Antebellum America Research Articles

Henry Bibb’s (Dis)claiming Family: Malinda as a Case Study of Black Women’s Symbolic Annihilation in Antebellum Literature

Existing scholarship on the autobiography Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb prioritizes Bibb’s masculinity and the impact of slavery on Black families, often overlooking the complex experiences of enslaved Black women such as Bibb’s first wife Malinda within such a narrative. Amy Lewis’s article “Who’ll Speak for Malinda?” distinguishes itself by offering an alternative narrative focusing on Malinda’s experience. My paper builds on Lewis’s work by arguing that despite condemning slavery, Bibb’s narrative inadvertently perpetuates Malinda’s symbolic annihilation. Through a close reading of Bibb, my study attempts to reveal how enslaved women’s experiences are often omitted, trivialized, and condemned in American antebellum literature. By devoting particular attention to the “symbolic annihilation” of enslaved women, this paper responds to Amy Lewis’s call for alternate narratives and offers a critical shift in reading and interpreting depiction and omission of Black women in ex-enslaved narratives throughout nineteenth-century antebellum America. This approach has the potential to uncover the complex realities of Black women to offer valuable insights into their lives and experiences, thus challenging dominant interpretations of slave narratives.

Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America by Peter Radan (review)

Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America by Peter Radan (review)

Medical deception and the presidency in antebellum America

AbstractThe illnesses of United States presidents have long been a subject of interest to both scholars and the American public. One particular area that has generated considerable study is the management of information surrounding such illnesses. An extensive literature has developed around efforts by the White House to conceal, downplay, or ignore presidential maladies. This literature has largely focused on the period from the Gilded Age to the present, accepting the widespread view that such efforts did not occur until the second half of the nineteenth century. This article examines four antebellum episodes in which the American public was not fully informed about the health of their leaders: James Madison's near‐fatal bout of “bilious fever” (1813), the final illnesses of William Henry Harrison (1841) and Zachary Taylor (1850), and Franklin Pierce's alcohol‐induced psychiatric decompensation after the death of his son (1853). Rather than a modern‐day phenomenon, this article argues that such deception is an ingrained and timeworn feature of the American political tradition.

Towards the South as a Carceral Landscape: The Historiography of Slave Patrols in the Antebellum United States

Towards the South as a Carceral Landscape: The Historiography of Slave Patrols in the Antebellum United States

Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States

Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States

Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States. By Sharon Ann Murphy

<i>Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States</i>. By Sharon Ann Murphy

Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States by Sharon Ann Murphy (review)

Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States by Sharon Ann Murphy (review)

Slavery, Surveillance, and Genre in Antebellum United States Literature by Kelly Ross (review)

Slavery, Surveillance, and Genre in Antebellum United States Literature by Kelly Ross (review)

Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States by Sharon Ann Murphy (review)

Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States by Sharon Ann Murphy (review)

"The Pathway from Slavery to Freedom": Frederick Douglass and Black Education in Antebellum America

"The Pathway from Slavery to Freedom": Frederick Douglass and Black Education in Antebellum America

Maura Lyons. Review of "The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s" by Alexander Nemerov and "Painting the Inhabited Landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the Global Reach of Antebellum America" by Margaretta M. Lovell.

Maura Lyons. Review of "The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s" by Alexander Nemerov and "Painting the Inhabited Landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the Global Reach of Antebellum America" by Margaretta M. Lovell.

Jenifer L. Barclay. The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America.

Jenifer L. Barclay. <i>The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America</i>.

Fugitive Motherhood, Maroon Revisions, and Otherwise Possibilities in William Wells Brown’s Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter

Abstract: This essay contends the paratextual depiction of the eponymous heroine of William Wells Brown’s 1853 Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter invites a speculative reconsideration, grounded in Black feminist theoretical frameworks, of Brown’s exploration of the possibilities of freedom for the fugitive subject in the antebellum United States. Through this reassessment, Clotel emerges as a fugitive mother who theorizes the geographies of slavery, imagining a world for her and her child entirely different from the one that otherwise rules their possibilities.

:Painting the Inhabited Landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the Global Reach of Antebellum America

:<i>Painting the Inhabited Landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the Global Reach of Antebellum America</i>

Unmasking the Master Narrative: Exclusionary Practices and the Enslaved African Muslims Omar ibn Said, Bilali Muhammad, and Abdulrahman Ibrahima Sori

This study aims to investigate the exclusionary practices encountered by enslaved African Muslims in the antebellum United States, with an emphasis on how these practices shaped their lives. The significance of this study is that it sheds light on the challenges faced by individuals such as Omar ibn Said, Bilali Muhammad, and Abdulrahman Ibrahima Sori, offering insights into the workings of historical power structures. The guiding research question is: “In what ways did exclusionary practices impact the lives of the enslaved Muslims under study?” Utilizing a decolonial framework, inspired by the works of Walter Mignolo and Anibal Quijano, the study engages with concepts including the ‘master narrative’, ‘coloniality of power’, and ‘exclusionary practices’ to assess the legacy of oppression. The study contributes to the scholarship by providing a focused analysis of the experiences of enslaved Muslims, a topic that has received limited attention in historical and archival research. The conclusion will synthesize the discussion on exclusionary practices and the ‘master narrative’, reinforcing their importance in historical analysis.

The Road to Oligarchic Peace: Comparing the Antebellum United States and Ukraine

This article endeavours to answer the question as to what accounts for the preservation of peace in the United States and Ukraine in 1850 and 2004 when there was a potential for an armed conflict. I argue that parallels can be drawn between the events taking place in both countries in the antebellum period, and, through a detailed empirical comparison, it can be demonstrated that peace endures when, during a supreme moment of crisis, an “oligarchic peace”, that is a compromise, is negotiated at the level of national and regional elites that ensures representation and protection of property rights for the key elites.

Painting the inhabited landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the global reach of Antebellum America By Margaretta MarkleLovell, The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2023

Painting the inhabited landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the global reach of Antebellum America By Margaretta MarkleLovell, The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2023

The Poison Pen: Slavery, Poison, and Fear in the Antebellum Press

ABSTRACT When enslaved people were accused of poisoning enslavers, it was newsworthy throughout the antebellum United States. Part of the broad appeal of such articles was their malleability; as reports of supposed poison plots or arsenic in a planter’s coffee travelled from newspapers in slave states to the pages of Northern publications, the articles morphed in form, purpose, and emotional tone. Southern readers looked to stories about thwarted poison plots to assuage their fears of a similar fate and present a brave united front. Meanwhile, Northern newspapers invited a host of other emotions from their audience, from enjoyment and schadenfreude to sympathy and anger. This article on messaging about slavery, poison, and fear in the antebellum United States builds on my monograph, Mastering Emotions: Feelings, Power, and Slavery in the United States, to focus on the emotional politics of fear. Examining how news about enslaved poisoners circulated and shapeshifted sheds light on the relationship between the antebellum press and collective emotions, and on the role of fear in defenses and critiques of slavery. While the Southern press framed stories about enslaved poisoners to address and manage members of the slaveocracy’s fears, the abolitionist press worked to invoke and amplify that terror.

The Labor Market Attainment of Immigrants in the Antebellum United States

The Labor Market Attainment of Immigrants in the Antebellum United States

"A Somewhat Remarkable Letter": Chambers, Poe, Whitman, Thoreau, and the Invention of the Prose Poem in Antebellum America

ABSTRACT: This essay explores the far-reaching influence on antebellum American literature of the January 1845 publication of Robert Chambers's anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , the first fully articulated exposition of evolutionary theory to appear in English. In Explanations , published in New York in 1846, Chambers replied forcefully to his scientific and theological critics and then correctly claimed that his work represented nothing less than a complete conceptual revolution, not only in science but in our understanding of the nature and purpose of existence itself. Focusing on Poe, Whitman, and Thoreau, this essay argues that Vestiges provided not only essential subject matter for these writers, but also provoked each to develop a productive set of heuristics, or open-ended methods of problem-solving. The revolutionary moment sparked by Vestiges led each to engage in a rethinking of the nature and purpose of literature and to develop stylistic innovations that came to change the direction of American literature itself.