The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region ca. 1600-1925

Go directly to the collection, The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region ca. 1600-1925, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection. History topics include:

Introduction | Colonization of Virginia and Maryland | The New Nation | Slavery | Civil War and Reconstruction | The Development of Washington, D.C. | Urbanization and the Problems of Cities

Slavery

Frederick Douglass (Untitled section in "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass")

The Capital and the Bay includes one of the best-known and influential pieces of writing on slavery, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave / Written by Himself." While this document is worthy of extended study, the collection also includes several other slave narratives that could be used to broaden and deepen students' understanding; these narratives include the following:

• "Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green, (Formerly a Slave.)"
• "A Narrative of the Life of Rev. Noah Davis, a Colored Man, Written by Himself, at the Age of Fifty-four"
• "Thirty Years a Slave. From Bondage to Freedom…Autobiography of Louis Hughes"
• "Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman"
• "Autobiography, Including Also Reminiscences of Slave Life"

The introduction to the American Memory WPA Slave Narratives collection by Norman Yetman is a critical resource for understanding the strengths and limitations of these sources. According to Yetman, slave narratives were intended to counteract the view put forth by supporters of slavery that slaves were happy and their lives secure. Stories from people who had become free and were then able to describe life in slavery were therefore powerful tools for abolitionists in the decades before the Civil War. Read several of the narratives and consider the following questions:

• What kinds of work do the writers describe?
• What difficulties did the writers' families face in slavery?
• What similar experiences did the writers have? How were the writers' lives as slaves different? What do you think accounts for the similarities and differences?
• How did the writers become free? What were their experiences as free African Americans?
• When were most of the narratives published? Can you explain why such narratives might have been published in the 1840s and 1850s?
• Imagine you are an abolitionist in the 1850s. You have read several of the slave narratives. Create a broadside using quotes from the narratives to support your position against slavery.

Excellent materials for teaching about slave narratives are also available on the National Endowment for the Humanities web site, including the essay "An Introduction to the Slave Narrative," by William Andrews, and a lesson plan, "Perspective on the Slave Narrative."

The slaveowner's perspective is also represented in the collection. For example, in "Chapter II" of his "Memories of Three Score Years and Ten," southerner Richard McIlwaine described in the early 1900s why he still believed slavery was "perfectly natural and proper and right":

It will, perhaps, seem strange to persons not acquainted with the benign influence of African slavery as it existed in Virginia during my early life, that many of the most vivid and tender memories of my childhood are connected with the household servants of my father, and of other families to which I had intimate access. The trouble with these persons is that they know nothing of the institution as it really was, as I knew it, and of the relations between master and servant. To me and others similarly situated it appears perfectly natural and proper and right, and we look back on those days without misgiving or regret, but with thanksgiving for what we experienced and learned under those conditions,—for the love and kindness we cherished for our colored friends and received from them, and for the relations we sustained to them and they to us. We have no antipathy to negroes as negroes. We were nursed and nurtured by the older of them, played with the younger and a mutual esteem and affection grew up between us. No institution has been more grossly misrepresented and maligned. Those were good old days for white and black,—better, far better, for multitudes of both races than these degenerate times of insincerity, lust, pelf, mammon-worship, strife, and murder.

(Page 19, "Chapter II," in "Memories of Three Score Years and Ten")

Other documents present debates about the institution. These include the following:

• "Memorial of Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, Praying for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia"
• "Speech of Charles Jas Faulkner in the House of Delegates of Virginia"
• "Speech of James M'Dowell, Jr in the House of Delegates of Virginia"
• "Speech of Mr. Bayly of Accomack, on the Bill to Prevent Citizens of New York from Carrying Slaves out of This Commonwealth"

Close analysis of these documents and others located via searches of the collection can help develop deeper understanding of slavery and its role in 19th-century America. Questions such as the following can guide that analysis:

• What arguments are made for slavery in these documents?
• What arguments against slavery are made?
• Examine your lists and sort the arguments into categories (e.g., moral arguments, economic arguments)? Do the pro and con arguments tend to fall into the same or different categories? Which categories of arguments do you think were most persuasive?

Introduction | Colonization of Virginia and Maryland | The New Nation | Slavery | Civil War and Reconstruction | The Development of Washington, D.C. | Urbanization and the Problems of Cities