The Art of Democracy - Jim Cullen

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“Give me liberty or give me death!”—and in his possessive sexual anxiety about women, Metamora seems more white than red. Of course, he represents a white man’s idea of what a great Indian should be, and his dramatic actions at the end of the play were probably as much calculated to show off Forrest’s physique and generate standing ovations as to make a political statement. But the play was nonetheless a genuine critique of white policy toward Indians. “Let us hope, for the honor of humanity, that this applause is bestowed on Mr. Forrest, rather than the ferocious savage he impersonates,” said a reviewer in the American Quarterly Review in 1830. In all likelihood the writer need not have worried, for the pace of aggression toward Indians did not slow in any perceptible way. Moreover, Robert Bird, who helped revise the play to suit Forrest’s purposes, later became the author of Nick of the Woods (1837), a novel that essentially justified a policy of extermination.35

      By the mid-nineteenth century, Native Americans were a dwindling group living outside white society. African Americans, by contrast, were part of a racially hierarchial system within white society, and their numbers were increasing. These facts help account for the different treatment of the two groups on the stage. A disappearing danger, Indians were often romanticized, the subject of nostalgia for a vanishing world. Black-white relations, on the other hand, were a subject of increasing conflict and uncertainty.

      It must be noted that while an assumption of black inferiority has been a staple of white thinking since the first slave arrived on these shores, this attitude toward blacks has not been monolithic. “In certain places and at certain times between 1607 and 1800, the ‘lower sorts’ of whites appear to have been pleasantly lacking in racial consciousness,” writes David R. Roediger in his study of nineteenth-century racism. Thus, he notes, white indentured servants and black (and Indian) slaves sometimes fled oppressive masters together in the colonial era, and blacks and whites socialized—and engaged in petty crime—together. Some slave revolts, notably in New York City in 1741 and Richmond in 1800, included white participants.36

      When present at all, African Americans were generally relegated to small roles on the early American stage. Free men of color did occasionally appear, and were treated with relative respect. And there were a few plays about the plight of slaves, usually centering on the tragedy of broken families. Most of the time, however, blacks were the butt of jokes, often stemming from their unusual dialects. In this regard, they were not unlike such ethnic types as the (drunk) Irishman, also a source of humor. More specific to blacks was comedy based on a purported love of finery, which reflected a racist contempt for any effort to enjoy white economic privilege. By the time Brother Jonathan was a clearly elaborated archetype, so was his black counterpart, Sambo, “lthough this “happy darky” was generally not allowed to express the confidence and pride of white characters like Jonathan, he was sometimes portrayed as a person of simple integrity, although this changed as the Civil War approached.37

      These black characters were almost always portrayed by whites in blackface—white men who covered their faces with burnt cork and used what they considered black language, mannerisms, songs, etc. By about 1820, such characters were common, especially for songs or brief entr’acte (“between act”) performances. However, this cultural practice was placed on an entirely new basis sometime around 1828, when Thomas D. Rice, an actor who specialized in blackface performances, saw an old African-American man perform an unfamiliar dance while singing “Wheel about and turn about jus’ so/Every time I wheel about, I jump Jim Crow.” Rice learned the song and dance, added new verses, and began performing “Jump Jim Crow” on stage. It was a sensation across the country, and even in London when Rice took it on tour.

      In the 1830s, blackface entertainment became increasingly popular but remained only one part of an evening’s stage entertainment. It was not until the early 1840s that groups of blackface actors began banding together to form troupes for what became known as minstrel shows. Many went on tour through the South and West, but the demand was so heavy that some cities were able to sustain troupes for a decade or more.

      Between the mid-1840s and the onset of the Civil War, the minstrel show evolved into the three-part structure that would define its course for the rest of the century. In the first part, the entire company formed a semicircle, with the star performers, called “Tambo” and “Bones” for the instruments they played, at either end. Individual minstrels sang or danced, while the rest of the company sang the choruses. Such numbers were interspersed with jokes and comic songs, presided over by a white master of ceremonies known as the interlocutor. The first part ended with a group song-and-dance number.

      The second part of the show, known as the “olio,” was a variety section that featured any number of novelty acts. One important element of the olio was a stump speech, usually given by an endman, who spoke in the garbled language of a pretentious black man “putting on airs.” “Transcendentalism is dat spiritual cognoscence ob psychological irrefragibility,” began one such speech, which simultaneously lampooned the “uppity” black man and the pieties of such intellectuals as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Indeed, class critiques were a very big part of minstrel social commentary, so much so that African Americans occasionally had a laugh at the expense of the white elite, as in this story about a black man who rides a ferry with a white one:

      When I got out a little piece from the shore, de man axed me if I knowed anyting about frenologism [phrenology, the mid-nineteenth century pseudoscience that mapped the brain]. I told him no. Ah, says he, den one quarter of your life is gone. Finally he says, does you know anyting about grammar. I told him no. Ah, says he, den one half ob you life am gone … He axed me if I knowed anyting about dickshionary. I told him no and he say tree quarters of your life is gone. We hit a rock and den I axed him if he knowed how to swim. He said no. Den, says I, de whole four quarters of your life am gone—shure.38

      In this story, blacks and whites share the kind of practical knowledge and wit so often celebrated on the U.S. stage, and the “other” is the formally educated white American who is both arrogant and ignorant.

      Shakespeare, incidentally, was a favorite among minstrels, both in such speeches and as a source of simple jokes. “When was Desdemona like a ship?” a comic would ask. “When she was moored,” came the answer. “Get thee to a brewery!” Hamlet would tell Ophelia—a telling joke on middle-class temperance advocates who considered alcohol a major moral issue. Such comedy is an important reminder not only of Shakespeare’s popularity with the mechanics’ set, which formed the core of the minstrel audience, but also of the often risque and decisively male humor that characterized it.39

      The final part of the minstrel show was a one-act skit. These generally had Southern plantation settings and featured slapstick comedy “nearly always ending in a flurry of inflated bladders, bombardments of cream pies, or fireworks explosions that literally closed the show with a bang,” according to one historian of minstrelsy. Such climaxes were typical of stage entertainment in the early nineteenth century, when even the most sober Shakespearian tragedy was followed by a farce to lighten the audience’s mood.40

      Broad comedy was only one side of minstrelsy, however. The other was a kind of melancholy that took a variety of forms in the songs. Some were laments for lost family members; others expressed nostalgia for plantation life. The most famous composer of such music was Stephen Foster, who began his career as a blackface singer before selling a series of songs to minstrel troupes in the 1840s and 1850s. His “Old Folks at Home” and “Massa’s in the Cold Ground” were great favorites in his time, while others (“O! Susanna,” “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair”) are still familiar today. Many described dying or dead lovers, which intensified their impact. Foster drank himself to death during the Civil War.

      Both the comic and the sentimental sides of the minstrel tradition were racist. With certain partial exceptions, like the ferry story quoted above, most humor in minstrel shows was at the expense of African Americans and was emphatically hostile to any hint of equality with whites. The sentimental strain in minstrel entertainment, a form that generally celebrated plantation life, implicitly or explicitly sanctioned slavery as the natural and most comfortable place for African Americans (escaped slaves were usually depicted as unhappy). In the early days of minstrelsy, there

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