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Douglass’s Long Run

Maurice S. Lee

in Uncertain Chances: Science, Skepticism, and Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

This chapter discusses how African-American authors participated in the probabilistic revolution. While early black Atlantic writers largely adhered to the providential outlook of Christian ... More

This chapter discusses how African-American authors participated in the probabilistic revolution. While early black Atlantic writers largely adhered to the providential outlook of Christian abolitionism, some later writers—most notably Douglass and the black intellectual James McCune Smith—deployed emerging sciences of chance to fight against slavery and racism. Douglass in his autobiographies and journalism moved away from providential rhetoric toward more empirical, quantitative antislavery arguments, aligning him with statistical sociology (Adolphe Quetelet), liberalism (John Stuart Mill), and pragmatism (the early Du Bois and, more surprisingly, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.). This chapter ends with a discussion of how pragmatism as traditionally conceived has failed to grapple sufficiently with the challenge of racism.Less

The Demons of Charles Percy

Bertram Wyatt-Brown

in The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family

The enigma of the Percy family began with Charles, its founder in the American Southwest, born in 1740 in some part of the British Isles. The first North American Percy was always able to inspire ... More

The enigma of the Percy family began with Charles, its founder in the American Southwest, born in 1740 in some part of the British Isles. The first North American Percy was always able to inspire trust and display the comportment of a responsible leader. Through successive governments, Charles Percy managed to present himself well without much self-revelation. In 1777, Peter Chester, governor of West Florida, appointed him one of the commissioners at Natchez. Charles Percy was forty years old when he married Sussanah Collins, sixteen years old. Successful though he was in weathering the depressed 1794 market, Charles had been showing signs of a growing derangement. Instead of financial woes, Percy had become subject to a malady that left him coldly suspicious of all around him. It was concluded that he committed suicide in a moment of “insanity of mind.”Less

A Convert to Community

Dr Philip Lockley

in Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: From Southcott to Socialism

This chapter explores the early career and conversion to Southcottianism of James Elishama Smith – a key figure in the relation between millenarianism and social radicalism in the 1830s. Smith ... More

This chapter explores the early career and conversion to Southcottianism of James Elishama Smith – a key figure in the relation between millenarianism and social radicalism in the 1830s. Smith originally trained as a Church of Scotland minister. In 1828, he was convinced that the millennium was imminent by the preaching of Edward Irving – a member of the Albury Group of evangelicals, and a founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church. Smith adopted Irving’s pessimistic millennial beliefs for a period, before opting to join Wroe’s ‘Christian Israelite’ community at Ashton-under-Lyne in 1830. This chapter traces Smith’s shifting pre-1830 millennial beliefs in detail, as he exchanged a belief in the millennium based solely on scriptural interpretation for one based largely on revelations to modern prophets. It identifies Smith’s intellectual inheritance from Irving, and shows how his views on human action and divine agency altered with his conversion to the Southcottian tradition.Less

Agents of the Millennium

Dr Philip Lockley

in Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: From Southcott to Socialism

The chapter recovers the theological basis for James Elishama Smith’s radical career in the early 1830s, explaining his rapid transition from Southcottian to Owenite socialist in 1832-33. The chapter ... More

The chapter recovers the theological basis for James Elishama Smith’s radical career in the early 1830s, explaining his rapid transition from Southcottian to Owenite socialist in 1832-33. The chapter retraces Smith’s process of entry into the London culture of freethought radicalism and Owenism using Smith’s own writings and other radical sources. These reveal that existing histories have inadequately understood the role of theology in Smith’s radicalism: Smith justified his choice to work with ‘infidel’ radicals at the time, not on the basis of pragmatism, but from an explicit view of how both divine and human agency would achieve the millennium. Smith articulated a distinctive theology of unconscious and conscious agency in realising the millennial state. The chapter argues that this persuasively links Smith’s Ashton and London careers and his millennial and socialist visions. Smith endeavoured to persuade other millenarian Christians likewise to embrace socialism as God’s agents of the millennium.Less

From Revelation to Radicalism

Dr Philip Lockley

in Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: From Southcott to Socialism

This chapter pieces together the origins of a working alliance between certain Southcottian figures and freethinkers in 1830 and 1831. It recovers the settings of the emergent alliance, the points of ... More

This chapter pieces together the origins of a working alliance between certain Southcottian figures and freethinkers in 1830 and 1831. It recovers the settings of the emergent alliance, the points of personal contact which created it, and the intellectual bases behind it. The chapter makes innovative use of both Southcottian sources and material more commonly consulted by historians of radicalism than of religion, including the correspondence of Richard Carlile and his associate, Robert Taylor. The exercise of reconstructing the social experience and relationships of Southcottians and radicals in a brief stretch of time allows the subsequent political paths taken by Southcottians such as James Elishama Smith to be explained. The chapter further sheds new light on several well-known episodes in Southcottian history, including John Wroe’s ‘virgins’ scandal, which preceded his dismissal from the Ashton community, and the anticlerical preaching tour of Zion Ward, when he publicly declared himself the messiah.Less

Remaking the Republic of Letters: James McCune Smith and the Classical Tradition

John Stauffer

in The Call of Classical Literature in the Romantic Age

James McCune Smith, a leading black abolitionist, physician, and intellectual in nineteenth-century America, believed that classical literature could help Americans abolish slavery. Fluent in Greek ... More

James McCune Smith, a leading black abolitionist, physician, and intellectual in nineteenth-century America, believed that classical literature could help Americans abolish slavery. Fluent in Greek and Latin, McCune Smith believed that the ancients offered cautionary tales for Americans. Their writings emphasized the urgency of abolishing slavery in America and establishing a “pure Republic” rather than another slave republic. With inspiration from the classical tradition, the U.S. could create a new “republic of letters” defined by a new vision of freedom and democracy. McCune Smith articulated this vision in the abolitionist press, most notably in Frederick Douglass’s Paper, in which he drew heavily from Anacreon, Terence, Virgil, Demosthenes, and Aristotle. The classical tradition could empower blacks and women as much as senators and statesmen.Less

Nora Jewell “In Family Way”: Washington, 1854–1910

Katrina Jagodinsky

in Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women's Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946

This chapter examines how Indigenous women dealt with the challenges of economic and sexual vulnerability under settler-colonial laws by focusing on the case of Nora Jewell in territorial Washington ... More

This chapter examines how Indigenous women dealt with the challenges of economic and sexual vulnerability under settler-colonial laws by focusing on the case of Nora Jewell in territorial Washington during the period 1854–1910. Nora Jewell of San Juan Island lost her Salish mother and Danish father to unknown circumstances and became a ward of Washington Territory at the age of twelve. In 1880 she sued James F. Smith, her American guardian, for rape, accusing him of impregnating her. This chapter considers Jewell's sexual assault case against Smith, the putative father of her unborn child, in criminal court to highlight the gendered and racial contours of change and transformation that shaped Indigenous women's legal philosophies and their encounters with territorial legal regimes.Less

The Banneker Age: Black Afterlives of Early National Science

Britt Rusert

in Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture

This chapter identifies Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785, 1787) as a “founding text” for a vibrant genealogy of black scientific discourse in the early national and antebellum ... More

This chapter identifies Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785, 1787) as a “founding text” for a vibrant genealogy of black scientific discourse in the early national and antebellum periods, from Benjamin Banneker’s 1791 correspondence with Jefferson to David Walker’s 1829 Appeal, James Pennington’s 1844 ethnology, and James McCune Smith’s essays on Notes, written in 1859, on the cusp of the Civil War. It also examines the widespread memorialization of Benjamin Banneker by African Americans in the antebellum period, an act that, among other things, used Banneker to imagine the beginning of a new scientific age, marked by anti-racism and emancipatory politics.Less

Glasgow under the Campbells, 1725–1742

Roger L. Emerson

in Academic Patronage in the Scottish Enlightenment: Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews Universities

This chapter discusses the selection from among the list of clerics contending for the principality of Glasgow. It notes that these men were Neil Campbell, William Hamilton, James Hart, James Alston, ... More

This chapter discusses the selection from among the list of clerics contending for the principality of Glasgow. It notes that these men were Neil Campbell, William Hamilton, James Hart, James Alston, William Gusthart (or Gusthard), William Wishart II, and James Smith. It reports that Neil Campbell, who had the endorsement of a Colonel Campbell, was almost certainly Ilay's cousin and eventual heir of line, the father of the boy whom Principal Stirling had fined, and was installed in January 1728, where for some years he buttressed Ilay's power in the University, the town, and in the local courts of the Kirk. It further reports that Principal Campbell's tenure was slightly longer than that of his kinsman the Earl. It observes that his long regime was marked by his lordly cousin's interference in the affairs of the University and College, which flourished partly as a consequence of their attentions.Less

Henry Highland Garnet: Nationalism, Class Analysis, and Revolution

Sterling Stuckey

in Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America

A major leader of blacks in the 19th century who has been underestimated, Henry Highland Garnet emerged from the precocious black student body at New York's African Free School to in time be hailed ... More

A major leader of blacks in the 19th century who has been underestimated, Henry Highland Garnet emerged from the precocious black student body at New York's African Free School to in time be hailed by Frederick Douglass as the foremost intellectual among blacks of his time. Focusing on the spiritual cost occasioned by successive generations of blacks passing on to subsequent generations the accumulated damage of enslavement, that insight premised his revolutionary stance as perhaps his most original contribution to nationalist theory. Since blacks alone had experienced that degradation, they had no choice but to lead in the overthrow of slavery. Under the pseudonym “Sidney,” Garnet advanced brilliant arguments for oppressed blacks leading their own struggle for freedom. Deeply humanistic, he was a leading advocate of the need for the liberation of white workers as well.Less

Captivity as Literacy Event

Andrew Newman

in Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities

The introduction uses James Smith’s 1799 narrative of captivity during the French and Indian War to illustrate key concepts adapted from sociolinguistics, academic literacy studies, and narratology. ... More

The introduction uses James Smith’s 1799 narrative of captivity during the French and Indian War to illustrate key concepts adapted from sociolinguistics, academic literacy studies, and narratology. Representations of literacy events, or action sequences involving reading and writing, express the captives’ affiliation with their discourse communities, which share literacy practices and language ideologies, including the widespread belief that literacy entails a cultural superiority over native peoples. The analysis distinguishes between conventional textual references, such as allusions, that belong to the author’s discourse, and texts that appear as part of the captive’s story. It presents the concept of the reception allegory, an application of another text to one’s present circumstances, and emphasizes the ethnohistorical context for the captive’s experience, as opposed to the cultural context for the author’s narrative.Less

“A Singular Gift from a Savage”

Andrew Newman

in Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities

Four captivity narratives set in the Great Lakes region during the second half of the eighteenth century feature scenes in which Native Americans present the authors with books. These book ... More

Four captivity narratives set in the Great Lakes region during the second half of the eighteenth century feature scenes in which Native Americans present the authors with books. These book presentations were symbolic interactions, in which the Indians affirmed their recognition of the value of books to the colonists. When the adopted captive James Smith lost his books, he feared for his life; by finding them and restoring them to him, his Kahnawake Mohawk kin paradoxically enabled his immersion in their society. For the diplomat Thomas Morris, who was detained by Miamis, and Thomas Ridout and Charles Johnston, who were both captured by Shawnees, their books facilitated their participation in secular literary culture. For Morris and Ridout, especially, the books furnished striking allegorical parallels to their experiences.Less

Eleazer’s Cross: Frederick Douglass’ Paper

Sarah Meer

in American Claimants: The Transatlantic Romance, c. 1820-1920

This chapter argues that claimants became fodder for mid-century periodicals, and they provided an imagery for anti-slavery rhetoric. It examines Frederick Douglass’s use of illegitimacy in his ... More

This chapter argues that claimants became fodder for mid-century periodicals, and they provided an imagery for anti-slavery rhetoric. It examines Frederick Douglass’s use of illegitimacy in his speech on the Fourth of July, and his deployment of ‘Yankee’ tropes to protest against segregation. It links them to his efforts to cultivate a transatlantic community through Frederick Douglass’ Paper, work involving personal and political bonds with British colleagues—William and Mary Howitt, and Julia Griffiths. The paper was both local and national in its reach, as was its fascination with claimants like Eleazer Williams and Monsieur Ben, two candidates for the ‘Lost Dauphin’. Monsieur Ben was the subject of a long-lost column by James McCune Smith, in the series ‘Heads of the Colored People’.Less

Shakespeare, Stendhal and James Smith

David Ellis

in Memoirs of a Leavisite: The Decline and Fall of Cambridge English

Recalling a lecture he gave in Bendigo on Othello provides Ellis with an opportunity for considering the article in The Cambridge Quarterly called ‘Scrutiny's failure with Shakespeare’, and Leavis's ... More

Recalling a lecture he gave in Bendigo on Othello provides Ellis with an opportunity for considering the article in The Cambridge Quarterly called ‘Scrutiny's failure with Shakespeare’, and Leavis's own sense of unfinished business in that area. He also remembers how, on his return to Europe, he translated Stendhal's Memoirs of an Egotist and secured what became a permanent post at the university of Kent. His one serious attempt to move from there involved an application for a post at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland previously held by James Smith, who was much admired by Leavis even though what he wrote about Shakespeare in Scrutiny was in a manner quite different from his ownLess

Conclusion

Britt Rusert

in Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture

The conclusion reviews the various ways that African American writers, artists, and performers responded to racial science in the age of comparative anatomy, from critiquing and deconstructing it, to ... More

The conclusion reviews the various ways that African American writers, artists, and performers responded to racial science in the age of comparative anatomy, from critiquing and deconstructing it, to parodying it and even, at times, flirting with it. Next, it turns to a genealogy of black craniology evident not only in the writings of James McCune Smith but also in anthropology work by Zora Neale Hurston to consider fugitive science’s postbellum migration from the natural sciences to the social sciences, as theories of race became increasingly tied to theories of culture rather than biology. The conclusion uses Ann Petry’s 1947 short story, “The Bones of Louella Brown,” to map the shifting relationship between black science and black literature at midcentury, a period that was witnessing the professionalization of both science and literary authorship. Finally, it turns to science in the age of neoliberalism and globalization to think about fugitive science as a model of resistance to contemporary forms of racial science, especially in genomics.Less

The Civil Servant, 1910–1925

in The Lancashire Giant: David Shackleton, Labour Leader and Civil Servant

This chapter examines the career of David Shackleton as a civil servant during the period from 1910 to 1925. It discusses the duties and responsibilities of Shackleton as Senior Labour Adviser and ... More

This chapter examines the career of David Shackleton as a civil servant during the period from 1910 to 1925. It discusses the duties and responsibilities of Shackleton as Senior Labour Adviser and highlights his selection to become the first permanent secretary of the Ministry of Labour in December 1916. It considers Shackleton's replacement with James Masterton-Smith and explains the role of Horace Wilson on this issue. It also mentions that Shackleton retired from public office in December 1925.Less

‘What is a Gentleman but his pleasure?’ Edward, Second Viscount Conway, and Killultagh

Daniel Starza Smith

in John Donne and the Conway Papers: Patronage and Manuscript Circulation in the Early Seventeenth Century

This chapter describes the early life of Edward, second Viscount Conway, from his military service with his uncle Sir Horace Vere onwards. He enjoyed early friendships with Chamberlain, Carleton, and ... More

This chapter describes the early life of Edward, second Viscount Conway, from his military service with his uncle Sir Horace Vere onwards. He enjoyed early friendships with Chamberlain, Carleton, and especially Algernon Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, and married Frances Popham. In 1629 he moved to Ireland to run the family’s estates, and in 1637 joined the Council of War, though he suffered defeat in Scotland in 1640. As Governor of Londonderry and Marshal of Ireland his property was attacked in 1641, then in 1643 he was accused of complicity in the ‘Waller Plot’ to restore King Charles to the throne. The latter portion of this chapter draws attention to Conway’s extensive literary and cultural connections, to John Donne junior, Denham, Davenant, Suckling, Waller, Sir John Mennes, and James Smith, and the elder Donne’s friend George Garrard, with whom Conway conducted an extensive, often highly amusing, correspondence.Less