A study of events relating to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857, such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates that occurred the following year, can help answer an interesting historical question: How did politicians of 1850s America understand the concept of checks and balances? Or, more specifically, how did they want judicial checks to be publicly understood? This is not so straightforward. True, the concept of “checks and balances” and its functionality to the “separation of powers” — terms coined by Montesquieu in his 1748 The Spirit of the Laws — were foundational to the design of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 (justified in the Federalist Papers, such as 47, 48, and 51). But the Lincoln-Douglas debates suggest (public-facing) perceptions of mutual regulation could differ dramatically among antebellum politicians, and were a bit dissimilar to modern understandings, in that efficacy was more doubted.

The Dred Scott decision declared that black Americans, even free persons, were not citizens of the United States and were not entitled to associated rights. Further, it was decreed unconstitutional to prohibit slavery in U.S. territories. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had created such a prohibition, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which had allowed territorial residents to decide the issue for themselves, were nullified. This was only the second time the Supreme Court had overturned federal law, and the first time it had rejected a major one.^[1] Marbury v. Madison in 1803 explicitly established the Supreme Court’s power to wield such a check when it overturned a minor provision of federal legislation.^[2] Article III of the Constitution, rather short indeed, does not specifically grant this power; it had to be extrapolated from an interpretation. It should be understood that the novelty of what occurred with Dred Scott left room for many questions.

Interestingly, the pro-slavery politician Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s rival candidate for a U.S. Senate seat representing Illinois, publicly questioned the effectiveness of the Dred Scott ruling. He had no qualms about the decision — he would “always bow in deference” to the Court, and thought Lincoln’s objections were misguided for a nation “made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man.”^[3] But he wondered in the famous debates whether total openness to slavery in the territories could be enforced, saying that “if the people of a territory want slavery they will have it, and if they do not want it they will drive it out… Slavery cannot exist a day in the midst of an unfriendly people with unfriendly laws.”^[4] Americans out west would need the proper local legislation and police enforcement to either ban slavery or protect it.^[5] The Court’s ruling did not matter. Here Douglas’ view was perhaps slanted by an earnest devotion to popular sovereignty. He wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and then in 1857 had opposed the creation of Kansas as a slave state because the residents did not desire it.^[6] He defended the popular will more fiercely than slavery. But Douglas was perhaps also aiming not to lose moderate Illinois voters — too much allegiance to Dred Scott in a free state could be a political mistake, therefore it was better to stress a respect for the decision but doubt its effectiveness. In any event, we observe an interesting view on a seismic judicial check in the 1850s: it is meaningless in practice. In modern times, with many Supreme Court declarations of unconstitutionality under our belt, such a perspective is more rare. Lincoln derided Douglas’ theory of slavery’s survival, saying it was historically untrue and that territorial legislatures would have no choice but to tolerate slavery, just as they had earlier been forced to tolerate freedom.^[7]

Lincoln also questioned the Court’s efficacy, from a different angle. After criticizing perceptions of the “sacredness” of the Dred Scott ruling, pointing out that courts change their minds and overrule their prior decisions all the time, Lincoln essentially wondered whether Congress could overturn or ignore a decision of the Supreme Court. Again, the relative novelty of what the Court had done, Lincoln’s sincere perspectives on checks and balances, and his desire to gain anti-slavery voters must all be considered as factors in such an astounding proposition. “Douglas will have it,” Lincoln said, “that all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these extraordinary circumstances, and give their vote in Congress in accordance with it, yield to it and obey it in every possible sense.”^[8] He then pointed out that a couple decades prior, the Court had ruled that a national bank was constitutional (note this did not throw out established federal legislation, but upheld it). But later President Andrew Jackson “said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern a co-ordinate branch of the government…”^[9] He vetoed Congress’ recharter of the bank, declaring it unconstitutional. In the 1830s, the belief that the judicial branch could regulate and guide the legislative branch was not so universal, despite Marbury. One may be tempted to wave this off as part of Jackson’s personal penchant for ignoring restrictions on his authority, but here Lincoln is asking similar questions about the Court’s power in the 1850s, and pointing out Douglas once asked them as well: “I will venture here to say, that I have heard Judge Douglas say that he approved of General Jackson for that act.”^[10] Lincoln insisted that “each member [of Congress] had sworn to support [the] Constitution as he understood it.”^[11] Should Supreme Court understandings supercede congressional or presidential understandings? What Lincoln heavily implies here — he never goes so far as confident assertion — is that if another branch of government could reject a judicial finding of constitutionality, could one not reject a finding of unconstitutionality?^[12] Douglas, despite any earlier ideas on a similar but not identical case, marveled that anyone would insinuate Congress could reverse a Court decision.^[13]

Research of other documents will provide a wider view of what 1850s public officials made of the Court’s first overthrow of major federal legislation. Based on the debates, Douglas and Lincoln agreed with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who pushed the Dred Scott decision through with questionable constitutional interpretations, that the Court had such a right.^[14] Did others disagree? More likely, were more politicians speculating on what came after judicial rulings — such as whether federal, state, or territorial legislatures could wave them aside, as both Douglas and Lincoln suggested? What other concerns existed? And in the same way the debates do not evidence how widespread such questions were, they cannot be utilized to parse earnest belief from political theatre. How much did Lincoln and Douglas actually believe what they were saying, and how much was for power interests, or ideological interests? We would need to turn to their private letters or journal entries and hope for comparative material, doing the same with other public officials offering subversive questions and bold interpretations in front of voters.

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^[1] Paul Finkelman, Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017), 7.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid., 195.

^[4] Ibid., 204.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Ibid., 179-180.

^[7] Ibid., 212-213.

^[8] Ibid., 199.

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Ibid.

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Lincoln only flirts with contradiction concerning a legislature’s response to a Supreme Court ruling. When Douglas insisted that enslavement would not survive in some territories due to local lawmakers refusing to pass affirmative legislation or enforce the Court’s decision, Lincoln argued that they would nevertheless be forced to permit slavery (p. 213). To refuse was to “violate and disregard your oath” to the Constitution, and besides, “how long would it take the courts to hold your votes unconstitutional and void? Not a moment” (ibid). But here (two months earlier), Lincoln wonders whether Congress could flout the Court’s ruling, adding that “If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of that Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should” (198). Members of Congress should vote how they understand the Constitution. However, this is not a true contradiction, as Lincoln appears to see Congress, not territorial legislatures, as possibly having the power to override the Court. One legislature is a federal branch, the other not. Douglas also comes close to contradiction with his insistence that the Dred Scott ruling be respected — it is “a rule of law binding on this country” made by “the ultimate tribunal on earth” (201) — while also insisting popular sovereignty would reign in the territories despite the decision. But he has wiggle room as well: what ought to be respected not always is.

^[13] Finkelman, Dred Scott, 201.

^[14] Ibid., 30-38, 194-195, 198-199.

What role did manhood play in the Civil War? Beyond soldiering and fighting for country being a manly activity and duty, two historical realities stand out.

In What This Cruel War Was Over, historian Chandra Manning posits that ideologies of gender, while one factor of many, motivated Confederate soldiers to fight to preserve slavery. “Slavery,” she writes, “was necessary to white Southerners’ conception of manhood…” (Manning, 12). Its abolition would undermine gender constructions of the 1860s South. To be a man was to possess “mastery” over blacks, women, and children; it was also to see to the prosperity and protection of one’s family (ibid). Emancipation would overturn the social order and unleash violent acts of black vengeance, both destroying white families (12, 217-218). At the extreme, Southern soldiers feared white enslavement. The “hellish undertaking,” an Alabama private wrote, of “Lincoln & his hirelings” would ensure whites were “doomed to slavery” (39). Abolition would mean, another Confederate opined, “fire, sword, and even poison as instruments in desolating our homes, ruining us…” (38). White male control over white women would slip away alongside control over blacks, with one soldier from Georgia writing that slaves were already discussing “whom they would make their wives among the young [white] ladies” (36). Slavery had to be protected to preserve authority over others and the security of families, which were central to white male identity.

Manning further argues that black men recognized a link between slavery and manhood. (Of course, this was likewise not the only reason they fought for abolition.) Slavery stripped a man of what he held dear: the ability to protect his family, his humanity and dignity, and so on (12, 219). Only through abolition could the black man become a full man, in the individual and collective sense. Myths of inferiority, animality, and childishness could be washed away with the courage, agency, principles, and effectiveness displayed while serving in the Union army (129). A black soldier wrote of fighting for “the foundation of our liberty” and the “liberty of the soul” to “sho forth our manhood” (130). Another, from Missouri, aimed to reestablish possession and protection of his children when he wrote to their mistress and declared he was coming for them: the mistress would “burn in hell” if she further interfered with his “God given rite” to have his own children (ibid). Another black volunteer declared the war would help the race “attain greatness as a type in the human family” (ibid). For African American troops, to be a man was to be free, to be independent, to protect one’s family; it was also to be considered as much a man as any white male. Thus, slavery had to be destroyed.

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Originalism — trying to follow the intent of the writers of the Constitution — is a risky business. So is basing one’s ethics on the bible. Why? Because you may end up looking like Mr. Taney or Mr. Dew.

The Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision declared that black Americans, even free ones, could not be citizens of the United States and were not entitled to rights. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, stated that blacks

are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [1787] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them. It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or lawmaking power, to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. The duty of the court is to interpret the instrument they have framed with the best lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted…

Taney reiterated:

[Blacks] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race.

The Declaration is mentioned often as well:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them is [sic] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”

The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included…

Clearly, basing one’s beliefs and policy positions on older documents from barbaric times is a fine way to continue the barbarism. This is true whether or not you judge originalism to be the proper method of legal interpretation. In the context of American slavery, the same continuation occurred with the bible. In the antebellum era Thomas R. Dew, president of the College of William and Mary, denied

most positively that there is anything in the Old or New Testament which would go to show that slavery, when once introduced, ought at all events to be abrogated, or that the master commits any offense in holding slaves. The children of Israel themselves were slaveholders and were not condemned for it. All the patriarchs themselves were slaveholders; Abraham had more than three hundred, Isaac had a “great store” of them; and even the patient and meek Job himself had “a very great household.” When the children of Israel conquered the land of Canaan, they made one whole tribe “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” and they were at that very time under the special guidance of Jehovah; they were permitted expressly to purchase slaves of the heathen and keep them as an inheritance for their posterity; and even the children of Israel might be enslaved for six years.

When we turn to the New Testament, we find not one single passage at all calculated to disturb the conscience of an honest slaveholder. No one can read it without seeing and admiring that the meek and humble Saviour of the world in no instance meddled with the established institutions of mankind; he came to save a fallen world, and not to excite the black passions of man and array them in deadly hostility against each other. From no one did he turn away; his plan was offered alike to all—to the monarch and the subject, the rich and the poor, the master and the slave. He was born in the Roman world, a world in which the most galling slavery existed, a thousand times more cruel than the slavery in our own country; and yet he nowhere encourages insurrection, he nowhere fosters discontent; but exhorts always to implicit obedience and fidelity.

What a rebuke does the practice of the Redeemer of mankind imply upon the conduct of some of his nominal disciples of the day, who seek to destroy the contentment of the slave, to rouse their most deadly passions, to break up the deep foundations of society, and to lead on to a night of darkness and confusion! “Let every man,” (says Paul) “abide in the same calling wherein he is called. Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather” (I Corinth. vii. 20, 21)… Servants are even commanded in Scripture to be faithful and obedient to unkind masters. “Servants,” (says Peter) “be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle but to the froward. For what glory is it if when ye shall be buffeted for your faults ye take it patiently; but if when ye do will and suffer for it, yet take it patiently, this is acceptable with God” (I Peter ii. 18, 20). These and many other passages in the New Testament most convincingly prove that slavery in the Roman world was nowhere charged as a fault or crime upon the holder, and everywhere is the most implicit obedience enjoined.

Here Dew argues that the bible looks upon slavery approvingly, which justifies American slavery. One should avoid saying “The bible was used to justify slavery,” as is common. First, this implies the bible was twisted, distorted in some way. Not really: the text was written in a slave society — of course it isn’t going to declare slavery immoral and worthy of abolition. It was written in a society of absolute male rule and horror over homosexuality, of course it calls for a boot on the neck of women and gays. These were primitive desert tribes. Their characters, including God himself and the biblical heroes, ordered and carried out such oppression (see Absolutely Horrific Things You Didn’t Know Were in the Bible). Even those who insist that God decided to switch from barbarism to loving one’s neighbor with the arrival of Christ — who believe that Jesus marked the change for humanity, when the crushing of slaves, women, and gays suddenly became immoral and against God’s Will — will notice that the oppression of all three groups continues in the New Testament (which is still the inspired and flawless Word of God), as seen in Dew’s writing and my Horrific Things. As one might expect from the brutal Iron Age of the Middle East. (Note how an atheist in the twenty-first century and the religious, pro-slavery head of an Anglican college in the early 1800s can agree: it’s fairly obvious the bible has no moral issue with slavery.) Second, “The bible was used to justify slavery” is passive voice that erases the doer and implies that religious beliefs were solely an afterthought in propping up the “peculiar institution.” “Many Christians used the bible to justify slavery” is better — someone is involved at last — but “Many Christians believed the bible justified slavery and said so” is best. These weren’t all just enslavers searching for ways to excuse what they were doing and at some point thought the bible could help them out. Perhaps some followed that path, but most Southerners were Christians (like most Americans) who believed in the scriptures long before they began defending slavery publicly. It’s how people were raised, in the one true religion that condoned enslavement. Most slavery advocates were sincere believers, some even pastors, who did not consider slavery wrong because of what their sacred text said. “Whoever believes that the written word of God is verity itself,” a Richmond paper noted, “must consequently believe in the absolute rectitude of slave-holding.” No one can deny the economic and racial motives of pro-slavery Americans, but neither should earnest religious belief be ignored. Many factors were at work.

Taney and Dew held repugnant views, all will agree. But many today race to be just like them. The bible oppresses women and gays, therefore gays should have no right to marry (58% of weekly churchgoers still oppose same-sex marriage), adopt, or be served in places of business, and women should not be pastors (the largest Protestant denomination just expelled five churches for having female ministers, citing scripture). Many deeply conservative Christians would nod approvingly over the former, while frowning in distaste at the latter. The question for them is obvious. If Dew was wrong, why are you right? Why is it permissible for the modern believer to reject the bible’s approval of slavery or women’s subordination, but not its condemnation of gay people? Cherrypicking indeed. And if Taney’s originalist view of the Constitution led him to moral trouble, and brought calamity upon black Americas, we should probably be more skeptical of the document, more careful not to glorify. Constitutions or declarations of independence written in 2023 wouldn’t accept slavery or racism, wouldn’t tolerate unfree persons worth three-fifths of a human being, nor edicts that slaves who make it to free states are not free, nor “merciless Indian Savages,” for one minute. (See also How the Founding Fathers Protected Their Own Wealth and Power.) Our patriotic texts were written in an indecent time as well. We live in a more civilized society now. You can still believe originalist readings are best legal practice, but you must recognize that original intentions can be wrong and must be willing to push wholeheartedly for amendments to eradicate such wrongs.

Old texts are troublesome. See, Taney and Dew were right — the bible does offer plenty of support for slavery, the Founding Fathers did not envision black political equality. The lesson here is to think more critically about documents of the past. To recognize the risk of going to morally flawed works for moral or legal guidance.

Of course, there are plenty of moral edicts and actions to be found in the bible (“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you,” Ephesians 4:32), and other antebellum Christians believed the bible did not approve of slavery and said so — as most Americans were Christians, it is also the case that most Northerners and abolitionists were Christians (study the fiery, admirable Quakers, for instance). All sorts of beliefs and interpretations can spring from books containing much good and much bad. Obviously, there is also much that is valuable in the Declaration and Constitution. I wrote elsewhere that “the U.S. Constitution was a strong step forward for representative democracy, secular government, and personal rights, despite the obvious exclusivity, compared to Europe’s systems.” There is a lot to appreciate. And sometimes originalism produces moral outcomes, as one would expect from documents with much good in them (liberal justices use originalism as well; both sides use it when beneficial and reject it when inconvenient). We simply have to recognize the bad that comes with the good, and do something about it. The Constitution should be changed for the better, as it has been over two dozen times since the national founding, with amendments overriding the original articles. The moral flaws of the bible can simply be ignored, rejected from personal belief and public policy; most believers ignore how the New Testament lifts up slavery and male rule already — society can be far more decent than that — and should do the same with its antigay sentiment.

That’s how the moral person regards foundational texts from more backward, oppressive times. Don’t glorify. Keep what’s good. Burn the rest.

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With good reason, a 2022 Bancroft Prize went to The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics, by historian Mae Ngai of Columbia University. Ngai makes two major contributions. First, the work adds to the field’s understanding of how politico-economic concerns can create or influence racist beliefs. Second, it offers an important new observation on how China fell behind the West, adding late nineteenth-century factors to those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries highlighted by scholars like Kenneth Pomeranz. Ngai’s central contributions are in fact linked: economics and politics impacted racism, which impacted economics and politics.

In the United States, Australia, and South Africa, Chinese migrants and entrepreneurs pursuing gold mining and other enterprises met fierce resistance from whites. In California, for instance, politicians seeking votes whipped white miners, already concerned about the growing Chinese population, into a frenzy in the 1850s, resulting in discriminatory acts and violence (Ngai 85-88). Miners from China were framed as threats to white jobs, as a danger to the entire labor system. Whites falsely cast the Chinese as “coolies,” or indentured workers to bosses in China, servile by nature and paid little if anything to travel overseas and mine for gold. How could U.S. mining companies and white workers with higher wages — the free labor system — possibly compete with this? All this paralleled white worker anxiety over black slavery, concerns over displacement (ibid), only it was perhaps made more acute by the understanding that the valuable metal was a limited resource. The Chinese were invaders, robbing the U.S. of gold and with it opportunity (85, 134). This perception led to racist legislation, including exclusion laws that in the 1870s barred the immigration of ethnic Chinese persons (149-153). Though the British colonies of Australia and South Africa had unique experiences, certain interests in these places also stoked racism, at times centered around the Chinese race as a “moral menace,” “industrial evil” (269), or heathen invasion force (111), and eventually led to exclusion as well.

These policies hurt the growth of China, Ngai argues. “Anglo-American settler racism” played a role in “the development of global capitalism” (5). “Exclusion” specifically was “integral” (2). Opponents of exclusion had warned that ending migration would be a blow to trade and commerce, and it appears they were correct (274). “Exclusion meant fewer outlets for Chinese merchants and investors abroad,” as they were denied entry and business (274-275). Chinese capitalists were cut off from the most powerful and richest Western nations. They had to focus on southeast Asia. The restriction of the Western market decimated China’s tea industry, previously 55% of all exports (280). “Between 1886 and 1905, the volume of China’s annual tea exports fell by more than half, from 246 million pounds to 112 million pounds” (ibid). The U.S. had brought in 65% of its tea from China in 1867, but by 1905 it was down to 23% (281). Animus against the Eastern nation and its people had come to “outweigh…all other considerations, including those of a commercial nature,” an Australian analyst noted at the time (ibid). “The myriad nations all trade with each other,” Huang Zunxiang bemoaned in his poem “Exclusion of the Immigrants,” so “how can the Chinese be refused?” (271). As a further economic consequence of immigration bans, the Chinese in British colonies and America found it more difficult to send money (the strong pound and U.S. dollar) back to families in China, and the number of such workers who could even attempt this was of course capped (286-288).

Ngai writes that her “intention is to clarify racism’s historical origins and reproduction as a strategy of political interests” (xviii). Placing anti-coolieism, anti-Chinese racism, under the lights is as important as past scholarship that considered how racist depictions of Africans developed to justify slavery (see Harman, A People’s History of the World) — unintelligent savages could only benefit from enslavement. Economic interests pushed forward racist narratives. Likewise, notions of servile, inferior Chinese slaves (85, 107-108) served and protected white miners. Ngai’s text further serves to “illuminate how the politics of the Chinese Question was part of the ‘great divergence’ between the West and China in the nineteenth century” (310). The exclusion acts that shut the door on Chinese immigration and trade were a contributing factor, or perhaps a solidifying one, in the West surpassing China in economic might and development, alongside the factors uncovered by prior historians, such as proximity to coal and the existence of overseas colonies. It represents another blow to the old notion that the “Great Divergence” was a story of “inherent superiority or inferiority of Western versus Asian civilizations” or their capitalisms (309). Demonstrating economic contributions to racial ideologies would make for a powerful book, as would showing how racist beliefs and their policies impacted the relative power of global economies — doing both is award-worthy.

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Historian Vanessa M. Holden’s Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community argues that the August 1831 slave uprising in Virginia commonly known as Nat Turner’s Rebellion was in fact a community-wide rebellion involving black women, both free and unfree.^[1] Holden writes that the event should be called the “Southampton Rebellion,” indicative of the county, for it “was far bigger than one man’s inspired bid for freedom.”^[2] A community “produced [Turner]” and “the success of the Southampton Rebellion was the success of a community of African Americans.”^[3] The scholar charts not only women’s everyday resistance prior to the revolt, participation in the uprising, and endurance of its aftermath, but also that of children. Sources are diverse, including early nineteenth-century books and Works Progress Administration interviews, and much material from archives at the Library of Virginia, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.^[4] Holden is an associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of Kentucky; her work has appeared in several journals, but Surviving Southampton appears to be her first book.^[5] Overall, it is one of mixed success, for while community involvement in the revolt is established, some of Holden’s major points suffer from limited evidence and unrefined rhetoric.

This is a work of — not contradictions, but oddities. Not fatal flaws, but sizable question marks. For a first point of critique, we can examine Holden’s second chapter, “Enslaved Women and Strategies of Evasion and Resistance.” While it considers enslaved women’s important “everyday resistance” such as “work stoppages, sabotage, feigned illness, and truancy,” plus the use of code and secret meetings, that occurred before the revolt, it offers limited examples of women’s direct participation in the Southampton Rebellion.^[6] There are two powerful incidents. A slave named Charlotte attempted to stab a white owner to death, while Lucy held down a mistress at another farm to prevent her escape.^[7] After the revolt was quelled, both were executed.^[8] The chapter also details more minor happenings: Cynthia cooked for Nat Turner and the other men, Venus passed along information, and Ester, while also taking over a liberated household, stopped Charlotte from killing that owner, which one might describe as counterrevolutionary.^[9] This is all the meaningful evidence that comprises a core chapter of the text. (It is telling that this chapter has the fewest citations.^[10]) It is true that Holden seeks to show women’s participation in resistance before and after the Southampton Rebellion, not just during its three days. Looking at the entire book, this is accomplished. But to have so few incidents revealing women’s involvement in the central event creates the feeling that this work is a “good start,” rather than a finished product. And it stands in uncomfortable contrast to the language of the introduction.

Holden notes in the first few pages of Surviving Southampton that historians have begun adopting wider perspectives on slave revolts.^[11] As with her work, there is increasing focus on slave communities, not just the men after whom the revolts are named. “However,” Holden writes, “even though new critiques have challenged the centrality of individual male enslaved leaders and argued for the inclusion of women in a broader definition of enslaved people’s resistance, violent rebellion remains the prerogative of enslaved men in the historiography.”^[12] To scholars, Holden declares, “enslaved men rebel while enslaved women resist.”^[13] She is of course right to challenge this gendered division. But a chapter 2 that is light on evidence does not suffice to fully address the problem. The rest of the book does not help much — chapter 3, on free blacks’ involvement in the revolt, features just one free woman of color, who testified, possibly under coercion, in defense of an accused rebel, stating that she had urged him not to join Turner.^[14] Not exactly a revolutionary urging, though she was saving a man’s life in court, a resistive act. Charlotte and Lucy were certainly rebels, and one might describe those who provided nourishment, information, or legal defense to the men using the same phrasing, but more evidence is needed to strengthen the case. Holden’s women-as-rebels argument is not wrong, it just needs more support than two to five historical events.

The position would be further aided by excising or editing bizarre, undermining elements, such as a passage at the end of the second chapter. There is a mention of the “divergent actions of Ester and Charlotte,” followed by a declaration that “instead of labeling enslaved women as either for or against the rebellion, it is more useful to understand enslaved women as embedded in its path and its planning.”^[15] It is fair to say that we cannot fully know Ester’s stance on the revolution — she could have been against it and saved that enslaver, or she could have been for it and taken the same action. We do not actually know if she was counterrevolutionary. But Charlotte’s violent action surely reveals an embrace of the revolt. It is at least a safe assumption. Is Holden’s statement not stripping female slaves of their agency? Not for nor against rebellion, just in its path, swept up in the events of men? How can women be rebels if they are not for the rebellion? Here we do have a contradiction, and not just of the introduction, for nine pages earlier in chapter 2 the author wrote: “Past histories of the Southampton Rebellion regard Ester and Charlotte’s story as anomalous and their actions as spontaneous. However, their motives were not different from those of male rebels.”^[16] Here the women have agency, their revolutionary motives purportedly known. The attempted stabbing was “as much a part of the Southampton Rebellion” as anything else.^[17] It is a strange shift from empowering Ester and enslaved women as freedom fighters to downplaying Charlotte and advising one not to mark women as for the rebellion.

Language is a consistent problem in the book, and this is intertwined with organization and focus issues. This is apparent from the beginning. First one reads the aforementioned pages of the introduction, where it is clear Holden wants to erase a gendered division in scholarship and lift the black woman to one who “rebels,” not simply “resists.” The reader may then sit up, turn the book over, and wonder about the subtitle: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community. True, as we have seen, much of the text concerns everyday resistance before and after the uprising, but the fact that “rebellion” is not in the title instead is just slightly inconsistent with what Holden is rightly trying to do.

Similarly, look to an entire chapter that stands out as odd in a book allegedly focused on African American Women. Chapter 4 concerns children’s place in the Southampton Rebellion, and focuses almost exclusively on boys. In a short text — only 125 pages — an entire chapter is a significant portion. Why has Holden shifted away from women? Recall, returning to the introduction, that the University of Kentucky scholar aims to show that the revolt was a community-wide event. It was not solely defined by the deeds of men, nor women, nor slaves, nor freepersons — it also involved children, four of whom stood trial and were expelled from Virginia.^[18] Here Surviving Southampton has a bit of an identity crisis. It cannot fully decide if it wants to focus on women or on the community as a whole. The title centers black women, as does Holden’s rebuke of the historiography for never framing women “as co-conspirators in violent rebellion…[only] as perpetrators of everyday resistance.”^[19] Chapter 2 covers women to correct this. But the thesis has to do with the idea that “whole neighborhoods and communities” were involved.^[20] Thus, the book has a chapter on children (boys), free black men alongside women, and so on. The subtitle of this work should have centered the entire community, not just women, and the introduction should have brought children as deeply into the historiographical review as women.

Finally, we turn to the author’s use of the phrases “geographies of evasion and resistance” and “geographies of surveillance and control.”^[21] What this means is the how and where of oppressive tactics and resistive action. Geographies of resistance could include a slave woman’s bed, as when Jennie Patterson let a fugitive stay the night.^[22] There existed a place (bed, cabin) and method (hiding, sheltering) of disobedience — this was a “geography.” Likewise, slave patrols operated at certain locations and committed certain actions, to keep slaves under the boot — a geography.^[23] At times, Holden writes, these where-hows, these sites of power, would overlap.^[24] The kitchen was a place of oppression and revolt for Charlotte.^[25] Just as Patterson’s cabin was a geography of resistance, it was also one of control, as slave patrols would “visit all the negro quarters, and other places of suspected assemblies of unlawful assemblies of slaves…”^[26] Thus, the scholar posits, blacks in Southampton County had to navigate these overlaps and use their knowledge of oppressive geographies “when deciding when and how to resist,” when creating liberatory geographies.^[27]

As an initial, more minor point of critique, use of this language involves much repetition and redundancy. Repetitive phrasing spans the entire work, but can also be far more concentrated: “Enslaved women and free women of color were embedded in networks of evasion and resistance. They navigated layered geographies of surveillance and control. They built geographies of evasion and resistance. These women demonstrate how those geographies become visible in Southampton County through women’s actions.”^[28] Rarely are synonyms considered. As an example of redundancy, observe: “These geographies of surveillance and control were present on individual landholdings, in the neighborhood where the rebellion took place, and throughout the country.”^[29] Geographies were present? In other words, oppressive systems Holden bases on place were at places. There are many other examples of such things.^[30]

The “geography of evasion and resistance” is not only raised ad nauseam, it seems to be a dalliance with false profundity.^[31] It has the veneer of theory, but in reality little explanatory value. Of course oppressive systems and acts of rebellion operated in the same spaces; of course experience with and knowledge of the former informed the latter (and vice versa). This is far too trite to deserve such attention; it can be noted where appropriate, without fanfare. “Layered geographies of surveillance and survival” sounds profound, and its heavy use implies the same (note also that theory abhors a synonym), but it is largely mere description. Does the concept really help us answer questions? Does it actually deepen our understanding of what occurred in Patterson’s cabin or Charlotte’s kitchen? Of causes and effects? Does it mean anything more than that past experience (knowledge, actions, place) influences future experience, which is important to show in a work of history but is nevertheless a mere truism?

Granted, Holden never explicitly frames her “geography” as theory. But the historian consistently stresses its importance (“mapping” a resistive geography appears in the introduction and in the last sentence of the last chapter) and ascribes power to it.^[32] After charting the ways enslaved women resisted before the rebellion, Holden writes: “Understanding the layered social and physical geography of slavery in Southampton and Virginia is important for understanding Black women’s roles in the Southampton Rebellion more broadly. Most remained firmly rooted to the farms where they labored as men visited rebellion on farm after farm late in the summer of 1831.”^[33] Well, of course patterns — places, actions — of everyday resistance might foreshadow and inform women’s wheres and hows once Turner began his campaign. Elsewhere Holden notes that small farms and the nature of women’s work allowed female slaves greater mobility and proximity to white owners, a boon to resistance.^[34] Women were “uniquely placed to learn, move through, and act within the layered physical and social geographies of each farm.”^[35] Again, this is fancy language that merely suggests certain realities had advantages and could be helpful to future events. It goes no deeper, and it is truly puzzling that it is so emphasized. Such facts could have been briefly mentioned without venturing into the realm of theme and pseudo-theory.

Overall, Surviving Southampton deserves credit for bringing the participation of women, children, and free blacks in the 1831 uprising into the conversation. Our field’s understanding of this event is indeed broadened. But this would have been a much stronger work with further evidence and editing. Quality writing and sufficient proof are subjective notions, but that in no way diminishes their importance to scholarship. As it stands, this text feels like an early draft. Both general readers and history students should understand its limitations.

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^[1] Vanessa Holden, Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 5-10. 

^[2] Ibid., 7.

^[3] Ibid., 2, 6.

^[4] Ibid., x, 132-134 for example.

^[5] “Vanessa M. Holden,” The University of Kentucky, accessed March 2, 2023, ​​https://history.as.uky.edu/users/vnho222.

^[6] Holden, Surviving Southampton, 23, 35.

^[7] Ibid., 28, 36.

^[8] Ibid., 37, 81.

^[9] Ibid., 28, 36.

^[10] Ibid., 132-134.

^[11] Ibid., 5.

^[12] Ibid.

^[13] Ibid., 6.

^[14] Ibid., 52.

^[15] Ibid., 37.

^[16] Ibid., 28.

^[17] Ibid.

^[18] Ibid., 79.

^[19] Ibid., 6.

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] Ibid., chapter 1 for instance.

^[22] Ibid., 24.

^[23] Ibid., 12-22.

^[24] Ibid., 12.

^[25] Ibid., 28.

^[26] Ibid., 20.

^[27] Ibid., 12.

^[28] Ibid., 37.

^[29] Ibid., 8.

^[30] See ibid., 9: “The generational position of Black children as the community of the future was culturally significant and a pointed concern for African American adults, whose strategies for resistance and survival necessarily accounted for these children. Free and enslaved Black children and youths were a significant part of their community’s strategies for resistance and survival.”

^[31] The near-irony of this paper’s phrasing is not lost.

^[32] Holden, Surviving Southampton, 8, 120.

^[33] Ibid., 25.

^[34] Ibid., 34-35.

^[35] Ibid., 34.