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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2019
This artricle explores the philosophical roots of Alexander Crummell's abolitionism. It argues that the black abolitionist developed a philosophically sophisticated approach to antislavery politics and to black advancement rooted, in part, in his encounter with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's metaphysics and epistemology. Developing out his encounter with Coleridge and others, Crummell developed a politicized theory of the self. From Coleridge he took an appreciation of anti-instrumental ways of thinking about politics rooted in the alignment of internal qualities of the self with external political organizing. His thought demonstrates the cosmopolitanism and sophistication of antebellum black intellectual and activist life, as well as the ways that theories of selfhood were deployed in radical political movements of the nineteenth century.
1 Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903), 225Google Scholar.
2 Crummell, Alexander, The Relations and Duties of Free Colored Men in America to Africa: A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar, M.D., ESQ of New York City (Hartford, 1861), 7Google Scholar.
3 Frederick Douglass, “The Future of Africa,” Douglass’ Monthly, July 1862, 674–5, 674.
4 Rev. Dickerson, C. H., quoted in Ferris, William Henry, The African Abroad or His Evolution in Western Civilization (New Haven, 1913), 895Google Scholar. As one biographer succinctly wrote, “Alexander Crummell was a romantic.” Luckson Ewhiekpamare Ejofodomi, “The Missionary Career of Alexander Crummell in Liberia” (Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1974), 239.
5 Crummell, Alexander, The Future of Africa: Being Addresses, Sermons, etc. Delivered in the Republic of Liberia (New York, 1862), 15, 11Google Scholar.
6 Scholarship has often seen a link between romanticism and antebellum reform. The classic statement of this is Thomas, John, “Romantic Reform in America, 1815–1865,” American Quarterly 17/4 (1965), 656–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hingham, John, “From Boundlessness to Consolidation: The Transformation of American Culture, 1848–1860,” in Guarneri, Carl J., ed., Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture (New Haven, 2001), 149–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Romanticism is often blamed for imparting an irresponsible individualism to antebellum reform. Perhaps the most prominent recent study to make such a case is Gura, Philip, Man's Better Angels: Romantic Reformers and the Coming of the Civil War (Cambridge, MA, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Packer, Barbara, “American Verse Traditions, 1800–1855,” in Bercovitch, Sacvan, The Cambridge History of American Literature, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 2004), 11–16Google Scholar, at 13.
9 Some excellent new work on pre-twentieth century African American intellectual life includes Cameron, Chris, To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement (Kent, OH, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bay, Mia, Griffin, Farah, Jones, Martha, and Savage, Barbara., eds, Towards an Intellectual History of Black Women (Chapel Hill, 2015)Google Scholar; Ball, Erica, To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class (Athens, GA, 2012)Google Scholar; Reed, Adolph Jr and Warren, Kenneth W., eds., Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Ideological and Material Foundations of African American Thought (New York, 2016)Google Scholar.
10 Pearson, Erin, “‘A Person Perverted into a Thing’: Cannibalistic Metaphors and Dehumanizing Physicality in Late Eighteenth-Century British Abolitionism,” ELH 83/3 (2016), 741–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Recent works that have emphasized American abolitionism's transnational focus include Sinha, Manisha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, 2016)Google Scholar; McDaniel, Caleb, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (Baton Rouge, 2013)Google Scholar. For example, a recent study of Coleridge's “afterlives,” demonstrates his influence on everyone from Emerson to Oscar Wilde to Hindu reformers. But African American readers are absent. Vigus, James and Wright, Jane, eds., Coleridge's Afterlives (New York, 2008)Google Scholar. Another more focused work on Coleridge's reception in continental Europe has traced his influence everywhere from post-World War II Germany to nineteenth-century Czech intellectuals. Shaffer, Elior and Zuccato, Edoardo, eds., The Reception of S. T. Coleridge in Europe (New York, 2007)Google Scholar.
12 Some recent examples include Rooden, Aukje van, “Reconsidering Literary Autonomy: From an Individual towards a Relational Paradigm,” Journal of the History of Ideas 76/2 (2015), 167–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Izenberg, Gerald, “Self: The Limits of Autonomy,” Modern Intellectual History 15/1 (2018), 211–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, Peter, “The Place of the Sacred in the Absence of God,” Journal of the History of Ideas 69/4 (2008), 647–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 650.
13 Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1989)Google Scholar; Taylor, , A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA, 2007)Google Scholar; Seigel, Jerrold, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Welter, Rush, “On Studying the National Mind,” in Higham, John and Conkin, Paul, eds., New Directions in American Intellectual History (Baltimore, 1979), 64–84Google Scholar. The most prominent counterexample is Howe's, Daniel Walker Creating the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, MA, 1997)Google Scholar.
15 Izenberg, “Self,” 212.
16 Quote refers to Taylor's work. Gordon, “The Place of the Sacred,” 650.
17 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 217.
18 “Oneida Institute—Junior Exhibition,” Friend of Man, 6 Oct. 1836, 62, original emphasi.
19 Alexander Crummell, “Case of Bishop Onderdonk and Mr. Crummell,” Colored American, 7 Dec. 1839, 2; for more on Oneida see Sernett, Milton, “First Honor: Oneida Institute's Role in the Fight against American Racism and Slavery,” New York History 66/2 (1985), 101–20Google Scholar.
20 Crummell, Alexander, Destiny and Race: Selected Writings, 1840–1898, ed. Jeremiah, Wilson Moses (Amherst, 1992), 51Google Scholar; Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York, 1989), 22Google Scholar.
21 Sernett, Milton, Abolition's Axe: Beriah Green, Oneida Institute, and the Black Freedom Struggle (Syracuse, 1986), 139Google Scholar.
22 See Gura, Phillip, American Transcendentalism: A History (New York), 50–56Google Scholar.
23 Sernett, Abolition's Axe, 68, 76.
24 Green, Beriah, “Radicalism—in Reply to the Literary and Theological Review,” Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine 1/1 (1835), 156–71Google Scholar, at 169.
25 Green, Beriah, The Miscellaneous Writings (Whitesboro, NY, 1841), 38Google Scholar.
26 Green, Beriah, Sermons and Other Discourses, with Brief Biographical Hints (New York: S. W. Green, 1860), 168Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., 402.
28 Ibid., 407.
29 Beriah Green, “A Voice in the Wilderness: The Misanthrope,” Model Worker, 21 July 1848, 3.
30 Beriah Green, “A Right Minded Minority,” Model Worker, 14 July 1848, 1.
31 Green, Beriah, The Martyr: A Discourse in Commemoration of the Martyrdom of the Rev. Elijah Lovejoy (New York, 1838), 3–4Google Scholar.
32 Green, Beriah, The Chattel Principle: The Abhorrence of Jesus Christ and the Apostles; Or, No Refuge for American Slavery in the New Testament (New York, 1839), 14, 22Google Scholar. Walter Johnson, who has used this term to such effect, credits the ex-slave J. W. C. Pennington, who used it in the 1840s. But it appears that Pennington took the phrase from Green. Johnson, Walter, Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 19Google Scholar.
33 Green, Chattel Principle, 15, 34.
34 Ibid., 23.
35 Crummell, The Future of Africa, 353.
36 Crummell, Africa and America, 281.
37 Brown, William Wells, “Clotel; or, The President's Daughter,” in The Works of William Wells Brown in His “Strong Manly Voice”, ed. Garrett, Paula and Robbins, Hollis (New York, 2006), 221–63Google Scholar, at 245.
38 Alexander Crummell, “The Necessities and Advantages of Education Considered in Relation to Colored Men,” Black Abolitionist Papers 7437, 36.
39 Crummell, The Future of Africa, 12.
40 Crumell, Africa and America, 364.
41 Crummell, Alexander, The Greatness of Christ and other Sermons (New York, 1882), 209Google Scholar.
42 Ibid., 279–80.
43 Crummell, Africa and America, 34.
44 Crummell, “The Necessities and Advantages of Education,” 57.
45 Crummell, Greatness of Christ, 229.
46 Crummell, Africa and America, 96.
47 Alexander Crummell, “Caste in the Church,” Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York.
48 Some recent work on Coleridge and slavery includes Hutchings, Kevin, Romantic Ecologies and Colonial Cultures in the British Atlantic World, 1770–1850 (Montreal, 2009), 92–112Google Scholar; May, Tim, “Coleridge's Slave Trade Ode and Bowles's ‘The African’,” Notes and Queries 54/4 (2007), 504–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sonoi, Chine, “Coleridge and the British Slave Trade,” Coleridge Bulletin 27 (2006), 27–37Google Scholar.
49 In his biography, Coleridge's discussion of Kant takes place in a strange place: following his exploration of why these mystics kept alive his religious sentiment. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, The Major Works, ed. Jackson, H. J. (New York, 1985), 233Google Scholar.
50 Ibid., 214.
51 Coleridge cited Jacobi in The Friend. See ibid., 634.
52 Lowell, James Russell, Literary and Political Addresses, vol. 7 (Boston, 1904), 86Google Scholar.
53 Seigel, Jerrold, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (New York, 2005), 452CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
54 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Aids to Reflection (Burlington, VT, 1840), 10Google Scholar, original emphasis.
55 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, “Lecture on the Slave Trade,” in Coleridge, Lectures 1795 on Politics and Religion, ed. Patton, Lewis and Mann, Peter, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 16 vols. (Princeton, 1971), 1: 231–51Google Scholar, at 240.
56 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Essays on His Own Times, vol. 1 (London, 1850), 139Google Scholar.
57 Poems are “Religious Musing” and “Fears in Solitude.”
58 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, “The Catholic Petition Letter III (Continued),” in Coleridge, Essays on His Times in the Morning Post and The Courier III, ed. Erdman, David V., The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 3: 235–6, at 235Google Scholar.
59 Lowell, Literary and Political Addresses, 84.
60 Mill, John Stuart, John Stuart Mill on Bentham and Coleridge (New York, 1962), 129–30Google Scholar.
61 Alexander Crummell to Frazier Miller, 26 July 1894, Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York Public Library.
62 “Mr. Alexander Crummell,” Colored American, 9 Nov. 1839, 3.
63 See, for instance, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Extract from Religious Musings,” Colored American, 7 Dec. 1839, 4.
64 On black intellectual clubs see McHenry, Elizabeth, Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies (Durham, NC, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Porter, Dorothy B., “The Organized Educational Activities of Negro Literary Societies, 1828–1846,” Journal of Negro Education 5/4 (1936), 555–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wirzbicki, Peter, “‘The Light of Knowledge Follows the Impulse of Revolutions’: The Haitian Influence on Antebellum Black Ideas of Elevation and Education,” Slavery and Abolition 36/2 (2015), 275–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 See Sinha, Manisha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, 2016), 130–59Google Scholar.
66 Moses, Alexander Crummell, 14.
67 As the Colored American reported, “a majority of the committee of arrangements of the Political Association were members of the Phoenixonian Society.” “For the Colored American,” Colored American, 14 July 1838, 3.
68 Crummell, Africa and America, 300.
69 “For the Emancipator,” Emancipator, 26 Sept. 1839, 87.
70 Crummell, Africa and America, 300.
71 Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 9 Aug. 1848, Jay Papers, Columbia University, New York.
72 “Phoenixonian Society,” Colored American, 13 July 1839, 2.
73 Crummell, Destiny and Race, 52.
74 “The Minutes of the Albany Convention,” Colored American, 9 Jan. 1841, 1.
75 “College and Colored People,” American Anti Slavery Standard, 23 Nov. 1843, 98.
76 “We Take This Opportunity,” Weekly Advocate, 18 Feb. 1837, 1, original emphasis.
77 “Public Lectures of the New York Phoenixonian Literary Society,” Colored American, 6 Feb. 1841, 3.
78 Crummell, Alexander, Jubilate: The Shades and Lights of a Fifty Years’ Ministry (Washington, DC, 1894), 6Google Scholar.
79 Ibid., 8.
80 “Meeting of Colored Citizens,” Liberator, 21 July 1843, 114.
81 Moses, Alexander Crummell, 30.
82 “College and Colored People.”
83 On the Colored Conventions see Rael, Patrick, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002)Google Scholar
84 Minutes of the State Convention of Colored Citizens, Held at Albany, on the 18th, 19th, and 20th of August, 1840 (New York, 1840), 16.
85 Quoted in Moses, Alexander Crummell, 72.
86 Ibid., 75.
87 Crummell, “The Resurrection of the Dead,” Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York Public Library, original emphasis.
88 Seigel, The Idea of the Self, 5.
89 Alexander Crummell, “Eulogium on the Life and Character of Thomas Sipkins Sidney,” 4 July 1840, Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York Public Library, 37.
90 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 21.
91 Coleridge, Major Works, 240.
92 Mill, John Stuart, Collected Works: Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, vol. 10, ed. Robson, J. M. (Toronto, 1963), 126Google Scholar.
93 The society was renamed in December 1841. See “To All Such Persons …”, Colored American, 4 Dec. 1841, 147.
94 In 1860, he listed Channing's self-culture, alongside obvious classics like Pilgrim's Progress and Milton's poems, as necessary reading for Liberian emigrants. See Crummell, The Future of Africa, 42.
95 Crummell, The Future of Africa, 353.
96 Crummell, “The Necessities and Advantages of Education,” Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York Public Library, 20.
97 Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 3 Aug. 1843, Jay Papers, Columbia University.
98 Crummell, The Future of Africa, 75.
99 The question of the psychological costs of slavery is one fraught with peril. Painter, Nell Irvin gives the best recent account of this problem in “Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Fully Loaded Cost Accounting,” in Kerber, Linda K., Kessler-Harris, Alice, and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, eds., U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995), 125–46Google Scholar.
100 Crummell, The Future of Africa, 75.
101 Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 12 Sept. 1851, Jay Papers, Columbia University.
102 Crummell, Africa and America, 265.
103 Ibid., 15.
104 Crummell, The Man, the Hero, the Christian, 59–60. It was a quote from Coleridge's The Friend. See Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend: A Series of Essays (London, 1890), 49.
105 Crummell, Africa and America, 283.
106 Crummell, Future of Africa, 25.
107 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Emerson: Essays and Poems (New York, 1996), 68Google Scholar.
108 “The Colored Convention: Report of the Committee on Education,” North Star, 21 Jan. 1848, 1.
109 Crummell, Africa and America, 142.
110 Berman, Marshall, The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society, new edn (New York, 2009), 163Google Scholar.
111 Alexander Crummell, “The Destined Superiority of the Negro,” Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York Public Library.
112 Crummell, Africa and America, 137.
113 Ibid., 31.
114 Alexander Crummell, “The Discipline of Freedom,” Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York Public Library.
115 Moses, Alexander Crummell, 84.
116 Crummell, “The Destined Superiority of the Negro.”
117 Crummell, Africa and America, 126.
118 Ibid., 182.
119 Ibid., 14.
120 Blight, 567.
121 See Moses, Alexander Crummell, 227, for a discussion of their different ideas about race and history.
122 Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 12 Sept. 1851, Jay Papers, Columbia University.
123 Alexander Crummell to Unknown, 21 July 1890, Alexander Crummell Papers, Schomburg Library, New York Public Library.
124 Quoted in Blight, David, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York, 2018), 567Google Scholar.
125 See, for instance, Lawson, Bill E., “Douglass among the Romantics,” in Lee, Maurice S.., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglas (New York, 2009), 118–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
126 Entry for 23 April 1865, journal of E. C. Howard, Medical Office, Monrovia, 1865, in DeGrasse–Howard Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.