| INSTRUCTIONS: This assignment raises questions about a specific antiabolitionist propaganda strategy stemming from the anxieties of white men over the threat posed by free black labor. After examining the depiction of this anxiety in the 1835 engraving reproduced below, respond to the question. Then read and respond to three of your classmates' paragraphs. |
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This wood engraving was made ca. 1835. Its argument, that freeing southern slaves would lead to "black supremacy," had been a part of proslavery doctrine since the eighteenth century. In the engraving, whites hold the lowest positions of manual labor at this construction site. Skilled black masons boss them, saying, "Bring up the mortar, you white rascals" and "You bogtrotters, come along with them bricks." A wealthy black capitalist, bottom left, occupies an even higher economic station as he commands one of the white laborers: "White man, hurry up them bricks." It is difficult to tell whether the white man, bottom right, instructs the black man in front of him or the two masons above, when he says, "Sambo, hurry up the white laborers." But the dominant theme of a reversal of the existing order is clear: after abolition, the engraving suggests, privileged white males will lose their status as the proprietors of black labor. |
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Question: Abolitionists often sought to refute proslavery propaganda in their literature, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Write about one piece of abolitionist literature that clearly addresses the concerns of whites about "freed" black labor. For instance, how might Frederick Douglass's discussion of his work as a caulker in Baltimore be understood as a response to this illustration's propaganda about black labor? What other writers discuss "labor" as purposefully as Douglass does? Do you think contemporary readers would have recognized the literature you select as a response to proslavery propaganda?
SourcesLapsansky, Phillip. "Graphic Discord: Abolitionist and Antiabolitionist Images." The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. |