“THE DARKEST IS BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY”

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to recent approaches within Early American Studies, which position the early USA within a hemispheric transnational framework, and which depart from exceptionalist perspectives that view the identity formation of the United States as predominantly a negotiation of intra-national differences and traditions. Proceeding from Malini Schueller and Edward Watts's concept of the “messy beginnings” of American identity, it explores the repercussions of the Haitian Revolution on the identity discourses within the young nation. The article argues that while the Caribbean's image as a site of slavery, social and racial unrest, and miscegenation made it a “sensitive spot” in white republican discourses after the American Revolution, early emancipatory African-American discourses disrupted the racial stereotyping of black people as barbarous and powerless by using the West Indian slave revolt to construct alternative and empowering versions of black identity. The essay investigates the strategies by which African-American authors such as Prince Hall and John Russwurm employ the Caribbean experience of black revolt to imagine an alternative collective history distinct from that of white America.