Vol. XXX. Issue 2 (Spring 2023)
The 20th Annual Lecture on the Amistad, Central Connecticut State University
“The Existential Significance of the Amistad Rebellion: Enslaved Africans Throughout the Diaspora, and their Pursuit of Liberty from Bondage to Freedom”
Dr. Felton O. Best
(CSU) Professor of Philosophy, African-American, African, & Religious Studies
Director of African-American Studies
Coordinator of Religious Studies
Central Connecticut State University
New Britain, Connecticut
Scholars have hotly debated the causations of slave rebellions throughout the Diaspora. Such scholars include, but are not retained to, Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, Eugene D. Genovese, “Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Salve: A Critique of the Elkin’s Thesis”, Kenneth M. Stampp’s, “Rebels and Sambos: The Search for the Negro’s Personality in Slavery”, Seymour La Gross and Eileen Bender’s, “History Politics and Literature: The Myth of Nat Turner,” Donald Hickey’s “America’s Response to the Slave Revolts in Haiti, 1791-1806,” John Blassingame’s , The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, C.L. R. James’, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’ouverture and the San Domingo Rebellion, Merton Dillion’s, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and their Allies, and Winthrop Jordan’s White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 as well as others. All of these scholarly works have significant insights into the Amistad case of enslaved Africans in rebellion, and their allies. Regarding the historiography of enslaved African resistance, including but not limited to, the Amistad Rebellion, multiple scholars had concluded that the cognitive docility of Africans prevented their ability of having a positive existential perceptions of the self, in terms retaliating against the peculiar institution and other forms of brutality. This article argues that enslaved Africans were successful in enduring the hardships of slavery through the concept of “mask wearing” articulated by the noted 19th century African- American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in his poem, “We Wear the Mask.”
The concept of “mask wearing” allowed Africans to portray themselves loyal to their slave masters, while simultaneously endeavoring to plot to escape. Such strategies of “mask wearing” included faking pregnancies, breaking tools, poisoning slave master’s food, chopping down agricultural plants like tobacco and cotton plants, as well as faking their true personality types. This deliberate existential mask- wearing concept shows the intelligence, rather than the docility of the slave, simultaneously endeavoring to destroy the institution of slavery, and planning their escape from slavery to freedom through any means necessary. This concept of enslaved African mask -wearing explains the freedom concept of the Amistad Rebellion.
Regarding the Amistad case, on July 1, 1839, fifty-three Africans were kidnapped into slavery in Sierra Leone and incarcerated into the Havana slave market. Such enslaved Africans revolted against their oppressors . As a result of this uprising, such Africans, killed the captain as well as additional crew members. The initial arrival of the Africans in Connecticut resulted in their incarceration and the simultaneous charge of murder. However, given the reality that the slave trade was abolished in 1807, the institution of slavery as well continued to both, exist and thrive, in the Southern region of the United States. As it relates to the Amistad case, it arrived in the nation’s federal courts, and simultaneously gained the interest and the attention of the nation’s population. Even though the murder charges were dropped, these African captives, as a result of various claims of property rights, remained in the custody of Connecticut’s legal forces. Despite the issuance of an “ordinance of extradition” by President Martin Van Buren based upon Spain’s desire, the New Haven federal court refused to return these African captives to Cuba. This action was based upon their argument that “no one owned the Africans because they had been illegally enslaved, and transported to the New World” (Reidker, M ). As a result of the aforementioned, Van Buren appealed this decision, thus meaning that it would, in January of 1841, appear before the United States Supreme Court.
In response to Van Buren’s action, the abolitionists solicited former United States President, John Quincy Adams. Adams who was a noted liberal ordained clergyman was regarded by the abolitionists as an ally who was politically committed to the liberation of enslaved Africans.The Amistad Rebellion was not a new nor unusual movement of Black resistance to slavery, or for that matter any type of oppression. In fact, by 1829, David Walker’s appeal emphasized that enslaved Africans had to “free themselves,” including but not limited to, taking up arms in such an endeavor of resisting the oppression. During the peculiar institution Walker had talked about Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Haitian Revolution as an example of African’s self directed rebellion to the attempts of Black marginalization and domination. In addition, enslaved Africans in Sierre Leone, during the Zawo War embarked upon a prolonged revolt against Spanish and African slave traders. Likewise in Brazil, other revolts emerged against the abolitionists campaign for Black freedom.
The Amistad Rebellion is just one example among many in which enslaved Africans embarked upon self liberation through various acts of mask wearing. African enslavement in North America was dangerous to enslavers. Such enslavers endeavored to convince their human bondage that it was better to endure the humiliating aspects of slavery than to betray their masters. Despite their best efforts of psychological brainwashing of Africans, that their masters were benevolent paternalistic parents, such Africans rebelled, revolted, and resisted in various ways much to the surprise and perceived betrayal of their enslavers.
Numerous primary sources actually document the African concept of “mask wearing” where such slaves were perceived to be duped into believing that their masters had their best interests at heart. Such primary sources include narratives of enslaved Africans, slave masters diaries, antebellum travel accounts, statutory records, newspapers, story telling journals, published sermons, as well as published autobiographies from slaves such as Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage My Freedom,Harriet Jacob’s Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl, William L. Andrew’s Six Women’s Slave Narratives, and Booker T. Washington’s perceived accommodationist work Up From Slavery.
Although many Eurocentric scholars have endeavored to marginalize the idea of enslaved African’s intelligence and ability in “Wearing the Mask” primary source records as well as additional historiographical literature on the topic reveals the intelligence rather than the impaired mental conditioning of Africans. In fact, Ulrich Bonnel Phillips’ historical work has defined him as the “father of Eurocentric Antebellum enslaved African historiography. Phillips both denies, condemns, and refutes travelers accounts recording documenting the intelligence of slaves as well as ex- slaves narratives. Phillips writes:
“Ex-slaves narratives… were issued with so much abolitionist
editing that as a class their authenticity is doubtful……………
Traveler’s accounts……. Are the jotting of strangers likely to be
most impressed by the unfamiliar, and unable to distinguish
what was common in the regime from what was familiar in
some special case.” (p. 219)
Additional Eurocentric thinkers also joined the Phillips bandwagon regarding the perception of African docility and questioning their ability to organize, plan, and act in their own best self-interest of rebellion. On this point Randall Miller states that:
“One must use caution in dealing with the narrative of
enslaved Africans because they are most often the product
of rebels and resisters…. Because they constitute a sample
of a limited number of slaves population.” (p. 138) .
Despite the efforts of the Phillips/ Elkins thesis the reality is that African captives like those in the Amistad story, are more reliable in documenting this lived experience of African rebellion than Eurocentric scholars who endeavored to make such testimonies existentially invisible.
In reality, the autobiographical accounts of African captives throughout the Diaspora’s resistance to slavery are not only valid, -- they are simultaneously well- grounded and logical events regarding African’s concepts of mask wearing. In fact, if African accounts of “duping the master” were biased and invalid, the slave master’s preoccupation with the idea of Black docility, loyalty, and love for the master without retaliation, is both willful and sinful flawed philosophical thought.
In addition to the African Amistad Rebellion, notable additional enslaved African revolts occurred within America. Such events included the Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina, the Gabrial Prossor (1776-1880) plot in Richmond Virginia, the Denmark Vessey (1767-1882) conspiracy in Charleston South Carolina, and the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831. All of these events occurred as the result of the of slavery within America regarding persons of African ancestry. These rebellions in addition to other lesser known ones were perceived to be the only direct evidence of slave resistance. Although these large scale rebellions are crucial and critical moments in African Diasporic History, the published slave narratives serves as evidence which reveals that such enslaved Africans existentially defined themselves as cognitively empowered active resistors of all forms of human oppression both covertly and overtly. Enslaved Africans from continental Africa to their transplanted homes in various parts of the United States, and elsewhere, developed coping strategies that resisted their philosophical, psychological, and physical deterioration which allowed them to maintain a positive image of the self.
John Blassingame, the former professor of history at Yale University wrote the stunning scholarly book entitled The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South where he reveals several covert and overt forms of resistance to slavery. Blassingame developed the names of “Jack,” “Nat,” and “Sambo” as three types of slave personalities that lived on the plantation. What is most amazing is he argues that enslaves Africans could engage at will within any of these personalities. Blassingame writes:
“By engaging in religious activities the slave could,
for a while, shift his mind from his hopeless immediate
condition, to a bright future awaiting him.” (1979, p.7)
However, Paul Laurence Dunbar, had discovered this concept of “mask wearing” for enslaved Africans much earlier in the 19th century, which is documented in my biographical book on Dunbar entitled, Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906. (Best, Felton 1993)
Dunbar managed, I argued, to “document how people of African descent have historically learned to embark upon “existential philosophical and mutigenerational strategies of mask wearing to conceal their true identities as an endeavor to cross the color line and resist oppression in order to not be regarded in a category of otherness through his poem We Wear the Mask.”
Dunbar writes:
“We Wear the Mask” (1896)
We wear the mask that grins and lies
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes
This dept we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties,
Why should the world be other-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask
We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise,
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile,
But let the world dream otherwise, while
We wear the Mask!
As it relates to mask wearing as a form of resistance during slavery clarification is needed. Wearing the mask is a deliberate strategy of pretending to be happy while simultaneously planning for escape or attack. Notice the first stanza of Dunbar’s poem. He indicates that, “We wear the mask that grins and lies.” The major objective here is Dunbar’s depiction of both enslaved and or otherwise oppressed people of African descent concealing or masking their feeling in an an endeavor to prevent multiple forms of retaliation.
Scholars George Frederickson and Christopher Lash give clarification to this form of resistance from enslaved Africans their descendants. They write:
The issues involved in the study of “resistance” to slavery
are badly in need of clarification. The problem is one
would suppose, not weather the plantation slave was
happy with his lot but weather he actively resisted it. But
even this initial clarification does not come easily. Too many
writers have assumed that the problem of resistance consists
mainly of deciding weather the slaves were docile
or discontented and weather their masters were cruel
or kind. In this respect and in others, as Stanley Elkins
noted several years ago, the discussion of slavery has
locked itself into an old debate as it relates to the
contented slave…. Slave resistance weather bold and
persistent or mild and sporadic created for all slaveholders
a serious problem of discipline! (Frederickson and Lash, 316)
Frederickson and Lash had to come to the logical conclusion that the issue of the docile slave was invalid. The question would become one of the enslaved action of embarking upon any form of resistance. The historiographical literature on enslaved African rebellion. Lash had to come to terms with the reality that the argument that the slave had no concept of the idea of freedom is hard to believe. (Frederickson and Lash. 315).
It is absolutely clear that enslaved Africans rebelled against the institution of slavery. In fact, the evidence it is overwhelming! Some to the most convincing evident as relates to both overt and violent resistance to the actual and attempts of enslavement is the Nat Turner rebellion which is very synonymous with the Amistad story. One of the things that needs to be emphasized is that he was nicknamed as “Old Prophet Nat.” In this context, he was a slave preacher. His role as a theist was not predominated in the idea of the Christian biblical text that “slaves should obey your masters “however in his scriptural belief in “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent takes it by force!” (Douglass, 89).
Nat Turner, as well as the black victims in the Amistad case, saw it as both essential and theologically just to rebel against the perceived sin of Africanized incarceration. Turner led a band of sixty slaves in the bloody massacre in Southampton Virginia that included both men, women, and children. (Aptheker, p.49)
Several years earlier on September 9, 1739 the Stono Rebellion occurred in South Carolina. In fact, It was the largest African rebellion that existed in the Americans with the end result being that there was a loss of twenty-five colonists and about thirty Africans retaliators. (Aptheker, p. 123)
The slave revolt in Haiti from 1796-1806 proved to be another strong manifestation of Black resiliency. During the 1790’s the slave revolt proved to be both strong and frequent. The nations of the European powers had slave colonies in the Caribbean. Simultaneously the United States had an abundant population of enslaved Africans as well. In this context, it was in the interest of both to prevent slave revolts from spreading to other regions of the world. Despite the interest of both powers to suppress slave revolts, this shared interest was circumvented by the desire of each power to dominate economic trade produced from the commodities of enslaved African labor. Likewise, the reality was that slavery became a sectional issue in the United States between the Northern antislavery abolitionist advocates, and the Southern proslavery endeavor of repealing the antislavery efforts of the Federalists. (Aptheker p. 143)
The reign of Saint-Dominque was a French colony which existed in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is the region of the modern day Haiti—as we know it today form 1659-1804. In this context, before their independence was gained in 1804 Haiti was actually a French colony of Saint- Dominique . This region under French rule, grew to become the wealthiest colony and maybe the richest in the world. (Hickey, p. 212)
Toussaint L ’Ouverture, and individual of African descent would eventually become the leader of the Haitian Revolution. The French colony of St. Dominique had a prevailing history of unruliness largely because of Black discontent. By 1791, during the French Revolution unseen authority was dwindling in the mother country and its Black colony. Enslaved Africans rose in protest and revolted with the result leading to the killing of masters and the simultaneous the burning of plantations. In this context, a tremendous strong, and resilient Black leader by the name of “Boukman” assumed leadership and embarked upon voodoo which he perceived would “raise up Blacks to assume power over white oppressors.” Hickey p. 223
“Boukman” as he was called, eventually perished after spreading his revolutionary ideas, but was succeeded by additional inspiring future Black leaders. Like many Black leaders during the era of global antiblack racism, Toussaint Louverture, as Paul Laurence Dunbar would say, had learned to “wear the mask.” Although multiple white slave masters were killed, Toussaint—a gifted “ex slave” that had had learned to “wear the mask” by being recognized as one who, “provided for the safety of his master’s family before joining the revolt in 1791”—organized Africans into a resilient strong militia, thus demonstrating an “intuitive grasp of both the science of war and the art of diplomacy.” (Davis, p.213)
In conclusion, “Dunbarian mask wearing” as the noted poet Paul Laurence Dunbar had revealed in many of his short stories, was a political strategy of concealment used by enslaved Africans throughout the Diaspora, as well as the captives in the Amistad Rebellion. These resilient Black sailors did not reveal to their enslavers their skills of sailing, revolting, and their superiority of cognitive discernment —nor their psychomotor preponderation skills during warfare on land or at sea. The Dunbarian concept of “mask wearing” as a conscientious science of existential self-defined existence is also documented in two of my publications which I encourage all scholars to read to embark upon greater analysis of the Amistad Rebellion as an existential act of rebellion and the philosophical concept of “wearing the mask.” My earlier publications provide an analysis of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s resistance literature. Refer to Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar: 1872-1906 ( Kendall Hunt , 1996), and an article published in the Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 17, pp. 54-65, entitled “Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Protest Literature: The Years.”
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