9 thoughts on “Reading Questions for February 9”

1. Harrold repeatedly describes the group of antislavery whites and African Americans in antebellum Washington, D.C. as a “subversive interracial community.” Harrold seems to believe that their community status is what allowed this small group of societal outcasts to accomplish so much in an often hostile environment, where slavery was legal. Harrold defines this community based on their shared set of common values. Even more crucial, they (or at least some of them) wanted slavery to be abolished because they could see firsthand how it brutalized slaves and broke apart families. As a community, abolitionists cooperated in many group efforts to free individual slaves: they helped slaves physically run away from slaveholders and then continue to ultimate freedom in the North; they represented slaves in freedom trials; and they gathered money in order to purchase freedom for slaves.

   I would describe the relationships and interactions among Washington abolitionists as a community. If they didn’t share anything else, the white and African American abolitionists at least lived in the same city and could agree that slavery was wrong. According to Harrold, a relational community would share more than physical proximity and thus have a greater internal bond. I believe that the Washington community did have much more in common. The antislavery whites in Washington typically worked with middle-class African Americans, who were often relatively affluent and cultured. Local slaves also participated in the subversive Washington community; they still shared similar values with the antislavery whites, such as middle-class ambitions and a strong belief in family.

   The trial following the Pearl incident, in which many slaves tried to escape north to freedom, showed how members of the community would make sacrifices for the benefit of the greater group. Some abolitionists did not support illegal methods of freeing slaves, like in the Pearl case; yet these abolitionists did not mention these illegal activities in public, for fear of incriminating Drayton or others. This kind of behavior is representative of a community, in which members sometimes forego a personal belief in order to support the overall cause of the group.

   I think that it’s easiest to see how the Washington abolitionists made up a community by looking at what caused the community to disintegrate. Once the Free Soil Party infiltrated Washington politics, whites began to attend their own social functions, which African Americans did not attend. The onset of the Civil War caused the biracial community to become even more strained, as antislavery whites came into close contact with many refugees from the South. These refugees, former slaves that had escaped to the North, were typically poor, uneducated, and had little experience with abolitionists. Most importantly, the abolitionists no longer viewed the slaves as individuals who were actively and boldly seeking their help, as the refugees came in huge numbers when slavery was in the process of being abolished. Abolitionists no longer felt that they shared the same values as these former slaves. Thus the powerful forces that had been holding the Washington subversive community together slowly began to disappear and eventually so too did the community itself.

2. Harrold refers to the abolitionists in Washington, D.C., as an “interracial” or “biracial community.” What does Harrold mean by “community,” and based on specific evidence from the book, is this the term you would use to describe the cooperation between abolitionists in the city? Why or why not?

   When Harrold uses the word community, he is referring to a group of people working together to accomplish the common goal of challenging slavery. I would use this term to describe the cooperation between abolitionists in Washington D.C. The main way the subversive community challenged slavery in Washington DC was by helping individual blacks achieve freedom. Often African Americans approached the abolitionists seeking help for themselves or enslaved family members who were going to be sold south. White abolitionists such as Lundy and Tyson provided slaves legal assistance in freedom suites and purchased slaves in order to free them. Later abolitionists such as Torrey, Smallwood, and Chaplin helped slaves run away from their masters. Often agents working for the underground railroad were paid, and slaves were picked based on their ability to pay. This showed that the rescue missions although humanitarian were not an act of charity. The slaves were partners rather than recipients of aid. Another way that blacks and whites subverted slavery was through educating blacks which was the mission of Myrtilla Miner’s school. Black and white abolitionists also socialized together inviting each other to their houses and going to the same churches. Myrtilla Miner lived with the Edmonsons, a black family, and greatly enjoyed their companionship. This socializing created a sense of camaraderie, though these social interactions decreased in the 1840s and 1850s.

   However often the relationship between the white and black members of the community was tense. Whites and blacks sometimes had trouble relating to each other. The white abolitionists were often condescending and paternalistic towards the blacks. Myrtilla Miner set up her school for black women, partially because she did not think blacks were capable of educating themselves without the help of whites. Abolitionists also did not treat all African Americans the same, and the community was not totally inclusive. They preferentially helped blacks who were church members and middle class such as the Carter family whom Chaplin helped raise money for. The abolitionists needed for those they were helping to be relatable in some capacity even if it was not racially. So although abolitionists were willing to cross race boundaries, they were less willing to cross class boundaries. This limited the extent to which their community was truly biracial, since most blacks in the US at the time were impoverished slaves.

3. As the capitol of our nation and a prominent area where people of many backgrounds converged, Washington, D.C. played both an important and symbolic role in the issue of slavery in America when it was at its most volatile. According to Stanley Harrold, the abolitionist community in Washington, D.C. – during the period from 1820 until the outbreak of the American Civil War – was a unique collection of anti-slavery factions which evolved and created an interesting dynamic amongst the slave industry’s opposition in the Capitol. The particular qualities of this community stem from the adverse backgrounds of its various members, which Harrold describes as “interracial” or “biracial” in nature. While these terms may seem self-explanatory in their reference to blacks and whites, the differences outlined by Harrold pertain to far more than skin color – a defining factor in understanding the “community” as it existed within the Capitol.
   Subversives describes the antislavery community in the Chesapeake as uniting, “local slaves and free blacks with northern-borne white abolitionists, other northern antislavery activists, and a few white southerners.” This versatile composition did not occur seamlessly however, and the assembly of this community helps us draw conclusions on exactly what type of community it was. Given the two definitions of community Harrold provides us with (geographic and relational), he states that the relational community – being connected through “empathy and altruism” – was the significant marriage of whites and blacks that served as the foundation for what he feels was a vital component for the abolitionist cause.
   Despite his idyllic picture of this community, I feel that Harrold’s depiction of a seamless community is misleading as the collaboration between the groups is portrayed as uneven and comes across as one group using the other rather than true cooperation. The evidence of this is in the white abolitionists’ tendencies to associate and support only prominent black figures, such as religious leaders or wealthier light-skinned African Americans. Additionally, he projects a relational community united by ideals and emotion but describes the primary bonds of the community being those of fear and danger at the hands of shared enemies. The fact that African Americans could not act openly against slavery until the outbreak of war as well as the racial schisms that emerged in D.C. following the war’s conclusion especially stand out when contrasted against the image of community Harrold tries to convey. To me these qualities do not convince me that a true biracial community existed so much as a temporary biracial alliance.

4. In Stanley Harrold’s final sentences, he reminds his readers that “much can be achieved through interracial cooperation” (257). He built this assertion on his portrayal of a group of people in Washington, D.C. who he felt built a biracial community together. In this instance, a community means a like-minded group of people working towards a common goal, regardless of their opinions of one another.

   As Harrold establishes his argument, African Americans in D.C., slave or otherwise, remain without voice, without agency, without individuality until the second chapter, which seems to suggest that Harrold found the composition of the community to have been unequal. The notion that the “suffering blacks” needed white “benevolence” to save them from the rest of the racist society of the Chesapeake is repeatedly referred to and was evidently a common notion at the time (21). He repeatedly describes African Americans in these early sections as “desperate” and somehow unable to save themselves, and perhaps that’s just the ugly truth of it, that blacks had little role in their own abolition (12, 13). This may make legal sense because blacks could not vote or hold office. However, given how little abolitionists altered the overall social beliefs of Chesapeake society, it seems disingenuous to decentralize the role of former enslaved in their own salvation.

   The “community” Harrold describes was never an integrated one full of equality, even Myrtilla Miner who led a (non-integrated) school for black children, was gratified by being able to create an additional “miraculous power” in the “the sweet-faced world of young [black] women” (179). Helping freedmen was often relegated to a reluctant “humanitarian duty,” and never came to the forefront of my mind as a true community (240). As Harrold describes it, “it resided on black initiative,” yet “antislavery whites usually led it” (257). Harrold occasionally utilized the word “network” rather than community, which I found to be more accurate for the image of abolitionists in D.C. which he brought to light (204). Harrold’s idea of the biracial community follows the OED definition of a “body of people or things viewed collectively.” My expectations of a true community instead focus on a “body of people having common or equal rights or rank, as distinguished from the privileged classes.” I am thus unsure if it is truly possible to be in community with people who white “subversives” did not consider to be their equals.

5. Harrold defines the term “community” in two different ways. One is a geographical community defined by diverse groups of people occupying a shared location. The other is a relational community which comprises a group of individuals acting together to accomplish common goals, for example the scholarly community. Harrold characterizes the antislavery community of Washington D.C. as being mostly a relational community, but also having some elements of a geographical community due to the inherent tensions.

   The antislavery community of Washington D.C. were clearly united by the common goal of fighting against slavery. One issue was that they had very diverse ideas about how to accomplish that goal. Radicals such as Torrey and Smallwood sought to fight slavery by actually helping slaves to escape. Many people did not want to subvert the law like this and would prefer to free slaves through the legal method of purchasing their freedom. This idea was not amenable to those like Torrey and Smallwood because it seemed to validate slavery as a legal institution by compensating and rewarding slave owners.

   Another tension in the antislavery community of Washington D.C. was the fact that it was an interracial community. Although both blacks and whites in this community were united in the common goal of fighting against slavery, they had very different perspectives on it based on the crucial differences in life experience. One way this manifested itself was that white antislavery activists were often very condescending towards the black antislavery activists that they cooperated with. They did not view them so much as equals but as inferior beings that needed the help of whites. One example that Harrold highlights is Myrtilla Miner. She was making a valiant effort to help by establishing a school for black girls, but the way she acted towards her students and their parents is characterized as being somewhat condescending.

   Because of the tensions inherent in an interracial community with different ideas as to how to accomplish their goals, there was also a geographic element. The members of this community were brought together by the fact that they were trying to subvert slavery in a place where slavery actually existed and in a prominent place—the nation’s capital. Although Harrold also states that the antislavery community of Washington D.C. had a geographical scope outside of the capital. Many of the subversives in the capital would not have been able to do what they did without support from outside the geographical limits of Washington D.C. Torrey and Smallwood relied on a network of people north in the free states in order to operate their underground railroad and help slaves to escape. People like Myrtilla Miner had both encouragement and financial support from abolitionists in the northern free states. Harrold goes so far as to suggest that the antislavery community in the capital was really just a faction of the northern antislavery community, transplanted to the nation’s capital, in a stronghold of southern slavery.

   I think that “community” is a good term to describe the cooperation between the antislavery activists in Washington D.C. This group of people seems to fit both definitions of community. There was the relational element of working towards a common goal, although through a variety of different methods. There was also at least some geographical element in cooperating in the nation’s capital, where slavery still existed. Although Harrold characterizes this community as being somewhat tenuous due to the fact that it was interracial and ideologically different, it is still a community because it effectively succeeded in its goal in fighting slavery in the capital.

   Another way in which it clearly seems to be a community is that all of the same names keep coming up. Chaplin and the Baileys, for example, came up in a variety of different contexts, in connection with a wide range of subversive activities. The fact that all of the same names keep coming up suggests to me that all of these people knew each other and were cooperating together in a variety of different ways, which is the key way in which a community functions to accomplish its common goals.

6. In his book Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C. 1828-1865, Stanley Harrold makes an important distinction in addressing the abolitionists in the city, and the wider Chesapeake area. Rather than simply denoting them as abolitionists, Harrold goes one strangely descriptive step further and refers to them as an “interracial” or “biracial community.”

   Using this phrase, Harrold does not mean that this “community” is comprised of individuals of biracial heritage or descent, but that as a whole, this group is biracial – boasting members that are white, and members that are black. Considering the logistics of slavery, it would seem evident that white and black abolitionists would need to conjoin efforts to end slavery, as simply free black abolitionists were few and far between, and white abolitionists would have more social capabilities and capital. But as we have learned, there were some abolitionist groups that did not allow black members – and these were mostly groups that were not for immediate emancipation. It is this sub-distinction within the abolition movement that is the basis for my view of the second part of Harrold’s term – “community.”

   Referring to this group of abolitionists as a “community” is over-ambitious on Harrold’s part. The word “community,” as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a body of people or things viewed collectively.” Aside from this definition, there are thirteen other possible meanings to the word, ranging from grossly general (the definition provided), to highly specific. In his book, I think that Harrold uses “community” in a way that makes it seem very intimate and close – at least, more intimate and closer than one would initially think. But the context he provides – such as the interaction between black and white abolitionist, between abolitionists of either color over whether to colonize Liberia with freed slaves or immediate emancipation, still-prevalent racism, and the decision over which way to best approach emancipation (individually or in a larger region) – provides a very different picture. I do not think that the way Harrold suggests the term “community” to be used is how I would use it. For impersonal, more general usage, “community” works fine – as in they were all abolitionists of some sort or another. But to say that it was a “community” in a socially intimate, resoundingly cohesive way would be a gross overstatement.

7. Harrold argues that the Black and White abolitionists in Washington, D.C., before Reconstruction formed a biracial community to fight for their cause. He says that the community that the Black and White abolitionists did not form a geographical community, which is formed due to mere geographic proximity. Instead, the similar dangers the Black and White abolitionists shared and the differences they held against the pro-slavery proponents cemented their relationship into a “relational community” (Harrold, pp. 37-38).
   Harrold points out that this “relational community” based itself on principles of individual liberty, Christian morality, and the similarities they held as part of a middle class. In fact, this shared middle class identity was key—we see that Pearl fugitives such as the Edmonsons later sought college education and many Blacks who worked with or asked assistance from the Whites were members of the clergy. Therefore, the relational community disintegrated when fewer Blacks of the middle class sought help from the White abolitionists, and the less-educated, lower class of Blacks sought more assistance from the Whites.
   According to Harrold, this relational community built among the middle class among Blacks and Whites was not equal, either. In fact, the Whites frequently saw themselves as part of a superior race and approached African Americans with paternalism and cultural imperialism in their relationship.
   I agree with Harrold to some extent that there was a community among Black and White abolitionists, in that they both had a similar goal and similar difficulties in achieving the goal. However, I question how much of the sense of community was built from the shared “middle-class” background. Many of the sources that Harrold cites are White abolitionist accounts of the relationship and their emphasis on establishing the similarity among the Blacks and Whites. I wonder, however, to what extent the Black abolitionists would view them being in the same socio-economic class as the White abolitionists, especially when accepted that the “’the Colored Race’ needed improvement [and help from the Whites]” (Harrold, p. 51).

8. I’ll respond to question 2. It’s interesting that while Harrold’s book is about the subversive and anti-slavery communities in Washington D.C., he calls this community “synthetic.” He writes that the bi-racial community of DC was primarily “relational” and that it used “shared dangers, broad similarities, and individual similarities to stand in for more profound bonds.” This, at least for me, provokes the question of what “profound bonds” might fall outside of the purview of friendship, similarities and common dangers, and additionally, what communities might have the aforementioned bonds that could make the DC subversive community by contrast a synthetic one.

   I think that the answer to the lack of “profound bonds” can be found in the dissolution of the subversive community. Harrold repeatedly emphasizes the importance of a shared middle class identity between subversive whites and blacks and also importance of common religious belief. He also points out the importance of “whiteness” as a source of empathy in the antislavery community. This is interesting because it suggests that the blacks least in need of help were the ones that white abolitionists found it the easiest to align themselves with. Harrold also talks about the importance of a subversive identity for anti-slavery activists such as Torrey and Smallwood. During and after the civil war both of these factors that drove the community together were eroded—opposing slavery and freeing slaves was no longer subversive, and the black population of DC became increasingly desperate refugees from the South that had less in common with the abolitionists. At the same time, the political broadening of the anti-slavery movement created a more white-centric social environment, and the increasing black demands for autonomy and equality beyond the abolition of slavery ran up against condescension and racism among many anti-slavery whites. The limits of the community were that white abolitionists allied with blacks that were most similar to them and they were able to form an alliance against the only most egregious and visible crime against blacks: slavery. The community proved to be synthetic when these limits were surpassed and the question became one of providing political and social rights and autonomy to a community of blacks that was often very unlike the white abolitionists. I’m not sure if it’s entirely fair to call a community synthetic because it was unable to transcend its foundations, but I think that the “profound bond” that Harrold suggests was missing was this lack of a transcendent empathy that was ultimately aimed at complete equality.

9. Washington D.C., The Capitol of our nation has always been a hotspot of radicalism and reform. The Capitol has seen marches protests and movements over the years; Currently the extremely liberal group Occupy Wall Street is “occupying D.C.” During the 1960s as a nation we experienced Martin Luther King’s speech in the Capitol at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial essentially signaling an end of racial prejudice and segregation. During the Abolition movement in the Antebellum years and during the Civil War, Washington D.C. was the focal point of the Subversive movement. Outlined in Harrold’s book Subversives, the movement saw the formation of a community of activists fighting against the tyranny of slavery in our great land. While abolitionist movements operated across the Northern States, they often groups did not include blacks and whites, nor did they allow for their prolonged cooperation. The Subversive movement was different. As Harrold describes in his book the Subversives were truly a community of blacks and whites working together towards the common goal of ending American Slavery.

   Harrold defines a community using two definitions: “the first pertains to local geography…community means neighborhoods, towns, cities where people of diverse economic and political standing live close to one another and interact in various ways.”(36-37) The second definition of community that Harrold presents is that of Joseph Gusfield, a well-known sociologist. This definition of community is called “relational,” where “community refers to ‘human relationships, without reference to location.”(37) The subversive movement was truly a community according to both definitions of the word. The subversives lived and operated in the same community, Washington D.C., and they worked together sharing a common bond to end American slavery. Harrold describes the subversives as having: “a shared emotional response to the outrages of enslavement… There was a mutual awareness that slavery conflicted with principles of individual liberty and Christian morality. There was a common struggle against the status quo. Black and white activists agreed that as allies they could drive slavery from the Chesapeake.”(38) Together Whites and blacks formed schools, protested slavery, worked to smuggle slaves out of the south (as evidenced in the Pearl incident and the Underground Rail Road) and even formed and attended unsegragated interracial churches.

   In this exchange whites often raised funds to buy slaves out of slavery and to defend them in courts. Harrold writes: “Local African Americans called on sympathetic whites to help them gain access to the courts, to help raise money, and, occasionally, to risk their own freedom and lives in rescuing people from slavery.” (51) The whites and blacks involved in the subversive movement even went so far as to attend and establish interracial churches. One of the main whites responsible for this trend was Charles T. Torrey, who Harrold describes as “only attending black churches when he was in Washington.”(42) Similar actions by the whites of the subversive community strengthened the community in their resolve and bond as humans. Another arena where whites and blacks were able to strengthen the biracial community was in the creation of schools for the blacks of Washington. Harrold writes: “the proliferation of black schools also provide formal roles for black and white women in an emerging biracial community… By cooperating in black education, in promoting black freedom, and in confronting slavery’s defenders, early black and white abolitionists established a framework for the future.”(27)

   With the onset of the Civil War the subversive community and movement began to disintegrate. Harrold asserts that the influx of white anti-slavery politicians in the 1850s and the formation of the Free Soil Party signaled an end to the subversive movement. (169) The second and more damming blow to the movement came during the Civil War, when Southern black refugees began to overcrowd the city. Harrold argues: “Antislavery biracialism had always depended on shared middle-class values. As slavery succumbed to northern arms and the masses of former plantation slaves…reached Washington, what had been a subversive biracial community became neither Subversive nor a community.” (226)

   The subversive movement is the primary example of a community of blacks and whites working together to end Slavery. The accomplishments of the movement relied on a common bond between men. The community was able to form and operate effectively because of the pretences of union. As Harrold asserts: “The formation of a subversive antislavery community in Washington…depended on two things: the desperate efforts of African Americans to preserve their families and the arrival of northern whites who were willing to assist them.” (13) The community of change that the subversives formed was truly effective at combating slavery, and was truly a community in every since of the word, because of the cooperation and common ground found by Washington D.C. whites and blacks.