Table Of ContentABOLITIONIST GEOGRAPHIES
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Abolitionist Geographies
. . . .
Martha Schoolman
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Th e University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges fi nancial assistance provided
for the publication of this book from Dickinson College.
An earlier version of chapter 3 was previously published as “Violent Places: Th ree Years in
Europe and the Question of William Wells Brown’s Cosmopolitanism,” ESQ: A Journal of
the American Renaissance 58, no. 1 (Summer 2012): 1–3 5. A portion of chapter 5 was previ-
ously published as “White Flight: Maroon Communities and the Geography of Antislavery
in Higginson and Stowe,” in American Literary Geo graphies: Spatial Practice and Cultural
Production, 1600– 1900, ed. Martin Brückner and Hsuan L. Hsu, 259– 78 (Newark: University
of Delaware Press, 2007).
Copyright 2014 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitt ed, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy-
ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior writt en permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Th ird Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
htt p://www.upress.umn.edu
Schoolman, Martha.
Abolitionist geographies / Martha Schoolman.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-8074-0 (hc : acid-free paper)—
ISBN 978-0-8166-8075-7 (pb : acid-free paper)
1. Antislavery movements—United States—History—19th century.
2. Abolitionists—United States—History—19th century. 3. Delany, Martin
Robison, 1812–1885—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Emerson, Ralph Waldo,
1803–1882—Criticism and interpretation. 5. Brown, William Wells, 1814?–1884—
Criticism and interpretation. 6. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811–1896—Criticism
and interpretation. 7. Geography in literature. 8. Antislavery movements
in literature. 9. African Americans in literature. 10. American literature—
19th century—History and criticism. I. Title.
E449.S293 2014
326'.8097309034—dc23
2014001435
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
Th e University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Caitlin and Orly
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Contents
Introduction: What Is Abolitionist Geography? 1
1. Emerson’s Hemisphere 21
2. August First and the Practice of Disunion 69
3. William Wells Brown’s Critical Cosmopolitanism 99
4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s Anti- expansionism 125
5. Th e Maroon’s Moment, 1856– 1861 161
Acknowledgments 189
Notes 191
Index 225
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· INTRODUCTION ·
What Is Abolitionist Geography?
When your face is to the north, your back is to the south; your right
hand to the east, and your left to the west. Can you remember this?
— Martin Delany, Blake: Or, the Huts of America
T
his book is an experiment in thinking about the archive of
abolitionist spatial practice beyond the familiar stories of sectional-
ism and Manifest Destiny. Taking as its chronological touchstones
British West Indian Emancipation in 1834, the U.S. Compromise of 1850,
and John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859, this book examines an
ensemble of interrelated, mutually infl uential, and ideologically aligned
literary texts in order to delineate an approach to literary abolitionism
that promotes geography as a key discourse of abolitionist political in-
tervention. By elaborating the category of abolitionist geography, here
through the example of Martin Delany’s Blake, and then in the work of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Beecher
Stowe, among others, I argue for a bifocal att ention to archive as well as
methodology in order to off er a new account of literary abolition based
on a historicist reinterpretation of widely accepted critical equivalences
between spatial practice and ideological implication.
By starting with Martin Delany’s Blake: Or, the Huts of America, I
begin at the end of my story with what may be, for all of its oddities of
transmission and reception, the quintessential North American geo-
graphic novel. Likely writt en in Canada, Blake is set primarily in Missis-
sippi and Cuba, but covers the routes connecting the states of the south-
ern United States with each other as well as with those in the U.S. North,
before turning its att ention to the historical courses of the Atlantic slave
trade.1 As a novel of signifi cant spatial ambition, Blake embodies what
has come to be understood in contemporary critical discourse as a laud-
able spatial realism. By tracking its hero’s movements across the Gulf of
Mexico, it is widely argued, the novel acknowledges lines of kinship
· 1 ·
