American Literature to 1900: Reading Questions and Information

Reading Questions and Background

Wednesday 4/2/97

Location: [Reed College] [Department of English] [Laura Arnold][ Nation and Narration]Daily Readings

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Miscegenation, and the Trope of Passing

On Monday we begun a discussion of race in Uncle Tom's Cabin with Susan Nuernberg's essay "The Rhetoric of Race." I would like to give you some background on miscegenation and passing because these concepts are crucial not only to the ideology of Uncle Tom's Cabin, but also to the rhetoric of abolitionism and the slave trade. This handout is also intended to provide you with some visual documents to supplement our discussion.

Miscegenation

Before 1864, "Miscegenation" (the mixture [miscere] of races [genus]) was labeled "amalgamation" (meaning "to unite or merge into a single body"); yet, it would be naive to suggest that American racists approved of interracial relationships before the 1860s. Northerners and Southerners alike found the concept generally unsettling. For Southerners, mixed-raced offspring were a both a financial boom and a benefit of the slaver owner's sexual privileges; yet, at the same time, such children (and later adults) threatened to undermine the "natural superiority" of the white race--both because they were a living testament to whites' desire for African Americans and because they made the distinctions between blacks and whites fuzzy and, eventually, nearly impossible to discern. For Northerners, such intermixing became a sign of the moral deterioration of the South. Politicians and social commentators alike played upon these fears as seen in the political cartoon "Miscegenation Ball" (1864) (see hard copy version of this handout).

By the time of the Mexican-American war, racial amalgamation had become a political as well as social issue. By the mid-1840's the debates surrounding whether the U.S. ought to "swallow the whole of Mexico" were often embedded with fears of racial mixing (Duban 94). This was due not only to the fear that the incorporation of Mexico would throw the delicate balance between slave and free states out of alignment, but also to the fear of the amalgamation of the Mexicans themselves. Senator John C. Calhoun argued that the U.S. had "never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race" and as the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel put it in 1846, Mexico was a "sickening mixture" or "Negroes, and Rancheros, Mestizos, and Indians" (Duban 142). Anglo-Americans' obsessive fears of racially-mixed Mexicans reflected their own concerns with how miscegenation might "corrupt" the divine mission of the United States. The parallels between amalgamation on the frontier and within the U.S. due to the slave trade were not lost on nineteenth-century historians and social commentators: for example, historian William Prescott warned that, "the Spanish blood will not mix well with the Yankee, and the Southern scale of our republic is already getting a good deal too heavy" due to miscegenation between whites and African American slaves (Franchot 41). As you read Uncle Tom's Cabin you should try to discern Stowe's position on miscegenation and how she uses it as a rhetorical tool.

Passing

A common trope in abolitionist literature is the "tragic mulatta" who is both the product and victim of white lasciviousness. In abolitionist fiction and autobiographies, it was common to enact scenes in which the mulatta (and occasionally mulatto) passed for white in order to escape from slavery. One famous example of this occurs in William and Ellen Craft's slave narrative "Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom" (1860): in this narrative the "near white" Ellen Craft disguises herself in men's clothes and escapes by passing herself off as a young planter. (This narrative was the inspiration for the early African American novel Clotelle by William Wells Brown.) As you read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I would like you to pay attention to the instances of "cultural cross-dressing" and hypothesize about the ramifications of this trope and its relationship to Stowe's position on miscegenation in general.

Children

On the hard copy of this handout there is a post-civil war photograph of mixed race children who were used to raise money on behalf of the "Negro people." What rhetorical parallels do you find between this photograph and Stowe's portraits of children and mulattos?

Quakers

For those unfamiliar with American religious history, Eliza's retreat into a Quaker utopian community in chapter XIII may come as a shock. The Quakers were important spokespeople within the abolitionist movement from early in the colonial period (see John Woolman's 1774 Journal "A Plea for the Poor"). Quakers (otherwise known as the "Society of Friends") are an evangelical Christian religious sect founded by George Fox. They have no definite creed and no regular ministry, but are guided by an inner light. In addition to their characteristic simplicity of dress and speech (the archaic thees and thous) and their refusal to take oaths, they are known for their pacifism and for helping start the American abolitionist movement. Quakers were both the butt of jokes by pro-slavery cartoonists and the revered spokesmen of change. In the cartoons on the hard copy of this handout, you will see Quakers in and addressing a number of positions. In the first ("Slave Market of America") is a broadside supported by Quakers condemning the sale and keeping of slaves in the District of Columbia. The second, "Mystery of Babylon" places Quakers within a general nineteenth-century satire of American religion. The third, "Virtuous Harry" shows Quakers as the moral watchguards of hypocritical politicians. The fourth, "Dream" (a satire of Uncle Tom's Cabin) shows a slave cross-dressing as a Quaker. (You might consider whether this is a valid critique of Stowe's novel. For those mystified by the cartoon's iconography, reread Revelations--a major text for Stowe's work.) In all of the cartoons, Quakers are identifiable by their dress and speech as well as their political position. What is the political position of Quakers in Uncle Tom's Cabin? What is Stowe's position on Quakers and their politics? How does their utopian community compare to the one in the Blithedale Romance?

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Laura.Arnold@Reed.edu