From now till March 20th 2022, God willing, I will be mainly reading stuff from 1851 or before. The key word is “mainly”: most but not all of my reading will be from this period.
It will go like this:
Daily:
- Diaries – read whatever was written on this day 170 years ago in the diaries of:
- Thoreau (Concord, Massachusetts)
- George Templeton Strong (New York City)
- King James Bible – read at least one chapter a day.
Weekly:
- Newspapers – read the latest issue of 170 years ago for:
- The Economist
- Frederick Douglass’ Newspaper (successor to the North Star)
- “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” – read the chapter that was serialized this week 170 years ago. The serialization ran from June 5th 1851 to March 20th 1852, when the book itself came out. Chapter 6 comes out this Saturday.
Monthly:
- Books – read at least one book a month that was published 170 to 270 years ago (1751-1851). My default list right now:
- Jul 2021: Olaudah Equiano: Interesting Narrative (1789)
- Aug 2021: James W.C. Pennington: The Origin and History of the Colored People (1841)
- Sep 2021: Frederick Douglass: Speeches, 1841-51
- Oct 2021: Sojourner Truth: Narrative (1850)
- Nov 2021: Melville: Moby Dick (comes out in the US on November 14th 1851)
- Dec 2021: Phillis Wheatley: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)
- Jan 2022: Maria W. Stewart: Productions (1835)
- Feb 2022: Hosea Easton: A Treatise On the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States; And the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them; With A Sermon on the Duty of the Church To Them (1837)
- Mar 2022: Martin Delany: The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852) – this will be 170 years old by the time I get to it.
If I read a book before its month – or cannot get a copy of it – then I must find a book to substitute for it when that month comes.
Reference (from my 1949 media diet, I know how important in-period reference books are):
- dictionary – Webster’s dictionary of 1828, which is online and usable.
- encyclopedia – Rees’s Cyclopædia of 1819, which is what Thoreau used. Its pages have been photographed and put on the Internet, but it is hardly something you can use to quickly look up something. For that I will likely wind up using the Wikipedia.
- maps – Cruchley’s 1850 world map and some others I have assembled. I need a decent atlas, though. Or a functioning Google Earth for 1851. Or just a book on geography from back then. Because place names and their meanings change all the time.
The great thing about 1851 in 2021 is that all the copyrights have expired. That means much of it is just sitting out there on the Internet for free. These days the biggest barrier is ignorance – simply not knowing what is out there.
Why 1851: Because I have Thoreau’s diary from that year and I want to finish “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Moby Dick”. And the Black lens from slave days should have plenty to tell about the US, in both 1851 and 2021. Lens is not even the right word – more like X-ray glasses.
Suggestions are welcomed!
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- 1949 media diet review
- books – books I read in 2021
- things 1851:
- libraries: Frederick Douglass, Thoreau
- Black American writing, early 1800s – where most of the books come from
- 1851 in 12 maps
- New York City: a brief history: 1600-2017
- White lens
- The Black counter-frame
- writers:
- Frederick Douglass
- Martin Delany
- Sojourner Truth
- Phillis Wheatley
- Maria W. Stewart
- The Economist
- Webster’s dictionary
- King James Bible
561
A couple years ago I decided to read ten pages of Moby Dick a day from start to finish. It is such a monumental work and I’m so glad I finally read the whole thing. Coraggio!
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@ Abagond
Are you going to try to get in some representative music?
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@ Solitaire
Oh yes! Definitely.
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Possible resource:
https://www.loc.gov/collections/american-sheet-music-1820-to-1860/articles-and-essays/greatest-hits-1820-60-variety-music-cavalcade/1850-to-1860/
https://www.loc.gov/collections/american-sheet-music-1820-to-1860/articles-and-essays/greatest-hits-1820-60-variety-music-cavalcade/1840-to-1849/
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I do want to read Uncle Tom’s cabin. I want to learn how the pejorative “Uncle Tom” came to be used erroneously.
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@Mary
You won’t necessarily find that in the book. That comes from the distorted, minstrel-like, portrayal of the character in the stage shows.
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@: Open Minded Observer: Thank you for clarification and enlightenment.
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@Open Observer: Your explanation actually makes sense to me.🙂
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@Mary
Wow… I must’ve skimmed your post because I swear I just read “how the pejorative ‘Uncle Tom’ came to be used” and completely missed “erroneously” at the end. So here I thought you wanted to read the book to discover the origins of the pejorative… I’m an idiot.
Anyway, I’d be curious as to yours (and Abagond’s) opinion of the book. I appreciated it very much but, I think I’m also the target audience… well, if I were alive during that time anyway.
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-josiah-henson-real-inspiration-uncle-toms-cabin-180969094/
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@Solitaire: Thanks for the link.☺️
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@ Mary Burrell
You’re very welcome! Hope all is well and that you’re keeping safe.
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@ Mary
The Uncle Tom in the book is a hero. He gave his life to save two Black women. But the story was co-opted and minstrelized by stage producers who, um, left that part out for some reason.
Patricia Turner, a folklorist and professor of African-American Studies at UC Davis:
They made Uncle Tom into an Uncle Tom to make him more acceptable to White audiences.
More at NPR:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93059468
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@ Open Minded Observer
Yes, I will definitely be writing a post about it. I just read chapter 6, which was supposed to be comic relief but I found kind of sickening, especially after doing a post on “Jump Jim Crow”. If it were not such an important book in US history, there is no way I would continue to subject myself to it.
The book is aimed squarely at White women, presumably in the US North and UK, particularly those who loved tear-jerker Victorian novels. It is the White (racist) female gaze all the way.
Stowe wants you to empathize with Black people, put yourself in their shoes, break your heart, but I doubt she sees them as the equal of White people. She seems to be a White paternalist, like many White allies. She does seem to think most Black people have Christian souls, so there is that, but so did plenty of slave owners.
But I will be in a much better place to judge the book once I get to the end.
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Another source (podcast with transcript) discussing racism within Uncle Tom’s Cabin, how the novel was both progressive for its time and yet significantly contributed to lasting racial stereotypes:
https://www.writlarge.fm/episodes/uncle-toms-cabin
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@ Abagond
I haven’t looked at the following link yet because it’s a pdf and I’m currently on mobile. But it’s about the racial geopolitics in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first published work, Primary Geography for Children (1833). Sounds like a dovetail of this discussion about Uncle Tom’s Cabin and your post on the 1851 maps.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/478342/pdf
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@ Solitaire
Thank you so much! I was looking for something like this – a quick primer on the state of the world in 1851 as (at least some) people back then saw it. 1855 is certainly close enough. And Lesson XXII is even on race! Her own ideas about race is something I cannot help not think about when reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.
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@ Abagond
I’m so glad it was helpful!
“Her own ideas about race is something I cannot help not think about when reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.”
I was trying to find a timeline of her life online that would give a sense of how many Black people she actually knew before writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. What little I’ve found appears to suggest the answer is “not many.”
She did visit Kentucky as a young woman and witnessed a slave auction there. She did apparently hear first-hand accounts from a few escaped slaves like Josiah Henson.
But she doesn’t seem to have been moving in the type of abolitionist circles where she would have had personal acquaintance and regular interactions with people like Frederick Douglass or the Delaneys, the Purvises, the Fortens, etc.
The podcast I linked to says that she got at least some of her ideas about race from minstrel shows.
Also, she was definitely exposed at a young age to the “send them back to Africa” line of abolitionism, although I’m not clear on where her own opinion lay.
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Stumbled across this: The Christian Slave; a Drama:
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/uncletom/xianslav/xshp.html
The entire text is available at the website above.
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@ Solitaire
This is precisely what I am afraid of.
The American Colonization Society, founded in 1817, was pushing that line. It led to the creation of Liberia in 1847.
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@ Abagond
As I’ve been surfing around online, I’ve seen comments indicating that within scholarly circles, Stowe’s support of Liberia’s colonization has been a contentious topic. I’m guessing there’s way more about it in the critical literature on Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the biographies.
Wikipedia says her husband was a proponent of colonization who only gradually changed his mind in the lead-up to the Civil War.
Perhaps more importantly, her father was a vocal advocate of colonization and the Liberia plan. He was president at Lane Theological Seminary in 1834 when the students held a series of debates over colonization versus immediate emancipation, which ended with the school banning any discussion of abolition (and subsequently an exodus of students to Oberlin College). At the time Harriet was still unmarried, living in her father’s home, and is believed to have attended at least some of the debates.
She’s starting to remind me of Lincoln in this respect: prior to writing UTC, she had seen a little bit of southern slavery first hand, she was familiar with abolitionist ideas, but she had very little personal contact with Black people when she formed her opinions, and she tended to favor the African colonization plan, at least up to a certain point in her life.
“And Lesson XXII is even on race!”
I found the first edition free online here:
https://digital.cincinnatilibrary.org/digital/collection/p16998coll17/id/4302/
…and have been comparing it to the 1855 edition at Google books.
The chapter on race in the 1833 edition is XIII. Some of it is copied verbatim in the 1855 edition, but there are interesting changes, like no longer finding it necessary to describe White people (because of course the reader is White). The descriptions of the other races seem more racist in the 1855 edition.
Another interesting difference is the description of the southern states. In 1833, it’s fairly matter-of-fact information about crops and climate. In 1855, it’s chock full of anti-slavery sentiment.
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@Abagond
Thank you for that assessment upthread. When I first read the book I wasn’t yet in a place where I’d even have recognized it. I know that sad… But, I have come to recognize how much material on topics of race is created by white people for white people. I haven’t yet decided if that’s a bad thing or if it’s a function of white people working to fix the racism we created in the first-place since it shouldn’t fall on Black people to do the work. But, when there’s profits to be made, I start to question true motives.
I think you’re both probably right about Stowe not necessarily interacting regularly with many Black people. I spent some time visiting sites along the Ohio river a few years back and I know her name came up a lot during various tours as being “adjacent” to people more directly involved with the underground railroad activities there which tracks with her assimilating the stories she heard into the book.
@Solitaire
Thank you for the link above… I’ve added both Josiah Henson’s narrative as well as the keys to Uncle Toms Cabin to my Kindle!
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@ Open Minded Observer
I think it’s a fairly common experience for people to have books they read when young that were very important to them in opening their eyes and their hearts, but then years later they realize those books are also problematic. Not just with race but other issues, too.
I haven’t read Uncle Tom’s Cabin yet, but I can empathize because I had the same experience with Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. They both have some very powerful moments which impacted me in a positive way, but overall both are weakened by stereotypes and racism and over-reliance on the White lens, none of which I saw as a teenager.
Despite my age at the time, it’s still a failing of mine that I didn’t see it — but I had also been taught not to see it, if you know what I mean? Without realizing that I’d been taught any such thing.
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@Abagond
“I found the first edition free online here:”
The 2nd sentence of Ch.13: “Some are whtie, like the people of America;” That really says it all doesn’t it? Reading this and the chapter on Africa (Ch.19) which clearly echos the previous president’s viewpoint is yet another reminder of how little truly changes over time.
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@ Abagond
I just ran across a novel that you might find interesting, although it’s from 1857, a little past the date of your media diet.
It’s called The Garies and Their Friends, which according to Wikipedia “was the second novel by an African American to be published, and the first to portray the daily lives of free blacks in the North.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a preface to the novel, which is how I stumbled across it while searching on Project Gutenberg for Stowe’s works.
Turns out the author, Frank J. Webb, was the husband of Mary E. Webb, who I mentioned in an earlier comment at https://abagond.wordpress.com/2021/07/07/1851-media-diet/#comment-556998, about how she was authorized by Stowe to give dramatic readings of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Again from Wikipedia:
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Webb
(Webb was also the grandson of Aaron Burr, which has been confirmed by DNA testing. He may have been tri-racial, as one grandmother according to some of the historical accounts was possibly from India.)
Seems to me like this could be an interesting novel to read in comparison and contrast to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
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