Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself by John Ernest

Author:John Ernest [Ernest, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780807858905
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2008-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

1 From “Forget Not the Unhappy,” in Charles Swain’s English Melodies (1849). Swain (1801-74) included this song, of which the lines Brown quotes are the third and final stanza, in the book’s Part First. Songs and Lyrical Pieces Never Before Published.

2 The Evangelical Alliance, founded in 1846, was an attempt to organize evangelical churches from around the world. An American delegation attended the first conference in London in 1846, where the British delegation successfully moved to ban slaveholders from membership. As Carwardine has noted, “Evangelical southerners’ paranoia and isolation revealed itself in their view of the Evangelical Alliance as an ecclesiastical alliance intending ‘to unite the public opinion of Protestant Christendom against the churches and professors of religion in the Southern States’” (Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America, 384 n. 132).

3 Lee here refers to the story told in the Bible, in the Book of Exodus. Moses leads the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, across the parted Red Sea, through the wilderness, and toward the promised land. A story of liberation from both slavery and the oppression of an unjust ruler, the Exodus story was one of the central biblical stories of African American writing and oral culture throughout the nineteenth century and since.

4 Ham is a biblical figure often referred to in racial debates throughout the nineteenth century, and Noah’s curse on Ham’s son Canaan was used as justification for the enslavement of those of African heritage, who, according to the white supremacist biblical interpretation of the accusers, were said to be the inheritors of the curse of Ham. The curse follows the incident when Ham sees “the nakedness of his father.” When Noah awakes from his drunken state, he says, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Gen. 9:20-27). Canaan’s curse was misattributed to Ham and became the foundation for racist readings of the Bible sometime during the Middle Ages. For background, see Byron, Symbolic Blackness; Goldenberg, Curse of Ham; Hood, Begrimed and Black; and Johnson, Myth of Ham.

5 Patrick Henry (1736-99) was a Virginia statesman popularly known for his speech before the 1775 Virginia Provincial Convention, in which he said, in support of the American Revolution, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

6 This letter was sent to Sydney Howard Gay, a member of the New York Anti-Slavery Society and editor of the influential newspaper the National Anti-Slavery Standard.

7 The letter was sent by James Miller McKim (1810-74), a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society and, for twenty-five years, corresponding secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. McKim was actively involved with the efforts of the General Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia to aid and protect fugitive slaves in the 1850s. McKim was the primary contact in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society for Brown’s escape and made the necessary arrangements for Brown’s successful arrival and subsequent safety. Most likely, the name here is changed to protect the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in its efforts to help fugitive slaves. Note that

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