Liberty or Death

The recent Black Lives Matter protests and the movement's fierce response to centuries-old systemic racism in the United States sprang spontaneously from the shock effect of videos showing George Floyd pinned by the neck for nine and one-half minutes under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer while he lamented again and again, “I can't breathe.” He repeated these words twenty-seven times before expiring. In 2014, Eric Garner, also African American, died pronouncing these same words while being held in a chokehold by a New York police officer, also white. In his farewell address to the British people delivered in London on March 30, 1847, Frederick Douglass declared, “Every bayonet, sword, musket, and cannon has its deadly aim at the bosom of the negro: 3,000,000 of the coloured race are lying there under the heels of 17,000,000 of their white creatures” (1982b, 22). Recalling the well-known cry of the enslaved, Douglass then declaimed, “How Long! how long! O Lord God of Sabaoth!” (25). By the time Douglass left England, he was no longer a fugitive from American slavery, for his British friends had bought his freedom. As he took leave of his audience, Douglass told them he was returning to his country to continue the battle “for the sake of my brethren” (51). In his Narrative of 1845 he wrote of his escape from the slave shores of Maryland, “It was life or death with me” (1994, 89). This essay returns to the freedom narrative as a site for constructing an archaeology of the motto that defined not only the Age of Revolution but also the freedom narrative as a liberation genre: “Liberty or Death!” By choosing liberty and risking death, well over 150 fugitive authors in a span of thirty years created the first genre in U.S. literature aimed at declaring that Black lives mattered.The freedom narrative, which the scholarly tradition has misleadingly called the slave narrative, was the first discursive genre in U.S. literary history to challenge the legitimacy of a federal constitution that shielded Black slavery throughout the nation. After regretting the lack of a national literature in America, Theodore Parker in his address “The American Scholar” observed, “Yet there is one portion of our permanent literature [. . .] which is wholly indigenous and original; [. . .] that could be written by none but Americans, and only here; I mean the Lives of the Fugitives” (1907, 37). In a curious note to Parker's label “Lives of the Fugitives,” the editor in 1907 cited as examples the life stories of Douglass and Samuel Ringgold Ward (specifying “those works published between 1830–1860”), but also the highly inflammatory “Walker's Appeal” (Parker 1907, 504). It is true that David Walker's self-published 1830 pamphlet, which he addressed “to the Coloured Citizens of the World,” covers the thematic spectrum of “the inhuman system of slavery, [which] is the source from which most of our miseries proceed” (1830, 6). But Walker offers no account of his personal trajectory in and out of bondage. In the freedom narrative, however, the author's personal life history is typically interwoven with their denunciation of slavery. In other words, the narrative is the argument. But in his Appeal Walker turns this on its head and makes argument the narrative.And yet, it is precisely Walker's conceptual fireworks that pinpoint the freedom narrative's primary structuring impetus and raison d’être. Toward the end of his Appeal, Walker cites the famous words of the Declaration of Independence on the inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to girder his own radical “either/or” commitment: “I therefore ask the whole American people, had I not rather die, or be put to death, than to be a slave to any tyrant [. . .]?” (17). In his Appeal Walker frequently goads the colored people of the world to make a decision: You must choose either liberty or death. Either one or the other; nothing in-between. As a result of this extreme choice, Walker argues, the slave's status changes from brute to human, “For what is the use of living, when in fact I am dead” (82). Citing Jefferson and other slavocratic ideologues who claimed that Africans are little better than cattle, Walker calls on the enslaved to rebel against their beastly wretchedness: “Now, I ask you, had you not rather be killed than to be a slave to a tyrant, who takes the life of your mother, wife, and dear children?” (30). He repeatedly chastises his people with the cry, “Are we MEN!!—I ask you, O my brethren! are we MEN?” (19).The enslaved had only to turn their gaze southward, to the Haitian republic, to imagine the liberating possibilities of their decision. From the outset the main thrust of Walker's Appeal is “to awaken in the breasts of my afflicted, degraded and slumbering brethren, a spirit of inquiry and investigation respecting our miseries and wretchedness in this Republican Land of Liberty!!!!!!” (5). Once invested with this spirit, Walker's sleepwalkers would become, in Douglass's words, “slumbering volcanoes” (Douglass 1982a, 151). The decision to embrace “Liberty or Death” has consequences, for as Walker indicates, “Do not actions speak louder than words?” (15). Fully aware of historical precedent, Walker evoked the slogan “Liberty or Death” firmly convinced that the separation between word and action, intention and deed, could be bridged. The words of his appeal were meant and understood to be performative. In effect, Walker's pamphlet turned the South into a hornet's nest, which he fully intended: “I expect some will try to put me to death, to strike terror into others, and to obliterate from their minds the notion of freedom” (25–26). Walker's either/or injunction proved to be a totally disruptive act. It rallied Black leaders in the North and pushed many of them to assume a militant stance of violent resistance. It also may have led to Walker's mysterious death in Boston on August 6, 1830.In Douglass's powerful “slumbering volcano” address of 1849, in which he recounts the successful revolt of Madison Washington and eighteen other enslaved on the Creole brig in 1841, he writes, “Suiting the action to the word, in an instant his guilty master was prostrate on the deck, and in a very few minutes Madison Washington [. . .] had the mastery of that ship” (1982, 155). This liberatory struggle to compound word and action informs all three versions of Douglass's autobiography and goes to the heart of the freedom narrative's purpose (Boelhower 2019, 101–132). Under the banner of “Liberty or Death,” passage from word to action could not be any more radical, for the slogan itself is a battle cry: promissory if not immediately effective. As we see in the following, the slogan's words have a force of their own. The fugitive is buoyed up by their unconditional appeal. By appropriating them, the enslaved person, whether man or woman, is invested with the motto's intrinsic potency. Recounting his first attempt to escape slavery with two friends in his 1845 freedom narrative, Douglass writes, “In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed” (1994, 74).In his 1853 Atlantic-world narrative “The Heroic Slave” Douglass returned to the example of Madison Washington, who recalled the fathers of the American Revolution when rebuking the white mate of the Creole brig: “You call me a black murderer, I am not a murderer: God is my witness that LIBERTY, not malice, is the motive for this night's work” (Douglass 2015, 48). In his famous speech (1843) calling on the enslaved of the South to resist, Henry Highland Garnet had already evoked the name of Madison Washington (“that bright star of freedom”) and his fellow insurgents on the Creole, noting, “Nineteen struck for liberty or death” (2004, 187). It was now time for those in bondage to do likewise: “In the name of the merciful God! and by all that life is worth, let it no longer be a debatable question, whether it is better to choose LIBERTY or DEATH!” (186). By 1845 the freedom narrative, then known as the fugitive narrative, was a genre and could be as a response to to an archaeology of the slogan “Liberty or Death,” it may be to the of the under As the of the two slave and the fugitive the genre is by a of the and of life under an account of the fugitive author's personal and escape to freedom. The genre its from the by these two the the of systemic and the a that that system and freedom. the one the on and to an of on the he or on action and to the author's personal trajectory the world of bondage to the label slave narrative, the of of as the while by for the label fugitive narrative, the and liberatory trajectory for a and as first of have the as a most of the of these works escape over slavery. it be that when of their the to their run to freedom. only the but also and Henry and famous for their freedom be the genre is a of an in and a but we must not that the two discursive a and an The slave narrative label is and to the of the to these that in the South “the a slave have no appeal than the will of the that when the to and [. . .] it be by or death” was a one who over the of the the two were in them as man and and not as and his he would not some we that we were fugitive and had The is well freedom and not slavery at the end of the the freedom narrative as a site of and for the Black Lives Matter we will be better to the as a in the that led first to the of and then to the and the to the American As the in his published narrative, in this world will the of the from the In their of slave and the or of of their by on the and 48). The all of which were in the slave system were but to one to be and the on and the into those on the to leave In narrative of slavery writes, “I all the one by one from the and there was not one to be the most on the and in the South were for a few or or and if could expect a and then to be away, but this did not them from again and It took before to freedom As the fugitive in his narrative, “I in my life a slave who did not to there is not a more account of the will to be than that of who times before the other fugitive as Frederick Douglass and with the white “I had up my to After with the for two could not do any with me” the calls for and is and to his already he The of was a of in the it was almost to a to escape to the North or to or to some But there were to the system in of the in which in the South the for an of Black life under slavery, the and that of be as on the 2015, In with the the of freedom to be as of a tradition of Black liberation from the from the his the and to the for a the words “Liberty or Death” in the bosom of of enslaved As Douglass in his London farewell address cited the first of a [. . .] of are to and to strike for their own The it well (1982, was of historical to In had the of the British of Lord In the of more to the British and in their By the end of the there were an and in Washington, Black in the and and were in the David of Black as a us to the of the freedom narrative by it in the of the Age of Revolution and rather than it as a of white and an of the American tradition and no other literary genre was as as the freedom narrative in the of well into and the Age of when that spirit was all but of the on the freedom narrative has its to U.S. It is time that literary to these in to the Black enslaved and In the fugitive was in a to not a editor was there to them what to but had cited the of the Declaration of Independence and the slogan “Liberty or Death,” the them in and person, as many a slave the the there would have no to with and no freedom narrative what this more than any other structuring as we in the following, is the to the to choose freedom over the of in the of from that I am calling for on the in which with the slave Black and and fugitive authors in their to and be make and embrace the “Liberty or his to run for the sake of his enslaved and his mother, to In a with his mother, who has South a attempt to [. . .] you have that you would not a that you would be a try to your In his narrative slave life on a a is by an and I could to England, he and would me as as would a white After a and attempt to escape to England, which he is the on August for freedom the radical decision to escape from slavery to turn their into a “I out more on my with the determination either to my freedom or to in the slave were a source of what was on not only in the but also in the the slave the and the The words and as and as the North to a in the would have of the name “the first of in the and the American and and the Revolution of in of liberty and was in and on the and As writes, were the years of black in and in the and black people in the States were not of them or of their to from with their in to the of the as many as had the United The of the Haitian Revolution had to the slave and the Age of Revolution people the “Liberty or Death,” in these words from the As a speech the slogan's were and that it would be to which the battle cry or the its as a for from slavery, let me a few of the in which “Liberty or Death” a The Haitian which in the same as the of The of was struggle for in an world by slavery and a system of white under the of and As in those who the in under the motto “Liberty or which also as the banner of other After the were from the it was who that the white be from the Haitian and in of the “Liberty or Death” be March Patrick Henry a famous speech in in which he declaimed, me liberty, or me words to the other North American and to them against the country by their Either be to the or a Henry was not of slavery when he his but on August an enslaved who was in to an that would the Douglass writes, he into the he to a with the words or After a slave told his master the the were and some thirty or were up and As one at his “I have nothing more to than what Washington would have had to had he by the British and put on an enslaved had on a in He was then bought by and in the slave for bought his freedom and as a in South in the most and slave in the history of the United in his he to the federal in the white and the to the he and his liberation would some in the and to to David told his fellow that must be as as the of for were before he could them to two Black then the of while of were left no personal and did not speak at his he in the words of Henry Highland to freedom” (2004, 187). Black leaders in the United States frequently evoked example in their calls for violent resistance. In his of Douglass declaimed, of and the words by would be must strike the first the the of August in and a of insurgents on the As from to more By the time the was his had killed white It was the slave revolt in the the of the one of the he to to that life was no more than others, and his liberty as dear to then if he he would he or his the first were by the for his of slavery, died in battle at the 2015, was to and he to his that he did not out the death to the only must be in had first the the of his on the the but had it to a the of the his was not only in God but also in the of battle and the “either/or” of a by the as would be to the fugitive on a the to choose or death” sprang all from from the of slavery as a system aimed at the enslaved to and the freedom narrative a genre not it only to the of enslaved Black and but its had their very lives to be Douglass in his 1845 autobiography the of these two of the genre when he “You have how a man was a you now see how a slave was a (1994, and again, fugitive and enslaved life as a and in and their were and being from under a to a being under the and not a few and of these were as or a fellow in highly but for all of be these with the of neck the and other systemic to main purpose of the slave system was to the enslaved will if their the embrace of or death” as a a fugitive to escape on the of the rather than be again or witness the of a narrative, to the of to an at “Do you that [. . .] I you, if I After and years out in a at to As informs “I resolved what there be no me liberty, or me was my my from Patrick Henry, the motto a for and a militant of all By pronouncing to escape and it in the tradition of the of and the In effect, is calling the of to life into a as a put it to your own and them by the of your Douglass was not the only fugitive to Patrick motto as a to his decision to from slavery rather than be by and Douglass the motto to their personal escape as more a of and the of a radical of the either/or decision is to the motto “Liberty or Death,” but some authors its as his and attempt to escape slave and the no between the and writes, as I being that and [. . I resolved that I would try to from that of the it was death to and death to there and freedom was before it could only be death to if I was and freedom if I my In his narrative Washington and to the of decision: and there my was against my and I if I an I would run from these my authors a more of a decision to run for freedom. In his narrative a many who were almost all and I being a me very and I more and more to be or in the determination to the of the fugitive up under the of slavery, the their from slave to This of the slave system the to the enslaved to his or in with and in the freedom narrative, also to the of and New York and with the to have as a “I resolved to life in a to on while the were in the “I a of as I could [. . .] and to I upon the in the of God while to over the liberty from death to the life of enslaved one in his run to in the of a and to that to turn would be to he “I [. . .] most that I be from a and resolved that if again I I would my life in the of my It as no that the of his from the African he in before it was The of fugitive are with some and of by the of their to liberty, and the pursuit of fugitive authors the Age of Revolution into the Age of and with the to slavery turned As and in in the were for their of those who died to In the to narrative we a passage from a to the editor of the South a that to be [. . He was that he would not be In and from his for “the was a the and to the of a [. . .] [. . .] was the of the by a and those who in the of their death. the fugitive the of or death” a totally radical act. on a in “The was a but I resolved to attempt [. . .] I however, very little of my the and of the New York on many of the the of choosing or death” I have the repeated use of the word in to the to their decision. The word a to the and the and By their decision as an either/or the intention to an in its own the decision the of the and when the fugitive a of being that of the “I that I almost could the fugitive he “I when my struck the in as I had into As for Douglass's famous to freedom in his 1845 narrative from a of extreme to one of how I my when we were on the the the and I could them or Douglass was out to at the was the on to the freedom narrative as a in the of words against slavery, Douglass in his address his that words were not for the enslaved were in of In the had to if were to the from their In this choosing between or death” was a of As Henry it in his narrative, “I was that what I have my freedom or in the meant his and for had me of to the “It was a of life or death” was the when he and two to over the that was them to the slave in New resolved to our liberty or our my In the same as the eighteen insurgents who Madison Washington in over the Creole, in the same the use of the word resolved a or a This notion of the also to the between the and when the he will try to As writes, had resolved to my if it were in his my the slogan “Liberty or Death” from one freedom narrative to we have a history to the Black lives in their to the of true freedom in the of the world as to New and to England, or in the U.S. of the authors cited the of and by the of the and the of an out from under the of a the freedom also to continue the struggle on of the people left effect, the liberation in the words “Liberty or Death” has a and history that well the to and many other in As this archaeology of the genre with the of the motto first and in the of the As the the first of insurgents in in to the of which in the heart of all of and The freedom narrative sprang from the of the enslaved as a In it from from the As for the slave narrative, we that from by the videos of George Floyd to the white “I can't breathe.” what the freedom narrative and its of Black lives in a word, was to the from the slave narrative by the federal

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