Dynamic Sparklines

VIOLENCE, CHRISTIANITY, ABOLITIONISM

I have included dynamic sparklines for a few aggregated topic categories. Below the chart I describe the constituent topics that comprise each topic category as well as brief notes on patterns or outliers in these views of the data.

 

VIOLENCE

I have identified three topics that fall under the broader category of violence, and aggregated them here. The first two categories directly relate to violence done to the body; one focused on the bodily harm and the other on the inflicting of the violence, with many words strongly linking the topic to corporal punishment on the plantation. The third category is composed of keywords specific to war, and primarily of titles, structures, and military units.

  • Bodily harm: Back head feet hands cut man made blood whip hand boy put tied time ground blow struck left shot poor
  • Punishment: slaves master slave overseer plantation work field man whip masters whipped hands negroes cotton master’s time poor men called whipping
  • War: war men soldiers army general colored officers officer regiment chaplain battle camp military fort soldier troops service cadet duty guard

The early narratives contained comparatively less violence, with this frequency remaining relatively consistent until a sharp rise with several narratives published in the 1830s. The piece with the highest proportion of violence in the corpus (according to MALLET) is “Recollections of a Runaway Slave” by James Williams, published in 1838, about 9.6% of which was composed of language related to violence. The rise in the proportion of violence in the 1830s seems to be accompanied by a temporary decline in language related to Christianity.

CHRISTIANITY

Three topics identified by MALLET fall under the broad category of Christianity. One topic is related to the concrete elements of the institution of the church, the clergy, and services. The other two seem to be made up mostly of concepts, with one containing words that suggest personal, direct appeals and prayer, or dialogue. The other conceptual category seems less bound in personal appeal – though I imagine there could be significant overlap – and may be more suited for narrative discourse.  

  • Prayer: god lord pray prayer heart jesus great good soul time spirit day felt love prayed people brother meeting Christ dear
  • Theology: god man Christ world lord earth heaven great men spirit love life things jesus death truth holy soul power faith
  • Church: church meeting conference rev people bishop Methodist Baptist pastor members brother preached meetings preach churches elder held good brethren time

Some of the outliers with above-average proportions of religious language are authored by or about pastors, missionaries, and other clergy. The two pieces with the highest proportions of Christian language in the Antebellum period are “The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher” and the biography of Elder Charles Bowles, written by another clergyman. The title of the work suggest a subgenre within the corpus, the “saint’s life”:

“The Life, Labors, and Travels of Elder Charles Bowles, of the Free Will Baptist Denomination, by Eld. John W. Lewis. Together with an Essay on the Character and Condition of the African Race by the Same. Also, an Essay on the Fugitive Law of the U.S. Congress of 1850, by Rev. Arthur Dearing.”

ABOLITIONISM

MALLET identified two topics that I have aggregated under the umbrella name of abolitionism. These topics do not refer to the rhetoric of abolitionism, but to the language of political organizing and mobilization of resources for the cause. Sample keywords include:

  • Internal: Letter society committee received states friends office
  • External: Douglass states slavery president people great united anti-slavery convention meeting speech

Two brief notes: The Quakers, or Society of Friends, were the most active religious group in service of abolitionism, and among the savviest political organizers of the antebellum period. One of the topics appears to be related to the inner workings and proceedings of the abolitionist committees/societies, while the other to external relations and public events.

While contemporary abolitionists viewed the publication of these narrative was an essential tool in their campaign to end slavery, the black subjects and authors of these narratives were often excluded from the official abolitionist movement. As such, the language of the business of abolitionism is largely absent from these texts.

The two most obvious outliers before the Civil War are both accounts on the life of Lott Cary, a black missionary who became governor of Liberia. The colony of Liberia was a creation of the American Colonization Society (ACS), an unlikely partnership of abolitionists, slaveholders, and others with the goal to resettle free blacks in Africa.

The very small peak near the left edge of the sparkline is, of course, Equiano. He is at least twice exceptional, in both time and geography. His account was published in 1789, far before abolitionism coalesced into a formal movement in what would soon become the United States – this timing gives some context to the lack of “abolitionist” language in these narratives until much closer to the Civil War. Equiano was also writing from Britain, where a much earlier movement had begun surrounding the abolition of the slave trade.  Equiano was a vocal participant in the public debate, writing letters to newspapers and ceaselessly speaking on book tours, though those engagements are not captured in the narrative proper (see the appendices and additional materials in any print edition of his narrative). Like Cary, Equiano was also involved in a resettlement program. He was hired (and subsequently released) in a leadership position to resettle poor blacks from London to what is now Sierra Leone.

by Matthew McClellan