Threat of a Bondman

Political Self-Fashioning and Christian Empowerment in the Memoir of Quamino Buccau, A Pious Methodist

Bibliographic Data

ID11192541
AuthorsKenneth E Marshall (Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume29
Issue3
Pages361-388
Publication date2008-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSlavery and Abolition (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0144-039X • E-ISSN: 1743-9523
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01440390802267808
OpenAlexW2002728681
LanguageEN
References cited48

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes According to Quamino's amanuensis, he ‘was born in the vicinity of [New] Brunswick, New Jersey’ in February 1762 and died in Burlington, New Jersey, in November 1850; Allinson, Memoir of Quamino Buccau, 4, 28–29 (quotation 4). Similarly, the 1850 federal census places Quamino's birth in 1762, noting that he was 88 years old at the time; US Federal Census (MS), 1850, for City of Burlington in Burlington County, New Jersey (copy at Library of Michigan, Lansing). The Memoir can also be accessed on microfilm in Special Collections, Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; and online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/allinson/allinson.html. Hodges, Root and Branch, esp. 64–65, 134–136. The Memoir is briefly employed in Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, 25; and Lyght, Path to Freedom, 29–31. For Zilversmit, the Memoir confirms the harsh realities of eighteenth-century northern slavery and the ebullience of newly emancipated African Americans. Lyght views it as ‘an interesting story in the history of manumissions’ (30). As Bertram Wyatt-Brown has pointed out, enslaved males ‘were considered the most troublesome, and therefore on them fell the greater demands for signals of full compliance’; ‘The Mask of Obedience’, 1229. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind, ch.4. On the life of William Allinson, see Nelson, New Jersey Biographical and Genealogical Notes, 10–11; and Marshall, ‘“Ain't No Account”’, 22–23 (first quotation, 22; second quotation, 23). Marshall, ‘“Ain't No Account”’, 27, 28. US Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth, 195. See also McManus, Black Bondage in the North, 214 (Appendix); and Hodges, Root and Branch, 279 (Table 4). In addition to Somerset, East Jersey was comprised of Bergen, Essex, Middlesex, and Monmouth counties. Allinson, Memoir, 4–6. US Bureau of the Census, Century of Population Growth, 194. The 1771 census can also be found in McManus, Black Bondage, 210 (Appendix). The Hudson River valley was comprised of Albany, Columbia, Dutchess, Orange, Ulster, Westchester, and Rensselaer counties. On brutal treatment, see White, Somewhat More Independent, 87–88; Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, 60, 122–123, 176–177; Hodges, Root and Branch, 52–3, 65–6, 90–91, 116, 179–180; and Marshall, ‘Work, Family and Day-to-Day Survival’, 33–35. For an opposite strategy by a slave who invented himself as ‘mean’, see Marshall, ‘“His Disposition”’. Allinson, Memoir, 4 (‘Buccau’). ‘Being extremely illiterate, his [Quamino's] language was often incoherent; and he not unfrequently laboured in vain to find fitting phrases fully to convey the thoughts he was anxious to express’ (22). Marshall, ‘“Ain't No Account”’, 31–33. Allinson, Memoir, 4. On high turnover rate and rural isolation, see White, Somewhat More Independent, 88–93; Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, 16–21, 155–156; and Marshall, ‘Work, Family, and Day-to-Day Survival’, 24–26. Allinson, Memoir, 4, 5, 6, 9, 15–16 (‘young cub’, 4, ‘old friends’, 15). See note 38. Douglass, Narrative of the Life, 24–25; Jacobs, Incidents in the Life, 5–6, 13–14; Bibb, Narrative of the Life, 64–65; Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, 1–2. Important works on enslaved southern children include: Webber, Deep Like the Rivers; King, Stolen Childhood; and Schwartz, Born in Bondage. There are no studies that focus specifically on the childhood of enslaved northern blacks. However, Nell Irvin Painter provides an insightful discussion of the enslaved childhood of Sojourner Truth in upstate New York; Sojourner Truth, 11–18. For the enslaved childhood of Silvia Dubois in Somerset County and present-day Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, see Lobdell, Silvia Dubois, 53–56. Allinson, Memoir, 4. The probable identity of ‘Schenk’ is discussed in Marshall, ‘“Ain't No Account”’, 17–18. Williams-Myers, Long Hammering, 5. For a related comment on the slave community, see Painter, ‘Soul Murder and Slavery’, 30. The average slaveholder in Dutchess County at the time of the 1790 federal census owned 2.8 slaves; Groth, ‘The African American Struggle’, 76, n.14. See Painter, Sojourner Truth, 17. Allinson, Memoir, 19–30. Ibid., 4–5 (first quotation, 4; phrases and second quotation, 5). Henry Noble MacCracken maintains that in Dutchess County there was an ‘absence of riots, insurrection, and violence’ amongst enslaved blacks; Old Dutchess Forever, 125. For crime and ensuing burning, see Williams-Myers, Long Hammering, 46. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 615. Allinson, Memoir, 5. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 2. For Cuff (of Rumbout), see New-York Gazette: or, Weekly Post-Boy, 15 October 1753. For Trace (of Fishkill), see New-York Gazette (Weyman's), 6 September 1763. Mellick, The Story of an Old Farm, 604. On the negativity associated with human ‘blackness’, see Jordan, White Over Black, in conjunction with Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 447–449; and McClintock, Imperial Leather, 56–60. Allinson, Memoir, 5. While in exile in Poughkeepsie, ‘Quamino was several times taken to see his old master; and once Buccau [Brokaw] ... came to see him’ (4). Quoted in MacCracken, Old Dutchess Forever, 352; see also 362–363. Hodges, Root and Branch, 140. See also Williams-Myers, Long Hammering, 104. Groth, ‘The African American Struggle’, 65 (Table A). Hodges, Root and Branch, 145. For Pomp, see Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, 116. For Bridget, see Williams-Myers, Long Hammering, 56–57, 174. McManus, Black Bondage, 141. Allinson, Memoir, 5–6 (first quotation and ‘a stranger’, 5; quotations, 6). Painter, ‘Soul Murder and Slavery’, 12–13. Painter's application of soul murder – meaning the violation of one's inner being, or the extinguishing of one's identity – to explore American slavery's legacy of violence relies partly on the book written by Shengold, Soul Murder. As she explains, ‘The “abuse” in the subtitle can be violent and/or sexual, which presents children with too much sensation to bear’, whereas ‘“Deprivation” ... refers to neglect that deprives children of enough attention to meet their psychic needs’; 17, n.4. Silvia Dubois was enslaved from around 1788/89 to 1807/8, and Sojourner Truth from about 1797 to 1826. See Lobdell, Silvia Dubois, 12; and Painter, Sojourner Truth, 3, 24. Painter, Sojourner Truth, 16–17 (‘extreme anxiety’, 16). Painter's discussion on Truth's childhood is based upon the latter's autobiography; [Gilbert and Titus] Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Painter, Sojourner Truth, 15–16. Lobdell, Silvia Dubois, 67. Ibid., 60, 75 (quotation). According to Silvia Dubois's amanuensis, ‘Her love of freedom is boundless. To be free is the all-important thing with Sylvia. Bondage, or even restraint, is near akin to death for Sylvia. Freedom is the goal – freedom of speech, freedom of labor, freedom of the passions, freedom of the appetite – unrestrained in all things’; ibid., 45. Still, she was never able to free herself from the psychological impact of white people's racial brutality. A most forthright (and succinct) analysis of the difficulties under which enslaved women attempted to forge gender conventions can be found in Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household, 290–302. On the lives of enslaved women, see also White, Ar'n't I a Woman?; Jones, Labor of Love, ch.1; Stevenson, ‘Gender Convention’; and Weiner, Mistresses and Slaves. Like the historiography on enslaved women in North America, that of enslaved men focuses primarily on the plantation South (see, for example, note 82). On the forging of gender conventions among northern bondpeople, and the difficulties thereof, see Horton, ‘Freedom's Yoke, 51, 52–53. Allinson, Memoir, 6. The fact that at least eight of Isaac Brokaw's 10 children were baptized in the Reformed Dutch Church suggests that this was his religious home; Foster, Our Brokaw-Bragaw Heritage, 15, courtesy of Fred Sisser III. Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, ch.3; Hodges, Root and Branch, 144–146; Marshall, ‘“Old Yombo”’, 12–13. Quoted in Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, 94. See also Pingeon, ‘Blacks in the Revolutionary Era’, 19. Prince, The Papers of William Livingston, I, 338. Minutes of the Provincial Congress and the Council of Safety of the State of New Jersey, 162–3 (quotation, 163). ‘The Brokaw-Bragaw Family’, 12–13, 15, 16–17. Ibid., 16–17 (quotation, 17). Allinson, Memoir, 8. For Simon (of Kingston, Middlesex County), see Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), 11 September 1740. For Gilbert (of Bedminster), see New Jersey Gazette (Trenton), 7 August 1786. Hodges, Black Itinerants of the Gospel, 3. Van Dyke Malcom, ‘As I Remember Scenes’, 1. Ibid., 6 (‘retainers), 12 (quotations). The Kingston Presbyterian Church was located in Franklin, Somerset County, on the Middlesex County border. Mellick, The Story of an Old Farm, 603–605 (quotation, 605). [A. Van Doren Honeyman, ed.] ‘“Black Saint”’, 321 (quotation); McDowell, ‘Pluckamin One Hundred Years Ago’, 532. Allinson, Memoir, 6–7. Ibid., 7. As a parallel to this, Nell Irvin Painter explains that the slave Isabella (Sojourner Truth) had ‘freed herself from fear through the discovery of Jesus’ love'; Sojourner Truth, 22. Johnson, God Struck Me Dead, 56. See also Raboteau, Slave Religion, 266–275. This analysis is greatly indebted to Graham Hodges's discussion of the conversion experience of Mid-Atlantic slave James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, in Root and Branch, 123–124. Significantly, Somerset County is ‘well watered’, that is, the province ‘is cut into two, almost equal parts, by the main stem and south branch of the Raritan river’ – more than 100 miles in length; Gordon, Gazetteer of the State of New Jersey, 239. It is probable, then, that the ubiquitous Raritan River played an important role in Quamino's conversion experience. On racism in the Dutch Reformed Church, see Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, 25; and De Jong, The Dutch Reformed Church, 138. Migeod, ‘Personal Names’, 38–39; Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, 304, n.15; Dillard, Black English, 124; Puckett, Black Names in America, 434. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, 118. For informative discussions on naming in slave communities, see Wood, Black Majority, 181–185; and Gutman, The Black Family, 185–201. Sobel, The World They Made Together, ch.13; Northrup, Africa's Discovery of Europe, 28–29. Allinson's perception of himself as a protector of blacks is elaborated in the conclusion. ‘Being attached to the Methodist Episcopal Society, they [Quamino and Sarah] had regular prayer-meetings and class-meetings in their house’; Allinson, Memoir, 16. On the emergence and decline of the Methodist commitment to black abolition, see Mathews, Slavery and Methodism, ch.1. On Methodism's appeal to African Americans, see Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 102–113. These issues are also discussed in Hodges, Root and Branch, 182–183. Hodges, Root and Branch, 181. Quoted in Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, 77. For quotation, see Newark Sunday News (NJ), 14 April 1901. For the death of Nathan Woodward, see Unionist-Gazette (Somerville, NJ), 18 July 1901. Both sources are courtesy of Fred Sisser III. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 106–108; Hodges, Root and Branch, 182–183. William Allinson noted that some of Quamino's white coreligionists at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Burlington County ‘regarded him as belonging to an inferior caste’; Memoir, 29. Allinson, Memoir, 7–8. Ibid., 8. Blassingame, The Slave Community, 147. See also Raboteau, Slave Religion, 305–308. This analysis draws from Baptist, ‘The Absent Subject’, 151. Allinson, Memoir, 9. Ibid., 16. Black, Dismantling Black Manhood, chs. 2–3; Baptist, ‘The Absent Subject’, 147–152, 158–159. For more optimistic portrayals of the manhood of enslaved (southern) males, see, for example, Blassingame, The Slave Community, 92, 156–161, 284; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 424–423, 484–486, 491; and Gutman, The Black Family, 188–191, 385–387. Edward Baptist has described these works, published in the aftermath of Stanley Elkins's problematic ‘Sambo’ thesis, as ‘redeploy[ing] black men as men – as revolutionary rebels, protoblack nationalists, and fathers’. Bondmen, he explains, were ‘fit into patterns that would have been comforting to nineteenth-century free northern blacks’; ‘The Absent Subject’, 164, n.14. Stanley Elkins argued that the total authority of American owners negated alternative social bases and standards for enslaved blacks, thereby reducing them to an unmanly state of childlike dependency (i.e. ‘Sambos’); Slavery: A Problem, 81–89. Allinson, Memoir, 14. See, for example, Blassingame, The Slave Community, 146–7; Raboteau, Slave Religion, 304–311; Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebels, 244–6; Fick, The Making of Haiti, 44–5, 94, 137, 244; and Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil, 112–115, 118–128. See Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 8. Allinson, Memoir, 9. Ibid. Apparently, the ability of slaves to choose their owners upon their previous owner's death was a common practice in Somerset County. In his 1791 will, for example, Jacob Van Nostrand of Raritan bequeathed his ‘Negro man, Tom, and the rest of my blacks to choose their masters’; New Jersey Archives, 1st Ser., 37 (1942), 376. Similarly, the 1803 will of Bridgewater resident John Brokaw (Isaac Brokaw's third oldest son) granted the ‘Negro wench, Hannah, to have choice to live where she pleases’; ibid., 1st Ser., 39 (1946), 57. Allinson, Memoir, 9–10. On the probable identity of ‘Smock’, see Marshall, ‘“Ain't No Account”’, 35. See Eugene Genovese's pioneering analysis of paternalism in Roll, Jordan, Roll, 3–7, 658–660, passim. His essential argument is that slaves used the tradition of paternalism among slaveholders to find a measure of humanity in an otherwise inhumane system. Lobdell, Silvia Dubois, 54. Quoted in Linn, ‘Slavery in Bergen County’, 36; see also 37. For additional discussion, see Russell Hodges, Slavery, Freedom and Culture, 42. See Baptist, ‘The Absent Subject’, 137, 142–143. For quotation and ‘black wretch’, see Mellick, The Story of an Old Farm, 226. See also New York Gazette and Weekly Post Boy, 25 December 1752; Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), 9 January 1753; Messler, Centennial History, 128–129; Snell, History of Hunterdon, 104; Hodges, Root and Branch, 64–65, 134–136; and Marshall, ‘Powerful and Righteous’, 36–7. Allinson, Memoir, 8–9. Ibid., 10–11 (first and second quotations, 10; third quotation, 11). See also Wickes, History of Medicine, 271. The New Jersey Gradual Emancipation Act of 1804 provided that slave children born after 4 July of that year were to be apprenticed to their mother's owner until they reached the age of 25 if a male and 21 if a female. For discussion, see Wright, ‘New Jersey Laws’; Zilversmit, ‘Liberty and Property’; and Hodges, Slavery and Freedom, 135–6. Allinson, Memoir, 12–14 (quotations, 14). ‘William Griffith was not only an eminent lawyer, but a philanthropist, and bore a prominent part in originating and conducting the New Jersey Abolition Society’ (13). Wyatt-Brown, ‘The Mask of Obedience’, 1242. Allinson, Memoir, 14. Ibid., 4. Allinson, Poems, 30–31. Allinson, Memoir, 3. See Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 47–9 (‘peer relationship’ and ‘father knows’, 49); see also ch. 10. Allinson, Memoir, 27. Ibid., 23. The phrase is borrowed from McBride, Impossible Witnesses. Additional informationNotes on contributorsKenneth E. Marshall Kenneth E. Marshall is in the Department of History, State University of New York at Oswego

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