War Upon the Whites: Black Rage in the Fiction of Martin Delany

Abstract

Abstract In one of his insightful comparisons, Frederick Douglass summed up the essential difference between himself and Martin Delany. “I thank God for making me a man simply,” he observed, “but Delany always thanks him for making him a black man.”2 Unlike Douglass, Delany viewed revolutionary violence in relation to black separation and emigration to Africa rather than integration in America. As an abolitionist, Delany believed violence was necessary in the struggle for black liberation. “Shall the American slave,” he asked in the newspaper North Star in 1849, “remain in abject bondage, waiting patiently, toiling on and suffering on, having nothing in prospect but the hope of his heartless relentless master’s good will? Never. Let him be taught that he dare strike for liberty,-let him know this, and he at once rises up disenthralled-a captive redeemed from the portals of infamy to the true dignity of his nature-an elevated freeman.” At the 1854 National Emigration Convention, Delany again advocated resistance.