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Notes and Documents
Letters by African American Sailors, 1799–1814
W. Jeffrey Bolster
| SOME years ago, during the course of researching a book on black seafarers, I found fourteen letters written by eleven African Americans from 1799 to 1814. Each of the men had been impressed by the Royal Navy, and each wrote in hopes that the United States government would secure his release from the king's service. Material from the letters about family, identity, and work became part of my book, but the letters themselves have never been published and never, as far as I can tell, used by another scholar. I was struck at the time by their significance. Despite pioneering efforts by Carter G. Woodson, Robert S. Starobin, and John W. Blassingame, among others, to publish African Americans' early correspondence, precious few letters written by black Americans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have come to light. The mere existence of these letters is remarkable. That some of them contain autobiographical statements is even more noteworthy. Thirteen of them are published here.1 |
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Many readers of the William and Mary Quarterly have followed the controversy about Vincent Carretta's remarkable detective work into the life of Olaudah Equiano. Carretta's well-substantiated contention that Equiano invented part of his past, in the tradition of many autobiographers, propelled early black writing into national news. When the story broke in 1999, Carretta's critics insisted that The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, one of the foundational texts in the genre of slave narratives, continue to be accepted at face value, despite Carretta's new evidence indicating Equiano had been born in South Carolina. The controversy surfaced again intermittently, including with the release of Carretta's biography of Equiano in October 2005.2 |
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No other black writer in the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries created such a compelling first-person account of the Middle Passage. By questioning the veracity of its particulars, even as he honored Equiano, Carretta's scholarship provoked a sense of loss among those who imagined themselves connected through time to Equiano and his experiences. The larger context for these events and emotions is that, whereas African American history has flourished during the last thirty-five years, producing powerful collective biographies, few first-person accounts remain from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries in which black individuals tell their own stories. Though letters like the ones published here lack Equiano's literary skill and range, they are nevertheless genuine, heartfelt, and rare. These autobiographical accounts by members of the first generation of free black Americans deserve to be widely available. |
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Until 1815 the impressment of sailors by naval forces remained one of the more iniquitous forms of bound labor in the Atlantic world. Chronically short of manpower, especially during wartime, the Royal Navy routinely conscripted men against their will. Sailors fled taverns and boardinghouses when the press was active, hiding or running inland if possible. A merchant seaman whose ship was halted on the high seas, however, had nowhere to go. Being pressed could mean serving the king for years or even for life unless a disability prompted discharge. Jacob Israel Potter had served against his will for at least nine years when he wrote the second of two letters reproduced here. Nevertheless the British government apparently released about 20 percent of Americans who applied for discharge if they could demonstrate American citizenship. Knowing they had a chance to secure freedom, these men wrote to enlist the aid of family, friends, and well-placed patrons.3 |
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