As
readers of this blog know, True Yankees explores themes of global travel, the
construction of identity (both personal and public), and the place of these
within early American print culture. While
my own work focuses on American voyagers who sailed “eastward of Good Hope”
(geographically, into the seas beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and
psychologically, sailing beyond all that
was familiar, known, and comfortable), I hope to include, from
time to time, the ideas of colleagues who explore these themes in other
sites. Today’s guest post, from my
colleague Jessica Parr, offers us a fresh perspective, then, from the
perspectives of a marginalized people .
Examining the construction of the African diaspora in the poetry of
slaves in colonial America, she finds a Biblical foundation made the ordeal of
slavery both understandable and bearable.
“God’s Tender Mercies:”
Redemptive Language, Print Culture, and
Universal Salvation
in Early Black Consciousness
A Guest Post
by
Jessica Parr
University of New Hampshire
By the second half of the eighteenth
century, Christianity had taken on a dual meaning for African-Americans. On the one hand, evangelical Christianity
promised universal salvation, which held some appeal for marginalized and
dehumanized people. Religion also served
as a bond of sorts, across an African diaspora, as free and enslaved Africans
envisioned what a black society, free of the debasement of slavery, might look
like. On the other hand, white
pro-slavery Christians tended to emphasize religion as a means of social
control, designed to compel obedience among African slaves. It was a bit of religious pro-slavery
rhetoric unleashed by Anglican missionary Morgan Godwyn in his two treatises in
1680 and 1681.[1] These treatises were designed to persuade
planters who were reluctant to allow religious instruction to their slaves,
where the question of whether it was legal to hold Christians in perpetual slavery
was still unsettled law.[2]
Many early Black intellectuals and
writers, including Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, and Jupiter Hammond focused
on themes of faith, redemption, and hope in their writings. Jupiter Hammon was arguably the earliest
published African American writer.
Hammon was born into slavery in Huntingdon, New York in 1711. He remained a slave throughout his life,
serving four generations of the Lloyd family. Like Wheatley, the deeply
religious Hammon was literate, having been sent to school alongside the Lloyd
children. The Lloyds were a devoutly
religious family, and may, like Phillis Wheatley’s masters, have seen educating
their child slaves as a gesture of Christian charity.
In 1761, Jupiter Hammon become the
first African American to publish, with the publication of the first of his
poems, “An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ
with Penitential Crienes: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr.
Lloyd of Queen's Village, on Long Island.”
“An Evening Thought” stresses the idea of universal salvation, opening
with the verse: “Salvation comes by Jesus Christ alone…Redemption now to every
one.” Early scriptural arguments that were used to support slavery came from
the idea of original sin. One common bit
of scripture invoked by pro-slavery Christians, was the Curse of Ham, which
comes from the Book of Genesis. In this
biblical story, God cursed Ham for mocking his drunken father, Noah. His skin, and that of his descendants, were
scorched black. Proponents of slavery
argued that Africans were the descendants of Ham, cursed for his sins. Hence the
idea of “universal salvation” the “hereditary heathenism” that developed in
early Black print culture serves a rejection of the theological validity of these
scriptural interpretations.[3] Hammon’s emphasis on salvation can be read in
dual context to indicate both a salvation from sin, but also salvation from
slavery.
His writings that followed all
stressed a common theme, which encouraged slaves to focus on salvation, and
avoid vice and sin. It was a theme that
carried into other writings by early Black writers. Hammon’s 1778 poem, “An Address to Miss
Phillis Wheatley,” addresses Wheatley’s turn to religious life, saying
Thous has left the heathen shore;
Through mercy of the Lord, Among the
heathen live no more, Com magnify
thy God.” Wheatley had expressed
similar sentiments in her own poem,
“On Being Brought From Africa to
America.”
Phillis Wheatley, as illustrated by Scipio Moorhead
in the Frontispiece to her book Poems on Various Subjects (1773).
She
observed:
Twas Mercy brought me from my Pagan
land
Taught my benighted soul to
understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour
too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor
knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful
eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic
die."
Remember, Christians, Negros,
black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic
train.
At one level, Hammon’s writings appear to confirm some of the early pro-slavery rhetoric that encouraged obedience of slaves to their masters. On the surface, his poem, “A Dialogue, Intitled, The Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant” seems to confirm pro-slavery Christian arguments that religion could serve as a form of social control for slaves. The poem features a dialogue between a master and his slave concerning faith as a source of strength for getting through tough times (in this case, war). But shared expressions of piety also suggest a faith that mankind, black and white, have equal access to, even if their social standings are not currently equal. The idea of “perfect strength,” as Wheatley wrote to her friend and correspondent, Obour Tanner, “was made in perfect weakness.”[4]
In his 1787 Address to Negroes of New York, Hammon wrote:
Now whether it is right, and lawful,
in the sight of God, for them to make
slaves
of us or not, I am certain that while we are slaves, it is our duty to
obey our masters, in all their
lawful commands, and mind them unless we
are
bid to do that which we know to be sin, or forbidden in God’s word.”[5]
Hammon continues: “With good will doing service to the Lord, and not to men.”[6] Unlike white Christians, Hammon does not necessarily encourage obedience for its own sake. Rather, he encourages his audience to put their faith in God. Engaging in unlawful or disorderly acts would only degrade slaves further.
In the tradition of these Black religious writings, struggle is a common theme, and religion is the balm to get Black Christians through the trials they will endure until slavery comes to an end. It is the start of a Messaniac language, which provided Black Christian intellectuals from the middle of the eighteenth century onward with way to connect across the African Diaspora, but also served as a guidebook for envisioning a Black existence beyond the degradations of slavery.
Notes
[1] See especially Morgan Godwyn, Proposals for the Carrying on the Negro’s
Christianity (1681).
[2] Travis Glasson, “‘Baptism Doth Not
Bestow Freedom:’ Missionary Slavery and the Yorke-Talbot Decision, 1701-1730,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 67,
No. 2 (April 2010): 279-318.
[3] Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2012): 3, 172.
[4] Letter from Phillis Wheatley to Obour
Tanner, 19 July 1772. Upham Hugh Clark Collection. Massachusetts Historical
Society.
[5] Jupiter Hammon, An Address to Negroes in the State of New-York (1787): 7.
[6] Hammon, Address, 7.
