U of Ideas of General Interest -- August 2000
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor (217) 333-2177; [email protected]
HISTORICAL FICTION
New book pairs slave-rebellion stories by Douglass, Melville
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Perhaps one day the American slave ship Creole will become as famous as the Spanish ship Amistad, and Madison Washington, the African-American slave who led the rebellion on the Creole, will be as well known as Cinque, the African slave who led the revolt on the Amistad.
Until then, the American ship, slaves and their stories are "just lost in history," said George Hendrick, an English professor emeritus at the University of Illinois.
However, Hendrick and his wife, Willene, are doing their part to draw these relative unknowns out of history's shadows. Their new book, "Two Slave Rebellions at Sea" (Brandywine Press), sheds light on one of the most overlooked slave revolts at sea: the successful commandeering of the Creole off the East Coast of the United States in 1841 and the unsuccessful 1804 rebellion led by the African slave Babo on a Spanish ship, the Tryal. The stories the Hendricks have paired for the first time are the little known "The Heroic Slave," about Washington and the Creole, written by Frederick Douglass, and the often anthologized "Benito Cereno," by Herman Melville.
"These are two prime examples of slaves in revolt, and two major American writers trying to deal with them in an artistic way," George Hendrick said. "Two Slave Rebellions" includes an introduction by the Hendricks and an appendix of historical documents surrounding the revolt on the Spanish ship, so that readers can trace the ways writers fictionalize historical events. Douglass' story is based on a few newspaper articles -- the only historical evidence of the event, Melville's on court depositions.
The Creole slave rebellion took place on Nov. 7, 1841, in waters between Norfolk and Nassau. The 19 mutineers were arrested after the Creole reached Nassau, imprisoned for five months, and then freed by the British. The other 116 slaves onboard were freed immediately; most went to Jamaica.
By all accounts, Washington was an intelligent and formidable leader who, after escaping to Canada, returned to Virginia to find and free his wife. "He went the wrong way on the Underground Railroad and was caught," George Hendrick said. En route to New Orleans to be resold, Washington devised the plan and led the revolt against his American captors. Nothing else is known about the mutineers.
"The Heroic Slave" is the only piece of fiction written by Douglass, a great abolitionist orator, newspaper editor/publisher, and author of his own account of slavery. His point in the story is unambiguous, George Hendrick said: "African American slaves had every right to revolt. They were fighting for their freedom." Melville's message, on the other hand, was typically ambiguous.
Why was Melville's story of the 1804 revolt off the coast of Chile canonized, while Douglass' faded into oblivion? "Literary scholars in general prefer ambiguity to 'propaganda,' " George Hendrick said. "We think that's debatable." The Hendricks hope that descendants of the Creole slaves in the Bahamas and Jamaica will contact them, so that the Hendricks can add the descendants' accounts to the second edition of the book. The slaves undoubtedly had "horrible stories to tell," George Hendrick said.
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