Imagining State and Federal Law in Pauline E. Hopkins's <em>Contending Forces</em>

Abstract

Boston University Winner of Best Paper Contest, 2009 SSAWW Conference, General Category opening section of Pauline E. Hopkins's Contending Forces, set in 179os, Charles Montfort, a wealthy white plantation owner who has recently moved to North Carolina from Bermuda to escape imminent emancipation of his slaves, is shot dead. His wife is stripped whipped, his wife sons are transformed into slave property, his mansion is looted by a mob then burned. His estate, including his wife children as well as his property slaves, is then distributed among whites who carried out attack. The mob, organized as a committee on public safety, is led by Anson Pollock, a local aristocrat with sexual designs on Mrs. Montfort. Assisted by Bill Sampson Hank Davis, Pollock incites attack by spreading rumors that Montfort's slaves are planning an insurrection that Montfort's known plan to free his slaves at some future time constitutes illicit encouragement of rebellion. Discussing raid, Hopkins explains, In those old days, if accused of aiding slaves in a revolt, a white man stood no more chance than a Negro accused of same crime. He forfeited life property. This power of law Anson Pollock had invoked (7o). She adds that to gain sexual access to Grace Montfort, Pollock had first accused her of having black blood, then arranged that the two children their mother fell to his lot ... as his portion of spoils (71). No legal process is described__no hearing with testimony to determine Grace's race, for instance. Instead, Hopkins gives us a world in which state law, rather than intervening to prevent mob violence, actively legitimates is continuous with it. The public machinery of state law is an available instrument whites deploy to sate their private lusts, resentments, greed. Local anti-insurrection laws, combined with state tolerance of mob action, provide corrupt individuals with legal cover for murder, whipping, rape, theft, including theft of persons as property__actions carried out with impunity against whites as well as blacks. concluding section of novel, set in Boston in 189os, heirs of two Montfort sons recover a total of $250,000 in (376). Their lawsuit is brought on unspecified grounds against US government is heard privately by US Supreme Court (376-84). That is, federal government pays money to heirs of individuals who suffered (as much as a hundred years earlier) physical violence, emotional damage, loss of valuable property under color of antebellum state law. While state law had enabled injury, federal law provides a utopian pathway to healing it. Written in a time of heightened racial violence widespread lynching, Contending Forces situates federal law as key site for reparative justice for a range of injuries stemming from slavery. Hopkins's imaginative vision, federal government through its treasury its court system closes books on nation's shameful past opens door to its principled future. Although Hopkins calls her work a little romance, she also insists that both antebellum events those contemporary with her actually occurred (13, 14). Ample proof can be found, she asserts, in archives of Newberne, North Carolina, courthouse and at national seat of government, Washington, D. C. (14). No evidence has been found of a closely parallel North Carolina case or of any federal case paying reparative damages for wrongs like these; yet several critics have accepted Hopkins's claims to historical accuracy, including her excellent biographer Lois Brown, who argues at length that Montforts' story was traumatic story of Hopkins's own great-grandparents (220-52).(1) Looking closely at nineteenth-century historical legal context, I argue that, far from recounting personal or even possible legal events, Hopkins carefully reinvents American law in her novel to serve her reparative vision. …