In Building an Antislavery Wall, R. J. M. Blackett examines the
efforts of black Americans in England to advance the cause of their
own freedom. Speaking to enthusiastic working-class crowds in the
cities and lobbying in the salons of the wealthy and aristocratic,
black Americans used England as a forum to tell the world of their
cruel plight in the United States, to expose what they saw as an
oppressive slave society masquerading as the seat of democracy and
freedom. It was their goal to create a moral cordon around the
United States so that, in the words of Frederick Douglass,
""wherever a slaveholder went, he might hear nothing but
denunciation of slavery, that he might be looked upon as a
man-stealing, cradle-robbing, woman-stripping monster, and that he
might see reproof and detestation on every hand."" The American
blacks who visited England between 1830 and 1860 came there for
various specific reasons- some to raise funds for projects at home,
some to receive the education that they had been denied by American
colleges, many for refuge from slave-catchers. But every black saw
himself, at least to some extent, as an emissary from his enslaved
brethren in America, and he was treated as such by British society.
Some- Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delany, for example- were
already famous; others, like Henry ""Box"" Brown and James Watkins,
would gain fame through their lecturing while in England. Some of
the blacks who came to England were ministers; others were doctors,
journalists, and authors of slave narratives. Clearly gifted and
articulate individuals, these black Americans stood as living proof
of slavery's unfairness, flesh-and-blood refutations of America's
boasted freedom. Tracing the impact of the black Americans,
Blackett concludes that they were very effective spokesmen who
significantly advanced the cause of the Atlantic abolitionist
movement. British support had monetary as well as symbolic value,
and the popularity of the blacks as lecturers gave them a special
edge in both fund-raising and proselytizing. At the same time,
while organized white abolitionist societies expended much of their
energy on sectarian disputes, the blacks sought to bridge these
differences in the hope of marshaling the full weight of British
opinion in their favor. The blacks played an especially important
role, Blackett finds, in discrediting the American Colonization
Society- their adamant opposition made it difficult for
colonizationists to convince the British that their plan was in the
blacks' best interest. Chronicling the efforts of black Americans
to win international support for their struggles at home, Building
an Antislavery Wall illuminates an important chapter in the history
of American reform and in the emergence of an articulate black
leadership in the United States.
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