Saltwater anti-slavery: American abolitionists on the Atlantic Ocean in the Age of Steam

Abstract

Despite the explosion of interdisciplinary interest in the Atlantic world, the Atlantic Ocean itself is often quickly passed over in studies of transatlantic abolitionism. However, this essay briefly considers what we might learn about abolitionists from a perspective that treats the ocean as a “place” in its own right. American abolitionists in the mid-nineteenth century made numerous Atlantic crossings, and the crossings themselves – often aboard transatlantic steamships – offered significant and unique opportunities for abolitionist activism and self-fashioning. The architecture of the transatlantic passenger ship created a particular set of opportunities and constraints for political activism, while the experience of being on the ocean afforded abolitionist travelers unique opportunities for personal reflections on their political ideals and their self-transformation. By focusing on “saltwater anti-slavery” – defined here as the experiences of nineteenth-century American abolitionists at sea – this essay thus draws attention to the general differences that place made both to abolitionist activism and identity. It also suggests the value of treating the ocean and the transoceanic passenger ship as scenes of historical action and experience, not simply as places always en route or adjacent to settings on land.