"Americans as They Really Are": The Colored American and the Illustratation of Natational Identity

Abstract

On January 7, 1837, a new jour nal appeared on the streets of New York City. Entitled the Weekly Advocate, the newspaper explained in its masthead that it was “Established for, and Devoted to the Moral, Mental, and Political Improvement of the People of Color.” On the back page of that inaugural issue appeared the first installment of “A Brief Description of the United States,” a twopart piece where the paper’s printer, Robert Sears, compiled detailed information on each state’s population, terrain, and history. In his introduction, Sears lauded the United States’ governmental structure, writing, “Her political system has survived the tender period of infancy, and outlived the prophecies of its downfall. It has born the nation triumphantly through a period of domestic difficulties and external dan ger; it has been found serviceable in peace and in war; and may well claim from the nation it has saved and honored, the votive benediction of esto perpetua.” 1 Sears specifically invoked the role of the Federal government in the article’s second installment through the use of an illustration (see Figure 1). Set off above the sections on the states is a “Description of the Capitol,” giving the measurements of the Capitol building. Dominating the page is an image of the building itself, which is then surrounded by the descriptions of individual states. Reading the page as an image, the separate states are visually bound together by the federal government, as metonymically represented in the Capitol building. 2 The paper’s front page serves, then, as a literal illustration of the theory of federalism, whereby states and by extension citizens retain a level of autonomy from each other, with their connection mediated through a central, representative government. Such a system theoretically allowed disparate populations to live in harmony despite vast differences in geography, ideology, and culture, so long as they shared a commitment to republican ideals and institutions. 3 Unsurprisingly, this political organization appealed to the staff of a newspaper devoted to the cause of black Americans.