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Slavery and Silence. Paul D. Naish
Читать онлайн.Название Slavery and Silence
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780812294309
Автор произведения Paul D. Naish
Издательство Ingram
The so-called Transportation Revolution also had an effect on perception by collapsing the distance that had separated far-flung locations. But in this case the strangeness of Latin Americans in the U.S. imagination was little reduced by propinquity, while their presence in the neighborhood now seemed undesirable. Fellowship with republicans regardless of complexion became more problematic when they suddenly seemed to be living next door. Unflattering reports of the laziness and prodigality of Spanish Americans reached the United States more quickly and were disseminated more widely. Adrian R. Terry’s Travels in the Equatorial Regions of South America, in 1832, advertised as being available in Boston, New Haven, New York, Albany, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and Charleston, reported that “internal commotions, and a disjointed and precarious state of society; and … a low standard of morals and education” counteracted the natural advantages of the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador, resulting in the paralysis of industry and the stultification of trade.110
Similarly dramatic changes were afoot on the domestic scene. Most importantly, the boldness and vigor of the slave-based economy in the United States exceeded all expectations. Critically, U.S. slavery in the post-1826 period was a dynamic new institution. In defiance of all the predictions of the revolutionary period, human bondage was in no sense withering away. The institution needed fresh fields of operation, which conveniently opened up throughout the antebellum period. It needed new technologies to facilitate its spread, also appearing in the form of steel plows, railroads, and steamboats. It needed manpower, which was forcibly marched from the Upper South where slavery was moribund to the Black Belt where all was speed and sweat. New financial instruments facilitated the movement of capital. The corn and wheat of the West, the calicos and brogans of the northern factories that were supposedly destined for Mexico and Colombia found eager buyers in the U.S. South, where they filled the bellies and shod the feet of slaves.111
Because of the remarks made about race and slavery in Latin America, the Panama Congress debates ultimately cast a long shadow. As alarm over real and supposed threats from the federal government to the peculiar institution grew, many Southerners remembered Adams’s presumption in accepting the invitation to Panama. The kind of power he wielded could be used to wrest control of slavery from the states. The emergence of the Democratic Party under Andrew Jackson became for his supporters a safeguard of their rights as slaveholders.112 Opponents of slavery in the North had an even longer memory. In an 1847 pamphlet published during the U.S. War with Mexico, Massachusetts abolitionist Loring Moody quoted Senator Berrien’s remarks in the Panama Congress debates to show just how far short of the example set by the Latin American republics the United States fell in its commitment to liberty: “In what respect did the United States differ from ‘these new republics,’ which this sturdy democrat here [Berrien] stigmatized as ‘Bucaniers?’ ” asked Moody. “Certainly there is a broad difference,—the United States—whether bucaniers or not—never got so ‘drunk with their new born liberty,’ as to demolish their human flesh shambles, in the boisterous merriment of their intoxication. They were always sober enough to keep the watch-dogs of their plantations well trained.”113
Something of the complexity of the initial post-Panama reactions is revealed in Timothy Flint’s Francis Berrian, or, the Mexican Patriot, a fictional work that appeared in American bookstores “in the fifty-first year of the Independence of the United States of America,” as the publisher noted.114 It was the first U.S. novel with a Spanish American setting.115 Published even as the Congress of Panama assembled sans representatives of the United States in 1826, the novel documents the shifting meanings of race and nation, fraternity and foreignness during that memorable summer, demonstrating that wariness and ambiguity concerning the implications of future U.S.-Latin American relations were expressed in many varying contexts. In the novel the two regions do not share the blood of brothers, but their ultimate marital union becomes much more intimate than the fraternity invoked by U.S. congressmen. Yet Flint refrains from promising the success of this marriage.
Flint was a New England native like his hero, who traveled to Cincinnati as a minister but became a novelist, short story writer, and editor of the short-lived journal Western Monthly Review (1827–1830). His novel depicts the creation of the new Mexican republic through the eyes of a Massachusetts native who plays a pivotal role in the war for Mexican independence in 1821 and 1822.116 This character becomes in effect an American Lafayette, a foreign visitor swayed by the vision of independence and singularly efficacious in its realization.117 On the surface, Francis Berrian is a story of battle, romance, and upward mobility, resolved by marriage at the end of the second volume. On another level, the novel can easily be read as an allegory, informed by the hopeful prediction that republicanism will bind the United States and Mexico in a union of well-matched partners.118 But beneath its adventure-story veneer lurks skepticism about the heroics of revolution, the hardiness of republicanism, and the future of relations between the United States and Latin America.
Francis Berrian, off to seek his fortune, heads from New England to the southwest where he rescues a Spanish captive, the noble Dona Martha, from a band of Comanches. Martha becomes Berrian’s love interest, and consistent with the conventions of the typical nineteenth-century novel, differences of background and temperament must be overcome. Martha is the titled daughter of a Conde committed to suppressing the incipient rebellions for independence throughout Mexico—a foil for Berrian’s intrepid republicanism. Her nobility sets her on a social plane above Berrian, who despite his Harvard education is only a farmer’s son. Her Catholicism contrasts with Berrian’s sober Protestantism. But Flint takes care not to let the differences between the central characters stray too far. Romantic alliances between people of different races are out of the question (Berrian is bothered by advances of one of the “copper-colored daughters of the savages”).119 When Berrian rescues her, Martha throws herself upon his mercies, citing their common background: “Stranger! you are of our race.”120
Although Martha does not renounce her religion, she becomes a devout convert to republicanism. She instinctively understands and appreciates the political ideals Berrian takes for granted, if anything, surpassing him in her enthusiasm. People of Spanish origin do not lie beyond hope of republican redemption, Berrian recognizes: “Enlighten their ignorance;—break their chains;—remove the threefold veil of darkness with which your priesthood has hoodwinked them. My heart tells me that nothing can be more amiable than the Spanish character,” he says.121 Unfortunately, those of Spanish character do not form the majority of the Mexican population. When Berrian is drawn into the Patriots’ struggle for independence, he musters little sympathy for the Indian, mulatto, and Creole “rabble” that makes up the Patriot army; indeed it is suggested that they are not worthy of liberty.122 The select group Berrian looks forward to incorporating into the polity seems to be a tiny minority.
Two celebrations bookend Berrian’s adventures (even as the national jubilee served as the context of the novel’s publication). Early in the story, after Berrian’s rescue of Martha, the Conde has a party to celebrate her safe return.123 Berrian disapprovingly observes that during a fandango, titled guests smile upon the Terpsichorean efforts of the humble, and servants share the dance floor with the great. When Berrian turns up his nose at this demonstration of unexpected democracy, Martha challenges him, not out of noblesse oblige but out of a more inclusive interpretation of his own political creed: “Our national manners call for all this, and allow strangers privileges here, which would not be tolerated in any other place,” she says. “I should think it would be conformable to your republican notions to see the rich and the poor mixing together in the same sports, in which their ancestors mixed in the generations of the past. Will you have the goodness to walk this dance with me?”124 To Martha’s annoyance, Berrian stiffly refuses. After a sleepless night of torment, however, he accepts the justice of her rebuke and begs her forgiveness.125