he was even more fascinated by the slaves. Later in the evening, sitting on the Holbrook’s veranda with the smoke of a good cigar punctuating his remarks, Agassiz discussed “the races” with his hosts. It was a congenial setting, one perfect for speaking his mind on the subject fully. It was also a place where Agassiz would find little opposition to his views.27 Agassiz’s experience in the South was very different from his encounter with black people in Philadelphia. In South Carolina, Agassiz found himself surrounded by intelligent white men who firmly believed in the natural inferiority of Africans. He was also surrounded by dark-skinned people who were accessible as objects of study, more so than the hotel domestics up north had been; perhaps they were also less threatening. Long under the control of whites, the public behavior of slaves was determined by an established code of conduct, and the resulting demonstrations of subservience were understood to mean that they lacked self-determination. Everyone knew how a slave was supposed to behave; there would be no surprises, as perhaps there had been in Philadelphia. If the stereotypes of free blacks in the North had made an impression on Agassiz, the order of plantation society would prove no less influential.28 As he had done in the North, Agassiz delivered his lectures on the Plan of Creation to large audiences in Charleston. The Boston clergy’s response to his ideas, however, had distressed him, and so to avoid further conflict he may have revised the content of his lectures before delivering them elsewhere. Certainly in New York he seems to have chosen his words with care. After proposing to “throw some additional light upon the origin of Mankind,” Agassiz stated: “The different varieties of men are circumscribed in boundaries similar to those occupied by natural groups of animals. In other words, the different races of men cover the natural boundaries of the definite associations in the Animal Kingdom.” The logical conclusion to be drawn from this is that humans were also the product of multiple creations, but Agassiz apparently did not say this, at least not explicitly. Instead, he changed the subject completely, and then went on to reassert the specialness of human beings. This was far more circumspect than he had been in Boston, but if he did speak more cautiously in New York, he had little reason to do so in South Carolina, particularly at a special meeting of the Charleston Literary and Philosophical Society.29 128

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The society included among its members Holbrook, Bachman, Lewis Gibbes, the Reverend Thomas Smyth, the banker Daniel Ravenel, and the artist Charles Fraser. Holbrook, a gentle, soft-spoken man, rarely spoke at meetings, while Bachman could usually be trusted to offer his opinion, sometimes “vehemently,” as he did on 15 December, when after one of his lectures Agassiz joined the club for a discussion on “The Unity of the Race.” As the Reverend Smyth recorded, “Mr. Agassiz declared before the Literary Club that he believed in an indefinite number of original and distinctly created races of men.” What was more, he asserted that these different races constituted separate species. “As ocular and irresistible proof of his theory, Mr. Agassiz has been very ready, and with great reiteration, to point out in the fingers of the negro, a greater degree of web, and this to demonstrate, by his partial development, the difference of specific character and origin in this race of men.” That Agassiz used the hands of men for his comparison suggests that his experience in Philadelphia had not been forgotten. Perhaps he also examined the hands of people at Belmont.30 Agassiz did not articulate the idea that people of differing races constituted separate species while in Boston or New York. In Charleston, however, he made the claim very directly, and his ideas were shared by most of the other men present—most, but not all. Bachman was greatly disappointed in the man whose opinions he had so recently held in high regard. Not only did Agassiz have little to say to him of any significance on mammals when they had met privately, but now it was clear that he favored polygenesis. Bachman’s disappointment quickly developed into something more heated as he argued for the original unity of all humans. Agassiz was wrong to support original diversity, he felt; science and religion proved him wrong—surely the other members of the society could see this. The reverend doctor, however, was cut short. At precisely 10:30 pm, as society rules dictated, the discussion was brought to a swift conclusion. Bachman would be invited to give his full views on the subject at a subsequent meeting of the society, and these would be further developed into a book, but for now had to hold his peace. When he spoke to audiences in the North, Agassiz had stated that people of different racial characteristics did not share a common origin but that they nevertheless belonged to a single species. With this theory he advocated the doctrine of separate creations, but still he held to the idea that all humans belonged to the same biological classification. While in Charleston, however, Agassiz had stated not only that Africans had been created separately from Europeans but that they were sufficiently distinct physiologically and anatomically to constitute separate species. It was the first time he had made this assertion publicly. In the coming months and years he would equivocate on this point, but here, in South Carolina, 129

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surrounded by adoring naturalists who also happened to be slaveholders, he declared himself for the original diversity of humankind. For Agassiz the matter was important in its bearing on natural history, on the understanding of God’s creation, but for his audience and his hosts in the scientific community it was about much more. To Southerners polygenesis was a valuable tool in the political arena, and as the presence of slavery on American soil increasingly drove the nation toward violence, it was an idea whose time had come.

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Jack

Time had slowed, permitting him to consider the fine details of the moment thoroughly and without haste. His senses were intensely alive, and yet he also experienced everything as if from afar, as if it were happening to someone else. The water moved quickly, a cold blur against his skin, but he could also feel the subtle movement of his eyelashes as the current rushed across his face. The flesh on his cheeks was gently pushed upward by the water, and occasionally something brushed past him, a small leaf or twig, a grain of sand. It was all strangely calming. He had been plunged into a maelstrom, and yet he was unafraid. The reason for this, he supposed, was the firm grip around his chest. He was held fast; nothing could happen to him. But of course something did happen to him. When the preacher raised him up from the water he was changed. It was some time before he could take in the commotion around him. His eyes and ears were filled with water, and he gasped for breath as if he had been deprived of air much longer than a few seconds. The people touched him on the back, on his shoulders and arms as they congratulated him, welcomed him. It had been many years now, but he liked to recollect that moment in the river and the feeling he had afterward. The memory calmed him. He looked over the railing and down to the empty seats below. Somewhere down there the pastor was quietly listening. He usually kept out of sight, sitting at the back, under the gallery. It was only right that he did so. Some disagreed, expressed a desire that the pastor should lead them in their worship, but he did not share this view. It was the preacher who led the service. The white pastor had baptized him and many others, but the preacher told them why. He sat to the side, farthest from the preacher, and he never sang; he never liked to. He preferred to think while the others raised their voices in song. When the hymns and prayers were done there would be a conference. He would then have to say what he knew about those men and women who had strayed in recent weeks; he 133

would speak their sins as he knew them to be true. He would do this. Whether the offense was cursing or theft, falsehood or disobedience, the sinner would have to atone or be expelled. As watchman, his word would be accepted as true. Soon, he would be heard. The water ran cool over his body and he was calmed.

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8 Storm, Blood, and Fire

H

orrid murder, the newspaper announced on the front page alongside the daily poem, Irish jokes, and news from around the country. Murder itself was not a particularly unusual event, but in this case the crime was exceptionally brutal. The body had been discovered in the Congaree River, some ten miles below Columbia. Bruising on the victim’s breast and shoulder suggested a struggle, but these marks were insignificant compared to the fatal blow, which had landed on the poor man’s neck at an angle, as if someone had stood over him and brought the force of many thousands down on him. The murder weapon was thought to be an ax or a hatchet. Whatever the instrument, in the hands of the assailant it had severed the tendons of the victim’s neck on one side and left a dent in his vertebrae. The man’s head had nearly been taken off. The victim was Daniel McCaskill, overseer at Big Lake, a plantation not far from Columbia in Lower Richland County belonging to the estate of John Singleton. McCaskill had been to Columbia on Monday, 18 July 1842, to conduct plantation business. He was last seen the next morning when, after spending the night with a friend on the west side of the Congaree, he rose early, ate breakfast, and set out to catch the ferry across the river. Perhaps 135

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he hoped to be back at Big Lake before midday, not wishing to leave matters there too long in the hands of the slave driver. Eleven days later his body was found with coat and vest removed and bearing evidence of violent death. “His hat, pantaloons and drawers have not been found,” reported the Camden Journal, adding that they “were probably destroyed to hide signs of blood.”1 As news of the overseer’s murder spread, fear overtook the men and women of Richland County and surely extended into neighboring regions. McCaskill, a Scottish immigrant, had worked at Big Lake for at least four years, and possibly twice that time. He was liked by those who knew him, including planters in the region, Columbia merchants, and his employer, who paid him well. “We have known Mr. McCaskill for the last nine years,” wrote the editors of the Camden Journal, “and never knew him to have a dispute with anyone, or heard anything in disparagement of his character.” Who, then, thought so little of the man that they could bring an ax down upon his head? Who could have done such a terrible thing—and why?2 Suspicion for Daniel McCaskill’s murder fell immediately on the slave population. Something like this was bound to happen, though few dared to say as much until it actually did happen. Black people greatly outnumbered whites on the plantations, and despite the common refrain among the slaveholding class that slaves were happy with their lot, the fear of uprising underpinned everyday life in the South. When a group of thirty or so whites from neighboring plantations assembled at Big Lake, greatly agitated by news of murder in the vicinity, they concluded that responsibility for the crime lay with Plenty, the driver at Big Lake. They wanted him arrested.3 As a slave driver, Plenty’s role on the plantation would have brought him into a close relationship with the overseer, closer than perhaps anyone else, and it would have been an uneasy alliance at best. “The requisite qualifications in an overseer are utter heartlessness, brutality and cruelty,” a former slave remarked. “It is his business to produce large crops . . . no matter what amount of suffering it may have cost.” Violence was a regular part of plantation life, for this was how whites kept control of an unwilling labor force. As one planter explained, “Terror must operate to keep [the slaves] in subjection, and terror can only be produced by occasional examples of severity.” Daily were the opportunities for violence on absentee plantations such as Big Lake. The Singletons had a reputation for hiring particularly cruel overseers, and although it is not known whether McCaskill was a harsh or a lenient master, his job was to maintain order, and violence was considered the best way to

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achieve this. A strong hand was necessary, dogs and pistols often useful. The driver also played a role.4 It was on McCaskill’s instruction that Plenty would have had to mete out punishment to the other men and women of Big Lake. He stood on that fine, shifty line between the whites, with their orders and demands, and his people. Situated between the white world of power and the black one of servitude, with a thick rope of violence joining the two, the slave driver found himself in a difficult position, one that could easily have induced him to murder the overseer. Big Lake belonged to John Singleton, but when the old man died in 1820 his son, Colonel Richard Singleton, took responsibility for the cotton plantation, running it as a trust estate. Singleton was rarely at Big Lake. He was frequently out of the region and so relied on an overseer and his close friends, Wade Hampton and Benjamin Franklin Taylor, to look after his interests; Dr. Gibbes, who was physician to the Singleton slave population, could also be relied on for information. But despite his absenteeism, Singleton seems to have known the slaves at Big Lake reasonably well. He knew Plenty well enough to think him innocent of the overseer’s murder, yet he was also concerned that hauling the driver off at a time when there was no one on hand to maintain order would lead to chaos of the worst kind. “The negroes will run away en masse,” he cautioned. Singleton insisted that any investigations be made by those authorized to do so, by his personal agents, Hampton and Taylor, not the good citizens of Richland County, “otherwise it will be with injurious consequences to the interest of the plantation.”5 Singleton did not think Plenty responsible, and yet he could not decide who may have committed the crime. He was not alone in this, but whereas others simply had their ideas about the murderer’s identity, Singleton agonized about who might or might not have been responsible. “The negroes that suspicion rests strongest on,” he wrote from his summer retreat in Virginia, “I don’t think are the guilty ones.” Singleton did not identify these people, but he believed them to be “less able to commit such a deed than many others on the plantation,” and he also thought them to have had little motive. He went on to cast doubt on the very idea that the people at Big Lake had anything to do with the matter. Such a thing “is not certain,” he wrote—but then he admitted it “most probable.” If the murderers were indeed from Big Lake, he thought two men named Mike and Frederick most worthy of suspicion, but then he had to dismiss this possibility because they were not even in the area at the time.6

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The fact was, Singleton had no idea who was responsible for McCaskill’s death, and neither did anyone closer to the event. The search for the murderer or murderers continued, and several men were arrested and interrogated, but nothing new was learned. Taylor wrote to Singleton, “We have as yet entirely failed to arrive at any certain or even probable facts which can lead to the discovery of the murderers—so that we are just where we started.”7 There was, meanwhile, the problem of overseeing Big Lake. With McCaskill dead, who was looking after the crops and the workers? The cotton was exceptionally good that year, but without a disciplined labor force to bring it in, even the best crop was worthless. The summer was a busy time. The cotton bolls were just beginning to open, and every white man not away for the season was occupied with managing the work of picking, ginning, and packing. There were few available overseers to be had, and fewer still with the right experience and temperament, especially for managing a plantation under the terrible cloud of murder. Hampton and Taylor endeavored to find a permanent replacement for McCaskill, to ensure Big Lake was not given over to the slaves, but this proved difficult. Several overseers were employed and then dismissed, and Plenty was ever more relied upon.8 On 22 August, trouble struck Lower Richland Country again when a freshet caused the rivers to rise with sudden fury, threatening crops and generally causing havoc throughout the region. Embankments had to be repaired and quickly to prevent further damage, which meant workers would have to be taken from the fields to shore up the dam. The need for level heads in the management of plantation affairs was never felt more keenly.9 It was during this tumultuous time, more than a month after the murder, that new information regarding McCaskill’s killing came to light, leading to the arrest of four black men from Big Lake: Bacchus, Paul, Daniel and Jacob. From there the pace of events quickened.10 On Monday, 29 August, Wade Hampton spent the day at Big Lake, “examining witnesses for the defence of the negroes to be tried the following day.” The trial began at 10:00 am on Tuesday and carried on until after dark. “Bacchus, Paul, Daniel and Jacob were arraigned for McKaskill’s [sic] murder, before as respectable a court as was ever organized, for such a duty,” Hampton later reported to the still absent Colonel Singleton. The court in question was not a formal institution, for when it came to the misdeeds of black men justice was firmly in the hands of those white citizens against whom the crime had been committed. Though there was a judge, the Honorable Judge Earle, the trial took place at Big Lake rather than at the courthouse in Columbia, and it is unlikely that any records were kept; none are known. We know only what those who controlled the proceedings thought worthy of recording. 138

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We know that Joe, Plenty’s brother, was a witness, called to testify against the accused because he knew something of the crime. Joe was himself apparently involved, but in return for his confession and testimony against the others, he was not charged with conspiracy to commit murder. We know that the majority of the court believed his statement credible but that he could positively identify only Bacchus and Paul as the murderers. Hampton believed all four men guilty—Bacchus, Paul, Daniel, and Jacob—but, despite his role in the plot, Joe “could not, however, identify Daniel and Jacob with sufficient clearness, to satisfy a scrupulous Jury,” and so the two men were acquitted. Finally, we know that Bacchus and Paul were sentenced to be hanged on the third Friday of November 1842.11 The uncertainty that Singleton had expressed when he first learned of McCaskill’s murder, uncertainty about who could have committed the crime, seems to have stuck with him even after the trial was over and the sentence decided. He still had no idea who actually had committed the crime, but he did not believe it was Bacchus and Paul. In a surprising turn of events, Singleton claimed to have new evidence relevant to the case, and he hired a lawyer to defend the “unfortunate convicts.” After a series of delays, however, Judge Earle ruled that a new trial would not be granted. “I suppose the execution of the negroes . . . is inevitable,” Singleton’s lawyer wrote in his final missive.12 After nearly four months of incarceration following the trial, Bacchus and Paul were executed on 3 March 1843. The hanging took place at the southwest corner of Gervais and Lincoln Streets in Columbia, where an open lot afforded plenty of room for spectators to crowd around the gallows and observe the spectacle. Hangings often took on a carnival atmosphere, with people coming from miles around to witness the execution, but also to partake in dancing, horse-trading, gambling, and other amusements. The killing of two black men thought guilty of murder was a community event. Perhaps Dr. Gibbes was there. As physician at Big Lake he had known the condemned men.13 Julian Selby, a noted white citizen of Columbia, attended the hangings as a child in the company of a young woman who worked at the boardinghouse where he lived with his family. Black people could go anywhere in the city without being disturbed so long as they were accompanied by a white person. Selby claims the woman used him in this way to attend the execution with impunity; however, freedmen and slaves were undoubtedly welcome at the hanging of Bacchus and Paul. A public and gruesome death was considered a strong deterrent to rising up against whites, but it is hard to say for sure whether in this case the execution had the intended effect or some other quite different one. After all, white people surely missed the lesson in McCaskill’s horrid murder, the lesson that slavery will push a 139

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man to extremes, that violence begets violence. For Julian Selby, at least, the hanging was indeed significant. It was, he remembered many years later, his “first recollection of the terrible.”14 Jacob Stroyer had been a Singleton slave, and in the narrative of his life he told of the death of an overseer at Big Lake plantation. “One day,” he wrote, “the overseer at Big Lake punished the slaves so that some of them fell exhausted under their punishment. When he came to the two men, Cyrus and Stepney, they resisted, but were taken by force and severely punished. A few days after, the overseer died, those two men were taken up and hanged on the plantation without judge or jury.” Stroyer then described the ultraviolent rule established by the overseer’s replacement, in which “every slave who did not submit to his punishment was to be shot immediately.” The need to assert absolute authority in the wake of murder was imperative.15 Stroyer was born in 1849, seven years after Daniel McCaskill was killed, so he had no firsthand knowledge of that event. Yet as a child on Mathew Singleton’s plantation not far from Big Lake, he likely would have heard from his elders what had transpired in those terrible days. The facts as he states them are different from those of other sources, perhaps having been altered in the many tellings of the tale—the accused, for example, are named as Cyrus and Stepney—but this is no reason to discount his version of events altogether. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether he was referring to the McCaskill murder. If he was not, then it seems more than one overseer from Big Lake plantation was murdered. “Slavery and rebellion go hand in hand,” Frederick Douglass observed. This was a time and a place where violence was the rule, punishment coming again and again to the black man or woman, like the waves of some brutal and merciless sea hell-bent on breaking down only the dark stones that sit upon the shore. As Stroyer tells it, this was also a place where “the overseer died,” a simple statement that suggests natural causes but perhaps conceals some other event. He does not tell us whether Cyrus and Stepney were responsible for the overseer’s death; he does not tell us whether they were justly or unjustly “taken up and hanged.” He does not have to. The punishment these two men received is a fitting prelude to murder, just as hanging may be an apt conclusion. But to assume that Cyrus and Stepney— or Paul and Bacchus—were in fact guilty is to accept the same reasoning used nearly a century later to justify lynching. Imaginary provocation, circumstantial evidence, and kangaroo courts dogged the black man then and continue to do so to this day. At the same time, there is no denying that crime among the slave population and violent resistance to slavery 140

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occurred, because there was always motive. When slaves committed an act of aggression, they were responding not simply to the event that called forth their action but to the relentless injustice that tainted the whole of their lives and those of their ancestors before them and their descendants after. Given this heritage, little provocation was needed.16 Individual acts of slave aggression were fearsome, but the gravest of all horrors residing in the collective white mind was wholesale revolt. Thomas Jefferson, for one, greatly feared slave rebellion, but he believed that race war was probably inevitable. “Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.”17 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were at least five major plots of rebellion, but also countless smaller events, many of which were foiled. The first major revolt on record was the Stono Rebellion, which started one morning in the early autumn of 1739, when as many as one hundred enslaved Africans and African Americans armed themselves and marched southward from the Stono River in South Carolina to join the Spanish in Florida. Under the leadership of a man called Jemmy they moved from house to house, “with colours flying and drums beating, like a disciplined company,” seeking recruits and arms, destroying property and killing more than sixty whites. The group had gone twelve or fifteen miles when the militia put a stop to their progress, though some eluded capture and were pursued. All those who had played an active part in the uprising were summarily executed. One account claims that the planters then “cut off their heads and set them up at every Mile Post they came to.”18 In the years following Stono, major plots were led by Samba (Louisiana, 1763), Gabriel Prosser (Virginia, 1800), Denmark Vesey (South Carolina, 1822), and Nat Turner (Virginia, 1831). Some entailed the massacre of whites; all resulted in the execution of blacks, even in cases where no blood had been shed. No one had been killed during Gabriel’s rebellion, but the punishment for attempting to ignite a general uprising was nonetheless judged capital and thirty or forty conspirators were hanged, including Gabriel. A Charleston slave who was approached by one of the Vesey conspirators found “the burden of such a secret” so disturbing that he told his master of the plot. Denmark Vesey, a highly skilled carpenter, was identified as the leader, his plan apparently to murder every white man, woman, and child in Charleston, set fire to the city, and sail with his coconspirators to the black-governed Republic of Haiti. For whites the plot was both unbelievable in 141

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its magnitude and confirmation of long-held—though perhaps unspoken—suspicions. Elias Horry, for one, could not believe that his slave called John would kill him and his family, as another slave testified in court.19 “Tell me,” Elias asked John during his trial, “are you guilty? For I cannot believe unless I hear you say so. . . . What were your intentions?” “To kill you, rip open your belly, and throw your guts in your face,” came the reply. The possibility that an apparently faithful slave could commit such a crime kept white people awake at night for a long time to come.20 Following exposure of the Vesey plot, 131 alleged conspirators were picked up; 35 were executed—most without confessing guilt—27 were tried and acquitted, and 38 questioned and discharged. Meanwhile, terror spread among the white population. With a virtual blackout on reporting the event in the Charleston papers, the news traveled from house to house, the scope and magnitude of the plot escalating as it went. Some had their doubts that a massacre and conflagration had been imminent, including Governor Thomas Bennett, but most were easily convinced. The evidence against the conspirators, however, does not add up, suggesting that the plot was more the product of hysteria among the white population than organized conspiracy among the black. Something may have been afoot, but in all likelihood it amounted to far less than Elias Horry and his contemporaries believed. Those who went to the gallows without confessing were probably innocent of the charges against them.21 Reports of slave uprisings increased when Southern society was under stress, when other situations or events—such as political unrest or the conditions of war—made the population nervous. News of rebellion in the Caribbean also undermined whites’ sense of security. A state of barely suppressed terror, inspired by the possibility that slaves were perhaps not as happy and content as whites wanted to believe they were, was ongoing. Whites searched the faces of individual slaves for evidence of discontent and conspiracy. A sideward glance, an unexpected gesture, and of course overt acts of resistance—these were interpreted as signs that the nightmare of insurrection was perhaps not far off. “I am always studying these creatures,” Mary Chesnut wrote in her Civil War diary. “They are to me inscrutable in their ways and past finding out.” She called them “sphinxes,” their faces like masks and their actions offering no clue as to their true feelings. There was no telling what a slave was really thinking.22 Fear also crept into the free black and slave communities, particularly in the wake of uprisings, when the possibility of indiscriminate reprisal and false accusation was very real. 142

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Even plantation slaves, supposedly isolated from the news of such events, were aware of significant rebellions. “The Nat Turner insurrection in Virginia and the Vesey uprising in Charleston was discussed often, in my presence, by my parents and friends,” recalled a former slave in South Carolina. “Slaves were about as well aware of what was going on, as their masters were.” Deference to whites usually increased in the wake of an uprising, but in some cases, learning of others’ actions, especially if successful, had the opposite effect. This was the case with Saint-Domingue (later the Republic of Haiti) in 1791. When news of racial violence reached the mainland, incidents of rebellion among American slaves increased. Knowing that others had been successful in gaining their freedom could be a spur to action.23 Liberty—freedom from oppression—this was undoubtedly the goal of organized insurrection, as the Stono march to Florida and Vesey’s planned flight to Haiti indicate. One African American in the North regarded Vesey and his coconspirators as “patriots” and “martyrs in the art of Freedom.” They were, in other words, little different from the people who had won independence from British rule in 1776. In the American republic as in the British colony, if liberty would not be granted, then it would be taken.24 The white population had a different view on the matter. The problem was one of control: slaves and free blacks had to be closely regulated to ensure they did not have the opportunity to plot against whites. Actual instances of rebellion made it clear that existing codes of conduct were insufficient. With each new organized revolt—whether real or imagined—the white population sought to stabilize its position of power by further regulating the lives of black people with ever more strident measures. This inevitably led to greater dissatisfaction among those being constrained, making a concerted and violent response all the more likely. The cycle of oppression and resistance, exploitation and revenge, escalated in favor of continued and ever more brutal violence. On the plantation level, slaveholders could of course regulate many aspects of their slaves’ lives, but not all. How and when enslaved people worked and what activities they could undertake in their own time was in fact a matter of negotiation, with the slave population sometimes subtly manipulating their masters, other times more openly bargaining with them, in order to gain more favorable conditions. Religion was a particularly contested issue. Whites viewed separate black religious meetings as hotbeds of insurrection—any occasion on which slaves or free blacks gathered unsupervised was thought dangerous, as was the leadership of black preachers, whose prominence in the community and ability to stir up a congregation were well known. Black churches were often shut down and black worshippers shuttled into more subdued, white-led churches, where they could be monitored. 143

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But this attempt at avoiding potentially volatile situations sometimes backfired: police raids on and the eventual closing of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston were contributing factors in the Vesey plot of 1822.25 Religion could be used to the slaveholder’s advantage. In the wake of the “recent melancholy murder” of Daniel McCaskill, a Methodist preacher sought Wade Hampton’s support for establishing a mission on the Congaree River below Columbia to serve the black people of the region—the very location where the overseer’s body had been found. This part of the county was apparently now dangerous, its inhabitants in need of organization and instruction. While the missionary zeal that gripped the nation during this time was undoubtedly genuine, and many slaves and free blacks found spiritual balm in the Christian idea of a heavenly afterlife, organized religion had its political and social uses. The creation of plantation missions was in part a response to accusations that slavery condemned black people to heathenism: seeing to the religious instruction of slaves allowed slaveholders to defend their values as Christian and their labor system as beneficent. At the same time, Christianity was deployed as a soporific, its paternalistic message offered as the model for plantation life. Planters had to pay for the missionaries’ services, but it was worth the price to have their slaves weekly catechized in the benefits of passivity and obedience. “I have no doubt that the improvement of the morals of the slaves would soon be apparent, as has been the case elsewhere,” the Methodist preacher wrote to Hampton, “and that a Missionary once employed, the planters would not be willing to lose his labors.” In the decades following the McCaskill murder, plantation missions became commonplace in South Carolina, which, according to the slaveholders, brought about “a better spirit and subordination” among the slaves.26 It was, however, in the sphere of state politics that the regulation of blacks’ behavior was undertaken most pointedly. After the Stono Rebellion of 1739 the General Assembly of South Carolina passed an “Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and other Slaves,” which became the basis for most American slave codes of the nineteenth century. Among the prohibitions placed on slaves by the act were traveling or bearing arms without a permit if not accompanied by a white person, participating in commerce without first obtaining a permit, and renting premises for personal use. Punishment for breaking the new regulations ranged from fees levied for residing on an estate without the presence of a white person to death for attempting to raise an insurrection. The act also legally justified, in retrospect, the killing and execution of slaves thought responsible for the Stono Rebellion.27 Following Gabriel’s uprising in Virginia in 1800, the South Carolina Assembly passed 144

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further laws, shoring up the existing code and extending it to free blacks as well as slaves. After Vesey’s supposed plot in Charleston, yet another round of regulations was passed, including the Negro Seamen’s Act, which stipulated that every black sailor must be jailed when in port at his own expense or that of his employer. If the costs were not paid, the sailor would be sold into slavery. In 1823 the act was declared unconstitutional, forcing the State Assembly to revise the legislation, abandoning the hope of enslaving black seamen who anchored in Charleston. A revised version of the law was later passed, and by 1850 it had been adopted by five other states in the South.28 It was, however, Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831 that threw the nation into a crisis unlike any other. Turner was a religious man. Born and raised in Southampton County, Virginia, he had been deeply impressed by Christianity, believing that he “was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty.” He occasionally experienced visions that he interpreted as messages from God. One such vision told him to lead an uprising, and so it was that on the night of 21 August 1831, Turner and five other slaves struck their first blow against Joseph Travis, on whose plantation they lived. After collecting arms and horses, they began their bloody rampage through the county. Twenty-four hours later, some seventy slaves had joined in the rebellion.29 Terror and alarm were apparently their aim. By the second day of their campaign they had killed at least fifty-seven white men, women, and children. Six days later, however, the rebellion was quashed. No one knows for sure how many died in the massacre that ended Nat Turner’s Rebellion, but estimates hover around one hundred, almost twice the number of whites killed. Turner was apprehended on 30 October and quickly tried and convicted. “The judgement of the Court,” announced the Honorable Jeremiah Cobb, “is that you be taken hence to the jail from whence you came, thence to the place of execution, and on Friday next, between the hours of ten am and 2 pm be hung by the neck until you are dead! Dead! Dead! And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”30 In the days and months that followed, panic spread across the slaveholding states. During the antebellum era there was usually little public discussion or even acknowledgment of organized slave unrest in the South. A notice might appear in the papers that a revolt had been put down, but the event would be described as if the threat had been inconsequential and its discovery inevitable; it would be minimized to alleviate whites’ fears. In the wake of Turner’s crusade, however, the unofficial rule of censorship was lifted as a national debate on slavery and the place of black people in American society ensued.31 Remarkably, in 1832, the year after Nat Turner’s Rebellion, the legislature of the state 145

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of Virginia debated the condition and continued existence of slavery in that state. Yet the outcome was not recognition of the injustice and many problems caused by slavery and a movement to bring about its end but rather a recasting of the perceived threat and further entrenchment of race prejudice. “We can sit down and imagine that all the negroes in the South have conspired to rise on a certain night, and murder all the whites in their respective families,” wrote Thomas R. Dew of the College of William and Mary in a response to the legislature’s debate. “We may suppose the secret to be kept, and that they have the physical power to exterminate; and yet, we say the whole is morally impossible.” Nat Turner was a lone fanatic, Dew claimed; slaves were incapable of overthrowing their masters because they had neither the resources nor the intelligence to do so. According to Dew, white people were in control and black people were enslaved for a reason, indeed, for the same reason: because this was the proper order of things. “Nothing, then, but the most subtle and poisonous principles, seditiously infused into [the slave’s] mind, can break his allegiance, and transform him into the midnight murderer.” True rebellion could not come from slaves because they were incapable of such thought. No, ideas about freedom and insurrection, Dew suggested, came from elsewhere, from outside the slave society: they came from Northern whites. Abolitionism, not slavery, was the true threat.32 In the wake of Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Southerners latched onto ideas about racial inferiority to justify slavery. So, too, did they come to despise this variety of men and women called abolitionists. The ideology of race was entering its maturity. In the autumn of 1831, four days before Nat Turner was captured in the Virginia tidewater but long after the first of his fellow insurrectionists had perished on the gallows, newspapers reported that a Columbia, South Carolina, “Vigilant Association” was offering “fifteen hundred dollars for the apprehension and prosecution to conviction, of any white person who many be detected in distributing or circulating within that State the newspaper, called ‘The Liberator,’ printed in Boston, or the pamphlet called ‘Walker’s pamphlet,’ or any other publication of a seditious tendency.” Slave insurrection was not the only cause of disruption to slave society throughout the nineteenth century. Militant abolitionism, another form of organized resistance, was beginning to press down on the slaveholders and to press down hard.33 Opposition to slavery went back as far as the late seventeenth century, when Quakers argued against the spread of chattel slavery to British North America. The movement had 146

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been strong during the revolutionary era, when colonists—slave and free, black and white— together fought against the rule of a distant and tyrannical sovereign. In the wake of the War for Independence, eight states abolished slavery and Congress legislated an end to the international slave trade. But as the century turned, the movement languished. “I have long since given up the expectation of any early provision for the extinguishment of slavery among us,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1805. More slaves were imported than ever before during this time as the cotton South committed itself to the plantation system. Gradually, the condition of slavery and dark skin became synonymous, the boundaries of race and class increasingly fixed, and African Americans regarded as a distinct and inferior group. In 1820 the Missouri Compromise extended slavery westward into the territories, making the national abolition of slavery anytime soon seem highly remote.34 In the 1820s American society began to fracture and racial tensions to ferment. As the North industrialized, lower-class white laborers, many of them immigrants, began to regard their common “whiteness” as the ticket to a place on the social ladder. To ensure that this place was not on the lowest rung, they cast “blackness” as a threat to white security. African Americans who were socially visible and comparatively affluent became targets as mob violence plagued black communities in the North. In the mid-1820s race riots occurred in New Haven, Boston, and Pittsburgh. Schools and churches were burned and black communities terrorized. Instead of protecting its citizens during this terrible time, state legislatures formalized discrimination by passing laws robbing African Americans of their civil rights. Meanwhile, the American Colonization Society sought a way to deport free blacks to Africa, South America—anywhere, so long as it was not too close to white Americans. Against this backdrop of mounting racial tension and explosive violence the languishing antislavery movement began to revive and its members organize into a political crusade. Unlike earlier abolitionist movements, this one had teeth. “I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice,” William Lloyd Garrison wrote in his first editorial for The Liberator, published on 1 January 1831. Garrison, a serious and self-righteous white man, had joined the antislavery movement when he began working as coeditor of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, Benjamin Lundy’s antislavery paper. Lundy was a Baltimore Quaker, saddle maker and editor who rejected the idea of “race” completely. “The odious distinctions between white and black,” he wrote, “have been created by tyrants, for the express purpose of acquiring and preserving their august authority.” Lundy supported colonization as a means of bringing about gradual emancipation, but Garrison came to reject this idea. Colonization was not about freeing people, he realized, 147

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but about exporting free blacks to ensure a more stable environment for the perpetuation of slavery. In his own antislavery newspaper, Garrison commanded the South to free its people. “I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and i will be heard,” he wrote. In the first issue of The Liberator Garrison also published a poem in which it was all but promised that if the slaves were not freed, then an end to slavery would come “with storm, and blood, and fire.”35 When Nat Turner’s Rebellion erupted just months after The Liberator’s debut, Southerners accused Garrison and his paper of instigating insurrection. Slave uprisings had occurred long before the advent of organized, militant abolitionism, but Southerners now blamed the violence on agitation from the North: slaves were incapable of organized resistance, they said, and responsibility must therefore lie with the abolitionists. Garrison’s response to the accusation was characteristically terse: “The slaves need no incentives at our hands,” he wrote. Living under slavery was enough to bring a person to murder. “I do not justify the slaves in their rebellion: yet I do not condemn them. . . . Our slaves have the best reason to assert their rights by violent measures, inasmuch as they are more oppressed than others.” Garrison’s apparent advocacy of violent resistance marked him as a threat. That he was also white, and so could potentially rally other Northern whites to the movement, was still more distressing to Southern slaveholders.36 Garrison’s approach was radical, but it was David Walker who truly shared the insurrectionists’ love of storm and blood and fire. Numerous abolitionists, including Garrison, thought Walker an extremist, and yet he had a profound influence on the movement, in particular by denouncing colonization. Walker was born in North Carolina in the last years of the eighteenth century. The son of a free woman and an enslaved man, his mother’s status caused him to be freeborn. In the 1820s Walker moved to Boston and opened a secondhand clothing store on Brattle Street, not far from the waterfront and near where Faneuil Hall Marketplace now stands. There he became involved with the country’s first AfricanAmerican newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, publishing numerous short pieces in the New York– based paper. By 1829 he was Boston’s leading spokesperson against slavery. Later the same year, as Garrison was coming to recognize the folly of colonization, Walker published his manifesto for the antislavery movement. Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World was in part a reply to Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Unlike Jefferson, Walker believed that whites and blacks could one day live together in harmony, but so long as slavery persisted and black people were regarded as inferior beings, no such thing was possible. It was an “insupportable 148

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insult” to claim that Africans were not “of the human family,” Walker wrote, but he knew well that such claims were uttered for the sole purpose of perpetuating slavery. He denounced as deplorable Jefferson’s “suspicion” that black people were inferior and should be kept separate from whites. “This very verse, brethren, having emanated from Mr. Jefferson, a much greater philosopher the world never afforded, has in truth injured us more, and has been as great a barrier to our emancipation as any thing that has ever been advanced against us.” In his response to Jefferson, Walker parodied the Virginian: “I advance it therefore to you, not as a problematical, but as an unshaken and for ever immovable fact, that your full glory and happiness, as well as [that of] all other coloured people under Heaven, shall never be fully consummated, but with the entire emancipation of your enslaved brethren all over the world.”37 Walker and Jefferson nevertheless agreed that violence was the certain outcome of present conditions. “I tell you Americans! That unless you speedily alter your course, you and your Country are gone!!!!!!” God would punish those people who dared to enslave their fellow human beings or deport them to distant lands and yet called themselves Christians. But retribution was not in the hands of God alone: the black people would themselves fight back. “It is just the way with black men—eight white men can frighten fifty of them; whereas, if you can only get courage into the blacks, I do declare it, that one good black man can put to death six white men; and I give it as a fact, let twelve black men get well armed for battle, and they will kill and put to flight fifty whites.” Walker then explained why this was so: “The reason is, the blacks, once you get them started, they glory in death.” He added further that “there is an unconquerable disposition in the breasts of the blacks, which, when it is fully awakened and put into motion, will be subdued, only with the destruction of animal existence.” This talk of black men as both capable and desirous of wielding ultimate power over their masters deeply frightened the South. When Nat Turner began murdering whites in the summer of 1831, Walker’s Appeal was blamed, and indeed it may have played a part.38 Walker’s Appeal was a fiery sermon directed at whites, appealing to their better nature as Christians, and, failing this, their sense of fear. At the same time he was calling on the slaves to prove themselves by acting against their oppressors. To reach both groups, Walker needed to distribute his text in both the South and the North. Engaging sailors, ship’s officers, postal workers, and ordinary travelers heading south who were sympathetic to the antislavery movement to help him, he sewed copies of the Appeal into the lining of their clothes. His success is measured by the response. In addition to the fifteen hundred dollars offered by the Columbia “Vigilant Association” for the apprehension of anyone distributing 149

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his Appeal, three thousand dollars was offered for Walker’s head, and ten thousand to the person who could procure the author alive on Southern soil. The state of South Carolina also made teaching slaves to read subject to severe penalty, and several state legislatures increased the restrictions placed on black sailors. In March 1830, a white sailor, Edward Smith, was fined one thousand dollars and sentenced to a year’s hard labor for distributing the Appeal around Charleston. Had Smith been a black man, his punishment would have been far more severe. In Frederick Douglass’s estimation, David Walker’s Appeal “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement,” signaling the beginning of a new era of commitment in the antislavery movement. No longer was the emphasis on “elevation” and “uplift,” on the cultivation of middle-class respectability, for as important as these were, they had also made the black community a target of white anger. No, in the face of white supremacy’s growing hold on the land, something more potent was needed. “This is the hour you are called upon to move with a bold and fearless step,” the black abolitionist James Forten told the Philadelphia Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in 1836. “There must be no lukewarmness, no shrinking from the pointed finger of scorn, or the contemptuous vociferation of the enemy; no withholding your aid, or concealing your mighty influence behind the screen of timidity; no receding from the foothold you have already gained.” The focus now was to be on outspoken and organized resistance. Slavery would fall because the South was forced to change its ways.39 In 1831 the National Colored Convention met in Philadelphia to chart a course of action. The following year the New England Anti-Slavery Society was organized, with the American Anti-Slavery Society, based in Philadelphia, established in 1833. Both societies were dedicated to the immediate, full emancipation of all slaves with no compensation to the slaveholders. In 1835 the American Anti-Slavery Society flooded the federal mails with antislavery literature, infuriating the South, which feared the pamphlets would reach free blacks and the slave population and spark an insurrection. On 25 July 1835, a mob raided the Charleston Post Office and burned all abolitionist pamphlets and tracts found on the premises. Governor George McDuffie called for the suppression of abolitionist activity, and the South Carolina legislature appointed a Joint Committee on Federal Relations to recommend a course of action against abolitionists. The committee’s report, which was adopted by the legislature, asked Northern states to outlaw antislavery societies and promise they would not interfere with slavery. It also threatened to censor the mail. Abolitionists responded by pointing out that such measures were a violation of civil liberties. At the same time, a new wave of particularly vicious riots occurred in major cities. 150

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Between 1829 and 1849 there were six race riots in Philadelphia. The riot of August 1842 resulted in the destruction of homes and meeting halls, as well as violent attacks on individuals. In 1838 a white mob several thousand strong reduced the newly built Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia to rubble. The hall, built by abolitionists, was meant to serve as a meeting place and symbol of the movement’s strength and determination. “The measure of our sufferings is full,” Robert Purvis wrote to Henry Clarke Wright during this time. The previous decade had been violent, but it was now clear that the storm had only been gathering.40 Hosea Easton found himself in the midst of the violent backlash against the abolitionists that occurred during the 1830s. In 1833 Easton, an active member of the antislavery movement, became pastor of the Talcott Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Hartford, Connecticut. The following year a race riot that lasted three days touched off when one of his parishioners was attacked on leaving church. The violence continued as white citizens terrorized Easton and members of his congregation. A few years later a different church for which he had recently taken responsibility burned to the ground. It is not known whether the cause was accident or arson, but even if the fire was accidental, it proved a fitting symbol of whites’ response to the African-American goal of uplift. It certainly spelled the end of Easton’s faith that respectability among black people would elicit respect from their white neighbors.41 In 1837, two months after his church was destroyed, Easton wrote A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U[nited] States, and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them. In this document, Easton challenged black people to raise themselves up from the low position to which prejudice had brought them, to recognize and take responsibility for their own degenerate state. Redemption was possible, but it would take a decisive act to overcome the generations of race prejudice cultivated by whites. From a young age white children were taught how to regard people with dark skin as hideous, inferior beings. “The first lessons given are, Johnny, Billy, Mary, Sally, (or whatever the name may be,) go to sleep, if you don’t the old nigger will carry you off; don’t you cry—Hark; the old nigger’s coming—how ugly you are, you are worse than a little nigger.” The instruction proceeded from there, relentlessly indoctrinating whites in the language and attitudes of hate and fear, and the methods of segregation and enslavement. To overcome this condition, whites would have to recognize the causes of their prejudice and accept black people as fellow Americans.42 151

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In the Treatise Easton separated biological, heritable traits such as skin color from notions of race as indicative of degeneracy. To do this he first made it clear that he took monogenism for granted, as all Christians must. This was the one “great truth.” It thus followed that variation among humans, as among all living things, was simply a function of natural law—God and nature, for Easton, were not one and the same but different entities altogether, one the Supreme Being, the other his creation. “Were I asked why my hair is curled, my answer would be, because God gave nature the gift of producing variety.” One man was given curled hair, another straight; why this was so would always remain a mystery. God’s plan was ultimately inscrutable.43 As for the creation of races, Easton subscribed to the biblical account, which stated that when Noah’s sons saw him naked, the one who laughed at his nakedness, Ham, was punished with dark skin. As all three sons—Ham, Shem, and Japheth—made their way into the world, they begat different peoples in different locations, hence populating the planet with diverse races. Further variation, Easton believed, was the product of climate, but the mind could also have an effect. “There is no truth more palpable than this, that the mind is capable of high cultivation. . . . In a country, therefore, where public sentiment is formed in favor of improving the mind, whatever the object may be, whether to promote good or evil, the mind is influenced thereby.” The mind, in turn, may lead to changes in the conditions of living, in the environment. Character and morality, no less than climate, played a crucial role in human development.44 Since Blumenbach in the eighteenth century, Africans were widely regarded as a racial type that had degenerated from the Caucasian. Easton turned this idea on its head. By comparing the histories of Europe and Africa, he showed that where Africans had produced enduring and sophisticated cultures—with Egypt the exemplar—Europeans occupied themselves with barbarity, rampaging across the continent to conquer or be conquered. Slavery and the colonization of the New World, at the expense of aboriginal cultures, were only the most recent examples of this tendency toward conquest and subjection—“wicked crusades,” as Easton called them. “It is not a little remarkable, that in the nineteenth century a remnant of this same barbarous people should boast of their national superiority of intellect, and of wisdom and religion.”45 Slavery was a condition that acted on the African’s body and mind. “Compare slaves that are African born,” Easton wrote, “with those who are born in slavery, and the latter will in no wise compare with the former in point of form of person or strength of mind.” It was not skin color that made a black man dull but relentless servitude under despotic rule. The 152

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equation of black skin with degeneracy was nothing more than a ploy to ensure the perpetuation of slavery for the sole purpose of making white people rich and powerful. The same went for claims that Africans and their descendants could withstand warm climates better than white people—Europeans first articulated this idea, Easton rightly noted, as they began to enslave Africans. Slavery created prejudice, and prejudice sustained slavery. Biology had nothing to do with it.46 Hosea Easton was the first African American to articulate a systematic theory of race. When he died just months after the Treatise was published, the nation lost an original and eloquent thinker and a man who might have gone on to argue against those naturalists who constituted the “American school” of ethnology. Had he lived another ten years, he certainly would have seen the growth of scientific racism as a defense of slavery, and he undoubtedly would have had something to say in response. Instead, his name fell into obscurity, and Southern slaveholders and politicians went on to devise a new defense of slavery largely unchecked.47

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The voices in the other room followed a pattern. It started with a low rumble, after which there was a period of relative quiet when one of them told a story. This ended with an outburst of voices as everyone expressed their delight with the tale and its unexpected outcome. Next they took turns making remarks, the men loud and confident and the women speaking softly, tentatively. Before long the cycle would return to where it started, with everyone speaking at once, a low rumble spilling easily from the room. He stood just outside the door, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He had spent the day rushing around in preparation for the party, arranged only that morning, when the doctor had paid an early visit. His feet ached. The bell rang, a shrill summons cutting through the tumult of voices. He hadn’t expected it again so soon. Before entering the room he took a moment to compose himself, straightening his jacket, smoothing his trousers, and removing all expression from his face. He could hear the doctor speaking, something about a recent visit to Charleston. He waited for a pause in the doctor’s story. With eyes downcast he approached the head of the table. A sign indicated he was to clear the soup. He started with the tureen, carefully lifting it from the table and placing it on the sideboard. Then he made his way around the table, concentrating fixedly on each bowl as he removed it. No one acknowledged him; they were all following the doctor’s story. The visitor, however, watched him closely. Out the corner of his eye he could see this man, whose arrival had thrown the household into chaos, following him as he went from place to place. It was unsettling to be scrutinized so closely. “That man is not like us,” he mused aloud when he was in the kitchen. “’Course not; he’s as pink as the meat on this bird.” She transferred the turkey onto a platter and nodded to him, indicating that it was ready to be served. He had a pretty good understanding of whites, knew them perhaps as well as any man 155

under the thumb of slavery could. But this visitor was different: he was not like the white folks in town. He was clearly a stranger—the way he talked gave him away—but he was no Northerner. He was a new kind of white person, which made him difficult to read and more than likely a danger to know. “No—what I mean is he’s not from around here. Not even from the North.” Her look indicated he’d best be off before the bird went cold. He crossed the yard and entered the house holding the platter high and hardly noticing its weight as he passed straight into the dining room to place it grandly at the center of the table. A cry of delight greeted him or rather the turkey as he entered the room. When he stepped back from the table, all eyes were on the magnificent bird that had been prepared for dinner and now delivered as if by magic. All eyes, that is, except for his own and the stranger’s, which met briefly in a moment of mutual and cautious interest.

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CHAPTER

9 A Positive Good

W

hen the young freshman from South Carolina rose to stand before his fellow representatives on Capitol Hill, he seems to have had little notion of the chaos he would unleash. Though inexperienced at addressing the House, James Henry Hammond was well versed in arguing his convictions, the soft stuff of opinion for him easily fusing into a hard core of universal truth. Having discovered his love of debate as a college student, he knew how to state a case and to state it forcefully. Subsequently, as a newspaper editor, he had sharpened this affection for argument into a powerful political instrument and at the same time found his subject: defense of the South and her institutions. He may even have been first to publicly utter the word “secession” and be taken seriously for it. For daring to take a radical stance so early in the game, he was justly rewarded by his peers and—still greater balm to his ego—by those stationed above him. He was, after all, an elected representative. But the Euphradian Society at South Carolina College and the readers of the Southern Times did not generally include among their numbers budding abolitionists or the sons of Northern industrialists. Congress, however, did. With the move to Washington, Hammond’s audience had changed, a fact that seems to have escaped our young

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political upstart. Ambition and approval at home made him bold; ego and inexperience of the national arena made him rash. The moment was precipitated on 18 December 1835, when William Jackson of Massachusetts submitted a petition to the House of Representatives calling for an end to slavery in the nation’s capital. Although the slave population in Washington was relatively small, the trade there was robust: slaves were brought in from Virginia and Maryland to be sold to planters and traders farther afield. The nation’s capital was effectively headquarters for the domestic slave trade, yet the presence of slavery in the district had never been legislated. Situated in the upper South, Washington was steeped in slave culture, but it was a distinct political zone, and as a result the legal status of slavery there would remain ambiguous until Congress took action. The sight of men and women chained together and dressed in rags as they marched through the streets of Washington on their way to the auction block outraged Northerners. For years they had petitioned Congress to ban slavery in the capital, but this required an open debate, which, given growing sectional conflict, would undoubtedly have split the nation in two. Petitions were thus routinely treated in a manner meant to diffuse the situation: they were referred to a committee that as a matter of course did precisely nothing. Northern congressmen were not content with this solution, and so increasingly they insisted that their petitions be openly debated. Southerners were not happy with this development. When William Jackson submitted his petition to the House, tensions were high—high enough to move an inexperienced representative to stand and speak. “I think, Sir,” said James Henry Hammond, “that this House should not receive the petition, and that is the course which I suggest.” Do not bury the offending document in the records of a bogus committee, he asked, but turn it away, deny the petition formal recognition and leave the issue of slavery to the states. “This House at least ought to be a sanctuary,” Hammond added, “into which no such topic should be allowed to enter.” The House erupted. No representative from the North would have his petition turned away—this would be tantamount to handing control of national politics over to the South; moreover, it would be undemocratic. Great pains had been taken to ensure that the government was carefully balanced, that no one person or faction could dominate all others. Hammond’s motion was an outrage. The Speaker repeatedly called for order, but he had difficulty bringing the proceedings under control. In a moment of impulse, Hammond had unleashed a maelstrom, but for all his inex-

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perience as a politician, he held his ground with confidence and a prevailing sense of duty. After the Christmas recess, he gave an address in which he fully articulated his position. “Mr. Speaker, I object to the reception of these petitions . . . because they are sent here by persons who are pursuing a systematic plan of operations intended to subvert the institutions of the South, and which, if carried into effect, must desolate the fairest portion of America, and dissolve in blood the bonds of this Confederacy.” The petition, Hammond claimed, was an abolitionist plot. Describing the recent rise of the antislavery movement and the threat he believed it posed, he quoted from abolitionist pamphlets and waved them in the air, dramatically punctuating his words. The source of conflict in the United States was not slavery, and certainly it was not the slaves, for they were “satisfied with their lot, happy in their comforts, and devoted to their masters.” Neither did the problem lie with slaveholders, for they were the kindest masters imaginable. No, the problem was with that minority of agitators in the North, the abolitionists. They sowed discontent where it never was, inciting “happy” slaves to violence—Nat Turner’s Rebellion remained a fresh memory even then—and now they were storming Congress with petitions and the intention of unsettling the nation’s balance of power. Hammond addressed the House for two hours, hammering home his conviction that to legislate on the matter of slavery in the capitol, given the present condition of national affairs, would lead to utter chaos, bloodshed, and the dissolution of the Union. In the course of his address he also articulated a new defense of slavery. “Slavery is said to be an evil; that it impoverishes the people, and destroys their morals. . . . But it is no evil. On the contrary, I believe it to be the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region. For without it, our fertile soil and our fructifying climate would have been given to us in vain. As it is, the history of the short period during which we have enjoyed it has rendered our Southern country proverbial for its wealth, its genius, its manners.” Slavery had made the South “the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth.” How was this possible? Because only in the Southern states did the natural hierarchy of human beings govern social relations, and so only in the South was society in its most perfect state.1 Hammond was not the first to claim that slavery was “no evil.” Increasingly in the 1830s, as militant abolitionism gained force, Southerners took a more systematic and selfconscious approach to the defense of slavery, which eventually developed into a formal

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ideology centered on the notion that slavery was a benevolent system of labor far preferable to any other. It was Professor Thomas R. Dew of the College of William and Mary above all others who exhorted his countrymen to abandon apologies for slavery and instead speak out in its defense. In response to the Virginia legislature’s debate on slavery in 1831 and 1832, provoked by Nat Turner’s rampage through the tidewater, Dew dismissed the possibility of emancipation with his now-famous claim: “But unfortunately the emancipated black carries a mark which no time can erase; he forever wears the indelible symbol of his inferior condition; the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots.” Emancipation was not the answer, for then what? Integration? Colonization? These, to Dew’s mind, were not solutions but still graver problems. No, the South must embrace its way of life, and be decidedly pro-slavery. Yet this change of attitude did not happen all at once. In 1835 slavery was still widely regarded as a necessary evil, something to be endured for the ultimate good it brought—a strong economy. Hammond’s comments on Capitol Hill were regarded as fresh ideas to many, thus touching off an explosive debate and bringing the government to a standstill.2 Though Hammond’s position was radical, he had the full support of his constituency and of his fellow congressmen from the South. There was, however, one fatal voice of dissent. Henry Laurens Pinckney of Charleston surprised his compatriots by breaking ranks to propose a solution to the stalemate. Later known as the “gag rule,” the compromise Pinckney offered was one whereby antislavery petitions would be referred to a special committee whose sole purpose was to receive such petitions and to respond in every instance with a statement indicating that Congress had no power to legislate on matters of slavery and that such power lay with the states. The petitions would thus be received but not debated. To Hammond and his fellow Carolinians, this was treason. When the House passed the gag rule, the subject of abolition was removed from the floor, and Southern interests were again swept under the rug. Years later the antislavery movement would use the gag rule to stir up the public, claiming that it was an obstruction to free speech, but for the moment it was the South that considered it a resounding defeat of their cause. Nevertheless, Hammond came through the ordeal a hero. Unlike Pinckney, who lost his seat in the next election, Hammond could be trusted to speak on behalf of Southerners. For his star turn in Washington, Hammond earned the admiration and respect of the public and his peers. In the role of spokesman for Southern concerns, he was perhaps second only to the great statesman John Calhoun, who, in a speech given before the Senate the

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following year, would defend slavery in terms very much like those Hammond had used, calling slavery a “positive good.”3 Hammond did not handle the success well. While walking to Capitol Hill one day not long after his keynote speech before the House, he suffered a “rush of blood to the head and came near going off.” He was carried to the nearby congressional post office, where a doctor bled him and administered a pint of brandy. Soon after, he went home. Following a period of bed rest Hammond traveled to Philadelphia, where he consulted one of the country’s foremost physicians, Dr. Philip Syng Physick, who suggested that the source of his illness was nerves. The prescribed treatment was a long trip overseas. Hammond promptly resigned from public office and prepared to spend two years abroad with his wife and eldest son. The freshman from South Carolina had caused a national incident and then fled the scene. It was not, however, Hammond’s final appearance on Capitol Hill, nor was it his last word on the subject of slavery and the natural hierarchy of human beings.4 James Henry Hammond (see illustration on p. 162) was not born into the wealth and privilege of South Carolina’s aristocratic upper class. He was not a Taylor or a Hampton, a Singleton or a Preston. He was, rather, the son of a man who struggled throughout his life to provide for his family. Hammond’s father, Elisha, had arrived in South Carolina in 1802, “Sick and a Stranger to everybody,” with few clothes and only twenty-five cents to his name. Elisha was no fool—he had put himself though college as a bricklayer, graduating from Dartmouth in 1802 at the age of twenty-eight—but with rare exception he was unlucky in matters of business, never realizing his ambition of social mobility. As a result, Elisha lived vicariously through his oldest son, James, placing his hopes on the boy and instilling in him a drive to succeed equaled only by the young man’s fear of failure. His father, after all, had never found success despite a lifetime of effort. Growing up, watching his old man undertake a string of poorly paid and at times humiliating jobs, James Henry Hammond gained a strong sense of where he did and where he did not want to be in the social hierarchy.5 Hammond’s climb up the social ladder began at South Carolina College, where, away from the poor example of his family, he would learn to play the role of aristocrat. His father had once been a professor of languages at the college, and a decade later, when down on his luck, was employed as the Steward, a job that made him responsible for feeding more than one hundred students, cleaning their rooms, making their beds and seeing to their soiled linens. When Hammond entered the student body, he was undoubtedly grateful that his

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father no longer held this ignoble position. His classmates were the sons of wealthy Carolinians, young men who were destined for public life. Hammond wanted to move among them, not expose himself to ridicule and forever ally his name with the stench of dirty laundry.6 Situated in the new capital city, South Carolina College had been chartered in 1801, the first college in America to be wholly endowed by a state from its own resources. Though 162

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admission was not determined by status, but by academic merit, it was typically the wealthiest families who could afford the tutoring necessary to prepare their sons. Once accepted, however, students seem to have had less interest in academic study than in drinking, dancing, firing guns in their rooms, and stealing turkeys from the yards of people unfortunate enough to live near the college—such were the disciplinary problems that continually vexed the faculty. “Want of discipline is here too palpable,” noted a visitor in 1819, “but there is no lack of whiskey.” Riots were a frequent occurrence, and on at least one occasion the state militia was called in to restore order. Even Wade Hampton II, whose father was among the college’s original trustees, was once caught “intoxicated to delirium, raving and storming like a Bedlamite.” He also neglected his studies and “avoided the examinations . . . without any kind of excuse.” Young Hampton left after two years without receiving his degree. In 1827 the entire senior class, including the future Dr. Gibbes, was expelled for disciplinary reasons. Such punishment, however, brought little if any harm to most students’ reputations. Gibbes, for one, was hired by the college soon after his expulsion to teach chemistry, geology, and mineralogy, and later had no problem enrolling in medical school. The students at South Carolina College hailed from distinguished backgrounds and knew that their place in society had been determined long before the first day of lectures.7 Lacking a good family name, Hammond was in a very different position from his classmates. His relative poverty made education a steppingstone to better things, rather than an opportunity for fun and games; he had little choice but to take advantage of his surroundings. As it happened, this entailed emulating the other students: in order to become a member of the planter aristocracy, he had to act like one. Hammond thus gave himself up to “idle associates” and with them neglected his academic studies to consider instead the subjects of “women, wine and cigars.” He also developed a strong sense that he was entitled to the best the world could offer. Though perhaps an unwise approach, he was only too happy to overlook his relatively low status and find ways to blend in.8 Throughout college Hammond was an active and energetic member of the Euphradian Society, one of two debating clubs on campus. Every Saturday evening the Euphradians met to consider important issues and develop their oratory skills. The ability to speak publicly and present an argument with logic and clarity was a highly prized skill, and Hammond’s involvement with the Euphradians ultimately helped him to transcend his humble origins and prepare for public life. At society meetings he spoke often and on a variety of topics, ably arguing any side of a debate. In his final year at college he was made president of the club and later was elected to give the valedictory speech for his graduating class. His 163

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father attended the commencement exercises and watched his boy—now a confident young man—acquit himself admirably as a public orator. At that moment, if only for a moment, it did not matter that the family was in grave financial trouble. When Hammond graduated from South Carolina College in 1825, he expected that a certain amount of fame and fortune were his due, but unlike many of his classmates he was faced for the first time with the necessity of work. Now an adult—he was eighteen—the extent of his father’s financial trouble was no longer kept from him. Hammond had to find a job. His solution was to study the law, and following admission to the bar in 1828 he opened a practice in Columbia. Hammond soon gained a reputation as a capable young defense lawyer and at the same time became a newspaper editor. It was a good time for an ambitious young man to undertake such work, for in the period of 1828–1832 South Carolina was embroiled in the tariff controversy, a political struggle that gave editors plenty to write about. The conflict started when Congress passed the Tariff Act 1828, legislation placing a high tariff or tax on goods imported from overseas. This tactic gave the Northern economy a boost, for Northern goods sold better when foreign products were more expensive, but at the same time it placed Southern planters in a vulnerable position: if the Europeans could not sell their textiles, they would not need the cotton grown on Southern plantations. Tariffs had been around for some time, but in the 1820s they were felt more keenly by planters and merchants. The soil in South Carolina was weary from the demands of cotton, whereas newly available and highly fertile land in Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas was plentiful. Cotton production in these regions increased massively, leading to a drop in the market price. With prices dropping and profits from the cotton boom evaporating, a new tariff was intolerable. As editor for the Southern Times, Hammond argued passionately against the tariff, adding defender of states’ rights to his regular job of defending forgers and murderers. It was work that allowed him to prove his worth and find his political voice. When composing editorials he drew on the skills he had gained with the Euphradians, finding just the right words to best defend an idea, in this case the rights of Southerners to be free from unfair legislation. For the substance of his arguments, he also drew from his college experience. Hammond may not have attended many of Thomas Cooper’s lectures at South Carolina College, but when he needed advice on political matters he knew well enough to contact “Old Coot,” as the students had called him. A short, heavyset man standing less than five feet tall and with a large and very round head, Cooper could often be seen riding a small 164

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white pony around Columbia, a comical sight that frequently made him the subject of fun. According to one student, “He looked like a wedge with a head on it.” But it was out of both respect and affection that students teased their teacher, and the measure of this lies in the degree to which they took his ideas as their own.9 Cooper was a controversial political figure, a man who dared go to extremes that others would not consider approaching even in their most private thoughts. Born in England, he emigrated after having railed against the British government one time too many. In America, Cooper became close friends with Thomas Jefferson, supporting him vigorously in the 1800 presidential election—so vigorously, in fact, that he was tried and convicted under the new alien and sedition law. Cooper possessed an “uncommonly keen and penetrating” mind, according to one contemporary; his ideas were forceful and his convictions heartfelt. Cooper’s reputation as a judge, teacher, and scientist was widely acknowledged. Yet when it came to his political views he was regarded as something of an agitator: “In talents, attainments, and general character, Dr. Cooper was one of the most extraordinary men of the day. But, in politics, so thoroughly were his notions infected and perverted by the groundless and wild doctrine of liberty and equality, that his benevolence and humanity alone prevented him from being a Jacobin.”10 After unsuccessfully angling for a post at Jefferson’s new university in Virginia, in 1820 Cooper became president pro tempore of South Carolina College; a year later he was elected to the presidency. Once in the South he seems to have tempered his public statements, but he soon dropped the pretense. An outspoken advocate of what came to be known as “The South Carolina Doctrines,” his opinions endeared him to the young and rebellious students in his charge, and many others besides. The tariff was one of his targets. In 1823 Cooper published a pamphlet declaring tariffs unconstitutional. In 1825, as the South was beginning to feel the competition from the new cotton economy to the west and new tariffs were under review in Congress, Cooper added the teaching of political economy to his duties at the college. He lectured on the principle of laissez-faire, whereby a government assumes responsibility for the protection of its people but leaves them to handle their own affairs in business and trade. In 1827, in light of a new round of tariffs, Cooper famously said, “We shall, before long, be compelled to calculate the value of the union.” The threat of secession would eventually become an almost routine response to legislation unfavorable to the South, but in 1827 it was a shocking suggestion. Yet as the debate continued, Cooper’s allies swelled into a majority. Meanwhile, he was catechizing his students on the arguments for states’ rights, and his influence was to have far-reaching consequences. Some 165

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thirty years later, in the midst of another, still graver crisis, twenty-four of Cooper’s former students served as delegates to the Secession Convention.11 During the crisis set off by the 1828 tariff, Hammond sought out Cooper’s writings. In his published work Cooper provided a clear articulation of the South’s position, which Hammond adopted as his own, as indeed most Southerners came to do. During this time Hammond also began corresponding directly with the aging professor, but by 1830 Cooper’s involvement with tariffs had reached its limit; the “father of nullification” was under attack from the clergy for his ideas on religion, which were no less radical than his ideas on political economy, and so when Hammond called on him, Cooper had little time for restating an already well-documented argument. As the controversy continued and the South did everything it could to pressure Congress into repealing the tariff, it was Hammond who argued the case for the South. The controversy reached a climax in November 1832, when elected delegates from across South Carolina met to decide a course of action. They drafted and ratified the Ordinance of Nullification, in which the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were declared null and void. The delegates also declared that any act of Congress that sought to enforce the tariffs, or otherwise interfere with commerce in South Carolina, would be interpreted as an act of aggression, one that forced the state to withdraw from the Union. It was a bold move. Never before had a state challenged the authority of the U.S. government in this way, and never before had a state taken steps toward possible disunion. The crisis was further aggravated by conflict within South Carolina. Not everyone thought disunion a viable option, and for nearly two years the state teetered on the brink of civil war. The stakes, however, did not continue to rise. In 1833 a compromise was reached when President Andrew Jackson persuaded Congress to reduce the tariff, at least for a time. It was a conciliatory movement that led South Carolina to reverse the Ordinance of Nullification. The Nullification Crisis enabled Hammond to find his political voice and become publicly known as a man who stood for the South, even as he was developing his position and understanding of the issues. It was a turning point in his career and in his personal life. No longer was he simply a young defense lawyer who worked to support his family. His editorials for the Southern Times had transformed him into a public figure, and there was no mistaking his platform. Hammond stood squarely for the South. Yet while it was valuable experience, and undeniably created a place for him on the political stage, it still did not gain him access to the social circles in which he so longed to move. For this he needed a good match. “Never marry unless a rich . . . woman. . . . Always have an eye to your ways and means.” 166

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Such was the advice Elisha Hammond gave to his son, and in this James did not disappoint. In 1831 Hammond proposed marriage to Catherine Elizabeth Fitzsimmons, daughter of a wealthy Charleston merchant. Catherine would bring to her marriage valuable social connections and a significant amount of property that she had inherited from her father when she was only eleven, including several plantations in the Beech Island area of South Carolina, near the Georgia border. Catherine was young, just fifteen when Hammond began courting her. Shy, socially awkward, and plain, she was swept off her feet by the dashing and articulate lawyer and newspaper editor.12 Hammond’s motives must have been all too apparent to Catherine’s family, for her mother and brothers opposed the match bitterly. Wade Hampton II, Catherine’s brotherin-law, was also against the marriage. The Hampton and Fitzsimmons families were close. Not only was Wade married to Catherine’s sister Anne, but the girls’ father had been the first Wade Hampton’s factor, responsible for selling his cotton at market in Charleston. The Hampton-Fitzsimmons clan rightly considered Hammond a gold digger, and they did all they could to prevent the wedding from taking place. They even asked Hammond to renounce her dowry, a test of his interest in her money, but Hammond refused and continued to woo the young girl, possibly beyond the limits of propriety. Persistence and strategy paid off. In 1831 Catherine convinced her mother to allow the marriage to take place, citing Hammond’s reputation as a lawyer and editor as testament to his good character. He was twenty-three, she was seventeen. Not surprisingly, it was a dismal union. “Women were made to breed,” the groom once crowed, “men to do the work of this world.” Hammond had taken his father’s advice to heart and married a rich woman without regard for feelings of love or affection. Though he esteemed and revered Catherine, he did not love her, and he claimed that she had “no art of administering any real comfort” to him. She did, however, make him a wealthy man and give him seven children, effectively fulfilling the requirements he placed on her.13 With his marriage Hammond acquired more than eighteen thousand acres of property, 147 slaves, and a devoted wife with valuable social connections. The union gave him the status and wealth that had so completely eluded his father. Yet material assets and a good reputation were not enough. Despite all he had gained, Hammond desired more. He was deeply vain, and he expected the world to appreciate his genius. He wanted to be recognized as the equal of those who conducted the state’s affairs, men of importance, model men admired by people of all stations, men he now counted among his friends—he wanted to be a Hampton, or at least to establish his own family on a level with the Hamptons. 167

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When Hammond was elected to the House of Representatives in 1835, it seemed that he had at last achieved his goal, but the strain proved too much. Hammond had learned from his father that the key to success was self-control, that in life there was only great success and great ruin, and all that separated the two was a man’s ability to control his passions, to be something other than what he was naturally. Consequently, Hammond learned to repress his desires and emotions. He was essentially two men, one who played the public role of spokesman for the South, with all the arrogance and swagger he could muster, and another man, one lurking beneath this character, who forever lived in fear that his true self would be exposed. It was a difficult act to sustain. “I still fear myself,” he confided to a friend in 1848, “that my acting may give out someday.” Caught between the wish for success and the certitude of failure, Hammond would forever fight against his passions, sometimes winning, at other times losing to disastrous effect. Hypochondria and psychosomatic illness plagued him throughout his life. His twin bugbear of intense ambition and fear of failure made every promise of success a terrifying and physically debilitating experience. Even as he addressed Congress and proclaimed slavery to be “no evil,” earning high praise from his compatriots, he was “nervous, melancholy and dreadfully dyspeptic.” Collapse was inevitable.14 This rise to ambitious political and social heights followed by a rapid withdrawal from public view would prove to be the pattern of Hammond’s life. Invariably, a moment of greatness would be followed by a hasty retreat into obscurity, followed again by an ambitious grab for power and position. Hammond’s ego could not long remain out of public view. When Hammond returned from his therapeutic trip to the European continent, he was not only fit and recovered from the nervous disorder that had caused his retreat from office, but he was also the proud owner of a sizable art collection, including some fifty paintings, more than forty engravings, half a dozen watercolors, and a number of busts. A trip to the Old World elevated a man, and each painting and engraving was a sign of Hammond’s newly acquired taste and sophistication. When he returned to Silver Bluff, his plantation near the Georgia border, he invited his neighbors to come around so he could impress them with his collection. The response was disappointing. None of his guests showed adequate appreciation, and in light of this Hammond came to regard the area around Silver Bluff as dull and stifling, the people there no better than “low-bred country folk.”15 It was time to find new neighbors. Late in 1838 Hammond purchased a two-acre lot on the corner of Blanding and Bull Streets in Columbia. It was a good neighborhood. His college friend Dr. Gibbes lived nearby, 168

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as did Wade Hampton II, which meant that his wife would be able to spend more time with her nieces, the Hampton girls. Hammond set out to build a magnificent three-story house that he designed himself. He was determined that the house be the finest Columbia had ever seen, and in the months following the building’s completion he noted with pride, “There is a great rage for building fine houses here now. I believe I set the example.” The finishing touches came early in 1841 when, with the assistance of his young nieces, he took care in hanging his collection of pictures. Hammond next did what was expected of a gentleman in Columbia: he threw a party.16 Columbia was famous for its parties, extravagant affairs of music, gossip, and a seemingly endless supply of food. As one Southern lady of impeccable reputation declared while visiting Columbia, “This is the most hospitable place in the world.” But on this occasion Hammond hosted a more sober event. There was to be no music performed by slaves on loan from a nearby plantation, and no mingling of ladies and gentlemen, for the musicians were not summoned and wives were left at home. Serving more than a purely social function, the gathering was really a pretext to bring together a number of Columbia’s more prominent citizens, the purpose of which was to ensure Hammond’s eventual place among their ranks as policymakers.17 Hammond was fishing for an appointment. His relationship with public office was never a comfortable one. “I do not think there is any class so base as politicians,” he once declared, despite following the issues closely and seeking office on several occasions. After his sojourn abroad, Hammond was sufficiently cured of his aversion to politics to seek the governorship in 1840. He was hopeful of success —the house he was building was meant to serve as his governor’s mansion—and so defeat came as a bitter pill. Others, it seemed, viewed him as something of a joke, his friends “lampooning” him in his candidacy. “Damn politics,” his college friend Josiah Nott advised him. “Quit it and be an honest man and a gentleman.” But Hammond desired public approval, so when he lost the race for governor, he felt all the more isolated from the intellectual society he considered his rightful milieu. It was therefore crucial that he remain in the public eye, perhaps gain some minor office until something more substantial could be found. The dinner party would be a means to this end, so long as he played his part well.18 The guest list included some of South Carolina’s most prominent citizens, men involved in the state’s commercial and political affairs. There was Colonel Robert Howell Goodwyn, a cashier from the Columbia branch of the state bank, and James L. Clark, who as well as being Hammond’s next-door neighbor was a teller at the bank. Hammond also invited David James McCord, a respected planter, lawyer, editor of the Columbia Telescope, 169

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and, until recently, president of the bank. McCord’s second wife, Louisa, was a wealthy woman, and her income had allowed him to retire from business and devote much of his time to publishing articles defending slavery. One such article sought to prove a writer “guilty of so many falsehoods and misstatements, as to fix the character of forgery on the whole account.” The writer was Charles Ball, the account his narrative of life in bondage, including the years he had spent on the Hampton estate.19 Dr. Gibbes also attended the dinner, as did Professors Robert Henry and Francis Lieber, both of whom taught at South Carolina College. William Ford DeSaussure, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, and John C. Singleton represented the planter class. Also present was John Preston, whose recent marriage to Caroline Hampton, Wade II’s sister, brought with it the responsibility of looking after the Hampton family’s sugar plantation in Louisiana. Preston was doubly related to the Hamptons as his own sister was married to the third Wade Hampton, a likable young man who also attended Hammond’s party, as did Wade II. The Hamptons both arrived after dinner had been served. The evening began in the parlor, where Hammond’s guests were given half an hour to examine his pictures. Observing them closely and listening to their remarks, he was hopeful that they would recognize the artistic brilliance placed before them. He was again disappointed. “They gazed at them with the apathy of Indians,” he wrote in his diary the next day. A few thumbed through the catalogue that he had had printed, but none responded with sufficient intelligence to satisfy his vanity. It was, he thought, like throwing pearls before swine. When the conversation turned to their host’s new house, however, the subject was taken up with great verve, and faults were cited without concern for Hammond’s feelings. In the end he chalked up their opinions to jealousy, a theory perhaps proven true by the ensuing frenzy to build.20 As they sat down to dinner, talk almost certainly turned to business. Politics was another favorite theme, particularly when discussed through the turbid smoke of a good “seegar.” Then there was the news. Two days previously, in a lengthy article published in the Charleston Courier, William H. Ellet, professor of chemistry at South Carolina College, had been praised in glowing terms for his contribution to a new invention. The article described a remarkable chemical process that had captured the world’s attention in recent months— Daguerre’s recipe for making photographs. In 1841 Columbia did not yet have a commercial photographic gallery, so most people had probably still never seen a daguerreotype. Ellet, on the other hand, had been experimenting with Daguerre’s invention for years and was

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among the first Americans to produce a daguerreotype. Professor Lieber, one of Hammond’s dinner guests, was not only a close friend of Ellet’s, but he had been present on 22 September 1839, when Ellet made one of the newfangled images.21 “My Boy,” Lieber had written to his son the next day, “Yesterday I saw some of those images made by the sun upon silver.” He went on to describe how Ellet made an image of a street scene, and though he did not fully understand what he saw, he had no doubt that it was a kind of modern miracle. The Courier’s recent notice may well have inspired Lieber to describe his first encounter with photography for the benefit of Hammond’s guests.22 The topic of all topics at a dinner party was without doubt that delectable form of social intercourse known as gossip. Stories of indiscretion were common currency in Southern society, and one rarely avoided being drawn into some sort of intrigue, real or imagined. Colonel McCord himself had not long before been “much of town talk.” It seems he was thought to have been intimate with Elizabeth Ellet, wife of the distinguished chemistry professor. Hammond apparently considered Wade Hampton to be “prime favorite” of Mrs. Ellet, but perhaps he associated the two in order to besmirch Hampton’s otherwise spotless reputation.23 Hammond and Hampton were related by marriage, but the two men were never quite comfortable with each other. Hammond barely concealed his jealousy of the richer and more popular Hampton, and no doubt harbored resentment for the fact that Hampton had opposed his marriage to Catherine Fitzsimmons. On the surface they had much in common, largely based on the fact that both held positions of authority within Carolina society and politics, Wade II through his position as son of the state’s most formidable planter of cotton, and Hammond by virtue of his political career. That their wives were sisters only seemed to confirm the notion that the two men were cut of the same cloth. In fact, however, they were as different as they could have been while belonging to the same class. The source of this difference lay in the means by which each had arrived at his position in society, Wade II by his high birth, Hammond through will and determination. The Hammonds and the Hamptons subscribed to opposing ends of the same value system, at the core of which was the idea that some people were born better than others and no amount of coaching or learning could raise a person up. Hammond could never be a Hampton or a Taylor—he was not born to it, an essentialist argument that reinforced existing hierarchical social structures, thereby providing a semblance of stability in a changing society. At the same time, however, the concept of equality under the law, a by-product of

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the newly fashioned American democracy, allowed that a man could distinguish himself through his accomplishments and thereby move ahead of his contemporaries. On the one hand a rigid caste system, on the other opportunity for advancement. What reconciled these two concepts was a narrow viewpoint. The possibility of moving ahead was available only to those people who occupied the topmost strata of American society—white men. Thus as a white American male, Hammond could earn himself a position of high status despite his humble origins, just as the first Wade Hampton had done at the end of the eighteenth century. The problem for Hammond, however, coming a generation later, was that many of his so-called peers who already occupied the room at the top were not particularly interested in sharing the view with someone hailing from several stories below. The two men were at once social equals and adversaries. “It went off very well,” Hammond concluded of his dinner party, “but was rather too large for social enjoyment of the highest character.” He also found his guests wanting. “They are excellent people,” he wrote in his diary, “but have neither intellect nor information. I learn nothing.”24 Hammond may have learned nothing, but he gained plenty. Within the year he was made director of the Columbia branch bank, a trustee of South Carolina College, and a general of the South Carolina Militia. In the following year he fared still better by at last winning the governorship of South Carolina. Hammond had played his part well and had again reached new social and political heights—but before long he would again sabotage his progress, this time amid the scandal and gossip so relished by Southern society. Poor judgment and a failure to play his part well would cause him to flee Columbia in fear for his life and be barred from politics for fourteen years. It would also lead him to compose his most famous defense of slavery yet.

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She had never seen him before. At first she had supposed he was a speculator and wanted to take her away from her people, away from her home, but he did not behave right for that. He did not seem interested enough to be a speculator, this heavy-set, balding man who talked peculiar. Oh, he took an interest, but at the same time he kept to himself. He did not put his hands into her mouth, like a trader would, checking her teeth for rot. He did not poke and prod and press his soft, round hands into her flesh looking for evidence of neglect or signs of rebellion. He did not touch her at all, this man. They were standing under a tree, a large magnolia. It was cool, and she was grateful to be away from the fields, away from the sun and the hoe. The two men talked, the doctor and this other one, the one called professor, but she did not listen to the words they exchanged. It did not matter what they said; the important thing was what they decided. To pass the time she counted her toes. When she reached ten she returned to the other foot so she could continue counting. “Raise your arms.” It was the doctor. He talked different when he spoke to her, louder, more simply. Like her ears were damaged and her mind gone. “Now turn around.” She turned until she was told to stop. They were behind her now. Raising her eyes she stole glances all around since they could not see her looking. The yard was empty of people—everyone was in the fields. A few chickens scratched, and a lazy mongrel yawned. “Your dress.” She did not hear at first. She was talking to the dog, and besides, they were behind her so the voice was not so loud as before. “Did you hear me, girl? Remove your dress!” Something swiped the back of her legs and left its sting behind for her to think on later. Slowly she untied the laces at the back of her dress and then eased the cloth down over her shoulders and to her hips. It fell in a mess at her feet. Shivering in the breeze she thought of her people, working in the fields. She wished she was with them.

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“Turn back around.” She did not move. She had heard the words clearly this time and understood their meaning plain enough, but she did not move. Instead she closed her eyes and slowly brought her hands together, pressing them together so one hand could feel the other. “Did you hear me, girl? I said turn around!” The cotton fabric weighed heavily on her feet.

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he guests were told to arrive at eight o’clock. As the carriage wheels turned on the avenue that ran from Garner’s Ferry Road to Millwood, Wade Hampton II’s country seat, those invited to the ball were met with a splendid sight. Gone were the trees that had previously obscured the great house like a dense curtain. The road now snaked uphill through a grand lawn broken only by the occasional pine tree, shrub, or flowerbed, while up ahead the house rose to take center stage where it could inspire envy and admiration, just as it had been designed to do. Originally a two-story cottage, Millwood was now flanked by two wings that extended around the back to form a courtyard. With these additions, the size of the house had nearly tripled. More impressive still were the twelve massive columns in the Greek style that lined the front of the building. The forest cleared and the house thus enhanced, it was as if an entirely new and bigger residence had risen up in place of the old one. The occasion was the inauguration of William Aiken, Jr., as governor of South Carolina, the guest list a “who’s who” of the Carolina elite. Greeted by the young Misses Hampton on the steps of the piazza, guests were ushered into the house to join the gaily dressed men and women who danced, chatted, and toasted the new governor. At midnight a supper of 176

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local and imported delicacies was served, followed by more dancing. It was not until the first light of day that guests congratulated Governor Aiken one last time, thanked their host and young hostesses with heartfelt courtesy, and made their way to the carriages waiting below.1 In a city known for its parties, the Hampton name had long been associated with Columbia’s gayest social engagements. Whether it was an informal dinner arranged on the heels of a neighborly visit or a grand ball intended to attract and impress the best of high society, guests were rarely disappointed. Wade Hampton II, first son of South Carolina’s pioneer planter, especially enjoyed the pleasures of Southern hospitality, and in this he was very different from his more conservative father, who had played the role of host more out of obligation than delight. With the passing of the first Wade Hampton in 1835, Wade II had assumed responsibility for managing the family’s twelve-thousand-acre estate and for maintaining the Hampton reputation. He was by far more interested in the latter. At the time of his own death in 1858 the family would be deep in debt, yet he would be fondly remembered for his generosity and even-tempered disposition. Wade II was also different from his father in that he eschewed the political limelight, preferring to remain in the background, campaigning for others and exerting his influence without appearing to do so. His endorsement of a candidate carried a great deal of weight. William Aiken, Jr., had been his man in the 1844 race for the governor’s seat, and to no one’s surprise his man had won. The inaugural ball was the talk of town for months following the event, a memory to turn over in the mind for the renewed pleasure this brought. It had been an exquisite affair, all agreed, but something had been missing. It could hardly be overlooked that everyone from the upper echelon of Carolina society was there but for one man, James Henry Hammond, the gubernatorial incumbent. That Hammond was also Wade II’s brother-in-law made his absence all the more conspicuous. Hammond had disappeared shortly after noon, when Aiken’s inauguration took place. Perhaps it was then that the rumors, for weeks uttered in hushed tones behind kid gloves, were first stated more boldly. The Hamptons and the Hammonds were not speaking, it was observed—but why? Something unpleasant between Wade II and Governor Hammond had been simmering throughout the latter’s term—but what? Governor Hammond, the gossips declared, had acted in an untoward manner in the company of his nieces, the Misses Hampton. Was it true? Was James Henry Hammond capable of such a thing? Marital ties had long brought the two families together, and when the Hammonds moved into their new home in Columbia, they saw still more of one another. The Hammonds were frequently at Millwood, and the Hampton girls often stayed with them when 177

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in town. Harriet and Catherine, the older of the Hampton girls, had even helped their uncle hang his prized pictures in the new house, and all of the children were around to help during the later months of their Aunt Catherine’s seventh pregnancy. Hammond, as a consequence, was “thrown into constant communication” with the girls. This arrangement proved to be his undoing. “Here were four lovely creatures from the tender but precocious age of thirteen to the mature but fresh and blooming woman nearly nineteen, each contending for my love,” Hammond confessed to his diary with unconcealed torment. “All of them [were] rushing on every occasion into my arms and covering me with kisses, lolling on my lap, pressing their bodies almost into mine, wreathing their limbs with mine, encountering warmly every portion of my frame, and permitting my hands to stray unchecked over every part of them and to rest without the slightest shrinking from it, in the most secret and sacred regions, all of this for a period of more than two years continuously.” Hammond, a man who had so repressed his desires that he was helpless against the slightest provocation, was unable to resist temptation. The girls, lacking both the guidance and supervision of a mother, who had died in 1833, had a reputation for unseemly behavior. Hammond thought they had “loose manners,” causing him to have “the most extraordinary suspicions as to their past experience.” He was no match for the girls’ candor, a product of both innocence and the freedom that comes with great wealth, but he also encouraged their natural affection for an uncle because he was desperate for intimate human contact. His relations with his wife—whom he had married when she herself was quite young—were at the time amicable but lacked passion. And so as matters got out of hand, surpassing the limits of propriety, he did nothing to stop the dalliance. Hammond and his nieces, he recorded in his diary, engaged in “every thing short of direct sexual intercourse.” The situation came to an abrupt end on 13 April 1843, when Catherine Hampton, then nineteen, rebuffed one of her uncle’s advances. Hammond quickly apologized and ceased all intimacy with the Hampton girls. Although the two families maintained close contact as if nothing had happened, Hammond resolved never to speak of the matter. The following autumn, however, he received a letter from Wade II denouncing him and breaking off all relations between the two families. Catherine had apparently told her father. As Hammond rightly noted in his diary, “A crisis has arrived.” Wade Hampton set out to destroy Hammond. The form this revenge took was not

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apparent at first, causing Hammond to fear for his life. With a few months remaining to his term as governor, he felt both vulnerable—his position required him to make frequent public appearances—and secure, for surely no gentlemen would dare assault a well-known representative of the state. Meanwhile, he did all he could to keep the matter a secret, particularly from his wife. When Catherine invited her relatives to official events, Hammond made light of the fact that none attended. Hammond was certain that Hampton would not dare to go public with the fact of his indiscretion, for it would be the girls who suffered from such ignominy, rendering them unmarriageable despite their wealth. (Harriet, Catherine, Ann, and Caroline Hampton in fact never married.) He was therefore surprised when it became clear that word of a rupture between the two men had spread throughout Columbia and that the nature of this rupture was the subject of much speculation. The “Hampton affair” had become a public scandal. Hampton’s revenge would take the form of damage to Hammond’s reputation, his political career, and the likelihood of fulfilling his ambitions. On the day Aiken was inaugurated, 10 December 1844, Hammond was desperate to leave town. He waited twenty-four hours—long enough to avoid accusations of cowardice but not so long as to invite an attack. The next day, fearing for his life but anxious to appear as if nothing were amiss, he rode down Main Street, showed himself at the statehouse, and then rode out of town. It would be fourteen years before he again entered public office.2 Safely ensconced at his plantation near the Georgia border, Hammond sought to regain control of his life by taking over the management of his estate, which during his time in office he had left to an overseer. When he was not experimenting with new agricultural techniques, caring for sick slaves, or otherwise attending to business, he studied topics important to him. The problem of “the races” was one such topic, and he pursued the matter with a view to writing a defense of slavery. Hammond had a dual purpose for this work. First, there is no doubt that he believed firmly in the states’ rights doctrine and the superiority of Southern culture. Slavery was central to both, and like many of his countrymen he did not hesitate to defend it against the growing threat from Northern abolitionists. Similarly, on a personal level, Hammond’s position in society was under threat. The Hampton clan was set against him—at any time he could be utterly ruined—and so he desperately needed the approval of others. By once again speaking out in favor of the South he could reinforce his position among the Carolina elite, his rift with Hampton notwithstanding. Yet these two

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reasons for writing in defense of slavery were really one and the same insofar as Hammond’s cultural and social identity as a Southern gentleman, an intellectual, and a slaveholder demanded that he assert himself on the matter of slavery above all others. Though Hammond was no stranger to the principles and practices of slavery, he approached the task of writing on the subject with all the diligence and thoroughness of a novice. He began by reading extensively, “upon both sides of the question,” and even corresponded with the wealthy New York abolitionist Lewis Tappan, who arranged for him to receive copies of antislavery publications. Although Hammond never for a minute suggested that he was sympathetic to abolitionism, Tappan was hopeful that he could get the South Carolinian to see “the enormous wickedness and ruin of slavery.” Hammond eventually set Tappan straight. “It is useless to argue with you about our slavery,” he wrote to the by now exasperated Tappan in the autumn of 1845. “You make no allowance for difference of races and colors and these constitute the main features of the case and make our System of Slavery a totally different thing from any that has heretofore existed on the Globe.”3 During this period Hammond also corresponded with his college friend Dr. Josiah Nott, who at the time was also studying up on “the races” and who would shortly become a leading figure in the “American school” of ethnology. Nott advised his friend on the medical treatment of slaves and provided Hammond with reading lists covering the latest in modern science, including archaeology, astronomy, geology, and physics. The two also corresponded extensively on ethnological subjects, enabling Hammond to reinforce his ideas on the supposed inferiority of blacks with scientific principles.4 Josiah Clark Nott (see illustration on p. 181) came from a distinguished Columbia family, one with a long history in the region. His father, Judge Abraham Nott, had been legal agent to the first Wade Hampton, once served as mayor of the city, and was a principal trustee of South Carolina College. Josiah graduated from the college in 1824, the year before Hammond and three years ahead of Dr. Gibbes. He went on to study medicine in Philadelphia, where Samuel Morton was one of his teachers, and then in the 1830s built up a successful private practice in Columbia, his clientele including the first Wade Hampton and the Hampton slave population. In 1833, together with Dr. Gibbes, he started a medical preparatory school in Columbia but three years later handed much of his practice over to Gibbes, including responsibility for the Hampton slaves, and moved to Mobile, Alabama. In his new home, Nott established a successful practice and conducted research leading to important contributions in epidemiology. In the 1840s he began writing on race. “My experience has taught me that if a man wants to get on fast he must kick up a 180

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dam’d fuss generally,” Nott wrote to a colleague. “A decent, civil, competent, meretricious man may rot in obscurity—a man must get notoriety in some way or the tide will run by him.”5 Kick up a fuss and obtain notoriety was precisely what Nott accomplished with the work he called “my nigger hallucinations,” “the nigger business,” or simply “niggerology.”6 Nott believed that Africans were inherently inferior to light-skinned peoples and that they were incapable of elevation—he believed this as others believed in the constancy of gravity or that the sun would always rise in the east. The existence of human types and their hierarchical arrangement was plain as truth to him, known to all with a modicum of common sense, but able to be proven, if necessary, with the aid of science. His approach, however, was anything but scientific, at least by current standards. Nott never conducted research 181

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as Morton had done with his collection of crania, meticulously gathering evidence and drawing conclusions from the data, however erroneous. Neither did he have an overarching concept of the natural world that was constructed for the most part through close observation, such as Agassiz’s Plan of Creation. Instead, Nott picked through the writings of others in search of anything that would support his convictions. If he liked what he read, he cited the author; if he did not, he kept reading. Unsurprisingly, Nott quickly latched onto polygenesis, for it served his purposes admirably. Nott and Hammond had both adopted their community’s prevailing attitudes about African Americans and slavery, but the shape these took in the course of their professional lives owed a great deal to their teacher at South Carolina College, Thomas Cooper. Cooper’s own ideas on race, however, were expressed with less consistency than those of his students. While still in England he had advocated abolition of the English slave trade on the grounds that Africans should be regarded as men, not brutes. Englishmen, he said, had no right to condone cruelty for the sake of financial gain. And yet not long after moving to South Carolina, Cooper purchased two families of slaves and was rarely seen without Sancho, his manservant. How could a person go from defending slaves to owning them? Cooper’s crusades were invariably determined by his unflagging support for the underdog, his desire to speak out on behalf of oppressed minorities. Thus in Britain he had supported abolition, while in America he believed that the industrial North’s treatment of the South was of greater concern than Southern planters’ enslavement of black people—here, the South, not the slave, was the victim. Cooper’s teaching henceforth embraced Southern attitudes unreservedly. In an article published in 1826, Cooper reinforced the commonly held belief that blacks were a “permanently degraded people,” an idea he may have picked up from his close friend Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, Cooper’s writings on race were in complete harmony with those of the Virginian. “I do not say that blacks are a distinct species,” Cooper wrote— thereby opening up the possibility that they were in fact just that—“but I have not the slightest doubt of their being an inferior variety of the human species; and not capable of the same improvement as the whites.”7 Cooper wrote these words at a time when American scientists were beginning to explore the diversity of human beings. The Reverend Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Charles Caldwell had both published their opinions on Henry Moss’s condition by then, and Caldwell, a close friend of Cooper’s from his Philadelphia days, would soon publish his Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race, in which he openly advocated polygenesis. Cooper, widely regarded as an “infidel,” had no problem with the challenge polygenesis 182

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posed to religious orthodoxy. As he wrote in the margins of a book by an English ethnologist, one who affirmed the unity of mankind, “No man can be a good reasoner who is marked by clerical prejudices.” It was reason, not religion that impressed him, and he in turn impressed this upon his students. Cooper thus exposed a generation of Carolina elite to new ideas on the original diversity of mankind at a relatively early stage and, in the case of Nott and Hammond, primed key figures in the coming debate.8 In the 1840s ethnology in America took a decisive turn. The political events of the previous decade, but particularly the rise of militant abolitionism, had caused a crisis of identity for the white population in the South. This in turn led to a desire on the part of whites to shore up the existing social hierarchy, which was precisely the purpose of ethnology. Books such as Morton’s Crania Americana (1839) and Crania Aegyptiaca (1844) cited ancient history and the enduring nature of white civilization to defend white supremacy while denying black people their own ancient and illustrious history. Greek and Roman statues were used to exemplify the Caucasian type not only out of propriety—it was impolite to use a fellow citizen as a “specimen”—but also because these images reinforced the dream of white civilization’s historical supremacy. Even though not everyone agreed with the scientific argument, ethnology gained legitimacy during this period because it offered a reassuring message. Nott and Hammond joined in the debate at this key juncture and pushed the scientific and political agenda for ethnology further than their teacher Thomas Cooper had been prepared to go. Nott’s first entry into the field of ethnology was an article entitled “The Mulatto a Hybrid: Probable Extermination of the Two Races if the Whites and Blacks are Allowed to Intermarry” and published in a respectable medical journal in 1843. The subject of amalgamation, or the intermixing of races, was widely debated among whites during this period, when increasingly the personal fear of interracial sex was extended to a social fear of racial degeneration. Many whites regarded interracial sex as a perversion of “natural sentiment.” Linked with this idea was the belief in the hierarchy of races, which was likewise attributed to natural or biological difference. If white people were more highly developed than blacks, as many people believed, then a mixed-race child fell on a scale between the two parents: more intelligent and robust than the black parent but less than so than the white. Race mixing was therefore thought to imperil the future of the white race by leading to its dilution or “degeneration.”9 This fear of miscegenation, a term coined later in the century, was legitimized and 183

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enhanced by articles like Nott’s. Apparently drawing on his experience of treating both black and white patients at his medical practice, Nott claimed that “mulattoes,” people of mixed race, were a sickly lot, with women particularly “subject to many chronic diseases.” The product of a mixed-race union, he claimed, was also less fertile. From these “facts” Nott concluded that the mulatto not only occupied a midpoint between the intellectual and physical capacity of the two parent races but that he or she was a hybrid, the progeny of “two distinct species—as the mule from the horse and the ass.”10 Hybridity had long played an important role in determining species differentiation. Since Buffon in the eighteenth century it was largely accepted that two creatures unable to procreate belonged to and indeed defined separate species. Two creatures that could procreate but produced sterile offspring also constituted separate species. In both cases the parent types were understood to be permanently distinct: they could not blend with other types to create a potentially endless sequence of variation. The horse and the ass could produce a mule, but this creature was unable to mate with another mule, or even with a horse or an ass, thus indicating that the two parent types belonged to separate species, while the mule, a natural dead-end, was a hybrid. Turning a blind eye to the significant numbers of mixed-race people in American cities and on Southern plantations, Nott believed that mixedrace children faced a similar fate. In 1844 Nott followed his paper on hybridity with Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races. In his earlier work he had shied from explaining the cause of diversity to focus instead on the more technical subject of hybridity and how this suggested permanence of type. In the Two Lectures he showed no such reticence. “The question of the unity of the Human Race is a grave one,” he began. “When we look around us and see the various complexions, and various physical conformations which exist in the human race, as the Caucasian, Mongol, Malay, Indian and Negro, we have naturally forced upon our minds the inquiry, are all these derived from one pair, or are they of distinct origins?” Nott wasted little time in providing an answer: “I set out then with the proposition, that there is a genus, Man, comprising two or more species—that physical causes cannot change a white man into a Negro, and that to say this change has been effected by a direct act of providence, is an assumption which cannot be proven, and is contrary to the great chain of Nature’s laws.” It was Nott’s objective to prove that black and white people had been distinct since the beginning of time, that “the Almighty in his wisdom has peopled our vast planet from many distinct centers, instead of one, and with races or species originally and radically distinct.” From this assertion it was only a short step to the idea that “nature 184

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has endowed them [nonwhites] with an inferior organization, and all the powers of earth cannot elevate them above their destiny.” In his lack of concern for religious doctrine, Nott was very much Cooper’s disciple. “It should be born in mind,” he wrote, “that we are now in the nineteenth century, which is marked by an advanced state of the sciences hitherto unknown, and that Biblical commentators have been forced to make large concessions to Astronomy, Natural History and Geology.” Although religion still held a central place in the lives of most Americans, and indeed found vast popularity through revivals and other organized expressions of spiritual belief, the Truth of science could not be denied. Nott believed it was necessary “to cut loose the natural history of mankind from the Bible, and to place each upon its own foundation, where it might remain without collision or molestation.” Members of the clergy disagreed.11 Nott was assailed by the clergy. Most people were still wary of polygenesis for the challenge it posed to religious doctrine, and Christian leaders provided both the argument and voice for this opinion. Nott, for his part, was well aware that the issue was as much a religious one as anything else. “Just get the dam’d stupid crowd safely around Moses,” he wrote privately to Hammond, “and the difficulty is at an end.” But despite being cast as an infidel by Christian leaders, or perhaps because of this, Nott received a great deal of attention for his ideas, much to his delight. His Two Lectures made him respectable in the eyes of many Southerners.12 Hammond’s writing on “the races” likewise earned him the respect of fellow Southerners. In early 1845, while still in hiding from the Hamptons, he wrote two letters to Thomas Clarkson, president of the British Anti-Slavery Society, which were published that same year and earned Hammond the praise he so desperately craved. “My letters to Clarkson are out and have produced quite a sensation,” he wrote in his diary. “I have received many extravagant compliments. . . . I think from all accounts they have considerably advanced my reputation.” The elder statesman John Calhoun agreed: “You are now so fairly enlisted and with so much éclat as the defender of the South against the assaults of the abolitionists that you will not be permitted to sheath your sword.” Hammond could not have been more pleased.13 The argument that Hammond made in the letters was essentially the same one he had made in the House of Representatives nearly a decade earlier, and he would continue to refine it for the remainder of his life, but now it was informed by current scientific theories. Bringing his considerable intellectual, oratory and debating powers to bear on the subject, he articulated what he believed to be the truth: that black people were and would always be inferior to whites, and that slavery was “a moral and humane institution” because it 185

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protected them from their own degenerate nature. Black people, Hammond wrote, could never prosper under any system other than slavery: “The reason is that the African, if not a distinct, is an inferior race, and never will effect, as it never has effected, as much in any other condition as in that of Slavery.” Indeed, peaceful coexistence was possible only within the confines of the master-slave relationship. “It is the most fatal of all fallacies, to suppose that these two races can exist together, after any length of time, or any process of preparation, on terms at all approaching to equality.” Blacks and whites “differ essentially, in all the leading traits which characterize the varieties of the human species, and color draws an indelible and insuperable line of separation between them.”14 Like others before him, Hammond stopped short of claiming that people of different races belonged to separate species. Instead, he wrote of distinct races, rather than species, and he noted “essential” differences between blacks and whites but declined to say publicly how those differences came about. Privately, however, he found polygenesis the most reasonable explanation for human diversity, for secondary causes rendered God powerless. “What use have we for Him,” he wrote to Nott, “if nature without his mind can change the Caucasian into the Malay or the Negro and develop myriads of animals and plants unknown to Noah? If we can conceive of any power adequate to do all this without God, then is it not superstitious to have a God at all?” Hammond veered from such bold reasoning in his published writings, but he left no doubt that his defense of slavery was based on the supposed innate, biological inferiority of black people. Hammond was interested in scientific proof of black inferiority, but the technical question of whether they had been created on separate occasions or constituted a distinct species ultimately mattered little to his argument. What was more, such controversial ideas could turn public opinion against him, and so he remained vague on the cause of racial difference.15 Hammond recognized the value and importance of science to his political agenda, and he lamented his lack of scientific expertise, which prevented him from “seeing” the answers to important questions. “I wish indeed that I had your knowledge of comparative anatomy and physiology,” he wrote to Nott. “Such knowledge is at the bottom of all great investigations in modern times.” Hammond pumped Nott for information on the physiology of Africans, quizzing him on their supposed ability to withstand hot climates better than whites and on whether their digestive system differed from that of whites. But despite this tutoring Hammond felt the shortcomings of his knowledge. “I would give all my law . . . for your information on the subject,” he told his college friend. Nott agreed that scientific knowledge married with Hammond’s intellectual abilities would have done a great deal for the cause.16 186

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In his letters to the English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, Hammond focused on refuting two accusations regularly made against slaveholders. The first was that slavery begets violence, the second that it leads to licentiousness. According to Hammond, these were false claims dreamed up by the minds of lying, perverted abolitionists. Such cases as the opponents of slavery may cite were probably drawn from the West Indies, he wrote, a totally different situation when compared to the South. In America the slaves were not ill-treated but cared for to a high standard by slaveholders who took their responsibilities seriously or risked losing their social standing. Accusations of abuse were either exaggerated or altogether fabricated. “I believe our slaves are the happiest three millions of human beings on whom the sun shines,” he wrote. “Into their Eden is coming Satan in the guise of an abolitionist.” Violence was always a last resort, Hammond claimed. The slaves themselves were content and peaceful, “unless instigated to [revolt] by others.” He went on to write, “It is certainly in the interest of all, and I am convinced that it is also the desire of every one of us, to treat our slaves with proper kindness, it is necessary to our deriving the greatest amount of profit from them.” Of course, some slaveholders lacked proper restraint, but as a rule they were good, kind people. An iron fist was only necessary where abolitionism caused unrest among the slave population. “When [the abolitionists] desist, we can relax.”17 Hammond’s own experience of managing a plantation suggested otherwise or at least demonstrated that master-slave relations were far more complex than he publicly acknowledged. The men and women who worked at Silver Bluff were not the childlike simpletons Hammond made them out to be. They did not follow their masters’ instructions blindly in the assurance that they would be amply cared for, and neither was resistance the product of abolitionist agitation. Rather, the plantation slave community was a complex social order that continuously negotiated its position when dealing with whites. Hammond himself had firsthand experience of this. In December 1831, shortly after his marriage, Hammond first took responsibility for Silver Bluff, the plantation his wife had inherited from her father. For years her brothers had run the estate on her behalf, but they did a poor job of it. When Hammond arrived, he found livestock running freely in the woods and 90 percent of the land undeveloped. More crucially, the slaves lacked discipline and resisted his instructions. To combat the problem Hammond took as his strategy the concept of total domination. In the first year he sought to destroy the collective will of the slave community by driving them hard, restricting or controlling every aspect of their lives, and using violence to assert his authority. It was, he 187

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claimed, a “year of severity which cost me infinite pain.” Though he claimed to dislike whipping the people he enslaved, he apparently had a greater dislike for expressions of disobedience. Many died as a result. Hammond called plantation management “war without the glory,” a view the men and women who worked for him may well have shared. Among his efforts of asserting absolute authority, Hammond replaced the task system of labor with the gang system, which meant that everyone old enough to work was part of a team that labored from early in the morning until dark. This system left them little time to attend to their own needs. Where the task system had allowed them to cultivate their own small gardens or engage in work from which they might earn small amounts of money once they had finished their assigned task for the day, the gang system afforded no such opportunities. But from Hammond’s viewpoint, tasking was grossly inefficient. The workers were too eager to call the job done and get away, he felt, completing assigned tasks quickly and sloppily. And so Hammond imposed the gang system on his slaves. Hammond’s plan backfired. The slaves, unhappy with the new regime, protested by doing exactly what their master did not want: they worked slowly and inefficiently, leaving weeds behind when hoeing and neglecting their work in numerous other ways. Hammond took notice. The slaves, he wrote in his diary, “evidently want to work task work which I will not do again.” Yet in the end he had no choice but to revert to the task system—there was no other way to ensure that the work would be done. Having staged a kind of strike, the black community at Silver Bluff won a significant victory in the ongoing negotiation of power that took place between master and slave, though of course Hammond acknowledged no such victory. A year after arriving at Silver Bluff he declared himself victorious. At long last, he recorded in his diary, the slaves were “broken in.” But though he could control a great deal about their lives, Hammond had learned that total control was simply not possible. Despite his efforts of domination and his claims of success, the black community at Silver Bluff maintained its own culture and customs, and also had its victories.18 “I wish the topic could be avoided,” Hammond wrote in response to the accusation that slavery led to immoral behavior between white masters and black slaves. “One of your heavy charges against us has been, that we regard and treat these people as brutes. [Yet] you now charge us with habitually taking them to our bosoms.” Hammond did not deny that sexual intercourse between master and slave took place, but its “character and extent,” he claimed, were grossly exaggerated. “No authority, divine or human, has yet been found sufficient to arrest all such irregularities among men. But it is a known fact, that they are perpetuated here, for the most part, in the cities.” Sexual intercourse between masters and their 188

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slaves was a human failing and an urban crime, not a product of slavery itself. Besides, Hammond added, “from the prolific propagation of these mongrels among themselves, we are liable to be charged by tourists with delinquencies where none have been committed, while, where one has been, it cannot be concealed. Color marks indelibly the offence, and reveals it to every eye.” Light skin betrayed the crime, yet Hammond also rightly pointed out that a light-skinned child could have been born of mixed-race parents. He seems not to have read Nott’s paper on the supposed infertility of “mulattos.” Hammond claimed that intercourse between master and slave would bring disrepute on the slaveholder. “If carried on habitually, it seriously affects a man’s standing, so far as it is known; and he who takes a colored mistress—with rare and extraordinary exception— loses caste at once.” So far as it is known. Secrecy, it would seem, could preserve a gentleman’s reputation—secrecy, and a culture that chooses not to see that which takes place openly.19 Hammond was patently wrong in his assertion that a man who takes a black woman for his mistress “loses caste at once.” For more than twenty-five years he kept two black “mistresses” without losing his social standing, though he did nearly lose his wife. In 1850 Catherine Hammond left her husband—not over the fact that he had sexually exploited her sister’s children but because he was fathering children by two of his slaves. Of these affairs he wrote no account and made no defense. It was his greatest crime, and so his deepest secret. Sally Johnson, a seamstress, was eighteen when Hammond made her his “mistress,” and when her daughter, Louisa, was twelve, he saw fit to do the same with her. Hammond had purchased the two in 1838 for nine hundred dollars. They lived in their own cabin not far from the family mansion; they were the only enslaved women who did not share quarters with a black man, and they were never allowed to marry. Nevertheless, though Hammond fathered a number of children by both Sally and Louisa, he was not always certain of their paternity. In a letter to his eldest white son, Hammond wrote, “Sally says Henderson is my child. It is possible, but I do not believe it.” And further: “Louisa’s first child may be mine. I think not. Her second I believe is mine. Take care of her and her children who are both of your blood if not mine and of Henderson.”20 Hammond’s enslaved children were subject to the same strict rules of behavior as his other slaves—he had no problem with his black children being beaten, provided they deserved the punishment and it was not excessive. However, his regard for them was different. At the age of fourteen Henderson was caught stealing from the household, but for punishment Hammond did not put the boy to work in the fields, as he might have done to a thief 189

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who was not his own child. Instead he sent Henderson away, to nearby Georgia, to learn the trade of winemaking. His black children were both something greater, more human, than his other slaves and something lesser than his white family. Among his dying requests was the wish that Sally, Louisa, and the children of both women be neither set free nor sold from the family. Freedom, he believed, “would be cruelty to them” due to their inferior constitution. At the same time Hammond could not bear the thought that any of his children should be the slaves of strangers. “Slavery in the family will be their happiest earthly condition.”21 “Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women,” Harriet Jacobs wrote in the narrative of her life. “Superadded to the burdens common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.” In 1835, the same year Hammond stood before the House of Representatives and claimed that slavery was “no evil,” Jacobs entered the crawlspace above her grandmother’s porch in North Carolina after her “master” had threatened to send her children—his property but not his progeny—into the fields as punishment for resisting his sexual advances. Believing that if the man could not gauge her response to such cruelty he would back down from the threat, Jacobs went into hiding. Her place of concealment measured nine feet by seven, with a sloping ceiling only three feet tall at its greatest height; there was no light and no ventilation. Aside from occasionally venturing outside at night to take exercise, she spent seven years of her life confined in “that little dismal hole.” “The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear. When she is fourteen or fifteen, her owner, or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of them, begin to bribe her with presents. If these fail to accomplish their purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission to their will.” Violence also prevents the men from coming to her aid and even causes some to deliver up their women to the master—but Jacobs does not condemn them for this. “Do you think this proves the Blackman to belong to an inferior order of beings?” she asked. “What would you be, if you had been born and brought up a slave, with generations of slaves for ancestors?” The idea that black people were made to be slaves, the very idea that Hammond asserted again and again, was “a libel upon the heavenly Father,” according to Jacobs. “I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live; it is the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the North, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They do the work.”22 Jacobs was among the first to speak out against the sexual abuse of enslaved women, giving voice to those who were perhaps seen but rarely heard, people like Sally and Louisa 190

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Johnson. Everyone looked on as black women were raped, their children then enslaved like them, but no one really saw. When a white man took a black woman as his “mistress,” the transgression was overlooked because a society that condoned slavery as a moral good had little problem with the ongoing abuse of black women. Men will be men, and the women, in any case, were black. His position at the top of the social hierarchy, and her place at the bottom, ensured no harm would come to him from such a liaison. James Henry Hammond benefited from just such an understanding.23 When Hammond wrote in his first letter to Thomas Clarkson that “our slaves are the happiest three millions of human beings on whom the sun shines,” he clearly was not thinking about the many ways the people on his plantation had resisted his attempts to wield total control over them. When Hammond wrote that reports of sexual intercourse between masters and slaves were “grossly and atrociously exaggerated,” and that in any case such activity was a problem of the cities, he was obviously not thinking of his own or his son’s relations with Sally and Louisa Johnson. The accusations of the abolitionists were exaggerated, he said; the South was a perfect society. When it came to separating his private thought and actions from his public persona as a Southern gentleman, Hammond was indeed a master.

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He braced himself as best he could. As the cart jolted against every rut and rock in the road, his body clattered painfully against the wood slats upon which he sat. The old jenny mule meanwhile marked time with her hooves. The cart was an old one, at least as old as the mule. Both were hardly ever used now. They were all that could be spared for this unusual and unexpected journey. The overseer was not happy about any of it. All a waste of time, he had muttered as they drove off. Dust rising from the road made his eyes water. On one previous occasion a white man had conveyed him in a like manner. It was many years ago now. It was the day he had been purchased at the market in town. “Sir,” he asked the overseer before they set off, “you taking me to be sold?” “Now that would be a journey worth the trouble,” came the terse reply, spoken more to the mule than to him. He took it for a “no,” and climbed onto the cart. Watching the trees as they disappeared from view, he tried to think of other things, to conjure the faces of his past as he did so easily while working in the fields, but he could not. For the first time in a long while he felt truly alone. When they entered the town he was surprised to see so many buildings pressed close together and rising three, four levels high. There were also people everywhere, men and women dressed gaily, strolling about with no apparent concerns. Some were black. This must be a different town, he thought. It could hardly be the place he had passed through all those years ago. The overseer took them around a corner and brought the cart to a halt. “All right, let’s be quick about this,” he said as he jumped down and tied the jenny to a post. “Come on, let’s go.” “Where?” “Inside, of course.” He climbed down from the cart and walked behind the overseer toward the building. As 193

he drew nearer the door something bright caught his eye. He managed to pause just long enough before entering the building to get a closer look at the shining object as it gleamed through the window. It was a picture, a small picture of a white woman. Something within him stirred. He was not permitted to linger over this unexpected miracle, to ponder its meaning or source, but as he climbed the stairs he found the woman’s face still before him, her eyes gazing directly into his own.

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11 Opposite Views

T

he science of race gained momentum during the 1840s, when Samuel Morton’s Crania Americana (1839) and Crania Aegyptiaca (1844) were buttressed by the more accessible writings of Josiah Nott and James Henry Hammond. Nott’s paper on hybridity and his Two Lectures, and Hammond’s letters to the English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, extended ethnology’s scientific and political influence while also appealing to the general public. In 1844 the political application of ethnology was further exercised when John C. Calhoun, then secretary of state and involved in diplomatic efforts to annex Texas as a slave state, contacted the nation’s premier Egyptologist, George Gliddon. In his lectures, publications, and exhibitions Gliddon claimed that the ancient Egyptians were not black, as had long been supposed, but white. He also claimed that the races had been distinct for at least four thousand years, a very long time when measured against contemporary views on the age of creation. Gliddon had supplied Morton with many of the Egyptian crania in his collection and had influenced his ideas on the permanency of race difference. In response to Calhoun’s summons, Gliddon met with the secretary of state and suggested he contact Morton, who later sent him copies of his books. Calhoun was evidently impressed by what he learned, for his diplomacy proved successful. Texas was annexed as a slave state in 1845.1 195

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The following year, at a meeting of the newly formed American Ethnological Society, Morton’s letter stating that different groups of humans had in fact been created separately was read. This public declaration from a highly respected scientist was a major boost to the advocates of polygenesis. Around this time material evidence supporting the theory was also discovered. While excavating earthworks in Ohio, Ephraim George Squier found bones and other artifacts that suggested an indigenous American culture dating back to antiquity had existed in the Midwest. Squier sent the crania he found at the site to Morton, who concluded that they were from ancient predecessors to contemporary Native Americans. When compared to the crania of modern Indians, it was clear to Morton that the American “type” had changed little over the course of centuries, or perhaps longer, and hence that the race had occupied the North American continent for a considerable time. With this the permanence of racial types acquired more physical “proof,” reinforcing the contention that the varieties of mankind were as old as creation itself. With each new publication and discovery, support for the doctrine of multiple creations grew within the American scientific community. White Americans had long considered black people to be inferior, but now this assumption was articulated as a scientific idea. Whereas in 1836 the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child had claimed, “Naturalists are universally agreed concerning ‘the identity of the human type,’” by 1850 the Democratic Review could note, if overconfidently, “Few or none now seriously adhere to the theory of the unity of races.” Polygenesis was no longer a mere suspicion, as Thomas Jefferson had put it, or the pet concept of slaveholders and assorted crackpots, but a serious theory worthy of consideration and debate and one that was finding expression in political discourse and diplomacy. The public still had yet to be convinced that they should revise their notions of biblical history, but the “American school” of ethnology nevertheless continued to win support.2 The opposition to polygenesis during this period of expanding scientific interest was not large, but in John Bachman it had someone willing to continue the debate until blue in the face. Late in the summer of 1849, the Charleston Literary Club invited Dr. Bachman to speak on Nott’s Two Lectures at one of their meetings. Since Nott’s work had been published five years earlier it had gained widespread attention, particularly in the South. Bachman, of course, despised the book. He viewed its author as a charlatan who “laboured rather to deny the historical veracity of the Scriptures than to prove the diversity of the races.” Moreover, Nott “produced no new fact or argument to bear on the subject” but reiterated the ideas of others and made claims without substantiating them. Simply put, Bachman did not regard 196

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Nott as a true scientist—he had never “described a single animal” and was, according to Bachman, unfamiliar with the criteria for judging species. The question of human diversity was a scientific matter, and those without the appropriate expertise should butt out. As Bachman had said of the Courier’s editors in the heat of the Feejee Mermaid controversy, “If they know nothing of a science on which they pretend to write, they should at least preserve a prudent silence.”3 Not surprisingly, Bachman’s review of the Two Lectures for the Literary Club was “adverse,” but the subject was far too complex to resolve in a single meeting. Subsequent meetings were thus convened, “two or three of which were occupied in an examination of the question on purely scientific grounds.” During these discussions Bachman found himself in the minority, but he carried on arguing his point out of a deeply felt sense of duty—to God, certainly, but also to the laws of nature. Meanwhile, it was said of Charleston that the question whether humans were originally diverse had “of late occasioned a good deal of conversation about town.”4 Bachman despaired of ideas such as those espoused by Nott entering the public domain. People uneducated in the methods and principles of natural history were ill-equipped to discern fact from fiction, true science from fabricated humbug. The public’s interest in the Feejee Mermaid and mesmerism had proved as much. Scientific debates, he believed, were best undertaken through scientific channels—books and articles published in reputable journals. In this way arguments could be made and evidence presented without anyone being shouted down and without inflaming the public mind. Keeping the debate within scientific circles also ensured that an author’s motives were legitimate, that he was not seeking attention by making controversial claims. Debate through specialist publication was the only honorable way to arrive at scientific Truth. In the wake of the Literary Club meetings, Bachman began composing his definitive answer to the ethnologists who supported polygenesis. “To our mind,” he wrote, “the field of argument may be much narrowed down by an examination of a single point: what are true species, and what must be regarded as only varieties?” Bachman defined species as “applying to those individuals resembling each other in dentition and general structure.” In other words, two animals belonged to the same species if they were more alike physically than they were different. He then proceeded to list all the many ways that apparently different groups of humans were alike, concluding, “Where we then discover so many characteristics that belong to every race, where their physical organization presents no material difference, and where the mental and moral powers are capable of improvement in all the 197

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varieties of men, what grounds have we, on any principles of science, to deny their common origin?”5 Bachman did not believe that white and black people belonged to separate species, but neither did he believe that they were equal. His father had owned slaves, and through marriage he likewise became a slave owner. This he easily reconciled with his religion, for in Bachman’s view the Bible approved of and sanctioned slavery. He believed that God had allowed black people to become inferior over time and that consequently they were perfectly suited to the condition of slavery—it was the duty and responsibility of the slave to be content with his or her role in society. Bachman did not, however, believe that slaves should be treated poorly, nor should they be excluded from Christian worship. Within three years of moving to Charleston to take up his role as pastor of Saint John’s Lutheran Church, Bachman had convinced his congregation to admit blacks to services, and he subsequently baptized hundreds of African Americans. He also established a fund for the poor and an academy for girls, and encouraged young black men to minister to their own people. Bachman saw no contradiction between his acts of benevolence and the keeping of slaves.6 When a young black teacher came to him one day with a caterpillar that he wanted help with identifying, Bachman was glad to oblige. Daniel Alexander Payne was a devout Christian, having been deeply moved by the teachings of Christ at a young age. Believing that God wanted him to teach his people, Payne set about educating himself, and in 1829 he opened a school. Yet he did not rest content with his own knowledge but continued to educate himself, exploring new subjects as best he could. Botany was one area of interest, zoology another. Payne would gather all the information he could on a particular species and with this make his own books for use in the classroom. He also killed, cleaned, stuffed, and hung specimens of insects, toads, snakes, and fish, and he often took his students out into the countryside to look for new specimens that could be captured and later studied in the classroom. Forever in pursuit of greater understanding and dedicated to instilling this love of knowledge in Charleston’s black population, Payne was enthusiastic both as a pupil and as a teacher. When the sister of one of his students brought him an unusual caterpillar, Payne did more than study the creature; he sought expert advice on its classification. “The Doctor received me kindly,” Payne recalled of his first meeting with Bachman, who identified the caterpillar and instructed the young teacher in its nature and habits. Bachman also taught him how to care for the caterpillar through its stages of metamorphosis, but Payne asked the naturalist to keep the specimen, perhaps because this would allow him to visit on future occasions. So it was that while observing the short progress of the 198

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insect’s life, the two men became intimate. “On my second visit he took me into his garden and showed me his fine collections of flowers,” Payne later recalled. He was also shown Bachman’s herbarium and collection of insects, which gave them ample opportunity to discuss some of the many aspects of natural history. “On my last visit he took me into his parlour and introduced me to his wife and daughters as ‘the young philosopher.’” These words gave Payne confidence among his hosts, so much so that he asked if Bachman’s daughter would play the piano for him, which she did. The moment, for Payne, was significant. Through his visits he felt he had established himself as an equal to the Lutheran pastor, who apparently did not find his visits with the self-educated black teacher a waste of time but on the contrary was happy to show off his specimens, discuss matters of natural history, and introduce Payne to his family. “There I sat,” Payne reminisced proudly, “and conversed with his family as freely as though all were the same color and equal rank.”7 Notwithstanding the generosity he demonstrated toward African Americans, Bachman would never have considered him of “equal rank,” no matter how devout, intelligent, or enthusiastic for natural history he may have been. In his view Payne could not possibly rise to a station equal to a white man, but he could learn about the world around him and through this knowledge better serve God. So it was that Bachman invited Payne into his home, discussed his work with the young man, and introduced him to his family. Later he did much more for Payne. In the wake of Nat Turner’s insurrection, when a bill was passed making the teaching of blacks subject to severe penalty, forcing Payne to flee the South, Bachman wrote letters of reference for him to aid his relocation. Bachman was not averse to helping black people, but he would never admit them to a position of equality.8 The Bible taught that there had been one act of human creation, and from this original pair the world was populated. Bachman believed that the first man and woman were neither white nor black—a description of the original type was ultimately beyond the reach of human knowledge—but he surmised that having lived in a warm climate they were thus “more or less dark-coloured.” Variations later occurred through the actions of climate and civilization, but they were only variations, leading to mild rather than radical differentiation. Some human varieties naturally fared better than others, with the European “as much of an improved race, as the African is a degenerate one.” White people were God’s original creation perfected. “That there should have been an improvement in form, feature, and color in man, removed to a temperate and healthy climate, enjoying all the comforts of life, together with the cultivation of intellectual qualities, is consistent with the state of progression which is imprinted on all the works of the Creator; that man possessed of intellectual 199

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and moral powers, has made advances, can be easily seen when we compare the knowledge of the present day with that which existed a few centuries ago.”9 Bachman was careful to draw the line with regard to change. Responding to newspaper reports that claimed whites in the South would turn black if the principles behind the “unity” argument were true, he stated without hesitation that this was not possible. “We are descended from races that have long become permanent,” he wrote, “and we have shown how tenacious are the peculiarities which attach to races once formed.” Yet at the same time he argued that permanent varieties “do not change their characteristics unless they breed with other varieties.” He also acknowledged that procreation between races produced fertile offspring, and in such cases “it could be difficult to determine to which race they belong.” The races were permanent but also capable of change through breeding; there were tenacious peculiarities of race, but “if we look among individual forms we will, in many instances, find it difficult to determine to which race they belong.” Bachman, though adamant in his principles, was not always consistent in his reasoning.10 While Bachman was writing his book, in the pages of a scientific journal he was also arguing about hybridity with the patriarch of American ethnology, Samuel Morton. Morton and Bachman knew each other well, though they never actually met. Morton rarely left his home city, and Bachman refused to set foot in Philadelphia because his father-in-law had abandoned his wife and children to settle there “with a lewd woman from the North.” Nevertheless, the two had exchanged letters and the occasional scientific specimen for years, although when Bachman saw that his contributions to Morton’s research were being used to support polygenesis, he was greatly distressed. He feared losing a friend and colleague, but he was duty bound to prove Morton wrong, and so for months Bachman traded punches with Morton in the pages of the scientific press.11 Nott, meanwhile, lurked in the background, writing letters of encouragement to his old teacher, egging him on in the “smash up of old Bachman.” “I really feel as if a viper had been killed in the fair garden of science,” he wrote with typical venom after an apparent victory was awarded to Morton, “and I hope his death will be a warning to all such blasphemers against God’s laws.”12 The viper was not so easily cowed. Bachman accepted the hybridity test of species differentiation, but he recognized that human beings were procreative regardless of color, or any other variation, and this therefore constituted “one of the most powerful and undeniable arguments in favour of the unity

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of the races.” Where Nott had claimed that “mulattoes” were a sickly lot and unable to procreate, Bachman recognized no such limitation. Humans of different races were perfectly fertile, as were their offspring. There was therefore no such thing as a human hybrid. What Morton called species were in fact varieties.13 Morton responded by suggesting that there were degrees of hybridization. These he later described as Remote Species, which could not produce offspring; Allied Species, which produced sterile offspring; and Proximate Species, which produced fertile offspring. Into this last category fell horses, sheep, goats, dogs, and humans. Hybridity, he admitted, was not a very good indicator of species differentiation. As an alternative definition of species, he suggested “primordial organic form.” This sleight of hand sidestepped the issue of hybridity, and validated all his claims and research on the diversity of mankind. Agassiz, for one, applauded the definition. “Bravo, my dear Sir!” he wrote to Morton. “You have at last furnished science with a true philosophical definition of species.”14 Morton’s new definition of species was certainly helpful in arguing for original diversity, but it was of little practical use. Naturalists identified species then as they had in Linnaeus’s time, by examining numbers of organisms and noting anatomical variations. Taxonomies were thus based on observable physical traits, with experiments in cross-breeding providing further evidence for the concept of hybridity. This was not an easy task. A specimen was not the same thing as a species, and the boundaries of any given species were not at all self-evident. “Differences are not necessarily specific differences,” Agassiz himself once noted, though he also tended to identify new species where others saw only varieties. Morton’s new definition—primordial organic form—provided no aid to this work, and indeed removed the issue from the laboratory altogether, placing it in the very distant and completely inaccessible “primordial” past. Who could say for certain what was primordial? Two organisms belonging to the same species had long been understood to share a common origin, but now it was a common origin that defined species. Morton’s definition had no practical application for natural history, but still it was hailed as a scientific advancement. Bachman for one would have none of it, and the two men continued to dispute the finer points of hybridity and species differentiation.15 By the spring of 1850, the debate between Morton and Bachman reached fever pitch. The third meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), to be held in the city of Charleston, was fast approaching, and delegates who had been following the argument were undoubtedly curious to know how the subject would be treated at

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the meeting. There was little question that the issue would arise. Bachman for one despaired of this happening. “I have no taste for controversy, and would gladly avoid it,” he protested after it was all over. But by then it was too late.16 The American Association for the Advancement of Science was founded in 1848 to recognize and support the work of the nation’s scientists by providing opportunities for the exchange of ideas and by raising the public profile of scientific activity. It also hoped to further the professionalization of science by constructing an impression of unity and collaboration though occasional meetings, which were open to the public and the press. At a time when the division between North and South was growing ever wider, this was a crucial objective. The organization had an open-membership policy, which meant that anyone with an interest in any scientific subject could join and attend meetings at which members shared their research and discussed new ideas. By holding each meeting in a different city, members could promote their work to potential benefactors both in their own communities and across the nation. Once each year, and sometimes more frequently, delegates agreed to set aside their scientific, political, and religious differences and together expose their work to public scrutiny. The city of Charleston was honored to host the third meeting of the association. In addition to covering all expenses for the meeting and for subsequent publication of the proceedings, on each night a prominent citizen hosted a reception for delegates, while during the days there were excursions to local places of scientific interest, such as the fossil-rich Sullivan’s Island. Some of the more important visitors were also accommodated in the homes of Charleston’s elite. “For a few days Science reigns supreme,” recalled the astronomer and AAAS member Maria Mitchell. “We are fêted and complimented to the top of our bent, and although complimenters and complimented must feel that it is only a sort of theatrical performance for a few days and over, one does enjoy acting the part of greatness for a while.” The city did all it could to make its guests feel welcome.17 The meeting itself took place 12–16 March 1850, at the Charleston Courthouse, a formidable three-story building on the northwest corner of Broad and Meeting Streets. Originally built to serve as South Carolina’s statehouse, it became home to state, local, federal, and circuit courts when the seat of government was moved to Columbia. The courthouse, which could comfortably seat large groups, was also frequently used for meetings, and in recent years had hosted debates on the federal government’s role in legislating slavery and

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the tariffs. In 1860 it would be the venue for the Secession Convention, moved from Columbia owing to a smallpox scare. At one time the courthouse also housed the Charleston Library Society, which had helped to restore the building after a fire in 1788, and the Charleston Museum, home to such novelties as a grass helmet from the Sandwich (now Hawaiian) Islands, Chinese chopsticks, and two poorly preserved Egyptian mummies. Though the museum relocated to Chalmers Street in the early 1820s, and in 1835 the Library Society moved to its own premises, the courthouse long resonated with scientific and intellectual pursuits, as well as with the defense of Southern principles.18 The association met in the Equity Courtroom, now called the Probate Courtroom, at the west end of the building on the second floor. Windows on three sides admitted sunshine and spring breezes, making it a pleasant place to spend the days listening to reports on scientific subjects ranging from ocean currents to pachyderms. The courtroom setting was also suitably formal, a place of Truth where proceedings were orderly without lacking in cordiality. It was an ideal location for the meeting. Louis Agassiz had been instrumental in bringing the AAAS to Charleston, for he was eager to raise the profile of the scientific community there, and as a founding member of the association he was in a position to do just that. By 1850 Agassiz was a major public figure, enthusiastically promoting science as an important undertaking for all. In return, he was rewarded with the love of a nation. But as well as being a great naturalist and a popular figure, he was also instrumental in the legitimization and popularization of polygenesis, more important even than Morton owing to his appeal and reputation. When Agassiz began advocating the theory of polygenesis, there was little doubt that people would take notice, yet from one utterance to the next it was still not entirely clear where he stood, particularly on the matter of whether the different races constituted separate species. He had said as much in Charleston in 1847, but elsewhere he was understood to support the unity of mankind—or was it unity of classification he supported, not of origin? Agassiz’s position was ambiguous, a remarkable circumstance given the fact that others were then joining the debate unreservedly. As an important public figure, he would have to set the record straight. The issue surfaced on the fourth day of the meeting. The session got off to a relatively late start at 10:30 that morning, perhaps because the previous night’s reception at William B. Pringle’s home had been particularly successful. Among those present for the late-morning session were Agassiz, President of the AAAS Alexander Bache, John Bachman, Robert W. Gibbes, Lewis Gibbes, John Edwards Holbrook, F. S. Holmes, numerous other

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scientists from across the country, the press, and members of the public. Bachman chaired the session, but the first paper was his own, so a colleague took the chair while he presented his research on American ferrets. The third paper that morning was one submitted by Nott. Called “An examination of the Physical History of the Jews, in its bearings on the Question of the Unity of the Races,” it was read by a fellow member of the association since the demands of his medical practice in Mobile prevented Nott from attending the meeting. Nott’s work sought to show that, despite global migration to new environments, Jews had not changed physiologically since the time of the Old Testament. There was little question in anyone’s mind, however, that the real subject of the paper was the permanent inferiority of black people. Nott’s reputation was well known. “The Jewish race has preserved its blood more pure than any of antiquity, whose history is known to us,” Nott’s proxy read, “and that consequently its original type ought to be the same, as its type of the present day. . . . [I]n no instance has it lost its own type, or approximated that of other races.” The Jews, he averred, provided “strong evidence of the permanence of type.” The paper continued in this vein, claiming, “no physical causes exist which can transform one race into another, as the white man into the negro, etc.” Bachman, who was again chairing the meeting, must have bitten his tongue throughout the reading of Nott’s paper.19 When the recitation was over, Agassiz stood to speak. Throughout the meeting he had constantly made his presence known—he gave five papers of his own, read one on behalf of a colleague, and frequently stood to comment on others’ work. Whether the subject was geology, paleontology, or zoology, he spoke with authority bordering on paternalism, and he made sure he was at the center of every discussion. It was therefore no surprise when he rose to speak after the delivery of Nott’s paper, yet for many what he had to say was truly shocking. Standing before the delegation, Agassiz said he wished “to correct some mis-statements, or at least misapprehensions of his views, on the subject of the Unity of the Human Race.” His position, it seemed, was not at all clear, and “some ill-feeling had arisen among naturalists, from not understanding the grounds of the controversy which were assumed by opposing parties.” If Agassiz had been tailoring his public lectures to suit the religious sensibilities of his audience, many of the Northern scientists present may not have been aware of his position on the matter. Agassiz announced that:

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As a general proposition he would side with those who maintain the doctrine of the unity of the race, if by the unity of the race be meant nothing more than that all mankind were endowed with one common nature, intellectual and physical, derived from the Creator of all men, were under the same moral government of the universe, sustained similar relations to the Deity, and were alike appointed to retribution and immortality beyond the grave. Under these aspects, he was ready to maintain the doctrine of the unity of the race. It was quite a different question, whether the different races were derived from the same common human ancestors. For his own part, after giving to this question much consideration, he was ready to maintain that the different races of men were descended from different stocks, and he regarded this position as fully sustained by divine revelation. In short, Agassiz asserted that the differences between the races were “primitive,” that they “did not originate from a common centre, nor from a single pair.” Though on this occasion he did not explicitly state that he considered men of different races to belong to separate species, it was nevertheless clear that he advocated original diversity, not unity.20 The courtroom erupted. Members of the clergy attacked Agassiz, causing him later to protest, “Why, there is no freedom for a scientific man in America!” Just as had happened in the North, his views were taken for heresy. Agassiz had tried to forestall just such a misunderstanding by pointing out that the Bible supported his views in its description of “other lands already peopled” in the time of Cain, but to no avail. A lively discussion ensued, a discussion that was not recorded by the association because, as Alexander Bache later wrote to Lewis Gibbes, “the remarks at the close of the meeting were altogether too popular a cast to require their printing.”21 Throughout the tumult Bachman was uncharacteristically quiet. It may have been that Agassiz’s remarks had come as a surprise. In his book on the unity of mankind, published just before the meeting took place, Bachman had quoted Agassiz as saying: “‘Even man, although a cosmopolite, is subject in a certain sense to this law of limitation. While he is everywhere the one identical species, yet several races, marked by certain peculiarities of features, are recognized, such as the Caucasian, Mongolian, and African races.’” Bachman clearly regarded this remark as supporting the theory of unity, overlooking the fact that this passage was part of an argument for separate creation. “There is only one way to account for the distribution of animals as we find them,” Agassiz and his coauthor state on the preceding

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page, “namely, to suppose that they are autochthonoi, that is to say, that they originated like plants, on the soil where they are found.” And yet, while in Charleston in 1847, Agassiz had concurred that separate creation meant separate species. Agassiz’s remarks at the AAAS meeting thus should not have come as a complete surprise.22 Nevertheless, Bachman was disturbed by the fact that Agassiz had just publicly announced his support of polygenesis. When the reverend doctor at last spoke, he said that “he was not disposed to discuss the question before the Society.” He believed “it was one of those nice and delicate questions which was, in his opinion, less suitable for open debate by a literary society before a promiscuous audience than for deliberate investigation by the advocates of opposing theories, through the [scientific] press.” Bachman uttered his regret that the topic had been broached at all; he had hoped his colleagues would show restraint and not openly discuss such a sensitive matter at a public meeting. He did not wish to see those who lacked the ability to reason scientifically exposed to unfounded concepts. Were this allowed to happen, “We might next expect to hear of itinerant lecturers, like those on psychology and mesmerism, gathering crowds to listen to their crude and undigested notions on the plurality of the human species, and as the mesmerizers give no quarters to the physicians, so these self constituted interpreters of science and of scripture, would visit with unsparing abuse, the Clergy and the Christian community who advocate the opposite doctrine.” Agassiz, however, had let the cat out of the bag, and his remarks would undoubtedly make a far and lasting impression. Not wishing to stimulate the debate further, Bachman simply stated that he disagreed with Agassiz “in toto,” and he referred those who wished to know more of his position to his recently published book. He then called a recess of fifteen minutes.23 Before Bachman could disperse the meeting, the Reverend Thomas Smyth stood to deliver a speech in which he countered Agassiz’s statement. Inspired by the December 1847 meeting of the Charleston Literary Club, and with the assistance of Bachman, Smyth had given three lectures on “The Unity of the Human Races” to Charleston audiences in 1849. These were later worked into a book, which included a précis of the “apparently irreconcilable and contradictory statements of Professor Agassiz,” from the Neuchâtel lectures through to his announcement at the AAAS meeting. At the meeting itself, Smyth remarked that the original unity of the human race was beyond question, and “any other view of the subject would tend to over throw the authority and defeat the objects of Divine Revelation.” Bachman must have fumed in his chair as Smyth prolonged the moment and brought the subject still more fully into the light of day. 24 Following the recess, the meeting eventually righted itself and returned to the busi206

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ness of hearing papers on meteorites, artesian wells, and jellyfish. The unexpected events of day four, however, would be what people remembered. And the news traveled fast. The newspapers, reporting that Agassiz caused “no little sensation” with his impromptu remarks, saw to that.25 Nott, however, learned of the meeting from Dr. Gibbes, and he was delighted with the outcome. “With Agassiz in the war the battle is ours,” he later wrote to Morton. “This was an immense accession for we shall not only have his name, but the timid will come out of their hiding places.” Matters did not quite play out as Nott hoped, in so far as “the timid” remained wary of a controversial theory, but there was no denying that Agassiz’s name lent credibility to the cause. The battle had indeed been won; the war, however, continued. 26 The news reached Boston within a matter of days. “Our readers will be startled, probably, at the declaration made by Professor Agassiz, of his disbelief in the unity of the human race!” So began an editorial in the Boston Daily Evening Traveller, published shortly after the AAAS meeting. The editors then stated the professor’s position boldly: “He avowed his readiness to maintain, in opposition to the authority of Scripture, that all the nations of the earth were not made of one blood, but that the different races of men are descended from different stocks.” Readers were startled. The Traveller received numerous letters in reply to the report on the AAAS meeting, letters from readers who were clearly familiar with Agassiz as a man of intelligence and integrity and who did not expect him to hold such views. Once again, there was confusion.27 “Are you quite right, Messrs. Editors,” one reader wrote, “in saying that Professor Agassiz contradicts the Bible?” It had been reported that Agassiz believed his views consistent with Christian teaching, and the reader noted this, but for his part he did not understand where in the Bible Agassiz found confirmation of his ideas. Unwilling to dismiss Agassiz as an infidel outright, the reader, who identified himself as “H.Y.,” supposed that “philosophical speculation has led him to forced interpretations, by which the true sense of Scripture is wrested, that it may agree with his opinions.” As the unconscious act of an inquiring mind, Agassiz could hardly be faulted for committing such an error in his attempt to reconcile his unconventional scientific beliefs with scripture. But perhaps it was not an unwitting error; perhaps, “in order to find a coincidence between the Bible and his views, he adopts a system of interpreting the Bible that destroys its authority.” Such a case would be grave. “But whether this is so, I have not yet learned,” concluded the reader, leaving the matter open for further discussion.28 207

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The Traveller, in response to H.Y. and other readers who expressed dismay at the news, moved to clarify matters. “We did not mean to say that Prof. A. had avowed his readiness to oppose the authority of Scripture; but we did mean to say that such was the inevitable tendency of his theory.” Though Agassiz himself believed his opinions were not in opposition to scripture, it was nonetheless a matter of interpretation—and interpretation of the Bible was not to be undertaken lightly. “For our own part, we do not see how his views can be sustained without involving a contradiction of Divine Revelation, in important if not fundamental particulars.” No one, it seemed, quite understood Agassiz’s position.29 208

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Among the Bostonians who read of Agassiz’s controversial remarks was a young woman with more than a passing interest in natural history. “I see,” Elizabeth Cabot Cary wrote to her fiancé, “that some of the church people are out upon you in the papers for your disrespect to Adam as the common father of mankind.”30 Miss Cary (see illustration on p. 208) and Professor Agassiz had announced their engagement at the New Year. Lizzie, as her friends and family called her, first set eyes on Agassiz in October 1846, not long after he had arrived in Boston. They were in church, and she was sitting with her family in the balcony. The next pew over belonged to John Amory Lowell, and Lizzie’s mother could not help but notice that Mr. Lowell had a stranger with him that Sunday. The man, Mrs. Cary thought, resembled Cornelius Felton, the Harvard professor her daughter Mary had taken for a husband. This stranger was an attractive man, and had about him a foreign quality—he would, she thought, make a fine husband for her Lizzie. Sitting down to Sunday dinner with the family later that afternoon, Mrs. Cary expressed her thoughts. “I wonder who it was who sat in Mr. Lowell’s pew today,” she said. “He was the first person I ever saw whom I would like Lizzie to marry.” Surprise held the Cary clan in silence for a moment before Lizzie spoke. “You must not rest your hopes on him, Mother,” she said. “It was Mr. Agassiz and he has a wife and three children in Switzerland.” And with that the matter was dropped.31 Elizabeth Cary was from a close, cultured Boston family, one in which education and the arts, commerce, and perhaps above all manners were held in high regard. Descended from good English stock, both of her grandfathers had held business interests in the West Indies. Her paternal grandfather, Samuel Cary, had prospered as a sugar planter in Grenada —at least until 1791, when a series of slave uprisings forced the family to flee to Massachusetts. Thomas Handasyd Perkins, the more successful of Elizabeth’s grandfathers, also had business in the West Indies: he owned a number of ships that transported sugar, coffee, and slaves to their respective markets. Later in life Grandfather Perkins turned to philanthropy, founding the Perkins Institute for the Blind with Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe as its director. Both the Cary and Perkins families were “cotton whigs,” for whom slavery was thought a necessary part of life and commerce, a fact that perhaps accounted for Elizabeth’s “rather taciturn” response to the abolitionist Charles Sumner when he made gestures of courtship. But by then she had fallen for the Swiss naturalist.32 Lizzie first met the professor at her sister Mary’s house, where she lived and helped with the Felton children. As fellow Harvard professors, Felton and Agassiz became fast friends, and often spent time together with the Cary sisters. Over the years this afforded Lizzie and 209

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Agassiz opportunity to develop a close relationship, one unburdened by the expectations of society, but perhaps not without its frustrations. When Agassiz’s first wife, Cécile, died in 1848, the situation changed. A year later it was socially acceptable for Agassiz to remarry, and in December 1849, after making enquiries into the Swiss naturalist’s character, Lizzie’s father gave his consent. There were, evidently, debts still outstanding, and Agassiz’s former secretary Edward Desor had been spreading rumors that the professor had contributed to Cécile Agassiz’s illness and death through neglect, but investigations had shown that the professor was above reproach in these matters. The New Year in Boston was greeted joyously along with the news that Professor Agassiz was to marry.33 When in the spring of 1850 Agassiz set off for the AAAS meeting in Charleston, it was the first time the two lovers had been apart since discovering their deep affection for one another. This separation magnified the fears and anxieties that new couples often experience, and Elizabeth Cary felt these intensely. The problem, it seems, lay in stark differences of opinion between the two, particularly, as she wrote to him, “about the subject on which we have differed so often.” The identity of this subject is not known, for Cary did not wish “that the confidence between us should be shared by a third person,” and with delicate matters, even writing to a lover can sometimes feel like a public display. Yet although the subject of their disagreement is not known for certain, it is possible that it was related to Agassiz’s “disrespect to Adam as the common father of mankind.”34 Since their engagement Cary and Agassiz had often disagreed, or, as she put it, “I have often been so unwilling to yield to your judgment.” This she partly ascribed to the awkward position of one betrothed but not yet married: to defer to a man who was not your husband simply felt wrong. But she also made it clear to Agassiz that she should be entitled to her own opinions, that it was not possible for them to always agree. “To have courage to express fully my difference from you on any point, even to the utmost degree, and yet to let the decision rest always with you, I am convinced is the only course which can satisfy us both.” As his wife she would defer to him in all things, but she would still voice her own opinion and have it be acknowledged. As she wrote to him while he was away in South Carolina, “We have such opposite views on some essential points, that it is not probable we shall in all be able to agree, even after the most deliberate discussion. In such cases one must yield, and it is surely from me that the concession ought to come, for you have already seen how ignorant I am of all that belongs to the life that is before me.”35 The life before her was the life of a naturalist’s wife, a world-famous naturalist at that, and her ignorance of natural history was then fairly absolute. Were their “opposing views on 210

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some essential points” to do with science? If so, it seems unlikely that Cary would be bothered by any of his theories other than the theory of separate creations. This was the one area where someone lacking in training as a naturalist, but raised under Christianity, could stand up and say, “I am unwilling to yield to your judgment.” No one, after all, wrote to the newspapers to say they disagreed with the professor’s ideas on geology or paleontology, or even that his ideas on race were objectionable insofar as they were unfairly discriminatory. The nerve that Agassiz touched was to do with neither science nor race, but religion. Elizabeth Cary’s upbringing, like that of most people in New England, would not have prepared her to support a radical new interpretation of the Bible. Years later she attended a lecture Agassiz gave “upon man,” which she called his “heathen views.” Of this lecture, she said, “I have never heard him so eloquent and so clear on that subject, so I suppose the listeners were as much pleased or displeased, as they had expected to be.” Her characterization of his views as “heathen” and the emphasis on “displeased” suggest that perhaps she, too, was displeased with what she heard.36 The deep, mutual affection that existed between Cary and Agassiz, however, could enable them to set their differences aside. “I know that if there is anything not absolutely important, to which I cannot reconcile myself,” she wrote to him, “you have too much tenderness for me to urge it—and I trust too much to our mutual devotion, not to believe that there is nothing essential to the happiness of either which we shall not, in the end, win from each other.” She added a caveat to this vision in which love conquered all: “But let us only, so far as we understand it, bring our lives into accordance with God’s will, and pray always for his light and blessing on our way.”37 The wedding was due to take place upon Agassiz’s return from the AAAS meeting, yet it was delayed somewhat when the professor changed his itinerary. He had been invited to travel to Columbia for the purpose of examining Africans, and this was an opportunity he did not want to miss.

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It smelled like the Devil. A powerful, dense odor hung in the air, one that no perfume could hide. It had a body, a shape, and a form to it. It was a thing that had risen from the depths of the earth, and he believed that nothing from such a low place could do man a service. Not for one moment the whole time he was there could he escape this odor. He held that fact as a sign to be heeded. A white man had met him at the door. It was early yet, hardly a soul to be seen on Main Street, but the sun was coming down hard. When the door opened, he explained his business. “Morning, sir. I been told to come here and say that the doctor—” “Yes—yes, of course. Come in.” The man stepped aside to give him room to move past and up the stairs. He heard the latch on the door as it was locked behind him. The odor was the Devil’s own, but the rooms were the finest he had ever seen. As he entered the studio he was stunned by the colors and the textures. Though he had been inside some of the city’s grandest homes, he had never before seen such exquisite furnishings. “You can wait over there. It won’t be long.” He took a seat on a hardwood chair, not daring to sit on anything nicer. As he waited he pondered his presence in such a place. He knew it to be a photographic studio, a temple consecrated to the vanity of whites, or so he once heard it called. There were also pictures in the window down at street level, but they were not the first he had ever seen. His mistress kept several in her bureau. But what was he doing there? This was no place for a black man. The vile spirit he inhaled with each breath told him as much. The doctor had sent him. He had been told to say the doctor had sent him. But what would the doctor want with his picture? He did not know what was expected of him, but he could be fairly sure it was not something he would willingly give.

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“We’re ready for you now.” He did not move, not immediately. But when he did rise to his feet he stood tall and took a moment to smooth his clothing before following the man into the next room.

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T

he view was not much to look at. The landscape between Charleston and Columbia consisted almost entirely of pine forest, affording passengers little more to gaze on than a restless blur of green and brown. There were no sublime vistas of towering, snow-capped mountains to dwarf the traveler and make him feel his mortality with a keen ache; no water-filled gorges to quicken the blood with the thought of pitching headlong into the depths should the bridge fail. Neither were there picturesque scenes of country life to break up the monotony of travel. The journey upcountry was decidedly short on picture-postcard views for the traveler to dream upon. “There is not a town or village of any consequence on the whole route of 130 miles,” one passenger complained.1 Occasionally, but only occasionally, there was a break in the endless parade of trees, a change of scene when forest gave way to a clearing in which men and women could be seen bent over their work of pushing cotton plants into the soil, a scene that while not exactly picturesque nevertheless provided relief from the steady smudge of longleaf and loblolly pine. Perhaps in the brief moment afforded by a clearing in the woods, one or two laborers would straighten up to watch the passing train, responding to the puff and wheeze of the locomotive as it chugged toward the capital, but more likely they simply lifted their eyes 215

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to acknowledge the presence of others and then lowered them again to the task at hand. Whether the brevity of this returned look was due to the familiarity of seeing locomotives pull their load across that particular stretch of land or the desire to avoid inflaming the overseer’s already touchy spleen, none could say. The question was hardly worth forming in the mind since the moment was soon over as both field and train were engulfed by forest. Agassiz traveled to Columbia in March 1850 at the invitation of Dr. Gibbes. It was a twelve-hour journey, and one that cost more than seven dollars. The ticket was expensive, but the railroad was a great improvement over the stagecoach, given the state of South Carolina’s roads, and both comfort and speed were important to such an illustrious traveler.2 Though Agassiz professed to be “tired of this wandering life” and to “long for rest,” it seems clear that he viewed any chance to explore unfamiliar territory as an opportunity no reputable naturalist should refuse. Travel, in his view, was necessary to the naturalist’s work, for only in nature could true discoveries be made—and discoveries were precisely what the naturalist hoped for most. Agassiz had long desired to lead a scientific expedition, and despite his many accomplishments he believed that only a grand journey could confirm his professional standing. Until he could satisfy this ambition, a key chapter of his life was missing.3 His voyage to the United States in 1846 at first promised to fulfill this desire, the New World being viewed as an especially vast and wild continent by Europeans, but from the day Agassiz arrived in Boston, he had had little opportunity to lead a serious expedition. His lecturing obligations and the claims of society prevented him from venturing far from the cities. He would have preferred to hike across frontier terrain rather than attend dinners in his honor, but initially at least this was not possible. Agassiz would have his expedition, to Brazil in 1865, but until then he continued to pine for exotic lands.4 To a European and a Northerner, South Carolina was exotic. The climate, geology, flora, and fauna were different from that found elsewhere in America and were therefore worthy of a naturalist’s attention. The continued existence of slavery in the South also contributed to the exoticism of the place. For Agassiz, as for many others, the South was a country within a country, a place set apart by its singular natural history and “peculiar institution.” He had twice been to Charleston before the AAAS meeting of 1850, and in subsequent years he returned to South Carolina regularly, teaching at the Medical College in Charleston during the winter months of 1851–52 and 1852–53, staying as a guest on the Holbrook, Ravenel, and Rutledge plantations, taking excursions along the coast and into the

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surrounding countryside. His first journey into the interior of the state, however, provided him with new opportunities. Once in Columbia Agassiz was again under obligation to fulfill certain social and professional responsibilities. Between his celebrity and Dr. Gibbes’s desire to show him off—after many invitations and two canceled trips, the doctor had finally lured Agassiz to Columbia—every minute of every day was filled with engagements of one sort or another. “I have been received with so much demonstrative attention,” he complained in a letter to Harriott Holbrook, “that I have not had a moment to myself.” From seven in the morning until late at night, Agassiz was on display, himself an exotic by virtue of his fame and his foreign birth. In the evenings he dined with such exalted families as the Hamptons, Taylors, and Prestons, while during the days he lectured at South Carolina College. Lecturing, however, offered some relief from the demands of society. If not out exploring the landscape, at least he could pursue his second love, teaching. The weather was poor—it rained almost constantly throughout the eight days of his visit—but his lectures were well attended and also well received, at least by his reckoning.5 “Professor Agassiz has been lecturing for some time past on Geology,” a student wrote home to his mother, concluding: “I don’t believe a word of it.” Agassiz was apparently sheltered from such criticism.6 Lecturing made the excursion to Columbia enjoyable, and also worthwhile insofar as it was profitable, but this was not his primary reason for accepting Dr. Gibbes’s invitation to visit the Carolina midlands. Agassiz had changed his plans—canceling a series of lectures he was supposed to give in Philadelphia on his way home and altering other arrangements, including the date of his wedding—so that he could examine slaves. “I am delayed here by investigations of the utmost interest to me respecting negroes,” he explained in a letter to a colleague. But it was not just any Negroes that interested him, or he may as well have stayed in Charleston, where Holbrook’s plantation would have sufficed to provide him with “specimens.” No, it was not Negroes per se that now interested Agassiz, but Africans.7 His friends and admirers up North, as well as his fiancée, would have to exercise patience a short while longer. In 1850 black people outnumbered whites by nearly two to one in Columbia and the surrounding area, but the number of African-born slaves was relatively small, amounting to less than 2 percent of the slave population. The transatlantic slave trade had ended in 1808,

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although smuggling continued. Yet by midcentury the population of enslaved people who were “country-born,” that is born in North America, had grown significantly due to a law stipulating that the children of enslaved women would likewise be treated as slaves. And so with each passing generation, as the slave population grew, the proportion of African-born slaves diminished, and men and women who had known life on the African continent—its landscape, customs, languages, and beliefs—grew increasingly scarce. This could have made it difficult for Gibbes to follow through on his promise to Agassiz, but if anyone in the region could procure Africans, it was the doctor.8 As physician to both the white and black “families” of prominent slaveholders, Dr. Gibbes would have known who among the slaves of Columbia and Richland County had been born in Africa, and he would have had access to them by virtue of his social and professional standing with the planter class. Providing Agassiz with black bodies to examine was not a problem. Doctor Gibbes procured at least seven, and possibly more, people for Agassiz to study, five of whom were native-born Africans. The professor had been able to observe slaves while at the Holbrook’s plantation in Charleston, but here, in Columbia, he could closely examine a group of Africans. It was the number as well as their origin that appealed to him. Studying a group allowed him to use what he called “the natural history method: the comparison of individuals of different kinds with one another.” Agassiz would undoubtedly have preferred to study a large number of individuals belonging to each ethnic group, but given the relative scarcity of Africans in America, he had to satisfy himself with a small group of people whom he could compare alongside one another.9 Shortly after the AAAS meeting in Charleston and his visit to Columbia, Agassiz wrote a series of articles on the subject of diversity in nature. In the second article, published in July 1850, he stated that there was not one homogeneous “African type,” but many, and that significant differences existed between them. His authority to make such a claim derived from his experiences in Columbia: “The writer has of late devoted special attention to this subject, and has examined closely many native Africans belonging to different tribes, and has learned readily to distinguish their nations, without being told whence they came; and even when they attempted to deceive him, he could determine their origin from their physical features.”10 Agassiz scrutinized his subjects and then made an attempt to “distinguish their nations.” He was a quick study, for he “learned readily.” But more astonishing was that he succeeded in his task “even when they attempted to deceive him.” This remark is striking. It 218

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suggests that the examinations were conducted as a kind of guessing game, that Agassiz did not simply observe his subjects visually, as he did fossils and other natural artifacts, but that he engaged in dialogue with them, testing his scientific expertise against Jack and Fassena’s knowledge of their own origin. However, in saying that they “attempted to deceive” him, Agassiz may not have meant that his knowledge was willingly tested but that his subjects were deceptive out of malice. There is in his remark a hint of the common prejudice that held black people to be natural-born liars. John Bachman was Agassiz’s adversary on the matter of polygenesis, but he seems to have had a similar ability to determine ethnic origin by looking at the bodies of slaves. “We still have some hundreds of native Africans remaining in South Carolina,” he wrote in his book defending the unity of mankind, “some of whom present the tattoo received in Africa.” Bachman went on to inventory the most striking physical features of these African slaves when compared with “our negroes.” Such differences were readily apparent because, as he wrote, “we have for many years past been in the habit of detecting their origin at a glance.” Morton was thought to possess a comparable skill with crania: “A single glance of his rapid eye was often enough to determine what, with others, would have been the subject of tedious examination.”11 Not everyone could distinguish the apparently subtle variations between African ethnic groups. A sugar planter remarked early in the century that it was “frequently difficult to ascertain” such a thing. Unlike the sugar planter, however, Agassiz was a skilled scientist. As Nott acknowledged, “It requires the keen and experienced eye of such a comparative anatomist as Agassiz to detect structural peculiarities in our few African born slaves.” With this ability, Agassiz need never have touched the slaves while examining them.12 That Agassiz, Bachman, and Morton believed they could discern racial type merely by observing subjects when others found the task difficult is explained by their professional claims as naturalists. This ability to read the body—to go beyond the surface with a penetrating gaze sensitive to slight variations—was one of the defining characteristics attributed to scientists in the nineteenth century. As Lewis Gibbes had claimed during the Feejee Mermaid controversy, “The many look but the few see.” With the attendant claim that the scientist could ascertain the Truth of his subject, this skill in seeing, rather than simply looking, is what separated the specialist from the lay public (though the ability could be contested). The scientist did not even have to be correct in his judgment—or rather, the scientist was always right by virtue of his professional standing, so long as his status was recognized. Agassiz’s reputation and expertise were of course undisputed, and so despite having met 219

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few Africans before traveling to Columbia, he could easily determine the slaves’ origins by examining their bodies. In this he was not playing a guessing game so much as a naming game: he stated what African ethnic group each person belonged to, and other people merely confirmed or denied this. The deniers, however, did not prove him wrong; they simply contradicted him. Jem and Alfred, Drana and Fassena, and the other people he examined may have insisted that he guessed their (ethnic) name incorrectly, but Agassiz could not be wrong. He was the authority on human diversity, not them.13 Modern science recognized that race was not simply inscribed on the surface of the body. There were “more important peculiarities than the mere differences in the color of the skin,” as Agassiz would write in 1854. The science of physiognomic perception was one approach to identifying types from individual specimens. By visually penetrating the surface, with all its variety, detail, and idiosyncrasies, physiognomists claimed to reveal the stable indicators that lay within. But a far greater influence than physiognomy was the study of anatomy, for scientists were dealing not just with the face and its moral depths but also with the body and its internal mysteries. Most ethnologists had received medical training, and hence were familiar with the body’s interior. Morton’s interest in collecting crania began when he found it difficult to obtain human skulls for an anatomy lecture, while Agassiz had dissected cadavers as a medical student, and his training in comparative anatomy also necessitated cutting into specimens to understand their conformation to type. In order to distinguish individual characteristics from those that delineate a species, the comparative anatomist typically examined multiple specimens over a period of time.14 It was of course Cuvier, Agassiz’s mentor, who made comparative anatomy standard practice in the study of nature. With Cuvier the whole specimen, not just its external appearance, became central to the naturalist’s training and to the development of taxonomic systems. Cuvier extended this practice into ethnology when he examined Saartjie Baartman, a Khoisan woman from South Africa, who early in the nineteenth century was exhibited in London and Paris as “The Hottentot Venus.” Baartman reluctantly allowed Cuvier and his colleague Henri de Blainville to examine her without her flesh-colored stocking, the costume she wore while performing, which gave the appearance of nudity, but still she insisted on covering her sex. Cuvier desperately wanted to examine her “apron,” that part of her genitalia thought to distinguish the so-called Hottentot women, but Baartman was resolutely against this. It was only after Baartman’s death in December 1815, that Cuvier was able to examine her as closely as he wished, in the privacy of his laboratory. Later he performed a public dissection and published his “findings” in medical journals and the popular press; 220

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he also made a cast of her body and genitalia and had her skeleton mounted, all of which were put on display at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. This series of increasingly invasive acts perpetrated on Baartman’s body was permissible, respectable even, because they had been committed in the name of science and by men with established professional reputations.15 In the course of the nineteenth century several doctors followed Cuvier’s example, closely examining the genitalia of black women, ostensibly for ethnological purposes. But even as invasive techniques were practiced, there was nevertheless a fixation on the surface. The physicians W. H. Flower and James Murie suggested that cutting into bodies was all too rare. “Observations upon the comparative anatomy of the different races of Man,” the two doctors wrote, “have hitherto been confined too exclusively to the external characters and to the skeleton. With very few exceptions the arrangement of the muscles, vessels, viscera, and even of the brain and nervous system, constitute at present an unexplored field.” The study of human skulls was of course very much in vogue, but few actually practiced craniology, and increasingly the science of race valued techniques of taking external measurements. Looking, it seemed, was more important than cutting.16 This emphasis on the external appearance of race despite an interest in the body’s depths was due in part to the fact that obtaining bodies for invasive examination or dissection was no easy matter. Grave robbing, after all, was a crime. Agassiz himself wished to obtain the brain of a black man for examination but was unsuccessful. Yet it was also due to the fact that once cut open, black and white bodies look pretty much the same. “There are no appreciable differences,” Nott regretfully told Hammond in response to Hammond’s query about the stomachs of black people when compared to those of whites. The interior of the body ultimately had little to say about racial difference. Anatomize a black man, Hosea Easton wrote in his 1837 Treatise, and “before the dissecting knife passes half through the outer layer of the skin, it meets with the same solids and fluids [as are found in white people], and from thence all the way through the body.” As a twentieth-century black anatomist noted, it is one of the great ironies of American racism that black people were considered by many to be different from whites, yet their bodies served nicely in the teaching of human anatomy.17 The science of ethnology was above all a science of looking, and particularly a science of apprehending surfaces—yet the look did not stop there but went on to peer inside the body, to see something beyond the surface without actually breaking the skin. Yet despite gaining its legitimacy from anatomical study, this extraordinary vision or optic power was 221

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not concerned with scrutinizing organs and other physical matter of the body’s interior. Rather, this way of seeing sought an essential truth of the body, one that was not actually visible, at least not in the usual sense of the term. When Agassiz examined Africans to determine the place where they had been born, he was not seeing racial types in their bodies so much as projecting his ideas of race onto them. By combining the visual analysis of individuals with prior knowledge of racial types, knowledge gained from the literature of ethnology and natural history, Agassiz’s “vision” constituted the slaves as racialized subjects. The apparent depth that Agassiz apprehended in the slaves with his optic power was not a physical depth but a cultural one. He believed he could see ethnological Truth of Renty and Drana—and he did, but it was a truth that he himself had constructed through the very act of looking. Race was in the eye of the beholder.18 It is perhaps unsurprising that Agassiz moved from seeking knowledge in the bodies of his subjects, to having images made of them. Cuvier had done as much with Baartman, arranging for her to be painted in frontal and profile views and having casts of her body made after her death. Encounters between scientists and non-European peoples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries almost invariably followed this movement from the initial experience of wonder or curiosity to an act of possession, whether actual, symbolic, or both. That photography was believed capable of penetrating the surface to reveal the “secret character” of the sitter made Agassiz’s choice of medium an easy one. Joseph Thomas Zealy had a reputation as “the best artist in the upcountry,” but he was also a shrewd businessman, advertising regularly that he had all the latest equipment necessary to his trade. His studio was located at the heart of the commercial district in Columbia, and at the peak of his career it was “fitted up with great taste and elegance,” including attractive furnishings and a piano “for the accommodation of his lady visitors.” There was also a separate room “for the proper adjustment of the toilette,” as well as a large skylight window “constructed for the purpose of his art.” He may even have perfumed the air to avoid offending his clients with the foul odor of photographic chemicals. Having your picture taken was a special occasion—his clients wanted to be flattered, even if only just a little, and if the camera with its mechanical precision would not do this, then he would have to make the experience pleasant in other ways. “In short, in every department of his business, he has spared neither pains nor expense to arrive at the utmost perfection of his art.”19 For his efforts, Zealy was rewarded with the respect of his fellow operators and the admiration and patronage of his clients. The Photographic Art-Journal often printed short 222

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notices telling of Zealy’s success. One such article assumed a gossipy tone: “We hear that Mr. Zealy of Columbia, S.C., is so busily engaged in copying the human face divine—particularly feminine—that he has scarce time to spend an agreeable moment at home.” Several female customers praised “Zealy’s magic art” in florid verse.20 Zealy was born in Beaufort County, South Carolina, in 1814. He worked as a carpenter and contractor in Orangeburg before the advent of Daguerre’s great invention. Subsequently, he joined the growing number of entrepreneurial young men who took up photography as a new, modern, and profitable way to make a living. Perhaps like so many others he had read 223

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of Daguerre’s process in the newspapers and then taught himself how to make photographs. Regardless of how he learned his new trade, by the mid-1840s he was highly skilled in making portraits (see illustration on p. 223). At first Zealy worked as an itinerant photographer, moving from town to town with his camera and chemicals, lingering only as long as there were customers who desired pictures and could pay for them. In 1846 his approach to business changed when a number of Columbia’s “most distinguished citizens” invited him to settle in the capital with his wife and four young children. Later that year he opened the city’s first truly established photographic gallery, over Mordecai’s store on Main Street. Before long he was a respected figure in Columbia’s business community, joining the Free Masons, owning slaves, and supporting the business transactions of others, as he did in 1864, when he witnessed a rental agreement for Dr. Gibbes. Zealy still occasionally worked as an itinerant daguerreotypist, renting out his studio to a new generation of entrepreneurs while he escaped the summer heat of the midlands and followed the demand for high-quality photographic images across county lines. It was, nevertheless, as Columbia’s favorite daguerreotypist that he was praised as an example of “native talent and genius.”21 In late March 1850, a distinguished visitor to Columbia had his portrait made. As the operator guided his customer to a chair positioned beneath the skylight, he might chat with him so as to learn a bit about his subject. His attention, however, was on the light: how it struck the man’s face and clothing and where the shadows fell. He then excused himself and disappeared for a moment beneath the black hood of his camera to check the focus and framing of the image. Once satisfied he had everything right, he removed the focusing glass and placed a cap over the lens. A copper plate had meanwhile been prepared—cleaned, polished, and coated in silver. It was then placed in a small box and exposed to the vapor of iodine, thereby creating light-sensitive silver iodide on the surface. The prepared plate was taken and placed in a different box, a light-proof slide made of wood. This was given to the operator, who inserted the entire slide into the camera. After reminding the sitter to hold very still, he removed the slide covering and then the lens covering and began counting—one, two, three, four . . . . When he felt sure he had his picture, he reinserted the slide cover and removed the plate from the camera. The operator then excused himself and took the plate to a darkened workroom. Once in the workroom he placed the plate, now free of the slide, in a developing chamber and exposed it to heated mercury fumes, which gradually brought out the image. It was then subjected to a bath of hyposulfite of soda to stop the chemical reaction of the silver 224

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iodide to light and to clean the plate of excess chemicals. After the surface was carefully dried, it was examined for quality. If judged a good image, it was covered with glass and placed in a case made of leather and velvet with a gilt frame. On returning to the studio, the operator showed the daguerreotype to his customer, or rather customers, for in this case the sitter was not to be the recipient of the image. “Agassiz has kindly allowed me to have a Daguerreotype taken of him, which is a good likeness,” Dr. Gibbes wrote to Morton. It is not known whether Zealy made this image, but there is little reason to doubt that the doctor would take his distinguished guest to the city’s most reputable photographic studio.22 Seated on the operator’s chair with the sunlight crashing down around him, doing his best to look “natural” as Dr. Gibbes lurked somewhere in the background, perhaps it was then that the idea of bringing enslaved Africans and their country-born daughters into the daguerreotypist’s studio occurred to Agassiz. A few words with Zealy, and assurances from Gibbes that various planters would consent to their chattel being treated in such an unlikely manner, and soon the commission was secured. But photographing slaves was not the same as photographing famous scientists or the politicians who lived in Columbia or their wives. It was not the same at all. The daguerreotypist, like the ethnologist and the physiognomist, looked through the appearance of his subject to discern an identifiable type—this common purpose suggests that it would have been easy for Zealy to provide Agassiz with the material evidence he desired. Yet, as we have seen, Agassiz’s ability to identify racial type was not a matter of revealing the “Truth” of each subject, of uncovering a universal fact. Instead, it was a matter of constructing meaning and convincing others he was right by virtue of his authority. For this reason the daguerreotypist could not possibly have seen in Delia and Jack what the naturalist saw in them. How then could Zealy portray the racial typology that Agassiz had in mind for the slaves? If, as one daguerreotypist claimed, “The whole character of the sitter is to be read at first sight,” what should Zealy look for in the faces of Renty and Fassena? At what moment did they best project the quality—the character—that Agassiz was seeking?23 Doctor Gibbes likely provided some assistance by describing to Zealy the conventions of scientific illustration. Frontal, profile, and rear views were what was needed. And they would have to remove their clothing. They would have to be daguerreotyped naked so that their bodies would be visible, so that the naturalist could see them clearly.24 This, of course, was highly unusual. The presence of slaves and the demands of science transformed the photographic 225

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studio, turning the purpose, conventions, and routines of photography on their head. Zealy was no longer operating within the realm of his expertise—or of anyone’s expertise, given the novelty of photography’s application to ethnology. But Zealy was probably unaware of this as he carried out his commission the only way he knew how, that is, using the same lighting, framing, and studio furniture he used for his other clients. His visual vocabulary, professional perceptions, and personal beliefs probably remained unchanged as he carried out his work. The plates were prepared and exposed, the images fixed and sealed into leather cases with “J.T. Zealy / Columbia, S.C.” stamped into the red velvet lining, and they were then sent on to the man who commissioned them. If Zealy overlooked the fact that his subjects were slaves, naked and posed in three views—and as a slaveholder he would not have found this shocking—then the experience was really not so different from his regular work. But it was different. For Delia, Jack, Alfred, Jem, Fassena, Drana, and Renty the experience of being daguerreotyped was unlike any other they had known. No one had asked them whether they wanted their pictures made. They were simply called from the field, the house, the workshop, or the slave quarters, taken into town, and led up the stairs of an unfamiliar building and into rooms with a powerful, dense odor that no perfume could hide. The rooms were the finest they had ever seen, but they had not been “fitted up with great taste and elegance” for a Mandingo carpenter or a slave driver from Guinea. They were slaves. They were not supposed to be there. They had somehow become the center of these people’s attention, the object of their scrutiny and industry. They were, to paraphrase the French Caribbean writer Frantz Fanon, dissected under white eyes, laid bare, slices of their reality cut away. In this place they could not be “themselves,” yet neither could they be what the environment called for, namely ladies and gentlemen. They could only be what they would always be in the presence of white people: slaves, Negroes, niggers. Perhaps at this moment they felt the “double-consciousness” described by W. E. B. DuBois: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”25 They did not ask for this. Perhaps the doctor offered words of reassurance, explained that they were to play a part in the advancement of science through important ethnological research, but they could hardly be moved by such words. The Devil was as much in the finery of their speech as he was in the air they breathed. What did Delia, Jack, Fassena, Renty, Drana, Jem, and Alfred make of having their 226

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photograph taken? How did they fit the experience of Zealy’s studio into their lives, which afterward surely continued much as they had before? What did this strange and contested space, one fraught with significance and purpose belonging to a world not their own, mean to them? Did they share the experience with other people, did they tell their family and friends about what had happened and what they had seen? Or was the experience perhaps so bizarre and traumatic that they never fully lived it in the first place?26 It is of course impossible to say for certain what the experience meant to them. Delia’s thoughts, her memories and opinions—her life in all its complexity—lies beyond our grasp. As one man said to another in Ralph Ellison’s last great and unfinished novel: “So maybe you see me but you sho in hell don’t see what I see.”27 We can look at Delia, look at her face as she looks into the camera, but we will never know what she saw. On 31 March 1850, as the town bell rang out across Columbia marking the death of South Carolina’s most revered statesman, John C. Calhoun, Dr. Gibbes sat down to write Morton the news of recent events. He began, however, with a characteristic note of self-pity. “Why do you not write me?” he implored. Agassiz’s visit was already fading into memory, leaving the doctor once again “solitary and alone.” But he moved quickly onto more interesting matters. “We have had a very pleasant meeting at Charleston,” he wrote of the AAAS meeting earlier that month, “and it passed off very well. They pressed Agassiz in Charleston, and he came out with his view on the Unity question, and stirred them up very much.” Morton of course was familiar with Agassiz’s opinion on the subject, so Gibbes did not have to elaborate. He did however write of ensuing events: “Agassiz came home with me and spent eight days here, lecturing successfully, tho’ in very bad weather. While here he was delighted with his examinations of the negroes. I took him to several plantations where he saw Ebo, Foulah, Gullah, Guinea, Coromantee, Mandringo [sic] and Congo negroes.” If Agassiz had any doubt about the announcement he had made in Charleston regarding original diversity, it was laid to rest by these examinations: “He found enough to satisfy him that they have differences from other races.” The doctor assured Morton that Agassiz would provide a full report in person. “He will be in Philadelphia about the 12th April and will see you, when you can learn from him the results of his investigations.”28 The practice of ethnology entailed classifying human beings into a typology in order to ascertain the cause of racial diversity. The daguerreotypes of slaves that Zealy produced were intended to represent this typology—this would be their function as scientific objects. 227

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Undoubtedly Dr. Gibbes understood this. His experience as a paleontologist and his close association with prominent ethnologists placed him in a position of some authority on the matter, even though he never engaged in ethnological writing or research. Agassiz, after all, trusted him to work with Zealy to complete the commission. When Gibbes wrote the labels for each daguerreotype, he did so with a naturalist’s understanding of the importance of detailed information. He was careful to include data useful to the typology Agassiz wanted to describe, such as the tribal affiliation of each individual. Yet he also noted down the name of each man and woman photographed, the name of his or her “owner,” and the trade practiced by some of the men. These data were of little use to Agassiz’s project, and indeed worked against it by highlighting the individuality of each person; they were for a different classificatory system altogether. If only for a moment, Gibbes appears to have forgotten the intended purpose of the daguerreotypes and regarded them as if they formed one of his collections.

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Jumping from the wagon as it passed the entrance to the estate, she hurried off in the direction of the slave cabins. She was expected to change her clothes and return to the forge as soon as possible, but when she could no longer hear the sound of the wagon as it continued down the road, she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her dress and slowed her pace. Her feet dragged in the dirt, raising little clouds of dust as she went. She was grateful to be alone. It had been her first time in the city, and she never could have imagined what she saw there. Others had told her about Columbia, had described the wide streets and massive buildings, the grand men on horseback, and the ladies holding parasols to keep the sun off their faces. She had heard of such things, but to see them was another matter altogether. And then there was the picture-making place. She did not like being the center of their attention, but it did not last long. Holding still in the bright sunlight was uncomfortable, and she did not know what would happen next— what were they going to do?—but after a short while the man who hid behind the box came out and said, “All right; I think we’ve got it.” The doctor then told her to cover herself. As she dressed they went into an adjoining room, leaving her alone. She listened carefully. The doctor was speaking. They seemed to have forgotten her. The box that they had pointed toward her was in the middle of the room. She edged closer to it, moving slowly, carefully, in case someone returned. She wanted to look inside, to put her head under the black cloth as the man had done and see what he had seen, but she did not dare. Instead she reached out and touched the soft fabric and ran her finger along the side of the box. Something in the corner of the room caught her eye. On a small table tucked under the sloping roof she found several objects that looked like small and rigid books. After glancing over her shoulder and listening closely for the doctor— who had not stopped talking—she carefully picked one up. Gazing into the eyes of a white 230

woman seated with a child on her lap, she put her finger to the image and was surprised by the cold, hard surface. “Come on—time to go.” It was the man who had brought her, one of the men from the estate. Without a word she followed him down to the street. She did not see the doctor as she went out. Drawing near the cabin she shared with her mother, father, and sisters, she looked to see if anyone was around. Once inside she called out. The cabin was small—she could easily have seen if someone was there—but she called out just the same. Kneeling by the bed, she slowly took the object from her pocket and opened it. Even in the dim light of the cabin she could make out the faces of the young woman and her child, their clothes, and the ornate chair that supported them both, the chair that she herself had sat upon. When she again put her finger to the image, this time she anticipated the cold, hard surface of the glass.

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13 Evidence

A

hearty storm battered New England, pitching torrents of rain down upon the people gathered outside Tremont Temple. It would have been a dismal scene, the sodden crowd pressed together in the night, were it not for the newly installed gas jets and a Drummond light, also known as a limelight. These fixtures cast a magnificent glow on everything within their range, lighting the temple like daylight itself. Spirits were thus high and the atmosphere festive despite the poor weather. The fireworks planned for the previous night had been canceled, but tonight—opening night—no matter what extremes nature might have in store, the curtain would rise to the crowd’s jubilation. When the doors finally opened at six o’clock, those fortunate enough to have a ticket pressed into the lobby and sought their seats. Extra chairs had been crammed into the boxes, passageways, and aisles, making it abundantly clear that the temple would fill beyond capacity. As rain-soaked and overexcited spectators poured into the hall, the temperature rose to stifling levels, especially in the gallery. The next morning critics would complain in their newspaper columns about crowding and the indignities this caused. “We think that those who pay five and ten dollars for a ticket ought to have at least a comfortable seat,” puffed one irate critic. He was also rather put out by the quality of the crowd, which he somewhat 232

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delicately termed “the multitude.” But this was no ordinary concert. On this night, discomfort would be endured for the sake of witnessing P. T. Barnum’s latest sensation, the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind. When Miss Lind took the stage, all complaints were forgotten. “She hurried forward to the front of the platform, amid such a hearty expression of welcome as seldom has been heard in our city. The prolonged greeting seemed almost to overwhelm her. She was pale, and was evidently agitated.” When she began to sing, a Bellini aria in the key of G, her voice was barely heard above a whisper. Gradually, it gained in strength and soon filled Tremont Temple with a new kind of birdsong. As she sang, her manner was simplicity itself: “She has no tricks or gesticulation,” remarked one correspondent. “She warbles, she does not act.” The Swedish Nightingale was so unaffected in her delivery of Bellini’s music that her performance was likened to nature and to miracles—the work of divine intervention rather than art. The critic who sniffed at the low quality of his fellow ticketholders ended his notice by breathlessly claiming, “Her concerts must be repeated until every body has heard her at least once.” Even the multitude must have its idols.1 On that wet night in September, when Jenny Lind first sang in Boston, another performance, also a debut of sorts, took place across the Charles River in Cambridge. There was no limelight at this venue, nor was there much of an audience. It was instead an intimate gathering of New England’s intellectual elite. In contrast to the press frenzy surrounding Jenny Lind, this event was not advertised. Not even a small advance notice had been placed in the papers, for this performance was considered unsuitable for the general public despite the presence of a popular figure. On 27 September 1850, as Jenny Lind warbled, Professor Louis Agassiz spoke to members of the Cambridge Scientific Club on the diversity of the human race, and in support of his ideas he showed a group of daguerreotypes of slaves. The meeting does not appear to have been one of the club’s usual gatherings, which typically took place on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Half a dozen Harvard professors had founded the club in 1842, and it had since grown to a membership of fifteen, including Asa Gray, a founding member and guiding force, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Cornelius Felton. Agassiz had joined in 1848. Its purpose was similar to that of the Charleston Literary and Philosophical Society in that it provided members with a regular opportunity to discuss subjects thought important enough that men of varied academic disciplines should be familiar with them, including the properties of electrical fish, the discovery of Neptune (then called “Leverrier’s Planet”), and assorted questions in physics. At each meeting, which took place in a member’s home, the host would speak on a subject of his choosing, and then the group would 233

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enjoy a lavish dinner washed down with several varieties of wine—so lavish in fact that one member, the president of Harvard University at the time, withdrew because he did not think it seemly for the institution’s leader to partake in such decadent gatherings. Temperance, it seemed, was not one of the club’s concerns.2 Whether all members attended the meeting on the night of 27 September is not known. No notes were kept of the meeting, and indeed it is not mentioned at all in the club’s surviving documentation, although given the informality of the club’s activities this is perhaps not unusual. The only indication that the meeting took place comes from the press, both in Boston and in South Carolina, which reported on the event after the fact. “At the meeting of the Cambridge Scientific Association [sic] on Friday evening last,” the Boston Daily Evening Traveller reported, “Professor Agassiz delivered a lecture upon the Unity of the Human Race.” The Tri-Weekly South Carolinian was slightly more to the point: “We notice that Professor Agassiz is still lecturing in Boston on the unity of the human race.” Both newspapers, however, reported on Agassiz’s use of the daguerreotypes with precisely the same language: “In the course of the lecture he pointed out many differences between the forms of the negro and the white race, a large proportion of which have not been previously remarked, and in proof of his statements he exhibited a large number of daguerreotypes of individuals of various races of negroes.” The Tri-Weekly South Carolinian also made much of the fact that the images had been made by “that prince of daguerreotypists, our friend Zealy.”3 So there they were, a group of highly educated men, gathered in the home of a fellow savant, listening attentively to Agassiz as he made his argument for the original diversity of mankind while also maintaining a general unity of type among human beings. In support of his argument he produced a number of daguerreotypes of slaves that had been made especially for him, images of African men from a variety of tribes and their daughters, all of whom he had examined on his recent trip to the South. He passed the images around as he spoke. Everyone present had seen a daguerreotype before, but none had seen any like these. As members of the Cambridge Scientific Club scrutinized the images of black men and women, a short distance away Bostonians were in thrall to Jenny Lind. She was pale and the exemplar of feminine virtue, while the faces in the daguerreotypes represented a black and inferior race. She had no “tricks”—she was naturally without artifice—while they were born deceivers. She sang, filling a concert call with her “birdsong”; they were without voice. “Her artless manners,” one critic wrote of Lind, “her unstudied grace, her kind heart

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and her excellent private character, all combined with the rarest of all physical accomplishments, confer upon her a charm such as never before made a woman the object of universal homage.” The slaves, in contrast, belonged to a “degraded and degenerate race,” whose “black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth, the wool on their head, their bent knees, their elongated hands, their large curled nails, and especially the livid color of the palm of their hands” combined to make them an object of widespread disdain and abuse. Talent, modesty, generosity, and above all “purity of morals” were Jenny Lind’s key attributes—she was just so good that everyone should seek to be ennobled by her presence. Africans, in sharp contrast, had to be contained, contact with them strictly controlled.4 The distinction drawn between the ideal of white femininity and the stereotype of the degenerate Negro was well known, its principles long permeating American society. Ethnology helped to codify and institutionalize such beliefs. As Agassiz spoke and referred to the picture of Alfred, Fassena, or Jack, he treated the images as evidence, as if the proof that his ideas were true could be seen plainly in each daguerreotype. But what did they actually show? What did the daguerreotypes of slaves mean to the men gathered that night? A photograph can only ever show what something looks like, what it resembles— there is no meaning, no significance to be found in the image unless the viewer has an understanding of its object, of what the image refers to, even if that knowledge comes from another image. The meaning of a photograph is therefore located not in the image but in what a person brings to it. Looking always entails comparing and contrasting what is seen with what is known, and although a photograph can show something “new,” the novel object must in some way relate to something familiar, or it will not be “visible.” This after all is the definition of evidence: one thing that confirms another. We look to photographs to confirm—to prove—what we already believe to be true. So what did the daguerreotypes of slaves look like? While the Boston papers were busy mulling over the question of whether Agassiz had contravened the Bible, the professor himself was perhaps for the first time in many years completely distracted from matters of natural history. Elizabeth Cary had spent the many weeks during his absence readying their new home and fretting over “the ceremony which I dread,” the anticipation of which was only made worse by the fact that Agassiz had extended his sojourn in the South. “These last few weeks of our separation are like the last page of a wearisome task,” she wrote to him in Columbia, unable to conceal her impatience to get

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on with the next phase of her life. Then, at long last, he returned to Cambridge, and soon thereafter a date was set. Professor Louis Agassiz and Miss Elizabeth Cabot Cary were married at King’s Chapel, Boston, on 25 April 1850.5 To become the wife of a famous scientist was in many respects to enter into a world completely apart from the drawing rooms of Boston society. Lizzie Agassiz would have to be more than an able manager of household affairs, for the professor’s household was difficult to distinguish from his laboratory. This confusion of life with work was in part the source of his charm, for the man lived and breathed the splendor of natural history. Small animals found their way into his coat pockets, ostensibly placed there for use later, and snakes sometimes lurked in his closet. There were also scores of assistants, artists, and students who came and went as if the professor’s home were their own. Agassiz thrived on being the center of activity, but the situation also placed untold pressure on him personally and financially. He wife would have to manage his affairs as a secretary or an assistant, especially since Agassiz had severed all ties with Desor, his former secretary. She would have to assert herself in order to banish the snakes from the closet and the students from the house—but she would have to proceed with care so as not to upset the professor in his work, for this was now the focus of both their lives. Lizzie Agassiz exercised both intelligence and tact in organizing all aspects of the professor’s life, including caring for his children with genuine affection. Alexander would follow in his father’s footsteps, with perhaps less renown but nevertheless making real contributions to science, while Ida and Pauline, aged thirteen and nine, respectively, when they arrived from Europe, grew into fine young women who thrived under the care of both parents. As regards the professor, Lizzie took over responsibility as his secretary, polishing the English in his correspondence, and transcribing many of his lectures. They traveled together on his research trips and lecture tours, and she managed his finances ably. When it became clear that their income was insufficient to meet the needs of his publishing ventures, she opened a school for young girls in their home. This undertaking delighted Agassiz and gave his wife a taste for work in the education of women, which, after the professor’s death in 1873, she redirected to the founding of Radcliffe College, of which she served as its first president. As the wife of professor Agassiz she also learned a great deal about natural history, and although she never tolerated reptiles being let loose in her closet, she was not so humorless as to miss the high comedy of the situation, especially when Agassiz asked her to admire the wayward snakes once they had been caught.6 If the subject of their premarital disagreement, their “opposite views on some essential 236

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points,” had been his unorthodox ideas on the cause of racial diversity, the matter was never again alluded to between them, at least not in writing. Perhaps they simply agreed to disagree, for the issue itself did not go away. Around the time of their wedding Agassiz was busy lecturing and writing on the subject. The press storm over his announcement in Charleston had brought the theory of multiple creations to widespread public attention, and Agassiz was again under attack. His fame had made an old idea seem new, almost as if he had been the first to propose it. “Agassiz’s theory,” as it had come to be called, was now a topic of general discussion and increasingly a national controversy.7 In 1850 and 1851, while Morton and Bachman raked over the finer points of hybridity in the scientific journals, Agassiz published a series of articles on diversity in nature. These appeared in the Christian Examiner, a Unitarian publication. By presenting his position in a religious-affiliated journal, Agassiz hoped to allay the public’s concern that his ideas ran counter to accepted biblical history. In three articles he outlined his ideas on the geographical distribution of animals, explained the theory of separate creations as it applied to humans, and reconciled these ideas with the existence of “a personal, intelligent God.” The articles were thorough, plain-speaking, and to the point. He wanted no more attacks from the pulpit or, indeed, from any other quarter.8 The Bible taught that all living things originated from a single center, and so subsequently must have dispersed and adapted to various novel conditions. Agassiz claimed that the laws of natural history did not support this idea. The number and diversity of species, and their perfect adaptation to the environments in which they lived, could hardly be the product of environmental conditions. “It would baffle the most fanciful imagination to conceive such . . . [an] arrangement as the mere result of migrations, or the influence of physical causes,” he wrote. What was more, it “would be ascribing to physical influences as much power as to the Creator himself.” God the Creator was the source of the earth’s variety, not the weather.9 In order to explain the sheer numbers and diversity of species, their distribution, and the fact that the fossil record showed a similar pattern of distribution for past epochs, Agassiz claimed that they had not been created in pairs, as was stated in the Bible, but in vast numbers, an idea he expanded upon in his third article. Whole herds, swarms, and flocks had been fashioned at once and in harmony with one another and with their environment. How otherwise could young creatures survive without their parents, parasites without their hosts, or beasts of prey without quarry? Agassiz took Cuvier’s argument against development —which stated that one feature of an organism could not change, for this would render all 237

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others unable to function properly—and he applied it on a grand scale. Every region of the globe, every zoological province, was a closed system of perfect harmony and could only have been created in the state in which it was found, for the slightest change would upset the delicate balance of the whole. Agassiz devoted the second of his articles to the problem of humans. He began by separating two issues that he believed had “almost no connection with each other” but were nevertheless “constantly confounded as if they were but one.” The first was the Unity of Mankind, the idea that all human beings shared a common nature; the second was also the title of his article, “The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races.” Here Agassiz sought to reconcile the conflict that arose for him in Philadelphia in 1846, the conflict between his Christian belief in “the confraternity of the human type” and the feeling that black and white people “are not the same blood.” By formally separating the two issues and explaining their distinction with the aid of science, he could both justify his condemnation of black people and explain himself professionally—for his conflict was confusing to others insofar as it ran counter to the assumption that a distinct origin necessarily meant the separation of types into separate species.10 Agassiz refrained from using the term “species” as casually as Nott and others had done. Though he was known for discovering countless species of fish and other creatures, many of which were in fact only varieties, he was wary of identifying different types of humans as separate species. “What constitutes a species in certain types is something very different from what constitutes a species in other types and . . . facts which prove an identity of species in some animals do not prove an identity or plurality in another group.” When it came to humans, Agassiz believed the common bonds outweighed the differences. “All men are men,” he wrote, “equally endowed with the same superior nature and made of one blood, inasmuch as this figurative expression applies to the higher unity of mankind, and not to their supposed genital connection by natural descent.” The “superior nature” of humans over animals, the potential to know God, united all human beings. This affinity, however, did not imply unity of origin.11 Beasts of prey all share similar features, he argued, including the shape of their teeth and claws, the construction of their digestive tract, and their disposition. “But because they agree so closely in all these prominent features, has any one ever thought that the wolf, tiger, and bear originated from a common stock, and that their resemblance was owing to this common origin?” Humans, he further argued, were even more varied than the beasts of prey, so why should they be said to share a common origin?12 238

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The matter, of course, rested on which differences and which similarities one chose to highlight and which were left unremarked. Classification would be impossible if every feature were given equal weight. Thus while linking all humans together on spiritual grounds, thereby satisfying his religious convictions, Agassiz could separate them into distinct groups using other criteria, satisfying his desire to keep black and white separate. The application of different criteria to establish taxa was not unusual, for creation was indeed so diverse as to render it impossible to apply the same criterion to all creatures. The selective application of criteria in order to support a particular ideological viewpoint was another matter. To make his point about humans, Agassiz used Africans as an example, specifically Africans he had examined in Columbia. There was not one homogeneous “African type,” he wrote; this was a misconception due to the color of their skin. “We generally consider the Africans as one, because they are chiefly black.” Look closer and differences abound. In a later publication to which he contributed, Agassiz reiterated this point, again drawing from his experiences in Columbia: “The differences between distinct races [of human beings] are often greater than those distinguishing species of animals from one another.” He then gave an example using Fassena and Jack, though not by name: “The chimpanzee and gorilla do not differ more from one another than the Mandingo and the Guinea Negro: they together do not differ more from the orang than the Malay or white man differs from the Negro.” What Agassiz had found satisfying about his examinations of Columbia slaves was not their collective difference when compared to “other races,” as Dr. Gibbes had supposed, but the differences between the people he examined. It was an idea he had long held to be true, but now he could support it with his own observations.13 Differences found among humans, Agassiz maintained, were significant, more so than the differences between animals belonging to separate species. “Whether the natural groups which can be recognised in the human family are called races, varieties, or species, is of no great importance, as soon as it is understood that they present the extreme development of a peculiar diversity. . . . All that is important in this question is to know whether these differences are primitive, or whether they have been introduced subsequently to the creation of one common primitive stock.” Of course in Agassiz’s view differences among humans were primitive: God, not “physical influences,” was the source of all creation and all variety. If separate creations did not mean separate species, then why was it important to know whether the differences between humans were “primitive”? It was important because this knowledge allowed Agassiz “to settle the relative rank among these races.” 239

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“It will not do to assume their equality and identity,” he wrote. “It will not do to grant it, even if it were not questioned, so long as actual differences were observed.” If all men had been created equal, then they would all look the same. But they did not look the same, they did not behave the same, and they did not create similar societies. Order, stability, prosperity—in short, progress—would only come about if the differences between peoples were recognized. The very future of America depended on it. Agassiz claimed his investigations on the subject of human diversity were “without reference either to politics or religion,” but there is little doubt that both were implicated in his science.14 Agassiz received the daguerreotypes of slaves from Dr. Gibbes while he was writing the Christian Examiner articles. As he unwrapped each parcel, carefully packaged for the long journey northward, and then opened the daguerreotype case to reveal the image, he again met with Alfred and Jem, Drana and Jack, Delia, Fassena, and Renty. The images must have brought his experiences in Columbia vividly to mind. Perhaps he even referred to the daguerreotypes as he wrote his articles, scrutinizing each image much as he had examined the person depicted. Of course, looking at a daguerreotype is not the same as looking at a human being. The images are small, fragmentary, and monochromatic, as well as twodimensional. But then they also could not behave unpredictably, nor could they try to deceive him.15 To a naturalist such as Agassiz, one with vast knowledge of comparative anatomy, the daguerreotypes could be very useful. They were rather like the fossils he regularly handled in his work, fragmented remains from which he could reportedly reconstruct the form of an entire specimen. Similarly, from each image Agassiz could construct an entire people, with Fassena becoming “Mandingo” and Jack “Guinea.” Used in this way, each daguerreotype functioned as an aide-mémoire, but it was also a souvenir. An object of memory, the souvenir is a record or trace of authentic experience, and a reminder of that experience, but it is not evidence of what one saw; it does not encapsulate a singular event but sums up its meaning. This meaning is largely determined by what one expected or desired to see, rather than what occurred. Photographs particularly lend themselves to the role of souvenir. A postcard depicting the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, for instance, does not depict what the tourist saw. It does not represent an actual experience of the pyramids or even the location where they are situated, but rather it signifies a site of meaning—the Egypt-ness of Egypt. The ostensible subject of the souvenir photograph thus 240

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becomes imprisoned in an idea, forced to play a part imposed on it. The souvenir allows one to possess this idea, to contain and control it, transforming the original object into something that can be mastered.16 By identifying or naming the men and women that he had examined, Agassiz came to possess them, in a manner of speaking. He possessed them as Guinea, Mandingo, and Gullah—African types—and in so doing asserted his right to identify and describe those types, much as he would have identified and described different fossils or species of fish to reinforce his status as a scientist. Naming the slaves made them his—not to own legally, as a slaveholder, and certainly not to touch, but to possess and manipulate as concepts. By rendering Jack and Fassena into ideal, conceptual categories, he could control them, tame and contain the threat he saw in them by fitting them into an idea of nature that reinforced the popular prejudice of black people as inferior beings. When he had them photographed, this fantasy of possession and control was taken still further. The daguerreotypes of slaves were souvenirs of a visit to South Carolina, but they were also souvenirs of a particular worldview and of one man’s career. Agassiz engaged the various disciplines and practices of science in the construction of an epic narrative about nature, the Plan of Creation. Everything had to fit into this all-encompassing worldview. No one specimen or concept proved the general theory, but each part contributed to the overall idea. Consequently, while conducting research, Agassiz always looked ahead to what he would find, and his every undertaking led to the same conclusion: his findings were always in aid of his theories, or they were not findings at all. In Columbia he sought evidence that would fit human beings neatly and securely into the Plan of Creation, like a jigsaw puzzle piece. He sought the essence of racial difference—the African-ness of Africans—and this was precisely what he found, not because it was there but because he was looking for it.17 The professor, however, probably thought of the daguerreotypes not as souvenirs but more narrowly as evidence. They showed what he had seen; they proved what he believed to be the truth about variation among human beings. But did they do this for other people? For someone who did not anticipate examining Africans in Columbia, and then find what he was seeking in them, and then again find this in the daguerreotypes, did they function as evidence? In speaking to the Cambridge Scientific Club about “the negro of Congo,” Agassiz may have given an ethnological description of Renty to explain what he considered to be his specific character. After describing the anatomical features that for him signified “Congo,” he could then pass around the daguerreotypes to make what he said clear, to show his audience 241

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what he had seen on examining Renty. In this way he could do more than verbally describe Renty: he could share a particular “vision” of the Congo and its people with his audience. The daguerreotype thus functioned as evidence of a theory because the professor related it to a matrix of ideas and a tradition of scientific education. Similarly, Agassiz could further “prove” that racial type was persistent by showing the daguerreotypes of Delia, since those characteristics thought particular to Congo Africans would have been passed down from her father, Jack. But perhaps the other members of the club did not see what Agassiz saw in the photographs, for they did not have the benefit of having examined Renty and Delia in person. The mechanical precision of the daguerreotype image could have mitigated this circumstance somewhat. The “reality effect” of the photograph lends itself to the conflation of appearance with truth, and so when Agassiz sought to link his ideas with the daguerreotype images, his audience could at least see Renty and Delia in crisp and fine detail, and seeing their bodies clearly while listening to his talk may have facilitated the acceptance of his ideas as truthful.18 Of course, there were almost certainly members of the club who did not agree with Agassiz. For those people the daguerreotypes were not evidence of the original diversity of human beings—they could not prove the theory because for them the theory was not true. So what did the daguerreotypes look like to these people? Although unusual, the daguerreotypes of slaves did not exist in a representational vacuum. They related visually to other kinds of images, and just as Agassiz’s talk provided a context in which the daguerreotypes’ scientific meaning could be understood, these other images could function similarly as an explanatory “text,” the meaning of one image influencing that of another. For those members of the Cambridge Scientific Club who were familiar with other early anthropological images, such as the lithographs of Saartjie Baartman that Cuvier had commissioned, the resemblance between these images and the daguerreotypes may have reinforced Agassiz’s intended meaning—such, after all, is the function of visual conventions. More problematic were anthropological images that looked very different. In 1848 Samuel Morton examined before members of the National Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia a Khoisan youth from South Africa by the name of Henry (see illustration on p. 243). After examining Henry, Morton published an ethnological description of him in the academy’s journal; he also had a daguerreotype made of Henry, an image he later gave to Agassiz. The two descriptions, one in text and the other an image, are very 242

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different. Morton’s ethnological description was essentially a list of physical attributes that were meant to indicate a racial type, the “Hottentot.” Henry’s complexion, his hair, and the shape of his head were all described in detail, little of which may be verified in the daguerreotype, which displays all the conventions of portraiture and indeed may have been intended as a portrait. If Agassiz displayed Henry’s daguerreotype alongside those made by Zealy— with Henry meant to show the Hottentot-ness of Hottentots—this may have confused his fellow club members, for the images were visually different, if conceptually linked. Shown 243

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alongside other, more ethnological images, Henry’s likeness revealed the tentative link between visual conventions and particular meaning. If both images were “scientific,” then what indeed was a scientific image?19 Morton and Agassiz both commissioned their images from a commercial daguerreotypist who used the same studio setting, chemical process, and display cases they used for portraits. There was no other option since the specialist ethnological photographer did not exist. For this reason the daguerreotypes of slaves, though very different from the portrait of Henry, bear some resemblance to typical photographic portraits, images of white Americans as well as African Americans. Of course, the photograph of Drana was meant to function as the antithesis of white portraiture: she belonged to a “degraded and degenerate race,” while white people were considered the height of civilization; her image was intended to represent a racial type, not an individual. On the one hand Jenny Lind (see illustration on p. 245), on the other an enslaved black woman—these contrasts linked the two kinds of images as much as separated them. The ideological construction of race requires a comparison, a standard against which “race” is defined. “Black” comes to hold meaning only in the presence (whether actual or implied) of “white.” To look upon the daguerreotype of a slave was thus to conjure in the mind another, spectral image, one that conveyed everything an African slave was not—we might even call this a “negative” image. This contrasting image, however, was not only conjured in the mind. As each member of the Cambridge Scientific Club held Drana’s or Alfred’s picture in his hand, if he positioned it just so in relation to the light, he could see himself reflected in the polished surface. The image of “self ” and “other” were thus brought into close and possibly uncomfortable identity. The daguerreotypes were related to other images, too. They were like the pictures of “white slaves” meant to aid the abolitionist cause by exposing race as a slippery concept and slavery as a diabolical practice. Seven-year-old Mary Mildred Botts was “so white as to defy the acutest judge to detect in her features, complexion, and general appearance, the slightest trace of Negro blood.” Exhibited in Washington and Boston, the young girl caused “astonishment that she should ever have been held as a slave.” Such cases scandalized white Americans but caused a Canadian newspaper to write, “Away, then, with the cant about the separation between the races!” Mary Mildred Botts’s daguerreotype was an unusual form of evidence: it proved a person could be both “black” and “white,” and so challenged the social and scientific classification of both categories.20 Then there was the picture of Jerry, a slave belonging to the Honorable D. M. Barringer of Greensboro, North Carolina. In his appeal to the state legislature for per244

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mission to manumit his servant, “Mr. Barringer said that Jerry had been in his service fourteen years, and had travelled with him in Europe; that during all that time he had never heard the slightest thing alleged against him, but, on the contrary, he was a universal favorite.” Jerry had also never attempted to run away. Honest, humble, and of course faithful, Jerry was praised as “one of the best colored men living.” While different members of the legislature weighed in on whether they thought Jerry should be allowed to go free, a 245

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daguerreotype of the good slave was passed around so that those present might see just how good he was.21 The daguerreotypes of slaves, but particularly those of Delia and Drana, also resemble erotic and pornographic photographs. Such images were widely disdained in the nineteenth century, and yet they were still produced and consumed. Public nudity was associated with loose morals, and so a person who was photographed without clothing was considered the lowest of the low socially. This was especially the case with black women. Though forced to remove their clothing when being auctioned to the highest bidder or whipped—or photographed—a black woman’s display of nudity under any circumstances reinforced the popular notion that she was naturally carnal and without shame. It was a stereotype used to justify rape. It also made her available as a subject of scientific scrutiny.22 The daguerreotypes of slaves are similar to other images, too, images that came later as photography found new applications and new meanings. They are like the photographs of “freaks” made to promote and further profit from sideshow attractions. The freak’s anomalous body stood in opposition to the “normal” spectator; it was meant to be judged against a standard of perfection shared by those who looked at the photographs. The freak photograph provided reassurance by keeping the abnormal at arm’s length but at the same time allowed the spectator to possess and therefore control the aberrant body. Equally, the daguerreotypes are akin to photographs of lunatics and hysterics, the acutely ill and also criminals, all images meant to pathologize and police an undesirable element of the population.23 So, too, are they like the lynching photographs produced in the late nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries. These extraordinarily brutal images were frequently made into picture postcards so that people who participated in the lynching, even if as spectators, could take home a souvenir and possibly share the experience with friends and family by mailing the card. About such images the writer Hilton Als has said, “I don’t know many people who wouldn’t feel like a nigger looking at these pictures, all fucked up and hurt, killed by eyes and hands that can’t stand yours.”24 The daguerreotypes of slaves that Zealy made for Agassiz were like these other kinds of photographs, whether because they were used as evidence or because they alluded to contrasting ideals, offered pleasure or documented abuse and suffering. They were like these other images, and so like them their meaning lay not in the light and dark tones of the photograph’s surface but in the eyes of the beholder. Meaning is contingent on the experience, knowledge, and beliefs a viewer brings to the act of looking. When Ellie Reichlin discovered 246

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the daguerreotypes in the attic of the Peabody Museum she remarked that it appeared Delia’s eyes were blurred with tears—but it may not have been tears that blurred Delia’s eyes. Instead, it may be that she had moved slightly when she was being photographed, creating the appearance of tears in the image. Or the blurring in her eyes may have been the result of a life spent mostly outdoors, toiling daily in the bright Carolina sun. Yet for Reichlin, the meaning of the daguerreotypes was inextricably linked with the suffering of the people in the images, and so in Delia’s eyes she saw tears.25 Meaning is also derived from how the images are put to use. The social contexts into which the daguerreotypes were brought and are still used today—including in this book— contribute to how they are understood. Agassiz’s status as an internationally renowned naturalist helped to create a framework in which the daguerreotypes could function as scientific objects, reinforcing ethnological theories, but they did not do so necessarily, nor exclusively. It all depends on who is looking, and why. Doctor Gibbes wrote to Morton when he had completed the task of labeling the daguerreotypes. “I have just finished the daguerreotypes for Agassiz of native Africans of various tribes,” he said. “I wish you could see them.” But did anyone see them—really see them? And when we say “them,” are we talking about the daguerreotypes themselves or the people depicted in the images? Certainly Agassiz and the other men gathered that wet September night looked at the daguerreotypes, but what did they see? Did they see a slave? A young woman or an old man? A carpenter or a man from West Africa? Someone who liked to sing or dance or chew tobacco? Did they see a heathen or a sinner, a Muslim or a Christian?26 “I am an invisible man,” says the narrator of Ralph Ellison’s epic story of race in the twentieth-century. “I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber, and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind.” How can a man with such attributes, a human being, be invisible? “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” For Ellison, to render a man black requires only that you look closely, scrutinize his body, his movements and his manner, and at the same time that you see nothing of the man, the individual before you. “When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.”27 One hundred and twenty-six years after the meeting of the Cambridge Scientific Club, the daguerreotypes of slaves were found in the attic of the Peabody Museum. This was perhaps a fitting place for them. Souvenirs often find their way to the attic, packed away with 247

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other items that have lost their original usefulness. But why were the daguerreotypes never published when the debates on human diversity were current? And why were they not collected together with Agassiz’s other anthropological photographs?28 Why were they “lost” for so long? Agassiz was well known for his impetuousness. He would frequently embark on a project only to abandon it later, having been distracted by some other, more interesting prospect or because he was burdened with too many obligations to fulfill them all. In 1850 he was thought to be writing a “book on the races.” This work would have been just the place to publish reproductions of the daguerreotypes since images require an explanatory text for them to make sense, and scientific publications carried authoritative weight. In a book dedicated to the subject, he could have made the significance of the images and his scientific ideas abundantly clear, but this project never came about. It may simply have been that Agassiz was too busy with other concerns, the images cast aside due to other, more pressing matters. Perhaps for this reason they were put into a drawer and forgotten.29 In 1854, however, Agassiz contributed an article to a book on ethnology compiled by Nott, and in this text he referred to Fassena and Jack as “the Mandingo and the Guinea Negro,” but he did not publish their images with the article. If ever there was an opportunity to use the daguerreotypes as evidence for separate creations, this was it. That he did not suggests that perhaps the images failed to fulfill his expectations for them, that in some way they did not function as they were supposed to. As the art historian E. H. Gombrich noted, “The test of an image is not its lifelikeness, but its efficacy within a given context of action.”30 The meaning of the daguerreotypes was neither obvious nor stable but required an explanatory text or verbal narrative for the intended meaning to be apparent. They also related to a wide range of other sorts of images, and so when Agassiz showed them at the Scientific Club meeting he had to tell his audience what they were seeing, what it was exactly that the daguerreotypes proved. If a person did not agree with his views, then he or she would not see in them the same “evidence” Agassiz claimed to see. For those people the daguerreotypes proved nothing scientifically, and so failed in their intended purpose. This failure, however, may not have been due entirely to different opinions on the cause of human diversity, but also to the fact that the medium of photography, having close associations with portraiture, reinforced the individual character of the sitter and therefore worked against the ethnologist’s purpose. Later in the century, the anthropologist W. H. Wesley opined that photography was not a suitable medium for his work. “It does not appear probable to me that photography 248

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will ever supersede drawing, for scientific purposes,” he wrote. The problem was “that the photographer renders every minute detail with absolutely certain fidelity.” This of course had been one of the qualities that had made the daguerreotype so highly prized at midcentury, but absolute fidelity to nature did not aid the ethnologist. Detail related to individual character, not generic type. The ethnologist could supposedly see through this detail to apprehend the stable structure lying underneath, but for all its claims to have a similar “vision,” the daguerreotype had no such optic power. The camera depicted what was actually there, not what the scientist saw or wanted to see. As Zora Neale Hurston observed, “All clumps of people turn out to be individuals on close inspection.”31 Agassiz wanted types—Hurston’s “clumps”—but the camera produced individuals. He thought photography could “inaugurate a new era in our science,” but there were problems. Sitting there with the daguerreotypes in his hands, the professor may have found that the human-shaped piece in the Plan of Creation did not quite fit—not, at least, when it was also a photograph.32

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Renty

“What you doing up, girl?” “Can’t sleep.” She lowered herself down on the step and pulled a thin blanket around them both. “That makes two of us,” he said. They stared into the darkness for a while, each pursuing a different thought far into the night. He was grateful for the blanket and for the warmth of her body next to his. She was good, his youngest. Always putting others before herself. “What did Old Man Taylor say?” “Huh?” He only half heard her question. “Old Man Taylor—what did he say to you when he came by?” “Oh, him?” he said, using the officious tone he liked to adopt when speaking of the Old Man. “Why, he was consulting me on important plantation business.” It was an old joke between them. “What business?” He could see she was smiling. “Oh, very important business.” Looking off in the distance, he pretended he had already lost interest in the conversation. “Come on, tell me.” “I shouldn’t tell you. You ain’t old enough.” “Was it about the crop?” “It was not.” “The stock?” “No.” “Come on, tell me.” “OK. But you got to promise not to tell a soul.” “I promise.”

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“Well,” he said, leaning in close, “the Old Man, he want me to be overseer when he goes away this summer. Look after everything.” “And what did you say?” “Told him I don’t want his job. Give it to somebody who needs it. I got better things to do than be his overseer.” She kept smiling that smile he loved, and it pleased him no end. Easy with each other’s company, they again lapsed into silence. “You go to town today?” This time he caught her off-guard. “I saw you go off in the wagon.” “Yes, sir.” “And they made your picture?” She only nodded in reply. He thought for a moment, then he said, “I seen it, but I sure don’t understand it. Seems to me there ain’t nothing folks can’t do if they set themselves to it. Nothing. Did you see the pictures?” “They showed me one.” “What you make of it?” She could think of no words to describe what she had felt when she first saw the picture, the same picture that was now hidden away among her few possessions, wrapped in an old, threadbare dress. She had shown it to no one and took it out only occasionally, when she was alone. But she often thought of it. When her father again asked her what she thought of the pictures, she shook her head in reply. She had not yet found the words to express what she thought. Only the image itself would come to her.

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14 Scientific Moonshine

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ate in the year 1850 a young man encountered Agassiz’s article on “The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races.” Moncure Daniel Conway, a student not yet nineteen, read every word with the eager anticipation of one hungry for knowledge, and he found the professor’s argument powerful. The claims that the different races of mankind had not originated from a single pair and that black people had never nor would they ever achieve a civilized state rang true for the youth from Warrenton, Virginia, the words shaping his very soul. Conway adopted Agassiz’s position as his own and sought converts among his family and peers, though not, presumably, among “the coloured servants who moved about the house.” Yet he had little success converting others to the professor’s theory. It was the antireligious nature of the argument that tripped him up. “My eccentric views were talked about,” Conway recalled many years later, “and I found myself the centre of a religious tempest in little Warrenton.” Still, the youth was not deterred. He sought out all he could find on the science of race, and in turn, like a young Morton or even Agassiz himself, produced his own work of ethnology, fifteen pages of closely written text “to prove that mankind are not derived from one pair; that the ‘Caucasian’ race is the highest species; and that this supreme race has the same right of dominion over the 253

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lower species of his genus that he has over quadrupeds—the same right in kind but not in degree.” No sooner had Conway finished his first scientific essay than he had a second revelation. In reviewing what he had written, Conway glimpsed between the lines something of himself. “I had caught a vision of my superficiality, casuistry, perhaps also of the ease with which I could consign a whole race to degradation.” Overwhelmed by a sense of his own inferiority, he cast the paper aside in horror. It was as deep a crisis as he would ever experience. Before the night was over he had succumbed to a violent and terrible fever, one “mental and spiritual more than physical.” When the sickness passed and he had left his “dead self ” behind, Conway was possessed of “a determination to devote my life to the elevation and welfare of my fellow-beings, white and black.” And so he did. Conway became not a lawyer, as his father had wished, but a Methodist preacher. He also became an abolitionist.1 Moncure Daniel Conway was not the only one to be affected by the new science of ethnology. Agassiz’s popularity had propelled the debate on human diversity into the public arena. As a writer for the American Whig Review noted in 1850, “The scientific study of humanity, from being for a century back the theme of a few speculative philosophers, is become at last a topic of general and even popular interest.” No longer were terms like “hybridity” and “primitive difference” confined to the scientific journals. Now the subject was addressed in a variety of publications, including the popular magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. In some cases Agassiz and ethnology were broadly satirized, but the association of his name with scientific notions of black inferiority, regardless of whether the writer agreed or disagreed with the principles of ethnology, did little harm to his reputation and only fueled interest in the matter. As Nott remarked in 1851, “The popular mind is fully awake on this subject.”2 This, of course, was Bachman’s greatest fear. Bachman and Morton had continued to trade insults in the scientific journals in the months following the AAAS meeting, but when Morton died in 1851, Bachman was left without an adversary. He was certainly not about to engage Nott in a scientific debate, for in his view Nott was unqualified for such a contest. And Agassiz, well, Bachman would probably have liked to dispute the matter with Agassiz, but after publishing his three articles in the Christian Examiner the professor apparently turned his attention to other matters. Or perhaps Bachman did not engage Agassiz on the subject out of concern that this would further popularize the debate, something he wished to avoid at all cost. Then again, it may have been that Bachman had simply tired of the controversy and was at last willing to let someone else argue for the unity of mankind. Among those ready to take the lead in defending the principle of unity was the Rev254

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erend Thomas Smyth, who in his 1850 book had been highly critical of Agassiz’s inconsistencies. Others criticized the professor for different reasons. Some believed Agassiz had gone far out on a limb due to “an inherent love of getting fame at any price.” A few thought he had not gone far enough, that Agassiz’s distinction between the unity of mankind and the diversity of type was a cowardly concession to the “prejudices of Boston.” Most critics, however, castigated Agassiz for writing “to please the Methodists and the slave-holders.” Privately, Bachman was also unhappy with the way that politicians were using polygenesis to defend slavery and with how opponents of original diversity were sometimes accused of being abolitionists, a label that could ruin a man in the South.3 During the 1850s the subject of slavery in America was growing ever more contentious. Since the War for Independence, territorial expansion had run rampant, and thus far most of the land acquired had been organized under slavery: five slave states had been added to the Union, with only Iowa admitted on the side of the North. Then came the Compromise of 1850, at which time California joined the Union as a free state, but the whole of the nation was made slave-catcher by virtue of the Fugitive Slave Law. Four years later the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened up territory that had been previously closed to slavery, thereby overturning the Missouri Compromise and so making very real the possibility that slavery would not wither and die—or at least be held in check by the limits of territorial expansion —as was supposed to happen, but would overrun the nation. The Kansas-Nebraska Act propelled the nation toward Civil War faster than any legislation yet passed by the federal government. Closely linked with the debate over slavery in the United States was the question of free blacks and their place in American society. In 1856 Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote in the Supreme Court majority opinion for the Dred Scott case that black people had no rights under the Constitution. “They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order. . . . so far inferior, that they had not rights which a white man was bound to respect.” Scott had sued for his freedom on the basis that he had lived for extended periods in a free state and a free territory. Taney’s ruling denied him not only his freedom but also his humanity on the basis that as a “subordinate and inferior class of beings,” African Americans were never intended to be regarded as American citizens. Taney was a staunch supporter of slavery, and the ethnological writings of Morton and Nott directly influenced his decision.4 Moncure Daniel Conway was thus not the only one to “consign a whole race to degradation” with relative ease. The dissemination of scientific arguments for the original 255

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diversity of humans and the natural inferiority of nonwhites was having far-reaching effects, and it was unclear whether the nation would, like Conway, one day recognize the crisis and leave its “dead self ” behind. For white Americans the theory of polygenesis was never a popular theory so much as a subject of popular interest, something to consider and discuss without necessarily subscribing to one side or the other. The notion that nonwhites were naturally inferior was commonly held in both the North and the South, and a conception of nature as organized, stable, and enduring was almost universally welcomed. But accepting separate creations as the cause of diversity was something else altogether. Faith in Christian doctrine was simply too great for most people to rush into accepting a new interpretation of the Bible, even if Professor Agassiz had explained how ethnology and religious doctrine could be reconciled. Yet despite the public’s reservations on the issue, the fact remained that neither those in favor of the original unity of mankind nor those against it could prove their point beyond a doubt. So long as the question went unresolved, the debate continued. Black Americans, in contrast, had little difficulty deciding which side of the argument to support. In Philadelphia a series of open meetings of the Social Improvement Society held in 1851 addressed the topic “Can the Colored Races of Men be Made Mentally, Politically and Socially Equal with the White?” The meetings, which took place at Franklin Hall over successive Sunday evenings, were attended by hundreds of people, black and white. The speakers were also racially diverse, and although each was given only ten minutes, he or she was permitted to discourse on any aspect of the matter. After each presentation, members of the audience put questions to the speaker. Not surprisingly, the quality of speeches varied greatly, but after eight weeks the society felt that the subject had been covered sufficiently. The policy of allowing discussion after a talk ensured that no consideration had gone unrepresented, no point of view overlooked. John H. Johnson, however, did not consider the topic exhausted.5 Johnson may have been a blacksmith; he was certainly of mixed-race parentage, a “colored man.” Little more is known about him other than that on the evening of 3 March 1851, about two weeks after the Social Improvement Society had concluded its debates on the question of racial equality, Johnson gave a lecture of his own at Franklin Hall. “An interesting lecture,” the advertisement in the Philadelphia Sun promised. “Come and hear.” The newspaper also stated that Johnson had made “extensive researches” on the African race and 256

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that he promised “to prove beyond the possibility of a reasonable doubt, that the Ethiopian, who are now termed the Negro race, founded the Arts and Sciences of the world, while the rest of mankind were in a rude and savage condition.” Johnson intended to prove not only that the “colored races” could be equal with the white but that they were in fact superior to them.6 The so-called degradation of the black people was a product of their enslavement, Johnson argued. Whites would similarly become servile and ignorant if they were treated like brutes, for “man is controlled by circumstance; and it is the habit of the mind that gives the mind its character.” As evidence that conditions, not someone’s inherent nature, made a person “inferior,” Johnson claimed that Northern blacks were generally more intelligent and independent of mind than Southern blacks. There were also countless examples of people who displayed great talent, black men and women who had been able to nurture their abilities as musicians and writers. Circumstance had allowed these people to excel, however exceptional they seemed, just as it did for the white majority. But one need not look for exceptions among the black population in America, for Africans as a people had long demonstrated intelligence superior to the Europeans. Johnson discoursed at length on the history of the Egyptians, who, as Herodotus had written, were dark-skinned. Samuel Morton, George Gliddon, and others claimed that the ancient Egyptians were white, but they did so out of a desire to keep blacks in America subservient; they used the present condition of Africans in America to argue that they had always been slaves, that they were fit for no other purpose. Johnson suggested that by identifying contemporary blacks as inferior and incapable of civilization, the so-called experts were arguing that they must have always been so and from this concluded that the ancient Egyptian leaders had been white. Johnson challenged those experts to an experiment. Raise a group of children born under slavery in a community without prejudice, one in which they could receive instruction and care and were taught to aspire to greatness. Do this, “and great numbers of them would become so dignified both in manner and sentiment that we would be surprised to think that they were the immediate offspring’s [sic] of poor contemptible negroes.”7 Johnson addressed his remarks directly to those “great pretenders to physical science” who claimed that the different races of mankind were as varied as the kinds of dog or horse. “This palpable absurdity has been credited by some who have [a] reputation for intelligence, and we doubt not that it appears a little plausible to some minds.” But plausibility was not enough to ascertain truth. Johnson suggested another experiment: raise a group of children 257

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of different races together, and unlike a group of dogs or horses similarly nurtured, they will grow to be as alike “as if they had all been taken from one race.” Circumstances—the environment in which a person grows and learns—this is what determines character, and different circumstances will invariably lead to different characters. Take this into account, and the apparent inferiority of black people “is not inherent as many would persuade us [it is].”8 For a “colored man” to hire Franklin Hall and give a public speech in response to current scientific and popular notions of black inferiority, this was an unusual undertaking. Johnson himself was evidently an unusual man. It seems he intended to publish his lecture, but this never happened. His talk, however, was mentioned in John Campbell’s book Negro-Mania. Campbell, a white man, was a member of the Social Improvement Society. He had participated in the society’s debates on racial equality, and he wrote his book “to popularize this question.” Campbell took it “for granted that no dark race of men has ever been equal to a white race,” and he quoted extensively from all the usual sources to prove his point, including Cuvier, Jefferson, Morton, Gliddon, and Hammond. By way of explaining how he came to write the book, in the opening pages he mentions the debates at Franklin Hall. He also mentions John H. Johnson. It seems, however, that Campbell had second thoughts about including this passage in the book, for in annotating his copy—possibly in anticipation of publishing a revised second edition—he excised all mention of African Americans having participated in the debate, and he crossed out references to “Mr. Johnson.” Perhaps Campbell felt that he had given a “colored man” too much credit by including him in his book. Perhaps he recognized that Johnson was the exception that disproved his views.9 Not everyone who dared to speak out against the new scientific racism did so in a rented hall before an audience alerted to the occasion by a newspaper advertizement. But there were others who spoke out. There were other men and women who recognized the prejudice embedded within the “positive facts” of ethnology, and these people did talk. They talked about what the “American school” of ethnology was saying about them, and they talked about how this new science of man was really a science of slavery. At reading rooms set up by abolitionist societies they read in books that black and white people had been created separately, and in the newspapers they read that they belonged to a degenerate race, a race specifically created to serve whites and so destined to always do just that. They read Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, and they read Samuel Stanhope Smith’s Essay of 1810. They read and they talked about what they had read, and then they read some more. It would be wrong to claim that there was anything like an organized African-American 258

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theory of race articulated in response to the “American school” of ethnology, because the black response was diffuse and for the most part it did not refute the ethnologists on scientific grounds. Nevertheless, debating the nature of race was not the sole privilege of whites. It was a preoccupation of all Americans.10 In the spring of 1853, Agassiz was on yet another lecture tour through the South. While in Mobile, Alabama, he spent some time with Nott, who was by then a good friend. “Nott is a man after my heart, for whose private character I have the highest regard,” Agassiz wrote. “He is a true man.” Nott was known as a scintillating companion among his friends, and for someone as important as Agassiz, he would have been sure to tone down his typically caustic manner. When Nott was at his most charismatic, it was hard not to like him. The two men also had in common the experience of being denounced by the clergy as materialists. Agassiz was truly devout, his science imbued with reverence for God, whereas Nott cared little for religious sentiment of any kind, but they could nevertheless bond over their shared experiences.11 During Agassiz’s visit the two men must have conversed freely and at length on matters of ethnology. It was in Mobile that Agassiz told Nott of his theory that the brain of an adult black man was comparable in size and intellectual ability to that of a Caucasian boy. Agassiz even offered to demonstrate this to the fascinated Nott, but the doctor was unable to procure a black man’s brain before Agassiz departed. Whether they had already secured a Caucasian boy’s brain is not known, but before he continued on his tour Agassiz did examine two African slaves and more than a hundred Choctaw Native Americans. Since his visit to Columbia, he had come to see that the “examination of the races themselves” was too rarely undertaken in ethnology. The difficulty, of course, was finding the time to make such inquiries. In Mobile, however, and with Nott’s assistance, he seems to have made the time. That he examined only two Africans on this occasion was perhaps because he had already had numerous opportunities to examine slaves. The Choctaws, on the other hand, were new.12 Nott explained to Agassiz that he was working with the Egyptologist George Gliddon to prepare a book on ethnology, a book that would combine all the arguments in favor of polygenesis. Although numerous writers at midcentury had sought to distill ethnology into language that the public could understand, there were yet too many summations and interpretations and too few original works on the subject by authoritative writers. “The science of ethnology is unhappily involved in much obscurity,” a Southern writer on race complained 259

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in 1851, “and there is probably no very extensive, certainly no thorough and satisfactory, ethnological book extant.” It was well known that Morton had been working on a volume to be called “Elements of Ethnology,” but he had died before getting far with the manuscript, leaving a shapeless collection of questions and half-formed answers, which taken together would hardly form a “thorough and satisfactory” work. Although Nott professed that once having got “the world quarrelling about niggerology,” he wanted nothing more than to “sit on the fence now and enjoy the fight,” he did not want the cause to lose the momentum it had gained with Agassiz’s endorsement.13 Morton’s widow had turned over to Nott a clutch of unpublished manuscripts, the inclusion of which in his book would lend credibility to the enterprise. It would be a big book, both in terms of its size—in the end it was more than eight hundred pages long—and impact. Nott sought out data from every quarter. Writing to Dr. Gibbes he asked whether Wade Hampton had experimented with his angora goats, as he had apparently promised to do, to see whether any light might be shed on the “vexed question” of hybridity. The examinations of Choctaws in Mobile were similarly an attempt to scare up facts that could be interpreted as evidence for polygenesis.14 Nott put it to Agassiz that an article from him would be a valuable contribution to the project. Since Agassiz had published his argument for polygenesis in the Christian Examiner, he had become relatively quiet on the subject, a fact that frustrated Nott’s own agenda. Morton had gamely traded insults with Bachman over hybridity in the scientific press, with Nott coaching the ailing craniologist from the sidelines—this was Nott’s idea of how the battle should be fought. Agassiz meanwhile seemed to have lost interest. Indeed, he had turned his attention to producing a major work of natural history and setting up a new museum at Harvard University, causing much of his time and energy to be spent on collecting specimens and raising funds. “Such fellows as Agassiz,” Nott wrote to a colleague, “are too busy or too lazy to quit fish for niggers or other small game.” Nevertheless, Agassiz did contribute an essay to Nott and Gliddon’s book. And what a book it was.15 Despite the controversial subject of the book, Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, published in 1854, was a tremendous success, selling thirty-five hundred copies in the first four months. Subsequently, more than six hundred orders were taken each month and by 1871—long after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had reframed the problem of diversity— it had gone through ten editions. This was astounding for a scientific work that cost five dollars. The Alabama Planter called Types of Mankind one of “the most notable books of the times.” The reviewer admitted that the theories it described might not be true, but “no one 260

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can doubt that it possesses a vast and universal interest.” This was the typical attitude: possibly it was true, but certainly it was interesting.16 “Ethnology demands to know what was the primitive organic structure of each race?” Nott asked in the opening pages. “What was such race’s moral and physical character? How far a race may have been, or may become, modified by the combined action of time and moral and physical causes? And what position in the social scale Providence has arranged to each type of man?” Types of Mankind was a compendium of practically everything that had ever been said on the subject of race—Nott quoted extensively from a multitude of sources—but it was this latter point that the book really pushed. On page after page Nott celebrated a social hierarchy that placed whites in a position of authority. “No two distinctlymarked races can dwell together on equal terms,” he wrote. Each race had its destiny, and the destiny of the white race was to lord over all others.17 Agassiz’s contribution to the hefty volume was a paper on the geographical distribution of animals and humans. He used Morton’s new definition of species as “a primordial organic form” to defend the idea that humans had been created in tribes and to uphold the notion that whites were superior to all other races. He also openly revealed his ambivalence for original diversity. In a discussion of Asian peoples he admitted: “I still hesitate to assign to each an independent origin (perhaps rather from the difficulty of divesting myself of the opinions universally received, than from any intrinsic evidence), I must, in the presence of these facts, insist at least upon the probability of such an independence of origin of all nations; or, at least, of the independent origin of a primitive stock for each, with which at some future period migrating or conquering tribes have more or less completely amalgamated, as in the case of mixed nationalities.” Unless this is an attempt to win the sympathies of people unwilling to accept the theory of original diversity on religious grounds, the crisis of faith that first arose for Agassiz in Philadelphia appears to have remained with him eight years later. He hesitates, yet facts lead him to insist (at least) on the probability that all nations were independently created . . . or perhaps it was (at least) primitive stocks that had been created separately. . . . In any case, differences among humans exist, and they could not be ignored. “I maintain distinctly,” Agassiz concluded with more confidence, “that the differences observed among the races of men are of the same kind and even greater than those upon which the anthropoid monkeys are considered as distinct species.” Taxonomy and classification would save him from the bugbear of uncertainty.18 Types of Mankind had little to say that was new. Most of the material had previously appeared elsewhere. Even Morton’s unpublished manuscripts offered no new evidence such 261

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as one might expect from a man who painstakingly measured cranial capacity. But the book was not meant to break new ground so much as ensure the public continued to discuss ethnology. Nott had said that his object was to get people quarreling about race. And so he did. “Gentlemen,” the distinguished speaker began, “in selecting the Claims of the Negro as the subject of my remarks to-day, I am animated by a desire to bring before you a matter of living importance, [a] matter upon which action, as well as thought, is required.” It was a brutally hot day, one such as only the Midwest deep in the throes of summer could produce. But despite the heat, the speaker held the attention of nearly three thousand people for two hours with this matter of living importance.19 Frederick Douglass spoke at the invitation of the officers and members of the two literary societies at Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio. Douglass, who had spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, was perhaps the best known of the abolitionists, the published narrative of his life and his newspaper, the North Star, bringing him to the notice of white and black Americans alike. He was also known as a powerful orator. The occasion of his talk at Western Reserve was the graduation of the class of 1854. It was the first time a black man had been asked to deliver a keynote address at a major American university, and not everyone thought it was a good idea. The faculty, trustees, and president of the college were all against having Douglass speak, but the students would not alter their choice. The subject of Douglass’s speech was “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered.” As early as May 1850, at a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in New York City, Douglass had responded publicly to the scientific racism just then gaining widespread attention. But the success of this earlier response relied on Douglass’s powers of oration, on the quick turn of phrase and ability to put hecklers in their place that was his strength as a public speaker. For the 1854 commencement speech he needed to be better prepared—he needed to be familiar with the science of Nott and Gliddon, Morton and Agassiz. Douglass sought advice from Dr. Martin B. Anderson, Archibald Alexander, and Dr. Henry Wayland, all of who were on the faculty of the University of Rochester and had an interest in ethnology. Douglass was already familiar with James Cowles Pritchard’s Natural History of Man, but through the recommendations of these men he would also come to know Types of Mankind and Crania Americana.20 Douglass (see illustration on p. 263) was further aided by a man he had known for years, a man he called “the first thoroughly educated man among us,” James McCune Smith. The son of a slave woman and a merchant, McCune Smith was born in New York City and 262

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educated at the African Free Schools there, where he was a star student. Unable to study medicine in America owing to the color of his skin, he went to Scotland and earned his MD from the University of Glasgow. McCune Smith later returned to New York to open an interracial practice and pharmacy on West Broadway. He was also physician to the New York Colored Orphan Asylum, and it was there that he met Henry, the young Khoisan man Morton had examined before the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and whose daguerreotype he had later given to Agassiz. In 1849 McCune Smith conducted his own “examination” of Henry before the benefactors of the asylum at their annual meeting, during which he implicitly mocked Morton, phrenology, and Camper’s facial angle by concluding that Henry’s head was not only “well formed” but equal to the Greek god Jupiter.21 263

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Between 1852 and 1854 McCune Smith published a series of articles in Frederick Douglass’ Paper under the title “The Heads of the Colored People, Done with a Whitewash Brush.” In response to the numerous stereotypical depictions of black people as victims of their natural “condition,” McCune Smith showed the people for what they were, individuals with varied needs and concerns having little to do with the color of their skin. The bootblack, the steward, the washerwoman—each had a story rooted in the quotidian details of lived experience, which, like the bootblack’s taste for kissing ladies, “gives positive evidence in behalf of the unity of the Human race.” The series was a satirical swipe at ethnology rendered in literary portraits of living people. These portraits, however, sometimes portrayed their subjects in a poor light, something that Douglass warned would get him into trouble with his own people, but McCune Smith was undaunted. His intention was to represent individuals accurately, to portray them as they were, flaws and all.22 McCune Smith looked and saw clearly how white scientists’ new approach to man was willfully blind to the specificity of individuals. He could see that a black person represented through the lens of race prejudice was not a human being made of flesh, bone and blood, but “a hideous monster of the mind, ugly beyond all physical portraying.” This monster, created with words and images under the protective covering of science, was “so utterly and ineffably monstrous as to frighten reason from its throne, and justice from its balance, and mercy from its hallowed temple, and to blot out shame and probity, and the eternal sympathies of nature, so far as these things have presence in the breasts or being of American republicans!” A decade earlier McCune Smith had written a pointed rebuttal to the ethnologists entitled “Civilization: Its Dependence on Physical Circumstance.” This essay would not be published until 1859, but Frederick Douglass borrowed from it for his Western Reserve commencement speech.23 The principal claim made against the Negro, Douglass told his audience in Ohio, was that he was not human. The heart of the matter was whether a black man was truly a man or some other kind of creature. Douglass must have been disgusted with having again and again to prove himself to the world. But so long as “intellectuals” compared uneducated black people with whites who had had every opportunity and privilege, so long as unjust comparisons were made to prove an inherent difference between people, it would be necessary to expose such claims as absurd. “Common sense itself is scarcely needed to detect the absence of manhood in a monkey, or to recognize its presence in a negro.” Common sense was closer to the truth than any theory concocted under the guise of scientific Truth, and common sense recognized that all men shared the same tendencies of communication, rea264

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soning, emotion, and religious inclination. Anyone not able to grasp this was under the spell of “scientific moonshine.”24 Douglass was particularly incensed by the way black people were represented visually. “I think I have never seen a single picture in an American work [of ethnology], designed to give an idea of the mental endowments of the negro, which did anything like justice to the subject; nay, that was not infamously distorted.” Douglass found Types of Mankind to be among the more wicked attempts to visually stereotype black people as inferior. There were more than 350 illustrations in Types of Mankind, principally of ancient sculpture, crania, and mummies, as well as several maps and tables. Most of these were copied from other publications, drawn by Gliddon’s wife; none of the images were made from photographs. “Many of the heads, however, are given in simple outline, and the majority have required reduction,” Nott wrote in the preface, “but persons who are familiar with the great works . . . from which these figures have been copied, will at once recognize a truthfulness in Mrs. Gliddon’s designs (viewed ethnologically) which speaks more than the encomiums of an admiring friend.” Nott defended the reduction of these images to highly schematic drawings by claiming that they conveyed a particular kind of truth, albeit one that required a new way of looking: when “viewed ethnologically,” they represented racial types rather than actual people. The function of images in such books was comparative: they constructed racial difference through the juxtaposition of contrasting representative types. Of course, the examples were chosen precisely because they displayed particular features, because they made the contrasts between types abundantly clear. The images thus presented a tautological argument, and they relied heavily on the aesthetics of physiognomy and Camper’s facial angle to do so. In a chapter on “Negro Types,” Nott included drawings of two people from Mobile among the many reproductions taken from Egyptian bas-reliefs. The profiles of these men stand in distinct contrast to the smooth, vertical profiles found in the “Caucasian Types” section of the book. Nott admitted that figure 179 in his book “may be considered caricatured, although one need not travel far to procure, in daguerreotype, features fully as animal; but Fig. 180,” he claimed, “is a fair average sample of ordinary field-Negroes in the United States.” Douglass despised the way illustrations in books like Types of Mankind were selected and presented as arguments for scientific Truth. To him it was perfectly clear that whites were represented “in harmony with the highest ideas of beauty, dignity and intellect,” while black people were “made to harmonize with the popular idea of negro imbecility and degradation.” 265

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Such exaggerations were hardly scientific, and Douglass was not the only one to point this out. Commenting on the unfair comparisons in one set of illustrations, a writer for the Athenaeum complained, “The animus of this is rather too evident, and ought not to have been suffered in a work professedly scientific.”25 As for the “evidence” of separate creation, Douglass found little of value. What did all the claims of the ethnologists prove? “Nothing, absolutely; nothing which places the question beyond dispute.” Douglass personally believed that “the Almighty . . . endowed mankind with organizations capable of countless variations in form, feature and color, without having it necessary to begin a new creation for every new variety.” This view was born out by the fact that people from diverse nations could join together to create a new and thriving society, as they had done in the United States, and that this joining together involved the amalgamation of races. That people came together and produced mixed-race children proved the unity of mankind. Douglass also believed it would benefit civilization. Racial mixture did not weaken a people or society, he said, but strengthened it. This was the idea that Douglass borrowed from McCune Smith, an idea that greatly disturbed Nott, Agassiz, and many others who maintained that miscegenation was a natural dead-end and a moral abomination. Douglass challenged the status quo when he declared that the black-white hybrid drew on the best of both races and strengthened the American people. Slavery, by contrast, hindered such progress. The United States was a great nation precisely because of its “composite character,” but segregation threatened to hinder the natural development of its people. Douglass recognized ethnology for what it was, a proslavery argument. Common sense lost out because too many people had a stake in race inequality; too much money was being made off the backs of slaves. “By making the enslaved a character fit only for slavery,” he told his young audience, “they excuse themselves for refusing to make the slave a freeman.”26 In the spring of 1850 Nott had encouraged Hammond to return to politics. “The natural element of every active mind is action,” he wrote to the semirecluse Hammond, “and you cannot be content to lie and rest while the crowd without is carrying on the work which nature has assigned our generation.” Nott also informed Hammond that he was becoming more famous for his love of money than his keen intellect. Now was the time to return to politics.27 Easier said than done. Although Hammond believed that “the almost unanimous 266

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opinion of the state is that I am the first man in South Carolina,” he was not at liberty to take advantage of this reputation. “The public is still burning with curiosity to know all about the Hampton affair and is disposed to taunt us both in order to get at it,” Hammond wrote in his diary late in 1850. However desirable and prudent a return to politics may have been, it was not possible so long as Wade Hampton maintained political control of the state. Meanwhile, Hammond’s wife had left him over his relations with Louisa and Sally Johnson. With his life in turmoil, securing public office was difficult.28 By 1855, however, the Hammonds were reconciled and once again living together, with Sally and Louisa residing in field quarters, some distance from the main house. Two years later, Andrew P. Butler resigned from his seat as U.S. senator for South Carolina, leaving an unexpected vacancy on Capitol Hill. With Hampton ill and confined to bed in Mississippi, Hammond saw his chance and took it. In December 1857, having rallied enough votes from his peers to win the seat, James Henry Hammond returned to politics for the first time in fourteen years. He wasted no time in making an impression. Three months after arriving in Washington, when Congress was deep into a heated debate about the admission of Kansas as a state, Hammond again caused a stir.29 “No, you dare not make war on cotton,” he said, challenging Northern delegates. “No power on earth dares to make war on it. Cotton is King.” Hammond said these words during a severe global economic crisis. Yet throughout the 1850s the South enjoyed a relatively strong cotton market, insulating it from the economic downturn and ensuring the region’s security against an aggressive North. Cotton made the South powerful, and cotton needed slaves. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill,” he said. “Its requisites are vigour, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have the other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.” Hammond called this lowly class the “mud-sill” of society, a natural, earthy foundation on which civilizations may be built. “Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves.” Hammond went on to say why it was that black people were particularly suited to this role of mud-sill. “The African, if not a distinct, is an inferior, race, and never will effect, as it never has effected, as much in any other condition as in that of slavery.” Hammond still 267

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shied from declaring black people wholly distinct from whites—he did not use the language of science and call them a separate species, but then he did not need to. His concern was rank, and as Morton and Agassiz had done before him, Hammond declared that men and women with African blood were and always would be inferior to whites. The ethnological argument of natural inferiority was implied in his contention that slavery was a natural social condition, that the South was not a place of moral degradation but a place where all people could reach their potential according to their race. At a time when the principles of ethnology were being disseminated through popular magazines and books like Types of Mankind, few would have failed to see the scientific basis of his position. “Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race,” Hammond said. “The Status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves.” Sidestepping God’s will and man’s desire, Hammond relied on the trump of natural law.30 Hammond’s mud-sill speech was a success. He had regained his place on the political stage after years of scandal and obscurity, and he forcefully defended Southern interests at a crucial time—certainly Hammond’s rhetoric gave new life to Southern propaganda, the “mud-sill” as an idea finding diverse expression for years to come. In many ways, it was the hard-won realization of his dream to be considered a gentleman of the highest order.31 But everything was about to change.

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The white man had given up and was walking away, but a call soon brought him back, smiling like a fool and struggling with his oversized book. He said, “Good day,” and from that moment onward hardly stopped talking, explaining that his job was to help count all the people in the country, so that the government would know just how many there were now living in each state of the Union. It was something they did every ten years, and this year for the first time they were counting the Negroes, too. It was a big job, to be sure, but an important one. He watched closely as this man with the awkward grin and active tongue explained his purpose. That a government should want to count its people, one by one, was a marvel. No one had ever counted him before. Freedom brought with it strange new experiences, there was no denying. To have your name taken down by an official representative of the government of the United States was something new indeed. The man spoke plain and polite, but there was no telling how long he meant to keep at it, and so, turning on tired legs, he made his way to the nearest chair. The visitor scuffed his shoes on the ground in a show of respect and stepped inside after him. Seated in the middle of the room at a simple pine table, he waited for the man to grow tired of talking. His hands, meanwhile, caressed the table’s edge, running along its length as far as his reach would allow. He looked up only when the government official asked him a question. “Your name?” The oversized book was opened on the table, with pen at the ready. “Fassena. My name is George Fassena.” He watched as the man’s pen recorded his words, scratching them in a neat line, down near the bottom of the page. “Very good. And your age?” The government official asked his questions without looking up, his pen continuing across the page as he spoke. “I am Ninety-four, or thereabouts.” “Do you have a trade; did you do a particular—” “Carpenter. I am a carpenter.” 270

“And where were you born?” “Africa,” was the response. “I was born in Africa.” The government official stopped writing and looked up. He then asked, but more slowly this time, “And your mother, and your father—where were they born?” “Africa. My family is in Africa. N be Mandinkoo.” George Fassena met the gaze of the government official directly, but he did not see the nervous white man sitting across from him. He did not see the official representative of the United States government as he wrote “Africa” in his census book, somehow fitting a vast and diverse landscape with its many peoples into the small space allocated on the page. He did not see the man, and neither did he tell the man what it was that he did see.

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15 Epilogue Revolution

I

t was still dark when they descended the high hill and crossed the river, the significance of their intended actions looming large before them. What lay ahead would perhaps have deterred a different group of men, yet this small and righteous army of twentytwo moved as one, pushing forward with like determination and resolve. Their crusade was a just one, and no man could convince them otherwise. Unified in purpose, John Brown and his men emerged from the forest, cut the telegraph wires, and stole quietly into the sleeping town of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry in the early morning hours of 17 October 1859 was designed to start a revolution. His plan was to lead a raiding party in the Virginia mountains, attracting slaves to their numbers, arming them with the government’s own weapons from the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, and gathering force as they traversed the South, leading the way to freedom. Slavery would inevitably collapse as a result, and the South be forced to repent of her sins. The South’s gravest fears were realized in Brown (see illustration on p. 273). Not only were their trusty servants to be incited into a violent uprising, but it would be at the instigation of a white abolitionist from the North. As Brown and his men set about their business, word of the insurrection reached the 272

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nation’s capital. President James Buchanan sent the marines under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee. By the time they reached Harper’s Ferry, seven of Brown’s men had been killed by local militia, seven more had been captured, and five had miraculously escaped; Brown himself was gravely wounded. Within thirty-six hours of the men’s stealing into town, the revolution was at an end. Not one slave from the surrounding region had joined in the uprising or been freed. Brown and the remainder of his force were captured and taken to Charlestown, Virginia, where they were quickly tried, sentenced, and executed for the crimes of murder, treason, and attempting to incite a slave insurrection. The proceedings were effected quickly, 273

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but not so quickly that Brown was altogether silenced. As he was led to the gallows on that cold, clear December morning, he passed a note to one of the guards: “I John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away; but with Blood.” And so it came to pass. In 1861, after the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency and following South Carolina’s lead, six states seceded from the Union, an act of treason that started the Civil War. After the fall of Fort Sumter to federal troops in Charleston Harbor, four more states joined the Confederacy. Six years later, when the war ended, slavery was abolished and four million slaves were freed. The price for achieving this was the lives of 620,000 Americans.1 John Brown’s raid was at first roundly criticized, but then the tide began to turn. “No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature,” Henry David Thoreau said of Brown. Many condemned his actions, his manner of seeing justice done with the aid of violence, but increasingly many more praised his name. “This is not because the acts of Brown are generally approved,” one newspaper commented, “for they are not. It is because the nature and the spirit of the man are seen to be great and noble.”2 As with so much else, the North and the South did not see eye to eye on the matter of John Brown. Henry William Ravenel recorded in his dairy, “The effect of this raid of Brown’s and the consequent feeling of sympathy manifested for him at the North has aroused a spirit of disunion at the South and a desire to separate from the Northern States, as the only means of safety to our institutions.” John Brown was a warning, one that chilled slaveholders and their families to the bone. Their own slaves would surely be faithful come what may, but an outside influence was hard to parry. All Northerners were now viewed with suspicion: Who among them might be a disciple of Brown’s? Commercial relations with the North were severed as far as was practicable and the Southern states began to organize in preparation for open confrontation. “If the North does not recede from its position of hostility, and give us guarantee of constitutional rights and protection,” Ravenel warned, “the indications now are that a revolution is unavoidable.” Secession was once again the watchword. The future was uncertain.3 The year 1859 was great and terrible, a year in which one era gave way to another with sudden and surprising fury. It was a time of rupture and change, of open conflict and radical new ideas; it was a year in which fears were realized and convictions undermined. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry confirmed that the nation was on the road to civil war, and there was no telling what misfortune this would bring or to whom. 274

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A second revolution also touched off late in 1859, this one started by a book. When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, he changed the way humans regarded nature and their place in it. In his book Darwin described the natural world as a seemingly random struggle for survival. Without fully comprehending the principle of heredity, he nevertheless understood that favorable changes in an organism, changes that might increase its chances for continued existence, could be passed on to subsequent generations. “Species have been modified,” he wrote, “during a long course of descent, by the preservation of the natural selection of many successive slight favourable variations.” Unlike other conceptions of nature, Darwin’s theory of natural selection explained the variety of living organisms purely by natural law, without recourse to divine intervention.4 The theory of natural selection challenged numerous beliefs held in the Western world, but it was particularly disturbing for the way it dispensed with God and fully treated humans as just another animal. Darwin’s nature was a closed system of causes and effects, with humans subject to the same forces of change as all other creatures. It was rank materialism, but at the same time it was very good science, and so came to be almost universally accepted. Speaking before members of the AAAS in 1867, John Strong Newberry characterized Darwin’s theory as representative of “a new age of progress” that was “shaking the moral and intellectual world as by an earthquake.”5 There was little in On the Origin of Species about the development of human beings. Darwin suggested that human diversity had been caused by the same principles of natural selection as acted on other species, but he declined to treat the case of humans in any detail, claiming that “without here entering on copious details my reasoning would appear frivolous.” In later publications Darwin would address the subject fully, arguing that there had been a “single parent stock” for humans and that racial difference was by now a permanent condition, but for the moment he simply let his case for natural selection speak for itself.6 Darwin’s evasion of the issue meant that On the Origin of Species did not spell the end of ethnology or even of polygenesis, only that the science of race would have to revise its methods and arguments. Josiah Nott’s interest in ethnology always lay first in its value to maintaining the existing social order and second in the challenge it posed to Christian doctrine. On the first point, natural selection did not contradict his conclusions—it was not original difference per se that was important but rather how differences evident today might affect social relations. It was clear to Nott and other ethnologists that the origin of life would always be a mystery, whereas the permanence of types had immediate application, and so 275

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he easily cast aside the question of original unity or diversity. “My intention,” he wrote in 1866, “is to deal with the negro race as it is, and to inquire what position Providence has assigned it in the affairs of our world.” The details could vary with each new scientific theory; it was the social order that must remain unchanged.7 As for the second point, well, Nott could not have been happier. “The man is clearly crazy,” he wrote of Darwin to a colleague, “but it is a capital dig into the parsons—it stirs up Creation and much good comes of such thorough discussions.”8 Agassiz was not nearly as flexible as Nott, but he could not deny that there was brilliance in the English naturalist’s argument. “Darwin has placed the subject on a different basis from that of all his predecessors,” he conceded in a posthumously published work, “and has brought to the discussion a vast amount of well-arranged information, a convincing cogency of argument, and a captivating charm of presentation. His doctrine appealed the more powerfully to the scientific world because he maintained it at first not upon metaphysical ground but upon observation.” But Agassiz’s praise of Darwin stopped there as he went on to write: “Indeed, it might be said that he treated his subject according to the best scientific methods, had he not frequently overstepped the boundaries of actual knowledge and allowed his imagination to supply the links which science does not furnish.”9 Agassiz had always sought to prove that nature was the living embodiment of God’s thought, and the immutability of species was key to this conception, for secondary causes could not improve upon God’s creation. This was natural history as he understood it to be, but it was a science based on increasingly outdated principles. Darwin, like Robert Chambers, the author of The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and Lamarck before him, drew from the same Enlightenment traditions, but they reached very different conclusions. Agassiz criticized Darwin for ignoring the fact that design in nature was everywhere apparent and that design could only be the work of intelligence. “No theory that overlooks this element can be true to nature.” But in Agassiz’s opinion, a graver shortcoming of Darwin’s theory was the lack of evidence to support natural selection. Where were the intermediate species, he asked, whether living or in fossil form? Where were the organisms that proved one type of creature had developed from another?10 Darwin anticipated this question. First, he noted, the geological record was incomplete and so did not present an accurate record of natural history. Second, intermediate types were missing from the record because they were small in number, being a transitional group, and because changes took place slowly, over great expanses of time. Third, and per-

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haps most important, intermediate forms were not in evidence because the current scientific way of observing nature did not recognize them. Change was hard to see. The naturalist’s job was to scrutinize a specimen and determine what it resembled, and so fit it into an existing classificatory system. In other words, naturalists looked at individual organisms but saw only types. Anomalies or peculiarities in an individual specimen were either judged insignificant for the purpose of classification, or, if the anomaly was considered worthy of remark and other specimens possessed the same anomaly, then a new species would be named. Under this system, organisms were either lumped into an existing species or used to describe a new one. For naturalists such as Agassiz, there was nothing in between the two; intermediate species did not exist. Darwin’s approach, however, suggested that there was no difference between a species and a variety except perhaps in the degree to which specimens differed from one another. If one expected every specimen to fit into an existing system, then fit it undoubtedly would. “As long as most of the links between any two species are unknown,” Darwin wrote, “if any one link or intermediate variety be discovered, it will simply be classed as another and distinct species.” Species, he said, were simply “strongly-marked and permanent varieties.” All species had first been varieties; all creation shaded from one type into another. Intermediate forms were everywhere. One only had to see them for what they were.11 Agassiz was not convinced. The term “species” for him had meaning in nature. It was not an arbitrary label but signified a grouping of organisms exhibiting the same fixed characteristics that did not change over time. Individual specimens naturally did not resemble one another in every regard, but where they did—where characteristics were persistent— they were specific characteristics. And where they differed, well, such individual difference could not multiply through the generations to create a new species. “On the contrary, it is a matter of fact that extreme variations finally degenerate or become sterile; like monstrosities they die out, or return to their type.” A species was by definition immutable because it had been created separately from another group. Agassiz simply could not accept a theory based on the potential for endless variation without either design or purpose. “I shall therefore consider the transmutation theory,” he wrote, “as a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievous in its tendency.”12 While all around him scientists were embracing Darwin’s new approach to understanding organic life, Agassiz remained opposed to the theory of natural selection. It was

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rumored that he clung to a creationist perspective owning to the influence of Boston’s clergy, particularly his father-in-law, Thomas Cary, but Agassiz did not need others to tell him what to think. He was merely defending the same Cuverian principles he had always supported. “We must be on our guard against all those systems of transformation of species so lightly invented by the imagination,” he had written in 1854. To the end of his life Agassiz clung to his outdated ideals, a position that greatly damaged his standing among colleagues and students.13 In the summer of 1863, Agassiz received a provocative letter from the respected physician Samuel Gridley Howe. The two men knew each other socially as they, along with other Boston luminaries, belonged to the Saturday Club, which periodically abandoned the city for weekend retreats in the Adirondacks. Moreover, Howe was director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, which had been founded by Lizzie Agassiz’s grandfather; he was also one of the “Secret Six” who had financed John Brown’s raid, though Agassiz was likely unaware of this. It was, however, in his capacity as a commissioner for the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission that Howe had written to Agassiz. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had come into effect in January 1863, and while it applied to the states then in rebellion—which meant that enforcement was actually beyond the government’s control—recent Union victories on the battlefield gave hope that an end to the war and to slavery was not far off. The Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission therefore looked ahead to what might happen following a general emancipation. Would “the African race,” as Howe put it, “be a persistent race in this country, or will it be absorbed, diluted, and finally effaced by the white race?” Interracial sex, or amalgamation, had produced millions of “mulattoes” under slavery: Would not this proportion increase once slavery was abolished? How did the infertility of “mulattoes” (Dr. Howe had apparently read Nott) affect the future of the race? “You will see the importance of considering carefully the natural laws of increase and their modification by existing causes before deciding upon any line of policy,” he wrote. Agassiz did indeed see the importance of the matter.14 In four letters written within the space of a week Agassiz candidly outlined his thoughts on the future of the black population in America. As he saw it, their prospects were bleak.15 Unless they were to be transported elsewhere, African Americans “must be considered permanently settled upon this continent,” he averred. At first he believed that this would lead to the South being redefined as “Negro States,” especially as black people from the North migrated south and whites from the South went north, each according to a supposed 278

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natural desire for what was thought to be a racially conducive environment. Four days later, however, he revised his thinking. “Surely we do not want to simply extend the area of Africa,” he wrote, “by giving over to the blacks exclusively some of the finest portion of this continent.” No; surely not. “Let us keep the Southern states to ourselves, while at the same time we prepare the negro race for their own work.” Work undertaken, no doubt, under the supervision of whites.16 Agassiz treated people of mixed-race parentage as a separate problem. The subject of amalgamation elicited in Agassiz a visceral response akin to the one he had experienced in Philadelphia some twelve years earlier. “The idea of amalgamation is most repugnant to my feelings,” he wrote to Howe. “I hold it to be a perversion of every natural sentiment.” Moreover, it was a moral sin. Agassiz believed that sex between a white and a black person was an abomination, and the resulting offspring—“half-breeds” or “nondescripts,” as he called them—were essentially monstrous. Taking his own feelings of disgust as evidence that all white people felt as he did and turning this feeling into a biological imperative, Agassiz claimed that whites had a natural loathing of blacks. This, he said, had determined events in America. “I have no doubt that the sense of abhorrence against slavery which has led to the agitation culminating in our civil war has been chiefly and unconsciously fostered by the recognition of our own type in the offspring of Southern gentlemen moving among us as negroes, which they are not.” In other words, abolitionism was not a political response to social injustice, but an unconscious biological reaction on the part of whites to seeing their own “type” mixed with the African.17 Fear of amalgamation was widespread during this time and was undoubtedly fueled by the recognition that slavery would soon be abolished. There were also a few people who openly advocated the mixture of races as beneficial to the nation, an aggressive position that did not escape Agassiz’s or Howe’s notice. In 1859 James McCune Smith had published “Civilization: Its Dependence on Physical Circumstance,” the essay that earlier influenced Frederick Douglass’s speech on ethnology, and in 1863, the same year that Howe and Agassiz corresponded, Douglass gave a speech in which he expressed hope that “the white and colored peoples of this country be blended into a common nationality.” Later that same year a new word would be coined in a pamphlet that promoted the mixture of races: miscegenation. The pamphlet, advertised in the abolitionist press, discussed in Congress, and widely debated in the run-up to the 1864 presidential election, was a political hoax intended to upset the Republican campaign.18 A new exhibit at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York addressed itself to the 279

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issue. Barnum’s subject, one of “a race of beings never before discovered,” had been brought from the Gambia River in West Africa. The creature was a peculiar sight. “The formation of the head and face combines both that of the native African and of the Orang Outang.” The head was small and the forehead sloped steeply, while the ears were “set back about an inch too far for humanity, and about three-fourths of an inch too high up.” The head and skull resembled the orangutan, “while the lower part of the face is that of the native African.” Other aspects similarly confounded classification. Barnum, it seemed, had found himself a natural oddity, and so, naturally, he sought the opinion of an expert. “He has been examined by some of the most scientific men we have,” he wrote of the creature, “and pronounced by them to be a connecting link between the wild native african and the brute creation.” Barnum called his exhibit “What Is It?” The creature he simply referred to as a “nondescript.”19 The Nondescript, portrayed by at least three different men, black and white, whose apparent disabilities and outlandish costumes made them appear unusual, was hailed as a “missing link,” an intermediate type such as natural selection was supposed to produce. As one man said of the Nondescript, “he’s a great fact for Darwin.” But in addition to raising scientific questions about the origin of species, the “What Is It?” exhibit allowed the public to express anxieties about amalgamation, the presumed result of emancipation. By presenting the Nondescript as possibly human, possibly animal—but by doing so in a way that clearly referenced Africans—Barnum allowed white society to openly discuss a very difficult subject. It was as if he had taken the ambiguity of feeling that Agassiz experienced on first encountering black people in America and put it on stage for all to share. Indeed, any attempt at classifying the Nondescript seemed to result in the vacillation between known categories that plagued Agassiz, whose very question in Philadelphia had been, “What is it?”20 No doubt Agassiz dismissed Barnum’s Nondescript as humbug, but the issues lurking behind the performance were real. As his use of “a mongrel nondescript type” to describe mixed-race individuals indicates, Agassiz was deeply concerned about the apparent dangers of amalgamation. To him race was a real, physical phenomenon; it was not a product of environment, history, or culture but a permanent category of human being created by God as he meant it to be. The crossing of two races thus went against both nature and God, and resulted in an entity that defied classification and therefore threatened to upset “the progress of a higher civilization and a purer morality.” The man or woman who was neither wholly black nor completely white went against natural law and was a danger to the progress of

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civilization. Pure races should be aided according to their natural abilities, but monstrous half-breeds, of which Barnum’s Nondescript was a caricature, had to go.21 Agassiz believed that following a general emancipation the American population would reorganize itself according to supposedly natural inclinations: the blacks and mulattoes would migrate south to the “Negro States,” while the whites moved north. Eventually the “nondescripts” would die out, for they were sickly, degenerate, and sterile, or at very least demonstrated “impaired fecundity.” Agassiz was convinced “that their very existence is likely to be only transient, and that all legislation with reference to them should be regulated with this view, and so ordained as to accelerate their disappearance from the Northern States.” Of course some whites would remain in the South to oversee the laboring class there and no doubt reap manifold benefits for the trouble. Agassiz’s vision for postemancipation America was not so very different from how things had been before the war, except perhaps that racial segregation would be nearly complete, keeping racial types “pure.”22 “Let any one who doubts the evil of this mixture of races,” Agassiz wrote, “and is inclined, from a mistaken philanthropy, to break down the barriers between them, come to Brazil.” In 1865 Agassiz finally undertook the scientific expedition that was his greatest ambition as a naturalist. With the financial backing of the Boston banker Nathaniel Thayer, he traveled to Brazil in search of evidence against natural selection. While in Rio de Janeiro and Manaus he also examined Brazilians to determine just what happened when people of different races were permitted to mix freely, and he arranged for them to be photographed (see illustration on p. 287). Unsurprisingly, Agassiz found in this work further evidence to support his ideas.23 It was in Brazil that Agassiz and his party learned of the Civil War’s end. Emancipation was now general; four million slaves were freed. One no longer needed to travel far to observe the breaking down of barriers between black and white. At six o’clock in the morning a thunderous explosion shook the city. Infants started awake with a cry, and dogs either barked fiercely or sought cover, each according to its disposition. Citizens sat up in wonderment at what fresh horror the day would bring. Columbia had been in a state of siege for days as gunfire was exchanged across the river, but this explosion—a terrific blast that shook the earth like a sign of God’s displeasure—this was something to heed rather than endure.24 Gradually word spread that the morning’s eruption had not been the work of the

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Union army but the product of an unlucky accident. Pillagers seeking to find something of value at the South Carolina Rail Road depot instead found a store of powder and, inadvertently igniting the cache, released a mighty explosion that rent the morning’s peace and likely caused the enemy to ponder the blast’s meaning, if only for a moment. When the Union soldiers recommenced their attack from an elevated position across the river, one mile to the west of the city, five shells struck the edifice of the new statehouse building, then under construction. The scars are still visible today in the smooth gray surface of the granite facade. There had been no strategic import to the depot’s obliteration, and fighting continued apace for a time after the explosion, but the moment nevertheless signaled an end to open hostilities. On that morning of 17 February 1865, Mayor Goodwyn surrendered Columbia to the Union Army. A few hours later General Wade Hampton III pulled the last of the Confederate troops out of the city and the capital of South Carolina fell. Colonel George A. Stone promised the mayor that no harm would come to person or property, but looting began almost as soon as his troops entered the city. Using axes to break into stores on Main Street, Yankee soldiers helped themselves to liquor, jewelery, coats, boots, and shoes. Pocket watches were also a favored item—many a man was asked the time only to have his timepiece taken from him. Looting quickly extended to private homes, both in town and in the surrounding area. As the drinking, looting, and destruction of property progressed, fires began to appear around town and could be seen from the porches of Columbia homes. The northwest part of town, called Cottontown, was soon aflame. Other fires appeared as high winds pushed the flames into the city’s commercial district. By midnight the full length of Main Street was “a solid wall of fire.” The city gave off a hellish light as banks, hotels, law offices, and stores were abandoned to the conflagration. Granite Range, the strip to which Zealy had moved his photographic studio late in 1850, caught fire around midnight “and might have been saved by ten vigorous men, resolutely working,” but was not.25 When the fire had run its course 84 out of Columbia’s 124 blocks were in ruins: fully two-thirds of the city had been devastated. Main Street was desolate for more than a mile. Thirteen hundred homes, the old statehouse, six churches, eleven banks, both railroad depots, schools, shops, and warehouses were not just damaged but completely gone. No fewer than 445 commercial establishments were out of business; many never reopened. Families sat on the streets protecting what little of their property remained. Most now owned nothing but the clothes they wore. Thousands of refugees from the surrounding countryside 282

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also wandered the streets in search of food and a place to rest. Farther out of town, animal carcasses littered the roadsides. “Columbia is beyond all doubt the most desolate looking place South of Mason and Dixon’s line,” wrote a reporter for the New York Times. “No one can fully appreciate the utter destruction of the city without seeing it.” This may explain why Richard Wearn took photographs of Columbia. Only in this way could such a catastrophe be appreciated. Wearn produced for sale a series of nineteen cartes de visite of ruined buildings—the daguerreotype had by now become obsolete, replaced by the paper-based albumen process, which could yield multiple photographs from a single glass plate. One of Wearn’s images shows Gibbes’s house, with the doctor posed on the steps leading up to the gutted brick structure, a small figure dwarfed by the devastation around him (see illustration above). Other images, such as the one of Hammond’s old house, which he had sold in 1846, show only chimneys and columns rising from the rubble like high brick tombstones in a desolate graveyard.26 Southerners blamed General William Tecumseh Sherman, the man responsible for the Union soldiers that occupied the city. Yankees had been heard to say such things as, “This thing began here, and we’ll stack the houses and burn the town.” Sherman in turn blamed General Hampton, claiming that Hampton had ordered his troops to set alight abandoned bales of cotton as they retreated. Hampton writhed under the accusation. “My reputation 283

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is the only thing that I have left,” he wrote, “and I am jealous of its preservation.” In all likelihood the fire was not the responsibility of any one man—certainly neither Sherman nor Hampton gave orders for the destruction of Columbia—but the product of multiple circumstances, among them abandoned cotton bales that had caught fire in the general chaos, drunk and vengeful Union soldiers who helped to spread the flames, and high winds. Blaming the other side just made the loss a fraction more bearable.27 And it was hard to bear, for the Civil War had brought catastrophe on the South. The loss of property was only made worse by the impairment of trade, communication, and travel networks. Essential items were in short supply, and those people who had invested their money in Confederate bonds were now destitute. As white men had marched off to war, women, children, and the aged had been left to run the farms, plantations, and businesses, causing productivity to slow and leaving much of the landscape in poor shape. Almost one-half of all livestock was dead, and fully one-half of all farm machinery had been wrecked. Grief lingered without reprieve, the war having killed one-quarter of the South’s white men of military age. War was terrible, but defeat was by far worse.28 Apart from the loss and devastation, white Southerners also found their world utterly changed in other respects. It was not simply that the slaves were now free, that the only system of labor the South had ever known was now outlawed, but a way of life had been abolished along with chattel slavery. Slavery had determined social relations as much as the politics and economy of the region. It had, as James Henry Hammond once claimed, made the South “the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth,” which is to say that it had created for wealthy whites a world of privilege. Now all that was gone. After the war, the South was more than just a place without slaves. It was a world seemingly without order or purpose.29 Doctor Gibbes never fully recovered from the shock of events in 1865. The fire that razed Columbia might have spared his house were it not for some fifteen or twenty Union soldiers who started a bonfire in his drawing room. The doctor lost more than just his home in the conflagration. The fire also destroyed his many valuable collections, the worlds in miniature that he had painstakingly built and of which he was so proud. Collecting was the activity that had sustained and defined him more than any other, and now it was all gone. The doctor’s fellow Carolinians also felt the loss, for as flames consumed his library and paintings, the fossils Agassiz once admired, and so much else besides, it was clear that the Old South was lost forever.30 Robert Wilson Gibbes died the following year, in 1866. He was just fifty-seven. 284

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The daguerreotypist Joseph T. Zealy also lost everything. The Zealy family was counted “among that number who have suffered most severely in the burning of the city of Columbia.” Zealy’s sister, Ann, made a special appeal to the U.S. Army, asking that they “refrain from molesting in any manner whatever the family of Mr. Zealy. . . . and furthermore to render them every assistance and protection in their power.” After the war Zealy did not return to the business of photography but reestablished himself as a merchant, perhaps seeing this as a more useful trade in the austere days of Reconstruction. In his later years he was known locally as “Uncle Joe.” A year before his death in 1892 he moved to Georgia to live with his daughter. He is buried in Columbia.31 James Henry Hammond never saw the South’s defeat. On learning of Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election, he was one of eight senators who resigned. He died four years later, two days shy of his fifty-seventh birthday. In the interim he complained of his health, fretted about the possibility of slave insurrection, criticized the Confederate leadership, and awaited news from his sons in battle. Hammond had committed the bulk of his wealth to the Confederate war effort, leaving his family poor and ruining all hope of founding a dynasty to rival the Hampton family, as he so desperately desired. Wade Hampton III lost a great deal of property and wealth in the war, and much else besides: his brother Frank was killed in 1863, and the following year his beloved son Preston fell before his eyes. When Sherman accused him of causing the destruction of Columbia, the city his grandfather had helped to establish, his anguish was complete. Despite these trials, however, the Hampton name continued to hold a high position in society. When federal troops finally withdrew from the South in 1877, Hampton became governor of South Carolina and was reelected the following year without opposition. He later became a U.S. senator. Hampton’s last words when he died in 1902 were, “God bless all my people, black and white!”32 The Reverend Dr. John Bachman always avoided taking an active stance on political matters, but he was a staunch supporter of the states’ rights doctrine. Throughout the war he did his best to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow Southerners by working at the hospital in Charleston and raising money for the care of sick and injured soldiers. Even after a stroke impaired his health, Bachman continued to minister to his congregation, and he did so until his death in 1874. He is buried under the altar of Saint Johns Lutheran Church in Charleston. After the war, the medical college that Josiah Nott had helped to found in Mobile, Alabama, was appropriated by the Freedman’s Bureau and turned into a school for former 285

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slaves. “The Chemical Laboratory is occupied by negro Cobblers,” he complained. Nott believed that the bureau was endeavoring to force black people into an elevated position for which they were not suited. Complaining further that “we had a Constitutional right to niggers” and that the South “is not now fit for a gentleman to live in,” Nott moved first to Baltimore and then to New York City, where he continued to practice medicine. Toward the end of his life he occasionally participated in the activities of the New York Ethnological Society, but with slavery abolished there seemed to be little point to arguing for the natural inferiority of black people. He died in 1873, on his sixty-ninth birthday, and was buried in Mobile alongside six of his children. With Nott’s passing, the “American school” of ethnology was officially dead.33 Ethnology faltered in America with the end of slavery, but the study of human diversity found new life during the 1860s, particularly in Great Britain and France. European nations were committed to the colonial enterprise and so had a vested interest in developing the ideology of race. During this time anthropology was accepted as a discrete and legitimate scientific discipline, one that claimed to produce unbiased knowledge. It also broadened to encompass not only ethnology, the study of race, but also human culture and society in its myriad forms. Studying Homo sapiens was no longer the leisure pursuit of gentlemen but a serious undertaking that required specialized training and institutional support. Methods were standardized, and still greater value was placed on measurements and statistics than had been in Samuel Morton’s time. Taking photographs also became standard practice. During the 1860s photography became easier as smaller, simpler, and more reliable equipment was invented. The new albumen process also made reproducing images cheaper and easier. By the time Kodak introduced flexible roll film in 1885, it seemed that everyone was taking pictures. The increased application of photography to anthropology, however, owed as much to institutional changes as to technological developments. As the historian John Tagg has noted, “The coupling of evidence and photography in the second half of the nineteenth century was bound up with the emergence of new institutions and new practices of observation and record keeping.” The proliferation of images and archives reinforced each other in the construction of race. No longer did “proof ” lie in the assertions of a select few; instead it was backed up by the seemingly more objective claims of a coherent discipline and its institutions.34 Two varieties of anthropological photography were developed during this period, 286

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both of which sought to overcome the representational limitations of the medium that earlier scientists had encountered. The first entailed photographing subjects without clothing and in frontal and profile views, but with a measuring device in the frame, a ruler of some sort that allowed quantifiable data to be extracted from the image. Attempts to produce empirical evidence from a photograph, however, were not entirely successful. Such photographs were “rarely either measurable or comparable with one another,” the British anthropologist T. H. Huxley complained.35 More successful, and increasingly popular among the public as collectable souvenirs, were anecdotal or “portrait type” photographs (see illustration above). These sought to capture the subject “naturalistically,” in his or her native costume and perhaps engaged in some traditional occupation. As the English scientist Edward B. Tylor recognized, ethnic type was no longer to be found exclusively in the “physical characters” of a person but could 287

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also be found in his or her “life and habit.” The detail that had been a problem in earlier anthropological photographs was now considered a virtue and indeed was valued in ethnographic descriptions as well as in images.36 Even after the Civil War, Agassiz maintained an interest in ethnology. He understood that the study of race had changed, and he collected the new photographs of ethnic types, including a variety of images published by the Société d’Anthropologie in Paris. Now “two classes of specimens should be brought together,” Agassiz averred, “one concerning the habits and pursuits of the races, the other concerning the physical constitution of the races themselves.” With regard to the latter, where original specimens could not be obtained, “portraits or photographs may be substituted.” Agassiz hoped to assemble for the museum he had established at Harvard University “a more complete collection, illustrative of the natural history of mankind than exists thus far anywhere.”37 In 1865 George Peabody offered Agassiz $150,000 as an endowment for his museum, a substantial amount that would have eased the pressures of fundraising. Peabody, who had made a fortune trading dry goods between England and America, offered the funds on condition that the museum would bear the Peabody name. “That,” Agassiz told his friend Jules Marcou, “I cannot accede to.” “Of course,” Marcou replied. “It will be Agassiz’s Museum.” “Yes,” the aging naturalist admitted, somewhat embarrassed, “you have ferreted my secret.”38 Agassiz’s museum, complete with a photographic studio in the attic, was in fact officially named the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). Peabody, meanwhile, went on to found not one but two museums in Massachusetts bearing his name, one in Salem, the other at Harvard. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology was one of the first museums dedicated solely to the study of human cultures. It inhabited the south wing of the building constructed for the MCZ, although the two institutions were distinct. However, in 1871, two years before the professor’s death, the MCZ transferred its archaeological and ethnological collections to the Peabody Museum, “where they more properly belong,” or so Elizabeth Agassiz felt. This included a significant amount of material that had been collected by Agassiz personally and may have included the daguerreotypes made in South Carolina.39 Agassiz never published any of the photographs that he had commissioned. Even when reproducing images became easier and the conventions of anthropological photogra-

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phy changed, he opted to use images he had purchased. Roland Barthes called photography an uncertain art, and he likened it to a science of desirable or detestable bodies, but he also called photography “the impossible science of the unique being.” The daguerreotypes of slaves showed bodies that were perhaps desirable, and possibly detestable, but they were undoubtedly unique. Agassiz had actually met the men and women who were photographed at his request, he had spoken to Delia, Jem, and the others and quizzed them about their ethnic origins—how could he not see them as individuals? When he needed an image to represent a racial type, perhaps he preferred to use one of someone he did not know personally. Maybe in some corner of his mind Agassiz understood that the science of the unique being was preferable to a science of desirable or detestable bodies.40 And what of the people portrayed in the daguerreotypes? What did the Civil War mean to Delia, Jack, and Renty? Following emancipation, where did Alfred and Drana go? Did they leave Columbia or remain in the area? What in the end became of Jem and Fassena? As with every other aspect of their lives, information about these men and women in the postemancipation era is scarce, providing only the sketchiest of outlines. In 1858, when the second Wade Hampton died, his property was divided amongst his children, and with each estate came the slaves and debt attached to that property. Fassena, whose name is recorded on an inventory along with furniture and livestock, thus passed into the possession of one of the Hampton children. After the war he lived outside Columbia in Lower Richland County. It does not appear that he married or had children. When the census taker came to his residence in 1870, he was ninety-four years of age—this would have made his birth year 1776, a significant year in American history, suggesting that perhaps Fassena was making a point by giving his age as ninety-four, just as Charles Ball did by naming the Fourth of July as the date Wade Hampton I purchased him at auction. Had he been born in 1776, Fassena would have been seventy-four the year Zealy made his daguerreotypes.41 Following emancipation Fassena used the name George Fassena. It is this unusual name—which in the Mandinka language may be a variation on “feseyaa,” meaning “superior” —and the fact that he retained it throughout his life that has permitted the discovery of information about him. For the other people who were photographed, we do not have the benefit of such a distinctive name.42 On being freed, many slaves took their master’s surname as their own, but often it was

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the name of the first master that they adopted, not the most recent. For some, however, it was enough to respect a person to take his or her name. Once freed, Jack, Drana, Delia, and Renty thus might have used the name Taylor in recognition of their relationship to Benjamin Franklin Taylor. A man by the name of Renty Taylor lived not far from Fassena after the war, but having been born in 1852 he could not have been the man that Zealy photographed; he may, however, have been his son. Two men called Renty appear in documents that suggest they passed from Taylor’s possession to Wade Hampton II sometime between 1852 and 1858. Although a shared name does not necessarily indicate identity or blood relation, in this case it is possible that they were the man photographed and his son. Like Fassena, these two men were subsequently passed to one of the Hampton children.43 Delia and Drana are still more difficult to trace because if they married they would have taken the names of their husbands. Drana, however, does not appear in Taylor’s will and so may have been sold between 1850 and 1852. It is also possible that she died, ran away, or met some other fate around this time. Nothing is known of Alfred or Jem. Following the Civil War, a number of black settlements formed outside Columbia, including Little Camden, Arthurtown, and Taylors. The latter was established in 1869 when members of the Taylor family sold a narrow strip of land sandwiched between rail lines to a group of five or six former slaves. The main street was called Taylors’ Row and is part of present-day Andrews Road, near the fairgrounds. The amount of money paid for Taylors was negligible: the purpose of the exchange was to ensure that the new owners had legal title to the property. The families who first settled there were called Green, Jenkins, Thomas, Gray, Frazier, and Brown. They continued to work in the cotton fields of their former masters, down along the banks of the Congaree River, but each night they returned to their homes in Taylors.44 Jack, Drana, Renty, and Delia had been Taylor slaves, and Jem was a Green slave. Perhaps some or all of them settled in Taylors. Perhaps they raised their families there and carried on working hard to survive in a world still rife with racial discrimination but nevertheless recognized that everything had changed because now they were free and beholden to no one. Perhaps they watched their grandchildren grow into fine young men and women and start families of their own, and perhaps they spent their final years in Columbia trying to forget the worst of slavery times but still preserving their own history and that of their relations to pass on to those that came after. Perhaps. 290

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In 1861, in a speech called “Pictures and Progress” that he delivered at Tremont Temple in Boston, Frederick Douglass remarked that “man is everywhere a picture making animal.” The ability and desire to make pictures was the true identifying characteristic of human beings, he said, not the various anatomical features that ethnologists studied and measured. According to Douglass, making images was the “highest attribute of human nature”—and the Middle Passage did not take this attribute away. Africans made images in America as they had made images in Africa, having carried their cultural traditions with them across the ocean. Their descendants, whether free or enslaved, also sought fitting representations for their beliefs and experiences, their people, and their dreams. With the invention of photography, another medium was added to their repertoire.45 The desire to be photographed did not recognize the racial divide. With the invention of photography, studios catering to African-American clientele rose up to meet the demand for pictures. During the antebellum era there were more than fifty documented black daguerreotypists with galleries in American cities. Among them was Jules Lion, who exhibited the first successful daguerreotype in New Orleans just six months after Daguerre’s process was made public. Augustus Washington had a studio in Hartford, Connecticut, where he made portraits of abolitionists, including John Brown (see illustration on p. 273). Of a portrait made by James Presley Ball of Cincinnati, Ohio, Frederick Douglass’ Paper said, “It is one of the best answers to the charge of natural inferiority we have lately met with.”46 To have your picture made by Lion, Washington, or Ball was a very different matter from being photographed by a white artist. As Douglass remarked, “It seems to us next to impossible for white men to take likenesses of black men, without most grossly exaggerating their distinctive features.” The reason for this was race prejudice as expressed through the false scientific notions of physiognomy and ethnology. But such images could be countered by pictures of African Americans as active, intelligent, and capable of employing science and creating art. Portraiture was and still is a political statement, the camera a valuable tool against misrepresentation. Each photograph that a black photographer made of a black subject documented his own humanity and that of his sitter, and so doubly argued against race prejudice.47 In 1977, a year after the daguerreotypes of enslaved men and women were found in the attic of the Peabody Museum, a very different group of photographs was discovered in the crawl space under a house in Columbia. This discovery brought to light a cache of glassplate negatives documenting the city’s African-American community in the 1920s and 1930s. 291

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The photographer, Richard Samuel Roberts, had taught himself how to make pictures by closely studying the literature provided by supply houses. Roberts operated a studio in the heart of “Little Harlem,” the black commercial district of Columbia, promising in his publicity leaflet, “If you are beautiful, we guarantee to make your photographs just like you want them. . . . If you are not beautiful we guarantee to make you beautiful and yet to retain a true and brilliant likeness of you.” When Roberts died in 1936, he had made more than ten thousand images (see illustration on p. 292).48 Did Roberts photograph any of the descendants of the men and women Zealy had photographed seventy years earlier? Did he perhaps take Delia’s picture? There is no reason to think that the two images by which we know her face were the only photographs she ever sat for. With emancipation came the freedom to be seen as one wished. What might she have thought sitting there in the photographer’s studio, years after slavery had ended and long after her encounter with the Swiss naturalist? Was there in the moment an echo of the unpleasantness of her first experience of photography? Or was there a fundamental difference being photographed by a black artist but, more important, doing so on her own terms and for her own purposes? What did she think when she sat for her portrait this second time, holding herself erect, wearing her best dress and seated on one of the photographer’s fine upholstered chairs? What might Delia have thought? Another woman had this to say when she was photographed around this time: He would take our pictures and let us see that those who said we were invisible were lying. That those who said we were ugly were lying. That those who claimed we were less than human were lying. That those who said we did not love each other, and marry, and produce children, and suffer, and grow old were lying. [The photographer] would let us bloom in the safe zone before his camera, and we saw ourselves differently through his lenses. We saw ourselves shining in all our specificity. In all of our generalities. In all our terrible humanness. We saw ourselves just shine.49

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Notes

Delia

Delia was a slave at Edgehill, a plantation owned by Benjamin Franklin Taylor and located just outside Columbia, South Carolina, on present-day Forest Drive. In Taylor’s will of 1852 Delia is valued at six hundred dollars and listed beneath Sam, the blacksmith. Alongside her name appear ditto marks, suggesting she worked in the forge with Sam. When Taylor died, the slaves listed in his will passed into the possession of his wife, Sally Webb Taylor. Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives, Columbia. Chapter 1. Introduction

1. Elinor T. Reichlin, “Survivors of a Painful Epoch: Six Rare Pre–Civil War Daguerreotypes of Southern Slaves” (typescript, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University), 2–3; Melissa Banta, A Curious and Ingenious Art: Reflections on Daguerreotypes at Harvard (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), 43. 2. Reichlin, “Survivors,” 2–3. 3. Banta, Curious and Ingenious Art, 43. 4. Helmut Gernsheim and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype (New York: Dover, 1968), 1, 54. 5. T. S. Arthur, “American Characteristics: The Daguerreotypist,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 38 (May 1849): 352. Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Progress,” The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 3: 1855–63, ed. John W. Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 453. 6. Stefan Richter, The Art of the Daguerreotype (London: Viking, 1989), 16. 7. [Elizabeth Eastlake], “Physiognomy,” Quarterly Review 90 (December 1851): 62–63. 8. Albert Sands Southworth quoted in Beaumont Newhall, The Daguerreotype in America (New York: Dover, 1976), 44. 295

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9. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 34. 10. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Daguerreotype,” in Classic Essays on Photography, ed. Alan Trachtenberg (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1980), 38. Samuel Morse quoted in Richard Rudisill, Mirror Image: The Influence of the Daguerreotype on American Society (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971), 57. 11. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 18. Balzac’s view is found in Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 208; the woman who wanted her dead child photographed is from Daguerrean Journal, 15 January 1854, 149. 12. W. Campbell, “An Incident,” American Journal of Photography 1, no. 1 (1858): 8–10. 13. Reichlin, “Survivors,” 5. 14. The Société Ethnologique quoted in Claude Blanckaert, “On the Origins of French Ethnology,” in Bones, Bodies, Behaviour: Essays on Biological Anthropology, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 41. 15. Frederick Douglass called ethnology “Scientific moonshine” in his speech “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 2: 1847–54, ed. John W Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 502. Renty

According to the label on his daguerreotype, Renty was from Congo, West Africa. Like his daughter Delia, he was a slave on one of Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s plantations. Taylor died in 1852, and in his will Renty is valued at a hundred dollars, a low figure—he was worth less than the ninety-three sheep Taylor possessed at the time of his death— suggesting that age or illness prevented him from working as much as others. In his daguerreotypes he appears emaciated, and a tumor is visible on his neck. Renty may have passed into the possession of Wade Hampton II: his name appears in the inventory made on Hampton’s death in 1858. Will and Inventory and Estate of Benjamin F. Taylor, Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives, Columbia; Appraisement of Estate of Col. W. Hampton, Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives, Columbia.

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Chapter 2. A Dam’d Poor Town

1. Walter J. Fraser, Jr., Charleston! Charleston! The History of a Southern City (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), 1–3; Joseph I. Waring, The First Voyage and Settlement at Charles Town, 1670–1680 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970), 22–25, 27, 36, 45. 2. Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 4–10. 3. The Council for Foreign Plantations quoted in Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550–1812 (Williamsburg: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 85. The percentage of slaves brought through Charleston, Jordan, White Over Black, 85. Samuel Dyssli quoted in David Robertson, Denmark Vesey: The Buried Story of America’s Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It (New York: Vintage, 2000), 18. 4. John Hammond Moore, Columbia and Richland County: A South Carolina Community, 1740–1990 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 41–43. 5. Edward Hooker on Wade Hampton quoted in Virginia G. Meynard, The Venturers: The Hampton, Harrison, and Earle Families of Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1981), 120. 6. Moore, Columbia and Richland County, 44–46. 7. Moore, Columbia and Richland County, 46–47. 8. Charleston Morning Post and Daily Advertiser quoted in Moore, Columbia and Richland County, 45–46. Edward Hooker quoted in J. F. Williams, Old and New Columbia (Columbia: Epworth Orphanage Press, 1929), 24. 9. Meynard, Venturers, 109. 10. Edward Hooker quoted in Williams, Old and New Columbia, 23–24. 11. Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: An Economic History of Britain Since 1750 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968), 115. 12. Edwin Scott, Random Recollections of a Long Life, 1806–1876 (Columbia, SC, 1884), 29. 13. Scott, Random Recollections, 30. 14. James Henry Hammond, An Oration, Delivered Before the Two Societies of the South-Carolina College, on the Fourth of December, 1849 (Charleston, SC, 1850), 5, 9. Alfred

Alfred was Fulani (also Fula, Foulah, and Fulah, as well as the French Peul), a pastoral, nomadic people that populated a broad region of West Africa and tended to keep 297

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apart from other ethnic groups. Though dispersed, they were numerically dominant in some areas and are still prevalent in the Futa Jalon region of Guinea. J. D. Fage, A History of West Africa: An Introductory Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 35–37. Chapter 3. Cotton

1. Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (1853; reprint ed., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000), 166. 2. Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains (1859; reprint ed., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 46–47. 3. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 60–71. 4. Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003); see in particular chapter 2, “Plantation Generations,” 53–96. 5. English traveler quoted in Constance McL. Green, Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956), 6. 6. Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 33, 38. 7. Eli Whitney quoted in Green, Eli Whitney, 38. 8. Eli Whitney quoted in Jeanette Mirsky and Allan Nevins, The World of Eli Whitney (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 59. 9. For South Carolina’s annual exports, see Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 263. The South’s portion of world cotton production is from Stuart Bruchey, The Wealth of a Nation: An Economic History of the United States (New York: Harper, 1988), 49. An observer quoted in Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 256. 10. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 132. 11. James Henry Hammond quoted in David Duncan Wallace, South Carolina, a Short History, 1520–1948 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 484. 12. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (Cleveland: Meridian, 1965), 52. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 178–179. Another man quoted in Edwin Scott, Random Recollections of a Long Life, 1806–1876 (Columbia, 1884), 22. 13. John W. Blassingame identifies Hampton as the man who purchased Ball at auction in Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), xxv. See also David J. McCord, “Life of a Negro Slave,” Southern Quarterly Review 23 (January 1853): 212. 298

NOTES TO PAGES 47–52

14. Charles Edward Cauthen, ed., Family Letters of the Three Wade Hamptons, 1782– 1901 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953), 6. Virginia G. Meynard, The Venturers: The Hampton, Harrison, and Earle Families of Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1981), 112–113. Ronald Edward Bridwell, “The South’s Wealthiest Planter: Wade Hampton I of South Carolina, 1754–1835” (PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 1950), 386–387, 406. 15. Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates and Interviews, Volume 2: 1847–54, ed. John W. Blassingame, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 359–388. 16. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 73–75. 17. Bridwell, “South’s Wealthiest Planter,” 772–773. James Stuart quoted in Thomas D. Clark, ed., South Carolina: The Grand Tour, 1780–1865 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973), 163. Receipts pertaining to runaway slaves, Hampton Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. 18. Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, 80–81. Jack

Jack was a slave driver on one of Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s plantations. Drivers functioned as foremen on the plantation, organizing the workers and meting out punishment. “At first I felt much repugnance against use of the hickory [lash],” Charles Ball wrote of his experience as a driver, “the only instrument with which I punished offenders, but the longer I was accustomed to this practice, the more familiar and less offensive it became to me.” In Taylor’s will Jack was valued at three hundred dollars. According to the label on his daguerreotype, Jack was also a Guinea African. The name “Guinea,” however, is not very helpful in determining Jack’s origins; the term derives from the Berber word for “black” and was often applied indiscriminately to people from the southern half of West Africa. Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains (1859; reprint ed., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 241; see also William L. Van Deburg, The Slave Drivers: Black Agricultural Labor Supervisors in the Antebellum South (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979). For Taylor’s will, see Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives, Columbia. For “Guinea,” see J. D. Fage, A History of West Africa: An Introductory Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 4n. Chapter Four. Transformation

1. Alabama newspaper quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (London: Penguin, 1990), 93. 299

NOTES TO PAGES 53–61

2. For cotton prices, see David Duncan Wallace, South Carolina, a Short History, 1520–1948 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 385. 3. For the South’s drop in railroad mileage, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 91–92. 4. My sampling of the newspapers is drawn principally from March 1850 editions of the Charleston Mercury. 5. “Snowing Worms,” Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 21 March 1850. “Great Fall of Flesh and Blood,” Charleston Courier, 13 March 1850; “The Shower of Flesh and Blood,” Tri-Weekly South Carolinian, 26 March 1850. “The ‘Shower of Flesh,’” Daily Telegraph, 13 April 1850. 6. “Shower of Flesh and Blood.” “‘Shower of Flesh.’” 7. “Chicken with a Human Face,” South Carolinian, 12 September 1848. 8. “Human Monster,” Charleston Mercury, 23 March 1850. 9. Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston, “Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England,” Past and Present 92 (August 1981): 23; Rosemarie Garland Thomson, “From Wonder to Error: A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity,” in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 3. 10. Phillip Sloan, “The Gaze of Natural History,” in Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-Century Domains, ed. Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 118. 11. Buffon quoted in Sloan, “Gaze of Natural History,” 132. 12. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966; London: Tavistock, 1982), 150. 13. D. W., “Account of a Singular Change of Colour in a Negro,” Weekly Magazine of Original Essays 1 (1798): 109–111. See also Charles Caldwell, The Autobiography of Charles Caldwell, M.D., ed. Harriot W. Warner (1855; reprint ed., New York: DaCapo, 1968), 163– 164, 268–289; and William A. Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815–59 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 5–6. Samuel Stanhope Smith claimed that Moss’s transformation began with his abdomen. Samuel Stanhope Smith, An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species [1810], ed. Winthrop D. Jordan (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 58. 14. Caldwell, Autobiography, 268–269. 15. Benjamin Rush, “Observations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black 300

NOTES TO PAGES 62–69

Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes Is Derived from the Leprosy,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 295. 16. Caldwell, Autobiography, 268–269. 17. Charles Caldwell, Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race (New York, 1830), vi–vii. 18. Caldwell, Autobiography, 269. 19. Smith, Essay [1810], 163. 20. Samuel Stanhope Smith, An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species (Philadelphia, 1787), 59n. 21. Smith, Essay [1787], 16. 22. Caldwell, Autobiography, 269–270, 272. 23. D. W., “Account,” 111. Rush, “Observations,” 297. Jem

Little is known about Jem apart from the information provided on the labels of his daguerreotypes: he was a slave of F. W. Green, and he was “Gullah.” F. W. Green was probably Frederick W. Green, a mechanic from Massachusetts, who seems to have owned the Red Bank Cotton Factory in Lexington, South Carolina. In 1850 Green lived in Columbia at the corner of Gervais and Sumter Streets and owned twenty-three slaves. This information suggests that Jem lived in the city, rather than on a plantation, and assisted Green in some capacity either at home or at the mill. While the other men who were photographed are identified as belonging to particular African ethnic groups, Jem is not linked to Africa as directly: the Gullah are a Creole people of the Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands. The term “Gullah” is thought to be derived from “Angola,” the region of West Africa from which the greatest proportion of slaves imported to South Carolina originated; however the Gullah people—whose isolation from other communities led to the development of a distinct language and culture—are in fact of diverse origin. U.S. census for 1850, Columbia, South Carolina; 1850 slave census, Columbia, South Carolina; Edwin Scott, Random Recollections of a Long Life, 1806–1876 (Columbia, SC, 1884), 38; James G. Gibbes, Who Burnt Columbia? (Newberry, SC, 1902), 15; William S. Pollitzer, The Gullah People and Their African Heritage (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005). Chapter 5. Humbug

1. Maximilian LaBorde, History of the South Carolina College (Charleston, SC, 1874), 194. Julian A. Selby, Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscences of Columbia, South Carolina (Columbia, SC: Bryan, 1905), 88. 301

NOTES TO PAGES 70–79

2. Robert W. Gibbes to Samuel George Morton, 4 March 1847, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia. Gibbes to Morton, 21 September 1846, Samuel George Morton Papers; Robert W. Gibbes to James Henry Hammond, 13 September 1843, 2 August 1846, James Henry Hammond Papers, Library of Congress. Charleston Courier, 17 August 1847; David Moltke-Hansen, Art in the Lives of South Carolinians: Nineteenth-Century Chapters (Charleston, SC: Carolina Art Association, 1979), Rsb-3; Robert W. Gibbes, Catalogue of Paintings, Marbles and Casts in the Collection of R. W. Gibbes, M. D. (Columbia, SC, n.d.). LaBorde, South Carolina College, 193. 3. Quoted C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 287. 4. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 96. 5. A contemporary quoted Woodward, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, 329. On collecting, see Maya Jasanoff, “Collectors of Empire: Objects, Conquests, and Imperial SelfFashioning,” Past and Present 184 (August 2004): 109–135; Didier Maleuvre, Museum Memories: History, Technology, and Art (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 115–119; Peter D. Osborne, Travelling Light: Photography, Travel and Visual Culture (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000), 63; Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 151–169. 6. Gibbes to Morton, 21 January 1850, Morton Papers; see also Gibbes’s letters to Morton dated 2 June and 21 September 1846. Gibbes to Morton, 15 July, 13 October 1845, 13 April 1848, Samuel George Morton Papers. 7. Arney R. Childs, “Dr. Robert Wilson Gibbes, 1809–1866” (MA thesis, University of South Carolina, 1925), 38–39. 8. Robert W. Gibbes, A Lecture on the Magnetism of the Human Body, Delivered Before the Apprentices’ Library Society of Charleston (Columbia, SC, 1843), 37. 9. “Grand Exhibition!!!” Charleston Courier, 17 January 1843. 10. Benjamin Reiss, The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum’s America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 106. 11. Phineas Taylor Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs: or, Forty Years’ Recollections (Hartford, CT, 1869), 129–130. 12. Lester D. Stephens, Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815–1895 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 14. 13. “Memoirs of Frederick Adolphus Porcher,” South Carolina Historical and Gene302

NOTES TO PAGES 79–87

aological Magazine 47 (1946): 218–219. See also John G. Morris, Fifty Years in the Lutheran Ministry (Baltimore, 1878), 84–85. 14. [John Bachman], “The Mermaid,” Charleston Mercury, 20 January 1843. 15. [Alanson Taylor], “The Mermaid,” Charleston Mercury, 21 January 1843. For Barnum’s agreement with Kimball, see Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 62–63. 16. [Richard Yeadon], “The Exhibition at Masonic Hall,” Charleston Courier, 21 January 1843. 17. [John Bachman], “To the Editor of the Mercury,” Charleston Mercury, 26 January 1843. 18. [John Bachman], “To the Editor of the Charleston Courier,” Charleston Mercury, 1 February 1843. [Bachman], “To the Editor of the Mercury.” 19. [Richard Yeadon], “The Mermaid, and ‘No Humbug,’” Charleston Courier, 1 February 1843. 20. Charleston Mercury, 5 February 1843. The certificate was republished in the Charleston Courier, 14 February 1843. 21. [Richard Yeadon], “The Mermaid Controversy,” Charleston Courier, 6 February 1843. 22. Richard Yeadon, “To Lewis R. Gibbes, M.D.,” Charleston Courier, 15, 23 February 1843. 23. Lewis R. Gibbes, “To R. Yeadon, Esq.,” Charleston Courier, 2 March 1843. 24. Quoted in Geoffrey Batchen, William Henry Fox Talbot (New York: Phaidon, 2008), n.p. 25. Richard Yeadon, “Mesmerism,” Charleston Courier, 11 February 1843. 26. Charleston Courier, 3, 15 February 1843; Charleston Mercury, 21 February 1843. 27. Robert W. Gibbes, “Description of the Teeth of a New Fossil Animal Found in the Green Sand of South Carolina,” Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences 2 (1845): 1–3; Richard M. Jellison and Phillip S. Swartz, “The Scientific Interests of Robert Wilson Gibbes,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 66 (1965): 78–84. 28. M. F. Ashley Montagu and C. Bernard Peterson, “The Earliest Account of the Association of Human Artefacts with Fossil Mammals in North America,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 87, no. 5 (1944): 414–415; Robert Silverberg, Scientists and Scoundrels: A Book of Hoaxes (New York: Crowell, 1965), 51–70. 29. Jeffries Wyman “Hydrarchos Sillimani,” Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History 2 (1845): 67. 30. Robert W. Gibbes, Memoir of the Fossil Genus Basilosaurus, with a Notice of 303

NOTES TO PAGES 87–97

Specimens from the Eocene Green Sand of South Carolina (Philadelphia, 1847), 5–6. Gibbes to Morton, 13 October 1845, Samuel George Morton Papers. 31. Quoted in Harris, Humbug, 65. 32. Charleston Mercury, 21 December 1847. Drana

Drana was Jack’s daughter, and she also lived on one of Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s plantations. Drana, however, does not appear in the inventory of Taylor’s will, and so between 1850, when she had her daguerreotype made, and 1854, when Taylor died, it seems that she either was sold, ran away, or herself died. Chapter 6. The Big Fish

1. Louis Agassiz to Rose Mayor Agassiz, 2 December 1846, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [66]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 2. Jules Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz, 2 vols. (New York, 1895), 1:275–276, 280. 3. American Journal of Science quoted in Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 118. 4. Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works, 1:277. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, 2 vols. (Boston, 1886), 2:429. 5. Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works, 2:97; Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 73. 6. Ernest Longfellow quoted in Louise Hall Tharp, “Professor of the World’s Wonders,” American Heritage, February 1961, 59. Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:405–406. 7. Benjamin Silliman, Jr., quoted in Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 125. 8. Asa Gray to John Torrey, 4 January 1847, Asa Gray Papers, Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University. 9. Julia Ward Howe, Reminiscences, 1819–1899 (1899; reprint ed., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 182–183. 10. Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 125, 129. Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:431. 11. Louis Agassiz quoted in Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 31. 12. Louis Agassiz quoted in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 1:82. 13. Louis Agassiz’s correspondence with his parents, January–March 1828, in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 1:61–70. 14. Alexander B. Adams, Eternal Quest: The Story of the Great Naturalists (New York: Putnam, 1969), 160; R. Lee, Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (New York, 1833), 266. Louis Agassiz, 304

NOTES TO PAGES 97–106

Essay on Classification, ed. Edward Lurie (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962), xii. 15. Lee, Memoirs, 274–276, 283. William Coleman, “A Note on the Early Relationship Between Georges Cuvier and Louis Agassiz,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 18, no. 1 (1963): 52. Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works, 1:43. 16. Cuvier quoted in Adams, Eternal Quest, 147–148. 17. Cuvier quoted in Toby A. Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades Before Darwin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 151. 18. Humboldt quoted in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 1:188; see also Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works, 1:40–41. 19. Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works, 1:50–51. 20. Louis Agassiz quoted in William James, Louis Agassiz (Cambridge, 1897), 9. 21. The account of Agassiz’s teaching is from Lane Cooper, Louis Agassiz as a Teacher: Illustrative Extracts on His Method of Instruction (Ithaca, NY: Comstock, 1945), 55–61. 22. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966; reprint ed., London: Tavistock, 1982), 132–134. Louis Agassiz quoted in Cooper, Louis Agassiz as a Teacher, 82. 23. Ann Shelby Blum, Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 7–8. Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 81. Marcou, Life, Letters and Works, 1:151. 24. Larry J. Schaaf, “Invention and Discovery: First Images,” in Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science, ed. Ann Thomas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 26–59; “Our Weekly Gossip,” Athenaeum, 20 March 1858, 372; L. L. Boscawen Ibbetson, “Photography,” Journal of the Society of Arts 1 (December 1852): 69. Albert E. Sanders and William D. Anderson, Jr., Natural History Investigations in South Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 66. 25. Agassiz’s letter to Cuvier may be found in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 1:106–108. Cuvier never read these words because the letter, or rather this version of it, was never sent. Charles Darwin quoted in Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2001), 56. Alice Bache Gould, Louis Agassiz (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1901), 32. 26. Louis Agassiz to Rose Mayor Agassiz, 2 December 1846, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [66]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Portions of this letter in translation may be found in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:409–429. 27. Louis Agassiz, manuscript lecture (bAg15.41.11), Archives, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. 305

NOTES TO PAGES 107–115

28. Louis Agassiz, An Introduction to the Study of Natural History (New York, 1847), 25, 53. 29. Agassiz, Introduction, 58. 30. Louis Agassiz, Notice sur la géographie des animaux (Neuchâtel, 1845), 31. 31. James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). As Asa Gray said of Agassiz’s Lowell lectures: “The whole spirit was vastly above that of any Geological course I ever heard, his refutation of Lamarckian or Vestiges views most pointed and repeated.” Gray to Torrey, 24 January 1847, Gray Papers. 32. Louis Agassiz quoted in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 1:389–390. 33. Gray to Torrey, 24 January 1847. 34. Torrey to Gray, 11 January 1847, Historic Letters Collection, Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University. 35. Gray to Torrey, 24 January 1847. Fassena

According to the label on his daguerreotype, Fassena was a carpenter, a Mandingo, and a Hampton slave. He is listed as “Facenah” and given a value of a hundred dollars in the inventory of the estate of Wade Hampton II, which was made in October 1858. The Mandingo (or Mandkina) people are descendants of the great Mali Empire, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries in present-day southern Mali and northern Guinea. Their belief system combined Islam and animism, and their history is preserved through an oral tradition of praise-songs, with the narrative of Sundiata Keita, founder of the Mali Empire, the most famous. Appraisement of Estate of Col. W. Hampton, Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives, Columbia; David C. Conrad, Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande People (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004); Ebrima Colley, Mandinka-English Dictionary (Banjul, Gambia: Peace Corps, 1995). Chapter 7. Truth Before All

1. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia [1787], ed. Thomas Perkins Abernathy (New York: Harper, 1964), 133, 138. 2. George M. Frederickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 6, 170; Barbara Jeanne Fields, “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America,” New Left Review 181 (1990): 101. 306

NOTES TO PAGES 116–122

3. Frederickson, Racism, 6, 170; Fields, “Slavery, Race and Ideology,” 101. 4. Benjamin Banneker, Copy of a Letter from Benjamin Banneker to the Secretary of State, with His Answer (Philadelphia, 1792), 4–5, 8. 5. Banneker, Copy of a Letter, 11–12. 6. Jefferson, Notes, 138. 7. Jules Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz, 2 vols. (New York, 1896), 1:23. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981), 44; Brian Wallis, “Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz’s Slave Daguerreotypes,” American Art 9, no. 2 (1995): 42. 8. Gould, Mismeasure, 44–45. For the original text in French, see Louis Agassiz to Rose Mayor Agassiz, 2 December 1846, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [66]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 9. Louis Agassiz to Samuel Gridley Howe, 9 August 1863, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [150]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 10. Louis Agassiz to Rose Mayor Agassiz, 2 December 1846. 11. Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 16–19. Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage, 1995), 41. 12. Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942; reprint ed., London: Virago, 1986), 48. 13. A Statistical Enquiry into the Condition of the People of Color, of the City and Districts of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1849), 39. Julie Winch, ed., The Elite of Our People: Joseph Willson’s Sketches of Black Upper-Class Life in Antebellum Philadelphia (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 127–128, 168–169; Marie J. Lindhorst, “Sarah Mapps Douglass: The Emergence of an African American Educator/Activist in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia” (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1995), 133–134, 142; Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Norton, 1997), 127–129. 14. John H. Johnson, “The Ancient Civilization of the Ethiopian or African Race” (Philadelphia, 1851; MS, American Negro Historical Society Collection [Box 5Ga], Historical Society of Pennsylvania), 3–4. 15. Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 254–259. Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Peter P. Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the 307

NOTES TO PAGES 122–132

Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 82. 16. George Combe quoted in William Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Towards Race in America, 1815–59 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 26. 17. Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 27. Gould, Mismeasure, 50–72. 18. Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana; or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America (Philadelphia, 1839), 1–3. Samuel George Morton to Josiah C. Nott, 29 January 1850, reproduced in Henry S. Patterson, “Memoir of the Life and Scientific Labors of Samuel George Morton,” ed. Josiah C. Nott and George O. Gliddon, Types of Mankind; or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races (Philadelphia, 1854), l. 19. Samuel Morton, “Account of a Craniological Collection with Remarks on the Classification of Some Families of the Human Race,” Transactions of the American Ethnological Society 2 (1848): 219. 20. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, 2 vols. (Boston, 1886), 2:438. Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works, 2:22–23, 29. Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 125. 21. Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 1:391–392; Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History 7 (1859–61): 271. 22. Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:417. I am assuming that the “great illustrated work” Morton gave to Agassiz was his more recent publication, Crania Aegyptiaca; however, it could have been Crania Americana. 23. Robert W. Gibbes to Samuel George Morton, 4 March 1847, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia. 24. Lester D. Stephens, Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815–1895 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 34, 53, 131. 25. Louis Agassiz quoted in Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 104. 26. Louis Agassiz, “Eulogy on J. E. Holbrook,” Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History 14 (1872): 348. 27. Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 143, 257. Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:497. 28. Lisa Gail Collins, “Historic Retrievals: Confronting Visual Evidence and the Documentation of Truth,” Chicago Art Journal 8, no. 1 (1998): 7–8. 29. Louis Agassiz, An Introduction to the Study of Natural History (New York, 1847), 54. 30. Stephens, Science, Race, and Religion, 94. Thomas Smyth, The Unity of the Human Races Proved to Be the Doctrine of Scripture, Reason and Science, with a Review of the Present Position and Theory of Professor Agassiz (New York, 1850), 166, 170, 355. 308

NOTES TO PAGES 133–137

George Gliddon to Morton, 9 January 1848, Morton Papers. Gliddon also suggested that Agassiz had been presenting his ideas differently in the North. Jack

According to church records, one of Benjamin Franklin Taylor’s slaves by the name of Jack was a member of the First Baptist Church of Columbia. The majority of the congregation from the church’s establishment in 1809 was black, and most of these people were enslaved. Services, however, were held separately from those for white members, and even though the pews on the ground level were unoccupied the black congregation had to sit in the gallery; a city ordinance required that at least one white person be present. The black congregation conducted much of its business independently, including disciplining members. “Watchmen” were appointed to report on the behavior of others. As well as Jack, Renty may also have been a member of the church: published records indicate that a Taylor slave called “Benty” was baptized in 1838—the difference of one letter may result from the name being misunderstood by the church record keeper or a misreading of the original document. The pastor for the period 1855–58 was, coincidentally, John T. Zealy, the cousin of Joseph T. Zealy, the man who made the daguerreotypes for Agassiz. Gregory A. Wills, The First Baptist Church of Columbia, South Carolina, 1809 to 2002 (Bentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2003), 57–59, 99–122, 290, 293. Chapter 8. Storm, Blood, and Fire

1. “Horrid Murder!” Camden [SC] Journal, 3 August 1842. 2. For biographical information on Daniel McCaskill, see Dixie McCaskill and Andy McCaskill, The McCaskill/MacAskill Family, 1770–1984 (Irmo, SC: D. McCaskill, 1984), 134–136; Singleton Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. For McCaskill’s pay, see his receipts, Singleton Family Papers; these may be compared with the pay received by other overseers, as noted in Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South, ed. John David Smith (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 310–312. “Horrid Murder!” 3. Richard Singleton to Robert Deveaux, 16 August 1842, Singleton Family Papers, Library of Congress. 4. Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (1853; reprint ed., New York: Dover, 1970), 224. See also Phillips, Life and Labor, 310. “Extract from Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies, by a Professional Planter (London, 1803), part I, chapter i,” in Plantation and Frontier Documents: 1649– 1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Ante-Bellum South, ed. Ulrich B. 309

NOTES TO PAGES 137–140

Phillips (Cleveland: Clark, 1909), 2:128. For the Singleton’s reputation for hiring cruel overseers, see James Chesnut to Richard Singleton, 17 July 1834, James Chesnut Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; Jacob Stroyer, My Life in the South (Salem, NC, 1885), 57–58. 5. Perceval Reniers, The Springs of Virginia: Life, Love, and Death at the Waters, 1775–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 54; Wade Hampton II to Singleton, 14 August 1842, Richard Singleton Collection, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University; Singleton to Robert Deveaux, 16 August 1842, Singleton Family Papers, Library of Congress. For Gibbes’s care of the slaves at Big Lake, see Robert W. Gibbes, bill for the care of slaves for 1839, 15 May 1840, and receipt for the care of slaves for 1841, 21 April 1842, Singleton Family Papers, Wilson Library; Robert W. Gibbes, “Southern Slave Life,” DeBow’s Review 24, no. 4 (1858): 321. Singleton to Deveaux, 16 August 1842. 6. Singleton to Deveaux, 16 August 1842. 7. B. F. Taylor to Singleton, 1 August 1842, Richard Singleton Papers, South Caroliniana Library. 8. B. F. Taylor praised the crop of 1842 as “the best we have had for many years.” Taylor to Singleton, 1 August 1842, Richard Singleton Papers, South Caroliniana Library. Hampton to Singleton, 21 August 1842, Hampton Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library; Hampton to [John C. Singleton?], 1 September 1842, in Charles E. Cauthen, ed., Family Letters of the Three Wade Hamptons, 1782–1901 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953), 30–31. 9. Hampton to [John C. Singleton?], 1 September 1842, Cauthen, Family Letters, 30–31. 10. Mathew R. Singleton to Deveaux, 30 August 1842, Singleton-Deveaux Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library. 11. Hampton to [John C. Singleton?], 1 September 1842, in Cauthen, Family Letters, 30–31; Deveaux to Richard Singleton, 7 September 1842, Singleton Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library; Richard Singleton to Deveaux, 20 September 1842, Singleton Family Papers, Library of Congress. 12. John P. Richardson to Richard Singleton, 10 November 1842, and James D. Treadwell to Richard Singleton, 31 December 1842, Singleton Family Papers, Wilson Library. 13. Hampton to John Singleton, 1 September 1842, in Cauthen, Family Letters, 30– 32. Julian A. Selby, Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscences of Columbia, South Carolina (Columbia: Bryan, 1905), 63. 14. Selby, Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscences, 63. Selby claims that three 310

NOTES TO PAGES 140–144

people were executed, which may be an error of memory, or perhaps the accused of some other crime was also hung on that day. 15. Stroyer, My Life in the South, 57–58. 16. Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Progress,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 3: 1855–63, ed. John W Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 465. 17. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia [1784], ed. Thomas Perkins Abernathy (New York: Harper, 1964), 132–133. 18. Alexander Hewatt quoted in Mark M. Smith, ed., Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 33. “A Ranger’s Report of Travels with General Oglethorpe, 1739–1742,” in Smith, Stono, 8. 19. An Account of the Late Intended Insurrection Among a Portion of the Blacks of This City (Charleston, SC, 1822), 4. 20. David Robertson, Denmark Vesey: The Buried Story of America’s Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It (New York: Random House, 2000), 78–79. 21. For a convincing, if controversial, argument that the extent of the plot was grossly exaggerated, see Richard C. Wade, “The Vesey Plot: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Southern History 30, no. 3 (1964): 143–161. See also Michael P. Johnson, “Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 58 (2001): 915–976; and the responses in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59 (2002). 22. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (1943; reprint ed., New York: International, 1974), 114–139; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 402–434. Mary Chesnut quoted in C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 114, 794. 23. Daniel Goddard, a former slave, quoted in George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Volume 2: South Carolina Narratives, Parts 1 and 2 (1941; reprint ed., Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973), part 2, 150. Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550–1812 (Williamsburg: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 391. 24. “A Colored American,” in The Late Contemplated Insurrection in Charleston, S.C., with the Execution of Thirty-Six of the Patriots (New York, 1850), 9. 25. Robertson, Denmark Vesey, 50–51; Wade, “Vesey Plot,” 159. 26. Whitefoord Smith to Hampton, 6 September 1842, in Cauthen, Family Letters, 32–3. Hampton was also approached by the Methodist minister the Rev. William Capers, with whom he became good friends. He eventually built a church for slaves on his property 311

NOTES TO PAGES 144–150

and purchased a copy of Capers’s catechism. Virginia G. Meynard, The Venturers: the Hampton, Harrison, and Earle Families of Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1981), 169. For the prevalence of white-controlled churches for slaves in the Columbia region during the 1840s and 1850s, see Gibbes, “Southern Slave Life,” 323; Luther P. Jackson, “Religious Instruction of Negroes, 1830–1860, with Special Reference to South Carolina,” Journal of Negro History 15, no. 1 (1930): 72–114; The Religious Instruction of Our Colored Population: A Pastoral Letter from the Presbytery of Tombeckbee [Starkville, MS] to the Churches of People Under Its Care (Columbia, 1859). William Curtis quoted in Gregory A. Wills, The First Baptist Church of Columbia, South Carolina, 1809 to 2002 (Bentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2003), 105. 27. “Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Other Slaves,” in Smith, Stono, 20–27. 28. David Duncan Wallace, South Carolina, a Short History, 1520–1948 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1961), 436; see also Bernard E. Powers, Jr., Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994), 32. 29. Aptheker, Slave Revolts, 296. 30. Jeremiah Cobb quoted in Aptheker, Slave Revolts, 302. 31. Aptheker, Slave Revolts, 316. 32. Thomas Roderick Dew, “The Abolition of Negro Slavery,” in The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830–1860, ed. Drew Gilpin Faust (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 67–68. 33. Newspapers quoted in Louis P. Masur, “Nat Turner and Sectional Crisis,” in Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, ed. Kenneth S. Greenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 152. 34. Thomas Jefferson quoted in Jordan, White Over Black, 347. 35. Liberator, 1 January 1831. Benjamin Lundy quoted in Bruce Dain, A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 102. 36. Liberator, 3 September 1831. 37. David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. Peter P. Hinks (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 12, 29, 32. 38. Walker, Appeal, 42, 27. Peter P. Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 160–169. 39. Frederick Douglass, “Our Destiny Is Largely in Our Own Hands,” in The Frederick 312

NOTES TO PAGES 151–162

Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 5: 1881–95, ed. John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 69. James Forten, Jr., An Address Delivered Before the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, on the Evening of the 14th of April, 1836 (Philadelphia, 1836), 3–16. 40. Robert Purvis to Henry Clarke Wright, 22 August 1842, in The Black Abolitionist Papers, Volume 3: The United States, 1830–1846, ed. Peter C. Ripley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 389. 41. Dain, Hideous Monster, 177–178; George R. Price and James Brewer Stewart, “Hosea Easton and the Agony of Race,” in To Heal the Scourge of Prejudice: The Life and Writings of Hosea Easton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 21–24. 42. Hosea Easton, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States; and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them: With a Sermon on the Duty of the Church to Them (Boston, 1837), reprinted in Price and Stewart, To Heal the Scourge of Prejudice, 105–106. 43. Easton, Treatise, 67. 44. Easton, Treatise, 69. 45. Easton, Treatise, 74. 46. Easton, Treatise, 107, 87. 47. Dain, Hideous Monster, 170. Chapter 9. A Positive Good

1. James Henry Hammond, Remarks of Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, on the Question of Receiving Petitions for the Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia (Washington, DC, 1836), 4, 11–17; Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 170. 2. Thomas Roderick Dew, “Abolition of Negro Slavery,” in The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830–1860, ed. Drew Gilpin Faust (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 58. 3. John Calhoun quoted in George M. Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 47. 4. Faust, James Henry Hammond, 181. 5. Carol Bleser, ed., The Hammonds of Redcliffe (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), 3; Faust, James Henry Hammond, 7–9. 6. Daniel Walker Hollis, University of South Carolina, Volume 1: South Carolina College (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1951–56), 67. 313

NOTES TO PAGES 163–177

7. A visitor quoted in Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 14. John Hooker and faculty minutes of the college quoted in Ronald Edward Bridwell, “The South’s Wealthiest Planter: Wade Hampton I of South Carolina, 1754–1835” (PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 1980), 559. Maximilian LaBorde, History of the South Carolina College (Charleston, SC, 1874), 190. 8. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 4–5. 9. A student quoted in Hollis, University of South Carolina, 94. 10. Charles Caldwell, The Autobiography of Charles Caldwell, M.D., ed. Harriot W. Warner (1855; reprint ed., New York: DaCapo, 1968), 338. 11. Thomas Cooper quoted in Dumas Malone, The Public Life of Thomas Cooper, 1783–1839 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926), 309. 12. Elisha Hammond quoted in Faust, James Henry Hammond, 30. 13. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 9. James Henry Hammond quoted in Faust, James Henry Hammond, 313. 14. James Henry Hammond quoted in Faust, James Henry Hammond, 9, 181. 15. James Henry Hammond quoted in Faust, James Henry Hammond, 209. 16. Faust, James Henry Hammond, 209. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 62. 17. A Southern lady quoted in C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 346. 18. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 65. Josiah Nott quoted in Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile, 66. 19. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 36–37. David James McCord, “Life of a Negro Slave,” Southern Quarterly Review 23 (January 1853): 206. 20. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 37. 21. “The Daguerreotype,” Charleston Courier, 19 February 1841. 22. Quoted in Harvey Teal, Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840–1940 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), 9. 23. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 93. 24. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 36, 96. Chapter 10. Niggerology

1. Virginia G. Meynard, The Venturers: The Hampton, Harrison, and Earle Families of Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1981), 172–173. 314

NOTES TO PAGES 178–186

2. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 172–175; Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 241–245. 3. James Henry Hammond to Lewis Tappan, 8 April, 6 September 1845; Tappan to Hammond, 25 March, 6 June, 23 July, 3 November 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers, Library of Congress. 4. Josiah C. Nott to Hammond, 4 September 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers. 5. Nott to Ephraim G. Squier, 26 March 1851, Ephraim G. Squier Papers, Library of Congress. 6. Nott to Hammond, 12 August 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers; Nott to Hammond, 4 September 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers; Nott to Squier, 14 February 1849, Ephraim G. Squier Papers. 7. Thomas Cooper quoted in Dumas Malone, The Public Life of Thomas Cooper, 1783–1839 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926), 287. “Letters of Dr. Thomas Cooper, 1825–1832,” American Historical Review, 16 March 1826, 729. 8. Thomas Cooper quoted in Josiah C. Nott and George O. Gliddon, eds., Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races (Philadelphia, 1854), 55. Cooper is called an “infidel” in Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 16. 9. Many whites represented by Louis Agassiz to Samuel Gridley Howe, 9 August 1863, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [150]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 10. Josiah C. Nott, “The Mulatto a Hybrid: Probable Extermination of the Two Races If the Whites and Blacks Are Allowed to Intermarry,” American Journal of Medical Sciences 6 (1843): 253–254. 11. Josiah C. Nott, Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races (Mobile, AL, 1844), 3–7, 38. 12. For the clergy’s response see Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile, 93; Nott to Hammond, 10 July 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers. Nott to Hammond, 25 July 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers. Nott to Samuel George Morton, 15 October 1844, 20 February 1845, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia. 13. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 149. James Henry Hammond quoted in Faust, James Henry Hammond, 278. 14. James Henry Hammond, “Letter to an English Abolitionist,” in The Ideology of 315

NOTES TO PAGES 186–198

Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830–1860, ed. Drew Gilpin Faust (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 170, 200–203. 15. Hammond to Nott, 3 August 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers. 16. Hammond to Nott, 3 August 1845; Nott to Hammond, 25 July 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers. 17. Hammond, “Letter to an English Abolitionist,” 178, 186–188, 192. 18. James Henry Hammond quoted in Faust, James Henry Hammond, 73, 92, 105. 19. Hammond, “Letter to an English Abolitionist,” 182–183. 20. Faust, James Henry Hammond, 87–88. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 19. 21. Faust, James Henry Hammond, 317–319. Bleser, Secret and Sacred, 19. 22. Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 44, 51, 77, 148. 23. Sander L. Gilman, “The Hottentot and the Prostitute: Towards an Iconography of Female Sexuality,” in Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 83. Chapter 11. Opposite Views

1. Josiah C. Nott and George O. Gliddon, eds., Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races (Philadelphia, 1854), 50–52; Thomas E. Will, “The American School of Ethnology: Science and Scripture in the Proslavery Argument,” Southern Historian 19 (1998): 25; William A. Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815–59 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 62; Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 95. 2. Lydia Marie Child, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (New York, 1836), 148. Democratic Review 26 (April 1850): 328. 3. John Bachman, Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race on the Principles of Science (Charleston, SC, 1850), 36. [John Bachman], “To the Editor of the Mercury,” Charleston Mercury, 26 January 1843. 4. Bachman, Unity of the Human Race, 3. Talk in town quoted from Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile, 113. 5. Bachman, Unity of the Human Race, 17–19, 29. 6. Lester D. Stephens, Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815–1895 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 4, 14, 166. Bachman, Unity of the Human Race, 8.

316

NOTES TO PAGES 199–204

7. Daniel Alexander Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years (Nashville, TN, 1888), 24. 8. Bernard E. Powers, Jr., Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994), 54. 9. Bachman, Unity of the Human Race, 156–158. 10. Bachman, Unity of the Human Race, 20, 231, 237. 11. John Bachman quoted in Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 125. 12. Josiah C. Nott to Samuel George Morton, 26 May 1850, 6 April 1851, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia. 13. Bachman, Unity of the Human Race, 119. 14. Samuel G. Morton, “Some Remarks on the Value of the Word Species in Zoology,” Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 5 (1850): 81–82. Samuel G. Morton, “Additional Observations on the Antiquity of Some Races of Dogs,” Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 5 (1850): 85–89. Louis Agassiz quoted in Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 141. 15. Louis Agassiz quoted in Mary Pickard Winsor, “Louis Agassiz and the Species Question,” in Studies in the History of Biology, ed. William Coleman and Camille Limoges (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 99. 16. John Bachman, “A Reply to the Letter of Samuel George Morton, MD, on the Question of Hybridity in Animals, Considered in Reference to the Unity of the Human Species,” Charleston Medical Journal and Review 5, no. 4 (July 1850): 659. 17. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community: The American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848–1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 105. Maria Mitchell quoted in Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, “Creating a Forum for Science: AAAS in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Establishment of Science in America: 150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ed. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Michael M. Sokal, and Bruce V. Lewenstein (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 15–16. Maria Mitchell was the first woman member of the AAAS. 18. Carl R. Lounsbury, From Statehouse to Courthouse: An Architectural History of South Carolina’s Colonial Capital and Charleston County Courthouse (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 57, 60–63; Albert E. Sanders and William D. Anderson, Jr., Natural History Investigations in South Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 27. 19. Josiah C. Nott, “An Examination of the Physical History of the Jews, in Its Bearings on the Question of the Unity of the Races,” in American Association for the

317

NOTES TO PAGES 205–211

Advancement of Science [AAAS], Proceedings of the Third Meeting, Held at Charleston, SC, March 1850 (Charleston, SC, 1850), 98, 104. 20. AAAS, Proceedings, 106–107; W., “Fifth Day’s Proceedings of the Scientific Association at Charleston,” Boston Daily Evening Traveller, 25 March 1850. 21. Tri-Weekly South Carolinian, 2, 6 April 1850; Charleston Courier, 18 March 1850. Louis Agassiz quoted in William Dallam Armes, ed., The Autobiography of Joseph Le Conte (New York: Appleton, 1903), 140. Alexander Bache quoted in Stanton, Leopard’s Spots, 154. 22. Bachman, Unity of the Human Race, 35–36. The passage is taken from Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould, Principles of Zoology: Part 1, Comparative Physiology (Boston, 1848), 180. 23. Bachman, “Reply,” 658. W., “Fifth Day’s Proceedings.” 24. Thomas Smyth, The Unity of the Human Races Proved to Be the Doctrine of Scripture, Reason, and Science; With a Review of the Present Position and Theory of Professor Agassiz (New York, 1850), 166–170. 25. W., “Fifth Day’s Proceedings.” 26. Nott to Morton, 4 May 1850, Samuel George Morton Papers. 27. “The Scientific Meeting at Charleston, SC,” Boston Daily Evening Traveller, 25 March 1850. 28. H. Y., “Prof. Agassiz and the Bible,” Boston Daily Evening Traveller, 27 March 1850. 29. Editorial note to “Prof. Agassiz and the Bible,” Boston Daily Evening Traveller, 27 March 1850. 30. Elizabeth Cabot Cary to Louis Agassiz, undated letter [March 1850?] (A.A26.1849–50.2), Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. 31. Louise Hall Tharp, Adventurous Alliance: The Story of the Agassiz Family of Boston (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), 5–6. 32. Tharp, Adventurous Alliance, 16–18, 24–25, 40. 33. Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz, a Life in Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 153–160. 34. Cary to Agassiz, undated letter [March 1850?] (A.A26.1849–50.4), Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz Papers. 35. Cary to Agassiz, undated letter [March 1850?] (A.A26.1849–50.6), Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz Papers. 36. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz to [Mrs. Thomas Cary?], 15 April 1851–2 [?], Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz Papers. 318

NOTES TO PAGES 211–218

37. Cary to Louis Agassiz, undated letter [March 1850?] (A.A26.1849–50.6), Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz Papers. Chapter 12. Investigations

1. James Stirling, Letters from the Slave States (1857; reprint ed., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 263. See also Eugene Alvarez, Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads, 1828–1860 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1974), 35, 153. 2. John Hammond Moore, Columbia and Richland County: A South Carolina Community, 1740–1990 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 137; Alvarez, Antebellum Railroads, 35. 3. Louis Agassiz to John Fries Frazer, 27 March 1850, John Fries Frazer Papers, American Philosophical Society. Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz, a Life in Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 73. 4. Lurie, Louis Agassiz, 35, 44, 73, 345–346. 5. For Agassiz’s canceled trips, see Charleston Courier, 24 December 1847; and Robert W. Gibbes to Samuel George Morton, 14 May 1849, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia. Agassiz to Harriott Holbrook, 22 March 1850, Louis Agassiz Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. 6. Thomas E. Bauskett to his mother, 26 March 1850, Bauskett Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. 7. Agassiz to Frazer, 27 March 1850. 8. 1850 census information for Richland County, South Carolina, retrieved from Historical Census Browser, University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center: http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (London: Wildwood, 1976), 23–24. Ellie Reichlin believed that advance planning for Agassiz to examine African slaves was required: “The African-born sample was not only unrepresentative of the majority of Southern slaves. It was also one which by its special nature required advance planning and an intimate knowledge of local plantations to assemble. This suggests that Gibbes and Agassiz had defined the objectives of the examinations well before the Columbia visit took place, enabling Gibbes to locate suitable subjects before Agassiz’s arrival.” Elinor T. Reichlin, “Survivors of a Painful Epoch: Six Rare Pre–Civil War Daguerreotypes of Southern Slaves” (typescript, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University), 13. As will be apparent in this chapter, I disagree with this assessment on grounds that Gibbes knew the black population well and knew the white planters even better. 319

NOTES TO PAGES 218–220

9. “I took him to several plantations where he saw Ebo, Foulah, Gullah, Guinea, Coromantee, Mandringo and Congo negroes,” Gibbes wrote to Morton. Among the people who were photographed by Zealy, none were identified as being Ebo (Ibo, or Igbo) or Coromantee, suggesting that Agassiz examined more people than were photographed or that some photographs have now been lost. Gibbes to Morton, 31 March 1850, Samuel George Morton Papers. On the “natural history method,” see Elizabeth Agassiz and Louis Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (Boston, 1875), 529; and Mary P. Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 16. 10. Louis Agassiz, “The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races,” Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany 49 (July 1850): 125. Agassiz later acknowledged that “species cannot always be identified at first sight, that it may require a long time and patient investigations to ascertain their natural limits.” Despite this remark, however, he never seems to have lost faith in his ability to discern type at a glance. Louis Agassiz, Essay on Classification [1859], ed. Edward Lurie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 178. 11. John Bachman, Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race on the Principles of Science (Charleston, SC, 1850), 215. On page 231, however, Bachman also wrote: “If we select the extremes of any of the races, we will see a wide difference; but if we look among individual forms we will, in many instances, find it difficult to determine to which race they belong.” Henry S. Patterson, “Memoir of the Life and Scientific Labors of Samuel George Morton,” in Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, ed. Josiah C. Nott and George O. Gliddon (Philadelphia, 1854), xxxviii. 12. “Extract from Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies, by a Professional Planter (London, 1803), part I, chapter i,” in Plantation and Frontier Documents: 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Ante-Bellum South, ed. Ulrich B. Phillips, 2 vols. (Cleveland: Clark, 1909), 2:127. Josiah Nott quoted in Reichlin, “Survivors,” 14. 13. Lewis R. Gibbes, “To R. Yeadon, Esq.,” Charleston Courier, 2 March 1843. See also Michael Foucault on the development of the anatomo-clinical gaze in The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception [1963], trans. A. M. Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1997), 115. Fifteen years after his experience in Columbia, while in Brazil, Agassiz had difficulty identifying racial types and hybrids because there color and status were not linked to form a simple ideological split of black/slave and white/master, as was the case in the United States. This led to errors and conflicts in classifying human types. Nancy Leys Stepan notes that the records of the Brazil trip “are full of examples of the mistakes they 320

NOTES TO PAGES 220–221

made in their pursuit of ‘pure’ Indians and other racial types, and especially in interpreting the social positions or racial ancestries of mixed-race individuals.” Consequently, with no secure classificatory system, the photos Agassiz made in Brazil “seem to float outside the framework of racial meaning. Unadorned by verbal or other markers external to the images themselves, the photographs could not confirm the racial ‘types,’ when the classificatory grid of race was itself unknown.” Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2001), 105. 14. Michael Shortland, “Skin Deep: Barthes, Lavater and the Legible Body,” Economy and Society 14, no. 3 (1985): 296. Samuel A. Cartwright, “Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 7 (May 1851): 691–715; Kenneth Kiple and Virginia Kiple, “The African Connection: Slavery, Disease and Racism,” Phylon 41, no. 3 (1980): 214–216. Louis Agassiz, “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Man,” in Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, ed. Josiah C. Nott and George O. Gliddon (Philadelphia, 1854), lxxv, 71. For Morton’s interest in collecting crania, see Patterson, “Memoir,” xxix. 15. The literature on Baartman is extensive. See, for example, Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Gender, Race, and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of ‘Hottentot’ Women in Europe, 1815–1817,” in Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture, ed. Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 19–48; Sander L. Gilman, “The Hottentot and the Prostitute: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality,” in Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 76–108; Percival R. Kirby, “The Hottentot Venus,” Africana Notes and News 6, no. 3 (1949): 55–62, 108; Percival R. Kirby, “More About the Hottentot Venus,” Africana Notes and News 10 (1953): 124–134. For reports on the examination and dissection of Saartjie Baartman, see Henri de Blainville, “Sur une femme de la race hottentote,” Bulletin des Sciences par la Société Philomathique de Paris (1816): 183–190; Georges Cuvier, “Faites sure le cadavre d’un femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentote,” Memoires du Musée d’Histoire Naturelle 3 (1817): 259–274. 16. See, for example, Edward B. Turnipseed, “Some Facts in Regard to the Anatomical Differences Between the Negro and the White Races,” American Journal of Obstetrics 10 (1877): 32–33; C. H. Fort, “Some Corroborative Facts in Regard to the Anatomical Difference Between the Negro and White Races,” American Journal of Obstetrics 10 (1877): 258–259; and W. H. Flower and James Murie, “Account of the Dissection of a Bushwoman,” Journal of Anatomy and Physiology 1 (1867): 189–208. All are cited in Gilman, 321

NOTES TO PAGES 221–224

“The Hottentot and the Prostitute,” 88–89. The two doctors quoted are Flower and Murie, “Dissection of a Bushwoman,” 189. 17. For Agassiz’s attempt to obtain the brain of a black man, see Allen B. Green to St. Julien Ravenel, 28 June 1850, Harriott Rutledge Ravenel Papers, South Carolina Historical Society; Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 415. The Green letter also refers to the daguerreotypes of slaves. Josiah C. Nott to James Henry Hammond, 12 August 1845, James Henry Hammond Papers, Library of Congress. Hosea Easton, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States; and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them: With a Sermon on the Duty of the Church to Them (Boston, 1837), reprinted in George R. Price and James Brewer Stewart, To Heal the Scourge of Prejudice: The Life and Writings of Hosea Easton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 115. W. Montague Cobb, the twentieth-century black anatomist, quoted in Todd L. Savitt, “The Use of Blacks for Medical Experimentation and Demonstration in the Old South,” Journal of Southern History 48, no. 3 (1982): 332, 4n. 18. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966; London: Tavistock, 1982), xx. 19. Photographic Art-Journal 2 (December 1851); “Daguerrean Rooms,” Daily South Carolinian, 15 November 1851. This description of Zealy’s studio does not pertain to the space he occupied when he photographed the slaves but one he occupied subsequently. In November 1850, Zealy moved his studio from Centre Range, a block on Main Street not yet identified, to Granite Range, which was located on the west side of Main (also called Richardson) Street between Taylor and Plain (now Hampton) Streets, where the Columbia Museum of Art is currently located. Zealy’s reputation is noted in Louis Foster Perrin to his sister, 16 October 1856, James Rion McKissick Collection, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. 20. Photographic Art-Journal, December 1851, 376–377; April 1852, 257; October 1851, 255–256. 21. South Carolinian, 17 October 1846, 4 February 1848. The first gallery to open in Columbia was that of J. Hervey, opened 15 February 1842. Zealy’s gallery, though not opened until 1846, remained open until it was destroyed along with most of Columbia in 1865 and was a recognized establishment in the city throughout its twenty years. See Harvey Teal, Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840–1940 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), 27, 28–32, 99. Clare M. McCall, A History of Richland Lodge No. 39 Ancient Free Masons of South Carolina at Columbia, South Carolina (Columbia, SC: Richland Lodge No. 39, 1991), 178; United States Census Schedule 2 (Slave Schedule) for the City of Columbia, Richland County, South Carolina, 1860; Rental 322

NOTES TO PAGES 225–234

agreement dated 9 November 1864 between R. W. Gibbes and S. G. Jamieson, Robert W. Gibbes Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. 22. Gibbes to Morton, 10 April 1850, Samuel George Morton Papers. This image is unknown; it probably entered Gibbes collection of photographs of famous scientists, which was destroyed in 1865 when Columbia was sacked and burned while occupied by the Union Army. 23. Albert Sands Southworth quoted in Beaumont Newhall, The Daguerreotype in America (New York: Dover, 1976), 44. 24. This denuding was not just of clothes but also of individual and social identity. Clothing is one of the many ways a person may express individuality and also signal his or her relation to a given society. Dress indicates status and gender but also potentially profession and of course ethnicity. The absence of clothing, in contrast, suggests a complete lack of civilization. Forced to remove their clothing, Delia and Jack were stripped of their identity and in the process transformed into primitives. This furthered Agassiz’s classificatory project. See Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, 99. 25. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove, 1967), 116. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk [1903], ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Bantam, 1989), 3. 26. Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 8. 27. Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth (New York: Random House, 2000), 236. 28. Gibbes to Morton, 31 March 1850, Samuel George Morton Papers. On the same day Gibbes wrote a similar letter to Augustus A. Gould; see Gibbes to Augustus A. Gould, 31 March 1850, Augustus Addison Gould Papers (MS AM 1210 [283]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Chapter 13. Evidence

1. H., “Jenny Lind’s Concert,” Boston Daily Evening Traveller, 28 September 1850; “Jenny Lind,” Boston Courier, 28 September 1850. 2. Two weeks earlier, on 12 September, Agassiz apparently hosted the group, though no subject is recorded, so it may be that this meeting had been postponed. On the night previous, however, the club was “With Dr Beck ”—this was Charles Beck, a professor of Latin—but again no subject is noted, so possibly this meeting was moved back a day. Cambridge Scientific Club, 1842–1985. Records of meetings, Typescript of Meeting Notes, 1842; September 1846–March 1909; Subjects of Papers Read at Meetings: Whose Papers and When They Were Read; “Meeting Notes, 10 September 1846–28 April 323

NOTES TO PAGES 234–239

1859; Meeting Notes, 14 March 1867–23 April 1868 (Mr. Lovering), HUD 3257, box 1, Harvard University Archives, Courtesy of the Harvard University Archives. See also Records of Cambridge Scientific Club, 1842–1985, General information about the Cambridge Scientific Club, Notes on the history of the Club compiled by Nathan Pusey, 1969, HUD 3257, box 1, Harvard University Archives, Courtesy of the Harvard University Archives. 3. “The Unity of the Human Race,” Boston Daily Evening Traveller, 2 October 1850; “Daguerreotypes and Anatomy,” Tri-Weekly South Carolinian, 10 October 1850. 4. “Jenny Lind,” Boston Courier, 28 September 1850. Louis Agassiz quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981), 44–45. For the original text in French, see Louis Agassiz to Rose Mayor Agassiz, 2 December 1846, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [66]), Houghton Library, Harvard University. 5. Elizabeth Cabot Cary to Louis Agassiz, undated letters [March 1850?] (A.A26.1849–50.4 and A.A26.1849–50.5), Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. 6. Louise Hall Tharp, Adventurous Alliance: The Story of the Agassiz Family of Boston (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), 112. 7. John Torrey to Asa Gray, 27 August 1850, Asa Gray Papers, Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University. Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography Memories and Experiences, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, 1904), 1:88. 8. Louis Agassiz, “Contemplations of God in the Kosmos,” Christian Examiner 50 (January 1851): 4. 9. Louis Agassiz, “Geographical Distribution of Animals,” Christian Examiner 48 (March 1850): 183–184. 10. Gould, Mismeasure, 44–45. 11. Louis Agassiz, “The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races,” Christian Examiner 48 (July 1850): 113, 135. 12. Agassiz, “Diversity of Origin,” 117–118. 13. Agassiz, “Diversity of Origin,” 125. Louis Agassiz, “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and the Relation to the Different Types of Man,” in Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, ed. Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, (Philadelphia, 1850), lxxiv–lxxv. The value of examining the women is less obvious but is generally understood to have been for the purpose of determining whether being born on a different continent affected the indicators of original type. 324

NOTES TO PAGES 240–247

14. Agassiz, “Diversity of Origin,” 110, 141–142. 15. Lisa Gail Collins, “Historic Retrievals: Confronting Visual Evidence and the Documentation of Truth,” Chicago Art Journal 8 (Spring 1998): 9. 16. Peter D. Osborn, Travelling Light: Photography, Travel and Visual Culture (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000), 22; Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 132–151; Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 12–13. 17. Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz, a Life in Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 206; Gwyniera Isaac, “Louis Agassiz’s Photographs in Brazil: Separate Creation,” History of Photography 21, no. 1 (1997): 6–7. 18. David Green, “Veins of Resemblance: Photography and Eugenics,” Oxford Art Journal 7, no. 2 (1985): 4. 19. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 4 (1848): 5–6. See also Arthur B. Stout, Woolcott Gibbs, John A. Smith, John L. Le Conte, and Theo. C. Tellkampf, Report Upon an Individual of the Bushman Tribe of Hottentots Brought from the Cape of Good Hope, by Mr. Chase, United States Consul at the Cape; by the Committee of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York (New York, 1848); “Annual Meeting of the Colored Orphan Asylum,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, 22 February 1849; Bruce Dain, Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 243–245. 20. “A White Slave from Virginia,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 9, 16 March 1855. Provincial Freeman, Toronto, 15 April 1854. 21. The National Era (Washington, DC), 18 January 1855. 22. Stefan Richter, The Art of the Daguerreotype (London: Viking, 1989), 17. For a discussion on, among other things, the donning and removing of clothing with respect to colonialism, see David G. Tomas, Transcultural Space and Transcultural Beings (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), 77. 23. Stewart, On Longing, 108, 132–133. Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2001), 89. 24. Hilton Als, “GWTW,” in Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, ed. James Allen, Hilton Als, John Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms, 2007), 40. 25. Elinor T. Reichlin, “Survivors of a Painful Epoch: Six Rare Pre–Civil War Daguerreotypes of Southern Slaves” (typescript, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University), 2–3. 325

NOTES TO PAGES 247–255

26. Robert W. Gibbes to Samuel George Morton, 17 June 1850, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia. 27. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952; reprint ed., London: Penguin, 1999), 7. 28. Stewart, On Longing, 150–151. 29. Louis Rodolphe Agassiz to Louis Agassiz, 21 February 1828, in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 1:65. Josiah C. Nott to Morton, 4 May 1850, Samuel George Morton Papers; Nott to Ephraim G. Squier, 4 May 1850, Ephraim G. Squier Papers, Library of Congress. Ann Shelby Blum, Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 6–8. 30. Agassiz, “Sketch of the Natural Provinces,” lxxiv–lxxv. E. H. Gombrich in Blum, Picturing Nature, 12. 31. W. H. Wesley, “On the Iconography of the Skull,” Memoires Read Before the Anthropological Society of London 2 (1865–1866): 193–194. Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942; reprint ed., London: Virago, 1986) 323. 32. Louis Agassiz quoted in Blum, Picturing Nature, 265. Chapter 14. Scientific Moonshine

1. Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography Memories and Experiences, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, 1904), 1:188–190. 2. American Whig Review 12 (December 1850): 567. For the treatment of ethnology see, for example, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt, Progressive Petticoats, or, Dressed to Death: An Autobiography of a Married Man (New York, 1874), 168; B. P. Shillaber, Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and Others of the Family (New York, 1854), 245; David Ross Locke, The Struggles (Social, Financial and Political) of Petroleum V. Nasby (Boston, 1872); S. Annie Frost, “Acting Charades: Strategem,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 92 (March 1861); and George Wood, Modern Pilgrims: Showing the Improvements in Travel, and the Newest Methods of Reaching the Celestial City, Volume 1 (Boston, 1855). Josiah Clark Nott, “Diversity of the Human Race,” DeBow’s Review 2, no. 2 (1851): 115. 3. Joseph Dalton Hooker quoted in Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz, a Life in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 269. J. H. Van-Evrie, Negroes and Negro Slavery; Introductory Chapter: Causes of Popular Delusion on the Subject (Washington, DC, 1853), 1. Jules Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz, 2 vols. (New York, 1895), 2:44–45. George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on AfroAmerican Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 86. 4. Benjamin C. Howard, Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United 326

NOTES TO PAGES 256–261

States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott vs. John F. A. Sandford, December Term, 1856 (Washington, DC, 1857), 10–13. Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 97. 5. John Campbell, Negro-Mania (Philadelphia, 1851), 4–5. 6. Trades of the Colored People (Philadelphia, 1838), 3. Philadelphia Sun, 1, 3 March 1851. 7. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s manuscript of Johnson’s speech does not discuss the Egyptians, except incidentally. The Philadelphia Sun’s advertisement and John Campbell, however, make it clear that this was the focus of his lecture. See Philadelphia Sun, 1 3 March 1851; and Campbell, Negro-Mania, 5. 8. John H. Johnson, “The Ancient Civilization of the Ethiopian or African Race” (Philadelphia, 1851; MS, American Negro Historical Society Collection [Box 5Ga], Historical Society of Pennsylvania), 11–19. 9. Campbell, Negro-Mania, 6, 546. Campbell’s copy of Negro-Mania is held by the Library Company of Philadelphia. 10. North Star, 23 March 1849; Bruce Dain, A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 112–114. 11. Josiah Clark Nott and George O. Gliddon, eds., Types of Mankind; or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races (Philadelphia, 1854), x. Louis Agassiz to James Dwight Dana, 18 July 1856, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 12. Louis Agassiz quoted in Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, 2 vols. (Boston, 1886), 2:498–499. Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 414–415, 444. 13. C. M. T., “The Diversity and Origin of Human Races,” Southern Quarterly Review 20 (October 1851): 458. Josiah C. Nott to Samuel George Morton, 25 July 1850, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia. See also Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, xlvii. Nott to Ephraim G. Squier, 4 May 1850, Ephraim G. Squier Papers, Library of Congress. 14. Nott to Robert W. Gibbes, 14 January 1853, Dreer Collection Physicians, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 15. Nott to Squier, 24 October 1854, Ephraim G. Squier Papers. 16. Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 178, 197. 17. Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 49, 79. 327

NOTES TO PAGES 261–274

18. Louis Agassiz, “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Man,” in Types of Mankind, ed. Nott and Gliddon, lxxiii–lxxv. 19. Frederick Douglass, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 2: 1847–54, ed. John W. Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 500. 20. Douglass, “Claims of the Negro,” 238; “American Anti-Slavery Society,” North Star, 16 May 1850. Audrey McCluskey and John McCluskey, “Frederick Douglass on Ethnology: A Commencement Address at Western Reserve College, 1854,” Negro History Bulletin 40 (September–October 1977): 747. 21. Frederick Douglass quoted in Dain, Hideous Monster, 249. For McCune Smith’s “examination” of Henry, see Dain, Hideous Monster, 243–244. 22. “Communipaw” [James McCune Smith], “Heads of the Colored People, No. 2: The Boot-Black,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 15 April 1852. 23. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, January 1852. James McCune Smith, “Civilization: Its Dependence on Physical Circumstances,” Anglo-African Magazine 1 (January 1859): 5–17. 24. Douglass, “Claims of the Negro,” 502. 25. Douglass, “Claims of the Negro,” 510–511, 519. Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, xiii, 260. Athenaeum, 17 June 1854, 747. 26. Douglass, “Claims of the Negro,” 502–510, 522–523. For an example of the link between ethnology and slavery being made explicit, see L.S.M. [Louisa McCord], “Negro and White Slavery—Wherein Do They Differ?” Southern Quarterly Review 20 (July 1851): 130. 27. Josiah Nott quoted in Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile, 119. 28. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 197, 205. 29. Virginia G. Meynard, The Venturers: The Hampton, Harrison, and Earle Families of Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1981), 174. 30. James Henry Hammond, “Mudsill Speech,” Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South, ed. Erik McKitrick (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 121–123. 31. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (London: Penguin, 1990), 196–197. Chapter 15. Epilogue

1. John Brown quoted in Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom and Blacks on John Brown (New York: DaCapo, 2001), 124. 328

NOTES TO PAGES 274–278

2. Henry David Thoreau and newspaper quoted in Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2: Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861 (New York: Scribners, 1951), 100. 3. Henry William Ravenel, The Private Journal of Henry William Ravenel, 1859– 1887, ed. Arney Robinson Childs (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1947), 3–4. 4. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species [1859], ed. Gillian Beer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 388. 5. John Strong Newberry quoted in Ann Shelby Blum, Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 237. 6. Darwin, Origin of Species, 162. Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals [1872], ed. Paul Ekman (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 355–356. 7. Josiah C. Nott, “The Problem of the Black Races,” DeBow’s Review 1, no. 3 (1866): 268. 8. Josiah C. Nott to Ephraim G. Squier, 22 August 1860, Ephraim G. Squier Papers, Library of Congress. 9. Louis Agassiz, “Evolution and Permanence of Type,” Atlantic Monthly 33 (January 1874): 94. Darwin sent a copy of On the Origin of Species to Agassiz, along with a personal note in which wrote, “I hope that you will at least give me credit, however erroneous you may think my conclusion, for having earnestly endeavoured to arrive at the truth.” See Charles Darwin to Louis Agassiz, 11 November 1859, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [276]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 10. Louis Agassiz, “Individuality and Specific Differences Among Acalephs,” American Journal of Science 30 (1860): 146. 11. Darwin, Origin of Species, 4, 375, 379. 12. Agassiz, “Evolution and Permanence of Type,” 98. Agassiz, “Individuality and Specific Differences,” 154. 13. Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography, Memories and Experiences, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, 1904), 1:153. Jules Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz, 2 vols. (New York, 1895), 1:230. 14. Samuel Gridley Howe to Agassiz, 3 August 1863, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [415]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 15. Apparently only two of the letters were actually sent. Elizabeth Agassiz suggests that there were three letters, with two being sent; she appears to have overlooked or not 329

NOTES TO PAGES 279–281

known the letter of 15 August. See Elizabeth Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, 2 vols. (Boston, 1886), 2:617n. 16. Louis Agassiz to Samuel Gridley Howe, 9, 11, 15 August 1863, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [150, 152, 153]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Elizabeth Agassiz interpolates the letter of 11 August, which was apparently never sent, with the letter of 10 August 1863. See Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:608–612 and 617n. 17. Agassiz to Howe, 9 August 1863. This passage has been omitted in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:598. 18. Agassiz to Howe, 9 August 1863, and to Agassiz, August 18, 1863, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [150]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Frederick Douglass, “The Present and Future of the Colored Race in America,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 3: 1855–63, ed. John W Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 576. James M. McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (London: Penguin, 1990), 789–790. 19. Bernth Lindfors, “P. T. Barnum and Africa,” Studies in Popular Culture 7 (1984): 21–22. See also James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 119–162. 20. George Templeton Strong quoted in Cook, Arts of Deception, 139. 21. Agassiz to Howe, 9 August 1863. 22. Agassiz to Howe, 10 August 1863, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers (MS Am 1419 [151]), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 23. Maria Helena P. T. Machado, Brazil Through the Eyes of William James: Letters, Diaries, and Drawings, 1865–1866 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 88; Gwyniera Isaac, “Louis Agassiz’s Photographs in Brazil: Separate Creation,” History of Photography 21, no. 1 (1997): 3–11; Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2001), 85–119. Elizabeth Agassiz and Louis Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (Boston, 1875), 293n. 24. For the Union Army’s attack on and subsequent occupation of Columbia, see John G. Barrett, Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956), 60–94; James G. Gibbes, Who Burnt Columbia? (Newberry, SC: Aull, 1902); Virginia G. Meynard, The Venturers: The Hampton, Harrison, and Earle Families of Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1981), 240–243; Edwin Scott, Random Recollections of a Long Life, 1806–1876 (Columbia, SC, 1884), 173–

330

NOTES TO PAGES 282–288

194; and William Gilmore Simms, Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbia, S.C. (Columbia, 1865). 25. Simms, Sack and Destruction, 42. 26. A reporter quoted in Harvey S. Teal, Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840–1940 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 118. 27. Yankees quoted in Simms, Sack and Destruction, 81. Wade Hampton III quoted in Charles Edward Cauthen, ed., Family Letters of the Three Wade Hamptons, 1782–1901 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953), 120. 28. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 818. 29. James Henry Hammond, Remarks of Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, on the Question of Receiving Petitions for the Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia (Washington, DC, 1836), 15. 30. Gibbes, Who Burnt Columbia? 19–20. William Gilmore Simms remarked that the Old South was lost in Gibbes, Who Burnt Columbia? 35–36. 31. Order of Bvt. Maj. General John M. Corse, 19 February 1865, Joseph T. Zealy Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. Selby, Memorabilia, 79. 32. Wade Hampton III quoted in Manly Wade Wellman, Giant in Gray: A Biography of Wade Hampton of South Carolina (New York: Scribner, 1949), 333. 33. Josiah Nott quoted in Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 296, 309–310. 34. John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (London: Macmillan, 1988), 5. 35. T. H. Huxley quoted in Elizabeth Edwards, “Ordering Others: Photography, Anthropologies and Taxonomies,” in In Visible Light: Photography and Classification in Art, Science and the Everyday, ed. Chrissie Iles and Russell Roberts (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1997), 56. The development of scientific methods in anthropology that accommodated the representational limitations of photography is an example of the emergence of objectivity as an epistemic virtue in the sciences as described by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison. The “collective empiricism” necessary for the acceptance of normative images is precisely what arose in anthropology from 1860 onward; what this book has considered is that period before the advent of collective empiricism, when practices were varied and standards not yet agreed. See Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone, 2007). 36. Edward B. Tylor quoted in David G. Tomas, “An Ethnography of the Eye:

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NOTES TO PAGES 288–291

Authority, Observation and Photography in the Context of British Anthropology, 1839– 1900” (PhD diss., McGill University, 1987), 98. 37. Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:582–584. 38. Marcou, Life, Letters, and Works, 2:142. 39. The Peabody Museum was not officially a part of Harvard until 1 January 1897, thirty years after it was founded. See Curtis M. Hinsley, “From Shell-Heaps to Stelae: Early Anthropology at the Peabody Museum,” in Race, Objects, and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 49–50. Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 2:584n. Alexander Agassiz, An Address at the Opening of the Geological Section of the Harvard University Museum (Cambridge, MA: Riverside, 1902), 14–15; J. O. Brew, ed., One Hundred Yeas of Anthropology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 15. Ellie Reichlin states that the daguerreotypes were transferred in 1935 in Elinor T. Reichlin, “Survivors of a Painful Epoch: Six Rare Pre–Civil War Daguerreotypes of Southern Slaves” (typescript, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University), 3. 40. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 71. 41. Meynard, Venturers, 192; Appraisement of Estate of Col. W. Hampton, Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives, Columbia. Fassena appears in the 1870 U.S. Census for Richland County, South Carolina, but he is mistakenly indexed as “Tassena.” 42. Ebrima Colley, Mandinka-English Dictionary (Banjul, Gambia: Peace Corps, 1995), 22. 43. The Renty who was daguerreotyped appears in Will and Inventory and Estate of Benjamin F. Taylor, Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia; two Rentys appear in Appraisement of Estate of Col. W. Hampton, Richland County Probate Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia. 44. Wade Franklin Hook, “Taylors: An Indictment or the Inevitable?” (MA thesis, University of South Carolina, 1950), 4–5. 45. Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Progress,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 3: 1855–63, ed. John W Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 459, 461. 46. Deborah Willis, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present (New York: Norton, 2000), 4. Margaret Denton Smith and Mary Louise Tucker, Photography in New Orleans: The Early Years, 1840–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State 332

NOTES TO PAGES 291–293

University Press, 1982), 3. Ann M. Shumard, A Durable Memento: Portraits by Augustus Washington, African American Daguerreotypist (Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, 2000), 2–4, 8. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 28 April 1854. 47. Frederick Douglass, “A Tribute for the Negro,” North Star, 7 April 1849. bell hooks, “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life,” in The Photography Reader, ed. Liz Wells (London: Routledge, 2003), 390–391. 48. Thomas L. Johnson, “Richard Samuel Roberts: An Introduction,” in A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts: 1920–1936, ed. Thomas L. Johnson and Phillip C. Dunn (Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark, 1986), 6. 49. Pearl Cleage Polk quoted in Shawn Michelle Smith, Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 75–76.

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Bibliographic Note

Following is a list of the manuscript collections and key publications consulted in the writing of this book. The former is offered as oblique acknowledgment of the archivists who provided invaluable assistance, the latter as recommended further reading. A full bibliography of the materials from which I have drawn is available on my web site (www.molly-rogers.com/ delia/bibliography.htm). Archives consulted include: John Fries Frazer Papers, American Philosophical Society; Richard Singleton Collection, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University; American Negro Historical Society Collection, and Dreer Collection Physicians, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia; James Henry Hammond Papers, Singleton Family Papers, and Ephraim G. Squier Papers, Library of Congress; Harriott Rutledge Ravenel Papers, South Carolina Historical Society; Singleton Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Manuscript Collections, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Collections consulted at Harvard University: Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study; Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers, Houghton Library; Augustus Addison Gould Papers, Houghton Library; Asa Gray Papers and Historic Letters Collection, Archives of the Gray Herbarium; Archives, Museum of Comparative Zoology; Archives, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; University Archives. Collections consulted at South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina: Louis Agassiz Papers, Bauskett Family Papers, James Chesnut Papers, Robert W. Gibbes Papers, Hampton Family Papers, James Rion McKissick Collection, Richard Singleton Papers, Singleton-Deveaux Family Papers, Joseph T. Zealy Papers. The history of ethnology as it affected racial attitudes in America has been ably described by Bruce Dain, A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 335

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987); Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1996); Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550–1812 (Williamsburg, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); and William A. Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815–59 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Among the biographical texts consulted are Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982); Reginald Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987); Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); and Lester D. Stephens, Science, Race, and Religion in the American South: John Bachman and the Charleston Circle of Naturalists, 1815– 1895 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Recommended readings in the history of photography are Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002); Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997); Peter D. Osborne, Travelling Light: Photography, Travel and Visual Culture (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000); Richard Rudisill, Mirror Image: The Influence of the Daguerreotype on American Society (Albuquerque: University Press of New Mexico, 1971); and John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (London: MacMillan, 1988). An excellent study of photography and race may be found in Shawn Michelle Smith, Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. DuBois, Race, and Visual Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), while many aspects of photography and science are covered in Ann Thomas, ed., Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). The standard text on anthropology and photography remains Elizabeth Edwards, ed., Anthropology and Photography, 1860–1920 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). For writings on the daguerreotypes of slaves specifically, the following selection is recommended: Melissa Banta and Curtis M. Hinsley, From Site to Sight: Anthropology, Photography, and the Power of Imagery (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press and Harvard University Press, 1986); Lisa Gail Collins, “Historic Retrievals: Confronting Visual Evidence and the Documentation of Truth,” Chicago Art Journal 8 (Spring 1998): 5–17; and Brian Wallis, “Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz’s Slave Daguerreotypes,” American Art 9, no. 2 (1995): 39–61. For excellent studies of Louis Agassiz’s Brazilian photographs, see Gwyniera Isaac, “Louis Agassiz’s Photographs in Brazil: Separate Creation,” History of Photography 21, no. 1 (1997): 3–11; and Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2001). Last, I would be remiss if I did not mention the first published assessment of the daguerreotypes: Elinor T. Reichlin, “Faces of Slavery,” American Heritage, June 1977, 4–11. 336

Illustration Credits

Page 2. Joseph T. Zealy, Delia, Country born of African parents, daughter of Renty, Congo, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53040 Page 8. Jean-Baptiste Sabatier-Blot, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, daguerreotype, 1844. Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film Page 10. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, The Louvre from the Left Bank of the Seine, daguerreotype, 1839. Musée des Arts et Métiers–Cnam, Paris / Photo P. Faligot Page 12. Artist unknown, unidentified portrait, daguerreotype, ca. 1850s. Collection of the author Page 22. Joseph T. Zealy, Renty, Congo, B. F. Taylor Esq., Columbia SC, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53038 Page 35. Joseph T. Zealy, Alfred, Foulah, Columbia SC, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53050 Page 49. Joseph T. Zealy, Jack (driver), Guinea. Plantation of B. F. Taylor Esq., Columbia, S.C., quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53043 Page 66. Joseph T. Zealy, Jem. Gullah, belonging to F. W. Green Esq., Columbia, SC, quarterplate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53047 Page 71. Quinby & Co., R. W. Gibbes, M. D., Surgeon General, SC, carte de visite, ca. 1861–1865. Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia Page 72. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Fossils and Shells, daguerreotype, 1839. Musée des Arts et Métiers–Cnam, Paris / Photo P. Faligot Page 75. Artist unknown, P. T. Barnum, ambrotype, ca. 1855–1865. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-cwpbh-02176) Page 78. Artist unknown, John Bachman, date unknown. Reproduced from Catherine L. 337

I L LU S T R AT I O N C R E D I T S

Bachman, John Bachman the Pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church (Charleston, 1888). From a copy, courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia Page 84. William Henry Fox Talbot, Articles of China, salt print from a calotype negative, ca. 1843. 7 5/16 x 8 15/16 in. (18.6 x 22.7 cm). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Agnes E. Meyer and Elise Stern Haas Fund and purchased through a gift of Mimi Haas Page 88. Joseph T. Zealy, Drana, Country born, daughter of Jack, Guinea, Plantation of B. F. Taylor Esq, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53041 Page 92. August Sonrel, Louis Agassiz, carte de visite, ca. 1859. Collection of the author Page 110. Joseph T. Zealy, Fassena (carpenter), Mandingo. Plantation of Col. Wade Hampton, Near Columbia, SC, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53051 Page 132. Joseph T. Zealy, Jack, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53044 Page 154. Joseph T. Zealy, Jem, Gullah, Columbia, SC, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53046 Page 162. Artist unknown, James Henry Hammond, date unknown. Reproduced from Virginia Clay-Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay, of Alabama (New York: Doubleday, 1904). From a copy, courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia Page 173. Joseph T. Zealy, Drana. Country born, daughter of Jack, Guinea, Plantation of B. F. Taylor Esq., Columbia, SC, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53042 Page 181. Artist unknown, Josiah Clark Nott, ca. 1860. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery Page 192. Joseph T. Zealy, Alfred. Foulah. belonging to I. Lomas, Columbia, SC, quarterplate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53049 Page 208. Artist unknown, Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, daguerreotype, ca. 1842. From the Archives of the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University Page 212. Joseph T. Zealy, Jem, Gullah. belonging to F. W. Green, Columbia, SC, quarterplate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53045 Page 223. Joseph T. Zealy, Dr. Michael Clark in his Mexican War Uniform, quarter-plate 338

I L LU S T R AT I O N C R E D I T S

daguerreotype, date unknown. Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia Page 229. Joseph T. Zealy, Delia, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53039 Page 243. Wilhelm and Frederick Langenheim, Bushman Hottentot Boy [Henry], daguerreotype, 1848. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53069 Page 245. Studio of Mathew Brady, Jenny Lind, daguerreotype, 1850. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-USZ62-110191) Page 250. Joseph T. Zealy, Renty, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53037 Page 263. Artist unknown, American School, Frederick Douglass, daguerreotype, ca. 1855. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rubel Collection, Partial and Promised Gift of William Rubel, 2001 (2001.756). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art Page 269. Joseph T. Zealy, Fassena, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 1850. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 35-5-10/53048 Page 273. Augustus Washington, John Brown, daguerreotype, ca. 1846–1847. © Photo SCALA, Florence. The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Page 283. Richard Wearn, Gibbes House, carte de visite, 1865. Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia Page 287. Walter Hunnewell, Inhabitant of Manaos, Brazil, 1865. Courtesy President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2004.1.436.48 Page 292. Richard Samuel Roberts, unidentified portrait, 1920s. From A True Likeness (Columbia, SC: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1986). © Estate of Richard Samuel Roberts

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Acknowledgments

It was as a student of art history at Rice University that I first encountered the Peabody Museum’s daguerreotypes of slaves. There, Diane Dillon and Hamid Naficy broadened my understanding of visual culture and challenged me to think harder and deeper about images. I am grateful to them both. I thank them, too, for their support in the years that followed my time at Rice. When the American Community Theater in Hong Kong invited me to write a short play, I chose as my subject the meeting of a daguerreotypist and an enslaved AfricanAmerican woman. I thank Elizabeth Bleijie for the invitation and the cast and production team of Natural History for bringing my words to life. I am also grateful to Elizabeth and Jerome Bleijie for their generous hospitality. On hearing about Natural History, Iradj Bagherzade suggested I write a book about the daguerreotypes. My initial response was to think such a project beyond my reach, but Iradj convinced me otherwise. Delia’s Tears would not exist had he not believed in the project and in my ability to see it through. As an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow I was able to conduct research on scientific racism at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Historical Society. I am grateful to these institutions for giving me the opportunity to peruse their collections and to the librarians and archivists who helped me to find my way. Phillip Lapsansky, then Reference Librarian and now Curator of African American History at the Library Company, was especially helpful. The Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina twice extended to me a Short-Term Visiting Fellowship. The time spent in Columbia allowed me to access materials not available elsewhere and enabled me to feel the cushion of long-leaf pine needles beneath my feet, to see the prehistoric sand as it spills from cracks in the pavement, and to experience at firsthand just how hot summer can be in the Carolina midlands. The South Caroliniana Library at USC was a vital resource, and of the staff there I am particularly 341

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

indebted to Beth Bilderback, Visual Materials Archivist. John Sherrer, Director of Collections and Interpretation, Historic Columbia Foundation, was a tremendous help over the years in locating historic sites; Kirkman Finlay III permitted me to wander around the old Hampton estate; and Harvey Teal spent time with me discussing aspects of South Carolina’s history. While in Columbia I also met Jeff and Gloria Wells—Jeff is the daguerreotypist Joseph T. Zealy’s great-great-grandson—and together we visited “Uncle Joe’s” gravesite in Elmwood Cemetery. Gloria’s genealogical research on Zealy yielded many new facts, and I am grateful to her for sharing this with me. More recently I came to know Cynthia Zealy Coleman, who has also conducted genealogical research on Zealy: her great-great-greatgrandfather may have been one of Joseph Zealy’s slaves. By connecting the present with the past, my discussions with Jeff and Gloria Wells and Cynthia Zealy Coleman have been tremendously inspiring. I thank them for their interest in my work and for sharing with me their family histories. Numerous museums, archives, and libraries granted permission to reproduce images and excerpts from manuscript material, all of which have enriched this book. I am especially grateful to Professor William Fash, Director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Others at the Peabody Museum have been indispensible over the years, particularly Ilisa Barbash, Pat Kervick, and India Spartz. Ellie Reichlin, formerly Chief Cataloguer at the Peabody—whose research more than thirty years ago laid the foundation on which all subsequent writers have constructed their views on the daguerreotypes—graciously shared with me her unpublished findings. The Arts Council of England, West Midlands, twice awarded me a grant, which allowed me to take time from work to write. I am also grateful to my colleagues, staff and students at the Centre for the History of Medicine and in the History Department at the University of Warwick, who took an interest in my work. I especially want to acknowledge Claudia Stein, both a teacher and a friend, who more than anyone helped to guide this book to completion. For translating portions of Louis Agassiz’s letter to his mother, I thank Douglas Morrey of the French Department at the University of Warwick. For giving me the opportunity to expand my knowledge of the history of photography, I thank Robin Lenman, editor of the Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Stephen Kenny of the School of History, University of Liverpool, was helpful in sharing with me the bibliography for his research on science

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

and race in nineteenth-century America. Sander Gilman, whose work has long been an inspiration, gave encouragement and advice at a critical juncture. Friends and family opened their homes to me on my research travels: many thanks are due to Kimberly Bush and Miguel Lopez, Ilene Fischer, Kendall Jacques, and Bob and Jan Rogers. Chris Darke, Phillip Warnell, and Carran Waterfield set excellent examples of uncompromising dedication to the work, and Jody Ake took my photograph using a largeformat camera and the wet collodian process—staring down the barrel of Jody’s camera was both frightening and exhilarating, and allowed me a glimpse of what Delia might have faced in Zealy’s studio. Beverly Beck, Elizabeth Bleijie, Kat Foxhall, Lydia Plath, Peter Playdon, and Claudia Stein read drafts of the text. Their comments and suggestions were cogent and constructive, and have helped to make this a better book. Chris Rogers, Laura Davulis, Laura Jones Dooley, and others at Yale shepherded the project through to completion with great care, while my agent, Rachel Calder, has been patient and supportive throughout; I am grateful for her kindness and expert advice. My parents, Robert and Mary Rogers, supported my research and writing in sometimes surprising but always generous ways. I regret deeply that they are not able to read the finished work. And, finally, I am grateful to Peter for his support during the writing of this book, the years before its conception, and onward into the next project. To him I offer this book as a token of my love, esteem, and sheer delight in his company.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 202, 275 abolitionism: blamed for insurrection, 53, 148, 149; development of, 146–147; and ideology of race, 115–116; organized activity, 150–151; Southern opposition to, 150–151, 159–160, 187. See also Brown, John; Douglass, Frederick; Easton, Hosea; Smith, James McCune; Walker, David Agassiz, Alexander, 103, 236 Agassiz, Cécile (née Braun), 102–103, 210 Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot (née Cary), 208, 209–211, 235–237, 288 Agassiz, Louis, xiii, 18, 92, 201; and AAAS meeting, 203, 204–205, 207, 227; and African Americans, 117–122, 128, 278–279, 281; and Bachman, 126, 129; Brazilian photographs, 281, 287; and the clergy, 109, 205, 237, 255, 259, 278; conflict between science and religion, 120, 123, 125, 128, 237, 238–239, 261; criticism of, xvii, 129, 207–209, 210–211, 217, 255; and Cuvier, 96–97, 99; and the daguerreotypes of slaves, 233, 234, 240, 241–242, 248; and Darwin, 276–278, 329n9; desire to travel, 95, 104–105, 216; examination of slaves, 128, 218–220, 222, 239, 259; early experience of America, 91, 105–106; fear of interracial sex, 118, 279, 280; on human diversity, 107–108, 117, 123, 125, 128–130, 204–205, 205–206,

237, 238–240, 261, 320–321n13; and lecturing, 93–94, 109, 126, 217, 234, 259; and marriage, 102, 103, 210 (see also Agassiz, Cécile; Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot); and Samuel George Morton, 123–125; at Neuchâtel, 99–100; and Nott, 207, 259–260; and photography, 102, 225, 249, 288–289; “Plan of Creation,” 106–109, 117, 125, 128, 241; popularity of, 93–94, 126, 203, 254; problems with colleagues, 102–103, 278; publications, 92, 96–97, 205–206, 218, 237, 248, 261; reputation of, 18, 92–93, 102, 207, 254, 278; on science in America, 105–106, 127; in South Carolina, 126–130, 203, 204–205, 216–217; teaching, 100–101; and theories of development, xiii, 108, 237–238, 276–278, 306n31; and visuality in science, 93, 100–102, 222; youth, 94–96, 104 Alfred (subject of daguerreotypes), xiii, 290, 297–298nAlfred; daguerreotypes of, 35, 192; imagined experience of, 36–37, 193–194; photographed, 225–227 amalgamation. See race: mixing (miscegenation) American Revolution, 27, 43, 46 anatomy. See dissection anthropology, 17–18, 57–58, 225, 242, 286–287, 331n35. See also ethnology Arago, François-Dominique, 9–10 Audubon, John James, xiii, 77–78

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INDEX

Baartman, Saartjie, 220–221, 222 Bacchus (accused of McCaskill murder), 138–139, 140 Bachman, John, xiii, 77, 78, 285; and AAAS meeting, 203, 205–206; and African Americans, 198–199, 219; and Agassiz, 126, 129; character of, 78–79; debate on human diversity, 79, 129, 196–198, 199–202; defends Albert Koch, 87; and the Feejee Mermaid, 79–82, 85; and hybridity, 200–201; and mesmerism, 85, 206; and Nott, xiii, 196–197, 254; pastoral work, 77, 198, 285; against popularization of ethnology, 197, 206, 254 Ball, Charles, 38–42, 45, 46–48, 170, 299nJack Balzac, Honoré de, 15–16 Banneker, Benjamin, 116–117 Barnum, Phineas Taylor, 74–76, 75, 279–280. See also Feejee Mermaid; Heth, Joice; Lind, Jenny; Nondescript, The Barthes, Roland, 14, 289 Big Lake (plantation), 135–138. See also Singleton, Richard Blumenbach, Johan Friedrich, 123, 152 Brayne, Henry, 25–26, 27 Brazil, ix, 216, 281 Brown, John, 272–274, 273, 278 Buffon, Comte de (Georges-Louis Leclerc), 58–59, 98

Charleston Medical College, xv, 216 Civil War, xvi, 255, 274, 281–284, 289 College of Charleston, xiii, 77 colonization, 147–148 Columbia, South Carolina: black settlements, 290; destruction of, 281–284; growth of, 29–31; incorporation of, 27–28; map, xix; population of, 217–218; Roberts photographs discovered in, 291 comparative anatomy, xiv, 97, 220 Condon, Lorna, 5, 7 Congo (West Africa), xvii, 17, 241 Conway, Moncure Daniel, 253–254 Cooper, Thomas, xiv, xv, 164–166, 182–183 cotton, xv, 21; economic vulnerability from, 52–53; ginning, 43–45, 47; picking, 45; in South Carolina, 38–39. See also plantation culture craniology, xvi, 123–124, 221 Cuvier, Georges, xiv, 96–99, 220–221, 222 Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé, 7–10, 11 daguerreotype: in Columbia, xviii, 170–171, 222–224, 322n21; conventions of, 7, 83; popularity in America, 10–11, 283; process, 224–225. See also photography; Zealy, Joseph Thomas daguerreotypes of slaves, xxi, 240, 247–248, 288, 332n39; discovery of, 5–7; labels, 17, 228; making of, 225–227; meaning of, 17–18, 20–21, 246–247, 248; use of, 227, 233–235 Daniel (accused of McCaskill murder), 138–139 Darwin, Charles, 104, 107, 329n9; On the Origin of Species, 19, 56, 99, 260, 275–277. See also development, theories of Delia (subject of daguerreotypes), xiv, 6, 17, 242, 290, 295nDelia; daguerreotypes of, 2, 229; imagined experience of, 3–4, 230–231, 293; photographed, 225–227 Desor, Edward, 103, 210 development, theories of, 56, 59, 98, 106–108, 275, 276–277

Caldwell, Charles, xiii–xiv, 61–62, 64, 117, 182 Calhoun, John, 160–161, 185, 195, 227 Cambridge Scientific Club, 233–234, 323n2 Campbell (daguerreotypist), 15–16 Campbell, John, 258 Camper, Peter. See facial angle (scientific measurement) Chambers, Robert: The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, 107–108, 276 Charleston, South Carolina, 25–27, 81, 127, 202 Charleston Literary and Philosophical Society, 81, 128–129, 196 346

INDEX

Dew, Thomas R., 146, 160 dissection, 79, 97, 220, 221 diversity in nature. See ethnology Douglass, Frederick, xiv, 47, 140, 150, 263; on ethnology, 262, 264–266; on images, 11, 291; on race mixing, 266, 279 Douglass, Sarah Mapps, 121 Drana (subject of daguerreotypes), xiv, 290, 304nDrana; daguerreotypes of, 88, 173; imagined experience of, 89–90, 174–175; photographed, 225–227 Dred Scott (Supreme Court case), 255 DuBois, W. E. B., 46, 226

First Baptist Church (Columbia), xvi, xvii, 309nJack “freaks.” See human anomalies Fulani (African ethnic group), xiii, 297nAlfred. See also Alfred (subject of daguerreotypes) Garrison, William Lloyd, 147–148 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Étienne, 98 Gibbes, Lewis R., 81–82, 203, 219 Gibbes, Robert Wilson, xv, 71, 163, 170, 180, 203; many activities of, 69–70; and Agassiz, xv, 126, 127, 218, 225; character of, 69, 70; collections of, 69–72, 126, 284; and daguerreotypes of slaves, 225, 226, 228, 240, 247; destruction of his property, 283, 284, 203; medical practice of, 69, 137, 139, 218; and mesmerism, 72–73, 85; and paleontology, 72, 85–87; reputation of, 70, 86; and Singleton slaves, 137, 139 Gliddon, George, xv, 195, 259. See also Types of Mankind Gray, Asa, 94, 105, 109, 306n31 Green, Frederick W., xvi Guinea, Africa, xv, xvi, 239, 240, 241, 248. See also Jack (subject of daguerreotypes) Gullah, xvi, 241. See also Jem (subject of daguerreotypes)

Easton, Hosea, 151–153, 221 Egypt, xv, 152, 240, 257 Ellet, Elizabeth, 171 Ellet, William H., 170 Ellison, Ralph, xxi, 120–121, 227, 247 Enlightenment, The, 19, 56–57 ethnology, 18–20, 123–125, 183, 227–228; African-American response to, 256–259, 262–266; “American school” of, 18, 153, 195–196, 258–259, 286; and anatomy, 220–221; and Christianity, 19, 62–63, 199–200, 253, 256; after Darwin, x, 275; and photography, 20, 226, 241–244, 248–249; political uses of, ix, 195, 255; popularization of, 195, 206, 207–208, 237, 254; and slavery, 19; and visuality, 20, 219–222, 225, 240, 242–244, 265–266, 286–288, 291, 331n35. See also Agassiz, Louis: on human diversity; Nott, Josiah Clark; polygenesis evolution. See development, theories of

Haiti, Republic of (Saint-Domingue), 120, 141, 143 Halttunen, Karen, 13 Hammond, Catherine Elizabeth (née Fitzsimmons), 167, 179 Hammond, Elisha, 161, 163–164, 166–167 Hammond, James Henry, xv, 33–34, 46, 162, 284; ambition of, 161–162, 167–168, 172; Columbia house, 168–169, 170, 178, 283; defense of slavery, 159, 179–180, 267–268; education of, 161–163; and ethnology, xv, 180, 186, 221, 267–268; the “Hampton affair,” 177–179, 267; health of, 161, 168, 285; letters to Thomas Clarkson, 185–186, 187, 188–189, 191, 195; and marriage, 166–167, 189; and Nott (see

facial angle (scientific measurement), 123, 263, 265 Fanon, Frantz, 226 Fassena, George (subject of daguerreotype), xiv, xv, 239, 289, 306nFassena, 332n41; daguerreotypes of, 110, 269; imagined experience of, 111–112, 270–271; photographed, 225–227 Feejee Mermaid, 73–77, 79–85, 87 347

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Hammond, James Henry (continued) under Nott, Josiah Clark); political career, 157–158, 160–161, 166, 168, 169, 172, 179, 266–267, 268, 285; as planter, 179, 187–188; sexual relations with slaves, 188–190; speeches of, 157–159, 267–268; and the tariff controversy, 164, 166; and Wade Hampton II (see under Hampton, Wade II) Hampton, Wade, xv, 28–29, 46–48, 69, 137–139, 144 Hampton, Wade, II, xvi, 48, 144, 163, 176–177, 260, 289; and James Henry Hammond, xvi, 167, 170, 171–172, 177, 178–179, 267; and McCaskill murder, 137, 138–139 Hampton, Wade, III, xvi, 170, 282, 285 Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. See Brown, John Harvard University, xiii, 18, 126, 234, 260, 288 Henry (Khoisan youth), 242–244, 243, 263 Heth, Joice, 74–76 Holbrook, John Edwards, 81–82, 127–128, 129, 203 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 209, 278 human anomalies, 55, 57, 58, 74. See also Moss, Henry humanity: of African Americans asserted, 264, 293; crimes against, ix; and Enlightenment thinkers, 59; meaning of, x–xi, xxi, xxiii, 57; of the people daguerreotyped, x, xxii Humboldt, Alexander von, 99, 104 Hurston, Zora Neale, xxiv, 121, 249 hybridity, 55, 74, 184, 200–201, 260. See also race: mixing (miscegenation)

Jacobs, Harriet, 190–191 Jefferson, Thomas, xiv, 113–117, 141, 147, 148–149, 182 Jem (subject of daguerreotypes), xvi, 290, 301nJem; daguerreotypes of, 66, 154, 212; imagined experience of, 67–68, 155–156, 213–214; photographed, 225–227 Joe (witness to McCaskill murder), 139 Johnson, John H., 256–258 Johnson, Louisa, 189, 191, 267 Johnson, Sally, 189, 191, 267 Jones, Daniel, 5 Kames, Lord (Henry Home), 63 Kimball, Moses, 74, 76, 79 Koch, Albert, 86–87 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 98, 276. See also development, theories of Lavater, Johann Caspar, 12–13. See also physiognomy Lieber, Francis, 170, 171 Lincoln, Abraham, 107, 278 Lind, Jenny, 74, 233, 234–235, 244, 245 Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), 58–59, 81 Lomas, I. (or J.), xiii Lowell, John Amory, 91–93, 209 lynching, 139, 140, 246 McCaskill, Daniel, murder of, 135–139, 144 McCord, David James, 169–170, 171 Mailer, Norman, xxiii Mandingo (African ethnic group), xiv, 239, 240, 241, 248. See also Fassena, George Margalit, Avishai, x–xi mesmerism, 72–73, 85 Millwood (plantation), 176. See also Hampton, Wade, II miscegenation. See under race: mixing (miscegenation) Missouri Compromise, 147, 255

industrialization, 31–34, 43–44 Jack (subject of daguerreotypes), xvi, 239, 290, 299nJack, 309nJack; daguerreotypes of 49, 132; imagined experience of, 50–51, 133–134; photographed, 225–227 Jacob (accused of McCaskill murder), 138–139

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monsters. See human anomalies Morrison, Toni, xxiv Morse, Samuel, 8, 14 Morton, Samuel George, xvi, 219, 254; and Agassiz, 105, 123, 124–125; ethnological writing, 124, 125, 183, 195, 260; and hybridity, 200–201; ideas on race, 124–125, 195–196. See also Henry (Khoisan youth) Moss, Henry, 60–65 Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), 260, 288

invention, 8–10; and physiognomy, 13, 225; portraiture, 7, 11, 83, 243, 248, 291; “reality effect,” 6, 11, 242; and science, 20, 102, 241–244, 248–249, 265, 281, 286–288; as souvenir, 14, 240–241. See also daguerreotype; Zealy, Joseph Thomas physiognomy, 12–13, 123, 220, 265, 291 plantation culture, 27, 42–43, 52–53, 115, 143 Plenty (driver at Big Lake plantation), 136–138 Poe, Edgar Allan, 14 polygenesis, 18–19, 59, 124–125, 129–130, 186, 196–198, 203; Agassiz’s support of, xiii, 108–109, 125, 128–130, 204–205, 237–240; opposition to, xiii, xiv, xvii, 19, 129, 197–198, 206, 254–255, 257–258, 266. See also Caldwell, Charles; ethnology Preston, John, 70, 170 Prosser, Gabriel, 141, 144–145

natural selection. See development, theories of Niépce, Claude, 8 Niépce, Isidore, 10 Niépce, Nicéphore, 8, 9 Nondescript, The, 279–281 Nott, Josiah Clark, xvi–xvii, 169, 180, 181, 254, 285–286; and AAAS meeting, 204, 207; ethnological writing, 183–185, 195, 196, 204 (see also Types of Mankind); and Hammond, 180, 186, 266; on hybridity, 184; ideas on race, 181, 204, 261, 275–276; medical practice of, 180; and Samuel George Morton, 180, 200; and religion, xvii, 185, 275, 276

race: cultural construction of, 221–222, 234–235; and the environment, xvii, 18, 58, 61–63, 119, 153, 237, 257–258, 278–279; as ideology, 114–115, 146; mixing (miscegenation), xvii, 118, 183–184, 266, 278, 279–281; and the sideshow, 75–76, 279–280 (see also Moss, Henry); and skin color, 60–65, 114–115, 123; stereotypes, 58, 120–121, 122, 151, 234–235, 246, 264; theories of, ix, 18–19, 59, 123–125, 151–153 (see also ethnology) Ravenel, Edmund, 81, 127 Ravenel, Henry William, 274 Reichlin, Ellie, 5, 17, 246–247, 319n8 Renty (subject of daguerreotypes), xvii, 17, 241–242, 290, 296nRenty, 309nJack; daguerreotypes of, 22, 250; imagined experience of, 23–24, 251–252; photographed, 225–227 Roberts, Richard Samuel, 291–293 Rush, Benjamin, 61, 64–65

original diversity. See polygenesis Paul (accused of McCaskill murder), 138–139, 140 Payne, Daniel Alexander, 198–199 Peabody, George, 288 Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, x, 5, 247, 288, 332n39 photography: and African Americans, 7, 121, 291–293; applications of, 83–84, 244–246, 286–287; claims of, 13–14, 225; and clothing, 6, 7, 224, 293, 323n24; ethics of, ix; as evidence, 84, 235, 241–242, 248, 286; experience of, 3–4,11, 15–16, 226–227; impact, 11, 33; interpretation of, 14–17, 83–84, 240–244, 246–247;

Saint John’s Lutheran Church (Charleston), xiii, 77, 198, 285

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science: authority of, 76, 80–81, 219–220, 221; classification, 57, 58, 59, 97, 227–228, 239, 277; definition of, 19; and entertainment, 57, 76–77, 279–280 (see also Barnum, Phineas Taylor; Moss, Henry); explanation of unusual phenomena, 54–55; and human diversity, 55, 57, 65 (see also ethnology); lack of consensus in, 54, 56, 73; modern development of, 19, 56; popular interest in, 76–77; species, definition of, 58, 98, 101, 125, 197, 201, 277; and visuality, 20, 82, 100–101, 219–222, 277, 331n35 Scott, Edwin, 32–33 Sekula, Alan, xxiii Selby, Julian, 139–140 separate creations, theory of. See polygenesis Silliman, Benjamin, 105 Silver Bluff (plantation), 167, 168, 179, 187–188. See also Hammond, James Henry Singleton, Richard, 137–139 slavery: changes to the practice of, 42–43; critique of, 39, 41, 152–153; defense of, ix, 159–160 (see also under Hammond, James Henry); emancipation, 274, 281; expansion of, 53, 195, 255; overseers, 136–137, 138; and racism, ix, 114–115, 147; as source of sectional conflict, 45; in South Carolina, 27, 39; and violence, 136, 140–141, 187–188, 272–274; in Washington, 158. See also plantation culture; slaves slaves: conditions of, 39–41, 188; drivers, xvi, 136–137; and insurrection, 53, 141–146, 148, 272–273; legislated regulation of, 144–145; and religion, 143–144, 309nJack (see also First Baptist Church [Columbia]); sale of, 47; violence against, 41, 136–137, 139–140, 190–191. See also slavery Smith, James McCune, xiv, xvii, 262–264, 279 Smith, Samuel Stanhope, xvii, 62–64, 117, 182, 300n13

Smyth, Thomas, xvii, 206–207, 254–255 South Carolina, 25–27, 144–145, 150, 166, 215, 274 South Carolina College, xiv, xv, 69, 162–163, 217 species, definition of. See under science Stono Rebellion, 141, 143, 144 Stroyer, Jacob, 140 Sturtevant, William, 17 Talbot, Henry Fox, 8, 10, 84 tariff crisis, xiv, 164–166 Taylor, Alanson, 76, 79, 83 Taylor, Benjamin Franklin, xvii, 137–138, 170, 290, 295nDelia Taylor, Sally Webb, xiv, 295nDelia Taylor, Thomas, xviii, 28–30 Taylors, South Carolina, 290 Thoreau, Henry David, 274 Torrey, John, 105, 109 Trachtenberg, Alan, xxii “Truth,” 13–14, 19, 20, 56, 219, 264 Turner, Nat, 141, 145, 146, 149 Types of Mankind (Nott and Gliddon), xv, 259–262, 265–266 unity of mankind. See ethnology: opposition to Vesey, Denmark, 141–143 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, The (Chambers), 107–108, 276 Walker, David, 148–150 Whitney, Eli, 44–45 Yeadon, Richard, 80–82, 84–85 Zealy, Joseph Thomas, xviii, 222–226, 282, 285

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