The Slumbering Volcano: American Slave Ship Revolts and the Production of Rebellious MasculinityIn The Slumbering Volcano, Maggie Montesinos Sale investigates depictions of nineteenth-century slave ship revolts to explore the notion of rebellion in formulations of United States national identity. Analyzing how such revolts inspired citizens to debate whether political theory directed at free men could be extended toward blacks, Sale compares the reception of fictionalized versions of ship revolts published in the 1850s--Benito Cereno by Herman Melville and The Heroic Slave by Frederick Douglass--with the previous decade's public accounts of actual rebellions by enslaved people on the ships Amistad and Creole. This comparison of narrative response with written public reaction to the actual revolts allows Sale to investigate the precise manner in which public opinion regarding definitions of liberty evolved over this crucial period of time between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Mapping the ways in which unequally empowered groups claimed and transformed statements associated with the discourse of national identity, Sale succeeds in recovering a historically informed sense of the discursive and activist options available to people of another era. In its demonstration of how the United States has been uniquely shaped by its dual status as both an imperial and a postcolonial power, this study on the discourse of natural rights and national identity in the pre-Civil War United States will interest students and scholars of American studies, African American studies, gender studies, and American history and literature. |
Contents
The Amistad Affair 1839 | 58 |
The Case of the Creole 1841 | 120 |
Benito Cereno 1855 and The Slumbering Volcano | 146 |
The Heroic Slave 1853 | 173 |
Selected Bibliography | 245 |
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Common terms and phrases
abolition abolitionist actions African American agenda Amistad Amistad affair Amistad and Creole antislavery argues argument assertion authority Babo Benito Cereno British captain challenged characterization Cinqué claim colonial created Creole archive Creole rebellion Creole rebels crew cultural debate Delano Denmark Vesey discourse of national disrupted Douglass emphasizes enslaved population Euroamerican European example Frederick Douglass freedom gender Heroic Slave historical ideological interpretations liberal theory liberty Listwell logic Madison Washington masculine Melville's Mendians ment Montez narrative Nassau native natural rights negro newspaper penny press pirates political theory position race racial racialist racialist discourses readers recognized representation republican Revolution revolutionary struggle rhetoric Ruiz sailors San Dominick schooner ship slave rebellion slave trade slaveholders slavery Spaniards Spanish story strategy subject-position supporters thereby tion trope of revolutionary U.S. Americans Uncle Tom's Cabin United USS Washington vessel violence Walker white supremacy women writers York