"The Skin of an American Slave": African American Manhood and the Marked Body in Nineteenth-Century Abolitionist Literature

Abstract

When Civil War began in April 1861, African American men attempted in vain to volunteer for military service. As Jim Cullen writes, efforts of abolitionists to contrary, secession, not slavery, was pretext for outbreak of hostilities, and Lincoln administration assiduously courted slaveholding states still in Union by avoiding any appearance of restructuring existing race relations. (1) For all of their differences, most Northern and Southern white men agreed that this was, indeed, a white man's war, and objected to idea that black men, slave or free, should occupy a role formerly reserved only for white male citizens. Yet military necessity would accomplish what abolitionist politics could not. The Emancipation Proclamation, effective on January 1, 1863, freed all slaves in states still in rebellion against Federal government; it also provided for lawful enlistment of African American men in Union army. (2) Eventually, 179,000 black men would serve in army, majority of whom came from Confederate and border slave states. (3) Black soldiers would play major roles in a number of battles, including those at Port Hudson and Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, and Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Abolitionists, black and white, and most African Americans were well aware that enlistment of black men into Union army would challenge fundamental notions of race, masculinity, and citizenship, and would have a significant impact on treatment of African Americans during and after Civil War. On July 4, 1863, seven months after Emancipation Proclamation took effect, Harper's Weekly responded to this controversial development with a drawing illustrating transformation of one black man from slave to contraband and finally to Union soldier (Figure 1). (4) Gordon, typical negro featured in drawing, is portrayed in three poses, from left to right. The first panel, labeled GORDON AS HE ENTERED OUR LINES, shows subject sitting in a chair with his legs crossed. His feet are bare and his clothes are tattered. In second panel, GORDON UNDER MEDICAL INSPECTION, Gordon wears only his pants and sits with his scarred back to audience, his face turned just enough to reveal his profile. He stands upright in third panel, wearing a uniform and holding a rifle in front of him; panel is labeled GORDON IN HIS UNIFORM AS A U.S. SOLDIER. The purpose of illustration appears to be to demonstrate Gordon's ability to transform himself--or to be transformed--into a man and a soldier. However, curiously enough, final panel is not most conspicuous in series. Rather, second panel, depicting Gordon's scars, is largest and presumably first to attract observer's eye. Despite label, which asserts that this image is drawn from Gordon's medical examination while in Union camp, illustration and scars that it highlights were more likely to remind readers that Gordon had been a slave, and a harshly treated slave at that. (5) The accompanying text also emphasizes the degree of brutality which slavery has developed among ... whites, rather than significance of Gordon's military service. (6) While his skin color suggests that Gordon was a slave, scars are presented in drawing as proof of that fact. Gordon is ultimately labelled a slave because of his scars and smaller representations of him as contraband and Union soldier do little to dispel that label. FIGURE 1 OMITTED] This depiction of Gordon accents conflicts inherent in visual and literary use of scar in representations of African American men, both before and during Civil War. (7) Although GORDON IN HIS UNIFORM AS A U.S. SOLDIER marks a new opportunity for African American men, spectacle of Gordon's scarred back is representative of a long tradition in abolitionist literature. …