Emancipation Day & Black Resistance

• August 1, 1834, free Black Americans commemorated Emancipation Day with parades, food, bazaars, and speeches, mirroring Fourth of July celebrations.
• Physician James McCune Smith criticized this celebration, viewing British emancipation as a compromise that compensated slave masters but neglected the enslaved.
• McCune Smith advocated for seizing freedom rather than receiving it as a conferred gift, emphasizing the necessity of struggle i.e. "Our freedom must be won".
• He praised leaders such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, for their acts of resistance, suggesting that violent acts shed light on the future of Black Americans.
• According to Smith, true freedom required physical engagement and physical assertion of manhood i.e. "They will never recognize our manhood until we knock them down a time or two".
• The shift towards violence among African Americans remains largely unaddressed in historical narratives.
• Black resistance was central to abolitionism, requiring a critical re-evaluation of the legitimacy and utility of violence.
• Black abolitionist ideology clarifies how the politics of violence both instigated the Civil War and promoted the perception of Black individuals as equal American citizens.
• Few benefits are gained from those in power, except through force.
• Engaging in a complex understanding of the political purposes of violence enhances our comprehension and utilization of the past.
• There is a trend to prioritize nonviolence and negate the potential of violence as a catalyst for American emancipation.
• Historiography usually follows moral suasion in the 1830s, political abolition in the 1840s, and separatism/emigration in the 1850s.
• Smith's work sees Black abolitionism as beginning near the inception of Atlantic world slavery, understanding the idea and experience of violence more than any other group.

Force and Freedom

• Examines tensions before the Civil War and conditions leading Black abolitionists to deem violent measures necessary.
• Sheds light on the shift from moral persuasion in the 1830s to combative efforts in the 1850s, elucidating moments fostering desire for force.
• The study intends to explain why Black abolitionist leaders valued violence over nonviolence, the factors that accelerated this change.
• Further aims include addressing routes to mutual agreement among Black leaders differing with white abolitionist leaders, and revealing the influence of the Black abolitionist movement.
• Highlights pivotal role of violence in conceiving emancipation and freedom
• Using force and violence to attain freedom is paradoxical within western political thought.
• In the pursuit of freedom, violence emerges as essential when it becomes the sole remaining choice, viewed as understanding an ideology of 'last resorts.’
• The study asks whether enslaved and free Black people should be obliged to obey laws that deny them the ability to shape those laws.
• This book refers to political violence as forceful or deadly actions operating around a political agenda/motivation to foster change.
• Everything about slavery and its abolition was contested as everything about history is contests of power / influence / governance.

Black Abolitionists

• Black leaders addressed how violence became a way of communicating and provoking change because violence became synonymous with a political language.
• Imagining violence as a language helps scholars understand 19th century African American history, considering both power maintenance and dissemination.
• Historic eras of revolutions set examples of how they were rhetorical / physical weapons to maintain the status quo, as well as overthrow it.
• François Furstenberg states Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" was the greatest revolutionary slogan of all time.
• Idea that freedom denied should be taken by force among Black abolitionists was not new.
• Their leaders used egalitarian language of the 18th / 19th Century and Black abolitionists presented as equal men whose struggles mirrored those of American revolutionaries.
• Founding Fathers inadvertently provided the language and ideology for a violent overthrow of slavery, because Haitian revolutionaries provided the precedent.
• The successful overthrow of slavery during the Haitian Revolution gave the first example of a Black revolutionary victory.

Violence as Haitian verb

• For enslaved and Black leadership, the revolution gave an implication that it was more than a noun.
• Examples made Black Americans confident asserting that equality and authority were not divine, hereditary, accidental - but that individual conditions could engineer change.
• Violence had a democratizing effect, creating opportunities for enslaved or oppressed free persons to engage in political and physical pushback.
• Minister Joshua Easton spoke to Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society meeting (1837), declaring abolitionists may attack slavery, however there is danger slavery will survive if there is still prejudice.
• Their warfare cannot be solely about slavery, rather the essence which makes color a sign of degradation.
• James Theodore Holly (abolitionist, emigrated to Haiti) critiqued hypocrisy of US independence (1850s), describing Haiti as inspiration for Black reformers.
• American revolution he posited, was revolt of people already comparatively free, independent, and highly enlightened, meanwhile the Haitian Revolution was a revolt of uneducated slaves against tyrannical oppressors.
• If those in power speak a language based solely on the philosophy of force", then the acquisition of equal rights would always require rethinking non-violence.
• Smith's words became prophetic. Black men and women seized their freedom with their own hands as McCune Smith's final proclamation proved shortsighted.
• Black leadership’s willingness to embrace violence came from long practice of nonresistance under white leadership rather than mere result of frustration, becoming a carefully calculated action.
• Radical Black authors served as publishing pioneers while figures such as Hayden, Loguen, Tubman, Purvis, Clark & Stewart believed in combats against slavery.
• The constant threat of mob attacks influenced Douglass to engage in altercations, marking shift in philosophy because the movement from moral persuasion to violence was from personal experience / politics.

Black Abolitionists cont.

• Few Black women spoke contrary to nonresistance during the antislavery movement, gradually need address grievances, with contributions at all levels cannot be underestimated.
• Leading women such as Cary, Harper, Remond, Purvis, and Truth assumed stances in aiding slaves / self defense as women were also not above packing guns.
• Sacrifices shared among Black families in decision making, examining women response, rhetoric and actions.
• The 1850s created space for abolitionists to convince allies that persuasion insufficient to combat Slave Power. Black leadership “protective violence, self denfense, disruptive/paranoid/force to engage/widen political agenda.
• Rather than focus on abolitionists versus moral/political issues, there were Eastern versus Western beliefs, this work focusses on Black leadership / vision free enfranchisement.
• By being subjects/founding, Smith notes the importance/subjectivity/origin of Black abolitionist and intellectuals through writings in their fight.
• He argued it was the responsibility of American to bring forth their nation in a way that faced their rights of Black people was paramount.