Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
544
Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
544Paperback(Second Edition)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253222640 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 06/29/2011 |
| Series: | Blacks in the Diaspora |
| Edition description: | Second Edition |
| Pages: | 544 |
| Sales rank: | 615,832 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Stolen Childhood
Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
By Wilma King
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2011 Wilma KingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-35562-1
CHAPTER 1
"In the Beginning"
THE TRANSATLANTIC TRADE IN CHILDREN OF AFRICAN DESCENT
Charlotte one of my fellow prisoners ... did comfort me when I was torn from my dear native land ...
Sarah Margru [Kinson]
"Your image has been always riveted in my heart, from which neither time nor fortune have been able to remove it; so that, while the thought of your sufferings have damped my prosperity, they have mingled with adversity and increased its bitterness," wrote Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa, as he reflected upon the fate of his beloved sister. In 1756, a woman and two men raided Isseke, the children's village in present-day Nigeria, while the adults were working in a common field nearly an hour away by foot. The raiders took the girl and her eleven-year-old brother, Olaudah, whose name means "the fortunate one." The children, descendants of a slaveholding Ibo chief, were aware of a previous battle between the Ibos and "their enemy." The warfare resulted in the victors taking prisoners who were either sold away or kept within the community. Fighting among different ethnic and language groups was not unusual in this part of West Africa, and it probably intensified with increased demands for black laborers by whites in the Americas.
Olaudah Equiano's lengthy The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Written by Himself, which was wildly popular during his lifetime, may be a window into the lives of African boys and girls who experienced an abduction, sale, and removal from Africa. It is possible that Equiano's graphic description of the Middle Passage garnered support for the British movement to abolish the slave trade, which coincides with the 1789 publication of his work. Doubts about the authenticity of The Interesting Narrative were raised soon after it was published, and questions about where Equiano was born linger—it may have been West Africa, the Danish West Indies, or South Carolina. Vincent Carretta, author of Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man, claims that "the available evidence suggests that the author of The Interesting Narrative may have invented rather than reclaimed an African identity." Baptismal and naval records place Equiano's birth in South Carolina. A thorough interrogation of The Interesting Narrative leads Alexander X. Byrd to posit that Equiano's use of Eboe as a geopolitical concept, cultural practice, or ethnic link to Africa is problematic. Byrd writes that Equiano "was remarkably adept at putting himself in the mind of a boy from the Biafran interior."
Questions remain about The Interesting Narrative. Is it an unreliable autobiography? Or is it a well-crafted novel? If Africa is the author's birthplace, his claims about his birth, early childhood, abduction and his experience of the Middle Passage are his own. If he was not born in Africa, Equiano created a masterful composite of experiences recounted by others. In either case, the details in The Interesting Narrative, regardless of whether it was produced by a South Carolinian, Gustavus Vassa, or an African, Olaudah Equiano, do not disagree with details from other narratives that describe abductions, sales, and forced migrations from Africa to the New World, and it is useful in that regard.
This chapter seeks to reconstruct the experiences of girls and boys among the multitude of Africans who were abducted, sold, transported across the Atlantic, and enslaved in North America. Children, a significant entity in the transatlantic trade, were easier to seize, more malleable, and required less space aboard ships than adults. These features made youngsters attractive to slavers and serve as the basis for questions about the experiences of the most vulnerable of Africans in the trade. How did boys and girls respond to abductors who spirited them away from their families, friends, and communities? Although children were more tractable than adults, did that characteristic merit differences in their treatment once they were aboard the slavers? Were children, like adults, vulnerable to illness and death in the Middle Passage? What were the psychological costs of seeing shipmates sicken and die? In what ways did children differ from adults who revolted against their oppressors while on the high seas? Ultimately, answering these questions will provide a more nuanced view of the transatlantic trade and the girls and boys who were affected by it.
The presence of children in the commercialization of human life is noted in official records, ship manifests, and logs as well as journals kept by medical doctors and slavers. Historian Paul Lovejoy estimates that girls and boys constituted over 12 percent of the Africans transported to the Americas during the period 1663 to 1700. Their number increased significantly in the period 1701 to 1809, when the proportion of children reached nearly 23 percent. In her study of children in the British trade in Africans, Audra A. Diptee affirms that from 1786 to 1792, 27 percent of the Africans transported from West Central Africa were children. In her overview of the Atlantic slave trade, Lisa A. Lindsay estimates that 28 percent were children. These percentages are applicable to the participation of England and the United States in the slave trade prior to 1807 and 1808, when they ended the overseas trade. During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, more than 60 percent of the Africans transported to the New World were boys and girls.
On occasion, European slavers sought children specifically, as was the case in 1746, when William Ellery, owner of the Anstis, told Captain Pollipus Hammond, "if you have good trade for the Negroes ... purchase forty or fifty Negroes. get most of them mere Boys and Girls, some Men, let them be Young, No very small Children." Nearly twenty years later, entrepreneurs John Watts and Gedney Clarke discussed sending a ship to Africa to procure laborers for sale in New York. "For this market," wrote Watts, the slaves "must be young the younger the better if not quite Children, those advanced in years will never do." In general, the most marketable age was between ten and twenty-four years old.
"Mere Boys and Girls" along with men and women were transported across the Atlantic together, but their "accommodations" varied according to age and gender. Young boys and girls often walked about the decks unfettered, while men were confined to the ship's holds and women traveled on the quarter decks. Age, gender, physical conditions, and life experiences tempered Africans' responses to being ensnared in the international trade, which began with their abduction and a trek to the coast, where they were sold before they were put on board slavers that would carry them across the Atlantic. Afterward, they were enslaved and challenged to adjust to a new form of bondage in America. No doubt children understood some portion of what was happening to them, but they, like the adults, had no way of knowing what the future held.
Researchers seeking narratives from youthful Middle Passage survivors are certain to encounter obstacles. First, the extant records are biased in favor of males, who outnumbered the females. Second, males were more likely to gain literacy and publish their narratives. Furthermore, almost all enslaved youngsters lived under extremely harsh conditions without opportunities to record and preserve an account of events in their daily lives as they occurred. As a result, the extant records were created later, when the survivors were no longer children. Because of this, critics are likely to charge that such recollections are not representative, that they have been distorted by the subjects' age, or that the accounts, especially if written by an amanuensis, are reflections of pro-abolitionist political agendas.
An exception to traditional autobiographies that illuminate the experiences of youthful Middle Passage survivors is a small cache of letters written in 1774 by Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John. Their specific ages are never mentioned, but the data surrounding important events in their lives suggest that they were not mature adults when they were enslaved. It is well documented that Little Ephraim and Ancona Robin, who were not slave born and were not enslaved as a result of war, were abducted in 1767, sold in the Americas, and returned to their home in Old Calabar by 1774. The Robin John family elders, influential slave traders in the Bight of Biafra, had arranged for Little Ephraim and Ancona Robin to study in England. This was not an unusual decision among elite Africans, for it served to prepare their offspring, male and female, for future negotiations with Europeans. In the case of the Robin Johns, the plan went awry as intense rivalry between African traders and European slavers resulted in violence known as the "Massacre at Old Calabar," which had consequences for the two youngsters.
Prior to the actual fighting, Amboe, an older brother of Little Ephraim and Ancona Robin, boarded the British slaver Duke of York with his siblings, ostensibly to assist in mediating the dispute among the traders. Once Amboe realized the danger they faced, he fought with the captain and first mate to free himself and his brothers. According to Little Ephraim and Ancona Robin, "the Captain Stroke him on the head" while others "behind him ... were cutting him on [the] head and neck till he were spent & all must [almost] Killed." The bloodletting that followed resulted in the deaths of 300 Africans. Afterward, Captain James Bivins agreed to accept another man in exchange for Amboe, whom he handed over to his rivals. As Amboe's younger brothers watched in horrible disbelief, their "Enemies ... cut off his head." After these events, the Robin Johns were not taken to London to pursue their studies. Instead, the captain put them in irons, transported them across the Atlantic Ocean, and sold them into slavery.
The Robin Johns, who remained together throughout their seven-year ordeal, wrote about their experiences as they occurred or within a relatively short of period of time afterward. Their correspondence is most relevant for investigating the mechanics of the transatlantic trade and how the two young Africans freed themselves and returned home by way of England in less than a decade. Their oral and written English-language skills, acquaintances with European traders, and tenacity weighed heavily in their success. It also appears that the Little Johns were familiar with Somerset v. Stewart (1772), a case involving Virginia-born James Somerset, whose owner Charles Stewart, a Boston customs officer, had carried him to England in 1769. Two years later, Somerset ran away. When Somerset was found, Stewart planned to send him to Jamaica, where he would be sold. British abolitionists including Granville Sharp sympathized with Somerset and assisted in filing a writ of habeas corpus. Lord William Mansfield, chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, heard Somerset's case and rendered a narrow opinion that focused on questions about removing a slave from England by force.
In all probability, British abolitionists were aware of the Little Johns' plight and encouraged them to seek redress through the court. Whatever the case, Little Ephraim wrote directly to Lord Mansfield about their enslavement and eventually received a favorable hearing in a British court.
Unlike the Robin Johns' letters, which focus specifically on their memory of the 1767 massacre, their enslavement in the Americas, and their quest for freedom, the narratives of other Middle Passage survivors mention their peers and some facet of an idyllic childhood before the raids resulting in their enslavement in the Americas. For example, a brief memoir by the African-born Florence Hall recounts playing in an open field with peers when raiders abducted her along with a number of her playmates. Similarly, the young boy Ottobah Cugoano was playing in a field with eighteen or twenty children when he was "snatched away from [his] native country." Boyrereau Brinch similarly wrote about a carefree childhood characterized by his family's blessings and "a heart lighter than a feather." Brinch wrote that as he and his peers prepared for a frolic in a river, they "could anticipate no greater pleasure, and knew no care." Their mirth came to an end when "waylayed by thirty or forty more of the ... pale race of white Vultures," who seized eleven of the fourteen children.
The abductions of Hall, Cugoano, Brinch, and their friends did not differ dramatically from what Olaudah Equiano and his sister experienced. But many children lived under less than ideal conditions before they were kidnapped and transported to the Americas. Many girls and boys were already enslaved in Africa as a result of warfare that had little or nothing to do with the transatlantic slave trade.
Several autobiographies written by Middle Passage survivors indicate that youngsters had a working knowledge of potential dangers from "raiders." For example, the Guinea-born Venture Smith vividly recalled the invasion of his village at the hands of hostile men. He estimated that he was only six years old, which would make the year 1729. Smith suggested that the intruders were "instigated by some white nation." Whether motivated by Europeans or by their own initiatives, the raiders greeted the child with "a violent blow on the head with the fore part of a gun, and at the same time a grasp around the neck." Afterward, Smith watched as the men "closely interrogated" his father before they "cut and pounded on his body with great inhumanity." Smith wrote, "I saw him while he was thus tortured to death." Witnessing such a tragedy was devastating and would have left a permanent imprint.
The six-year-old boy could do nothing to save his father or his people from annihilation by the large and continuously moving army of slave raiders. As it entered one village after another, the army "laid siege and immediately took men, women, children, flocks, and all their valuable effects ... then went on to the next." Smith's family had been forewarned, but it was too weak to withstand the assault. Their vulnerability was not unlike that of other narrators, including Hall and Equiano, who describe their hateful abductions. "Cries and screams were raised," Hall recalled. Their protests, "if heard," she added, were "unattended." Neither Equiano nor his sister cried out: there was no time. Besides, the kidnappers "stopped," or bound, their mouths to silence any protests.
The knowledge that raiders would and did overrun villages and take prisoners had prompted the adults of Isseke to prepare themselves against invasions. According to Equiano, when the adults went out to work, they carried "fire-arms, bows and arrows, broad two-edged swords and javelins" along for protection. "All [were] taught the use of these weapons; even our women are warriors," wrote Equiano, "and march boldly out to fight along with the men."
The warriors were of no help to Olaudah or his sister, and the children were catapulted into an unimaginable destiny. Their grief was overpowering, and their only relief was falling asleep in each other's arms. After more than a day's journey, the raiders separated the girl from her brother. The children's pleas to remain together fell upon deaf ears. Afterward, Equiano refused to eat and "cried and grieved continually" about the status of his sister.
There is no extant account of how the Equiano girl, whose name and age remain unknown, responded to the shock of abduction and detachment from her brother and other loved ones. One cannot assume that her gender mitigated her condition.
However, it is reasonable to posit that she, Olaudah's "dear partner" in all of his childish sports and the "sharer of [his] joys and sorrows," displayed emotions much like those of her brother, who declared, "I was quite oppressed and weighed down by grief after my mother and friends; and my love of liberty, ever great, was strengthened by the mortifying circumstances of not daring to eat with the freeborn children, although I was mostly their companion." The grief he felt over separation from his immediate family and birthplace was exacerbated by his loss of freedom and the humiliation associated with his newly imposed lower-class status.
During the course of separation from his family, Olaudah Equiano met several older West African women who comforted him. One was a wife of an African chieftain who had once owned him. In fact, Equiano claimed, the kind woman "was something like [his] mother." It is possible that the young Equiano girl also encountered circumstances like those her sibling experienced that may have ameliorated her condition.
At length, perhaps after several months and as many owners, Olaudah and his sister were reunited. This interval indicates that the traders remained in the vicinity over a period of time as they sought more Africans to fill the holds of their ships. The children's reunion was memorable. "As soon as she saw me," he wrote, "she gave a loud shriek, and ran into my arms." Neither child could speak. They simply "clung to each other in mutual embraces" and wept. The trader indulged them. The "joy of being together" again obliterated what Olaudah Equiano termed their "misfortunes," albeit temporarily.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Stolen Childhood by Wilma King. Copyright © 2011 Wilma King. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsPreface to the Second EditionIntroduction 1. In the Beginning: The Transatlantic Trade in Children of African Descent2. "You know that I am one man that do love his children": Slave Children and Youth in the Family and Community 3. "Us ain't never idle": Slave Children and Youth in the World of Work 4. "When day is done": Play and Leisure Activities of Slave Children and Youth 5. "Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave": The Temporal and Spiritual Education of Slave Children and Youth 6. "What has Ever Become of My Presus Little Girl": The Traumas and Tragedies of Slave Children and Youth 7. "Free at last": The Quest for Freedom by Slave Children and Youth 8. "There's a better day a-coming": The Transition from Slavery to Freedom for Children and Youth Notes Appendixes Bibliography IndexWhat People are Saying About This
"King's deeply researched volume on slave children first appeared to rave reviews in 1995 (CH, Apr'96, 33-4719), establishing her as a leading scholar on African American slavery generally and as an authority on slave youth culture. Slavery's all-encompassing veil, she wrote with passion and verve, enveloped bonded children, circumscribing their formative years, transforming them into chattel laborers, and subjecting them to arbitrary, untoward punishment and deleterious separation from families. King (Univ. of Missouri-Columbia) documented the various farm, industrial, and plantation occupations slave youth practiced and contextualized their lives by explicating their educations and leisure activities—elements that enabled them to survive enslavement and fashion new lives as freed men and women. King's second edition more than doubles the size of the original work. Drawing on extensive new scholarship and sources, she adds significant new demographic information regarding slave children and broadens her scope to include slave children born in the North and in urban centers. King also probes interactions between free, freed, and enslaved children across time and place and details the lives of children owned by African American and Native American slaveholders. Finally, her revised edition includes material on the heretofore-ignored role of slave children in the abolition movement. Indispensible. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. —Choice"
King's deeply researched volume on slave children first appeared to rave reviews in 1995 (CH, Apr'96, 33-4719), establishing her as a leading scholar on African American slavery generally and as an authority on slave youth culture. Slavery's all-encompassing veil, she wrote with passion and verve, enveloped bonded children, circumscribing their formative years, transforming them into chattel laborers, and subjecting them to arbitrary, untoward punishment and deleterious separation from families. King (Univ. of Missouri-Columbia) documented the various farm, industrial, and plantation occupations slave youth practiced and contextualized their lives by explicating their educations and leisure activities—elements that enabled them to survive enslavement and fashion new lives as freed men and women. King's second edition more than doubles the size of the original work. Drawing on extensive new scholarship and sources, she adds significant new demographic information regarding slave children and broadens her scope to include slave children born in the North and in urban centers. King also probes interactions between free, freed, and enslaved children across time and place and details the lives of children owned by African American and Native American slaveholders. Finally, her revised edition includes material on the heretofore-ignored role of slave children in the abolition movement. Indispensible. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. —Choice
"Stolen Childhood is a wonderful book with manifold strengths of research and analysis." —Nell Irvin Painter, reviewing a previous edition or volume
King's deeply researched volume on slave children first appeared to rave reviews in 1995 (CH, Apr'96, 33-4719), establishing her as a leading scholar on African American slavery generally and as an authority on slave youth culture. Slavery's all-encompassing veil, she wrote with passion and verve, enveloped bonded children, circumscribing their formative years, transforming them into chattel laborers, and subjecting them to arbitrary, untoward punishment and deleterious separation from families. King (Univ. of Missouri-Columbia) documented the various farm, industrial, and plantation occupations slave youth practiced and contextualized their lives by explicating their educations and leisure activities—elements that enabled them to survive enslavement and fashion new lives as freed men and women. King's second edition more than doubles the size of the original work. Drawing on extensive new scholarship and sources, she adds significant new demographic information regarding slave children and broadens her scope to include slave children born in the North and in urban centers. King also probes interactions between free, freed, and enslaved children across time and place and details the lives of children owned by African American and Native American slaveholders. Finally, her revised edition includes material on the heretofore-ignored role of slave children in the abolition movement. Indispensible. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. —Choice