// literary & arts //
Fall 2005
Slaves Built This City
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Slavery in New York
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At the end of Disney's abysmal 2004 movie "National Treasure," the heroes stumble upon a vast cavern that has been hidden beneath the cemetery of Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan since before the Revolution. "How did they build this using only hand tools?" the computer nerd gasps. Ignoring the ambiguous "they," the historian turned treasure hunter played by Nicholas Cage is equally awestruck. "The same way they built the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China," he replies. Apparently, the Founding Fathers, like the ancients, possessed incomprehensible brilliance and ingenuity, not to mention raw shoveling strength.
But any informed viewer understands how "they" built those monuments: slaves. Publicly accepted (i.e., Disneyfied) versions of American history have always ignored the part played by slaves in the opening acts. Whether brought from Africa, from the Caribbean sugar colonies, or born into servitude on these shores, slaves literally laid the foundations of America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The White House and the Capitol were built by unfree labor, a fact of which murals in the latter's rotunda shamefully boast. And if Disney's cavern under Trinity Church actually existed, slaves would have dug it too.
This is why "Slavery in New York," the current exhibit at the New York Historical Society, is so important. Louise Mirren, the Society's director, is not as hyperbolic as one might think when she tells us that the Society is "breaking the silence" about human bondage. The most valuable museums challenge the history we learn in elementary school, but few tackle an issue as important or as difficult as does the NYHS with this exhibit. The curators never allow themselves to forget that their goal is to change the public perception of slavery's role in America's past.
Nor do they forget that visitors of all ages comprise their target audience. Monitors spread throughout play the reactions of a diverse group of people to the exhibit. While adults may find themselves drawn to the paintings that show how Europeans saw or ignored the Africans in their midst, there are well-designed displays geared towards all ages. A bank of arcade terminals beckons kids to rescue free citizens kidnapped into slavery. The graphics are amazingly similar to those of online comics and games, and I had to wait twenty minutes before a fourth grader would let me put on a set of headphones. Except for a bizarrely warped screen in the atrium that reflects moving letters on the floor, the curators have wisely used flashy new media only when they amplify the exhibit's message.
The message of the exhibit—that slavery was ubiquitous in New York and America— is among the hardest ideas for the 21st-century mind to wrap itself around, but the curators have succeeded in demonstrating how early Americans wove slavery into all aspects of life. This was especially true in New York, which, as an early video display points out, never had any pretensions of being a "shining city on a hill." Instead, the city devoted itself to the gods of trade and commerce, and an enormous chart in the second room explains that, "slavery was the lifeline of hundreds of colonial New York businesses." That list includes trades in which manual labor was obviously essential, like slave trading, shipbuilding, and craft manufacturing, in addition to industries which sound eerily familiar—like advertising (of auctions), financing (of voyages), and insurance (of the ships and their human "cargo"). That same chart makes the less obvious point that the proportion of slaves in the labor force was much higher than their proportion of the general population, because, of course, all slaves worked.
As the slick introductory film points out, European colonists in the seventeenth century came up with the idea of captivity on the basis of "race"–a concept they invented out of whole cloth. The curators never let their audience forget that the exhibit's subject is not just "slavery" but the active enslavement of one group of people by another. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the documents the slave owners left for future historians, and the exhibit effectively uses the cargo lists and auction notices that were daily features in newspapers of the age. (For a few weeks the exhibit was even lucky enough to possess the original Emancipation Proclamation.) The most moving documents by far are the "wanted" ads for runaways posted by their masters, in which, as the curators explain, "slave owners served as witnesses despite themselves" to the "names, lives, personal histories, skills, character traits, and modes of dress" of African-Americans.
Visitors to the exhibit, like Americans of the Revolutionary period, cannot help but be surrounded by slaves. In one room, the narrative of a captive is told in his native Akan; in another, a replica of a well produces the voices of slave women, who took the opportunity to congregate there, away from the supervision of their owners; and in the final section, museum-goers mingle with full-size models of freemen and -women, dressed to demonstrate the multitude of vocations they found for themselves. Where most exhibits on early America have a glass case of the "ordinary objects" of life in that era, the NYHS has put a twist on that iconic display by explaining how each chair, mirror, or book was crafted, polished, or bound by slaves. Just around the corner is a starkly contrasting display of the rougher furniture, clothes, and utensils of slave life, made by their hands as well.
The curators properly contrast the story of slaves with triumphalist narratives of American goodness and progress. While the Netherlands governed the colony, slavery had not yet taken its fully awful shape. Many Africans in New Amsterdam were granted their freedom after defending the colony from attack by indigenous peoples, and they were given land of their own on the outskirts of the colony—but, as the displays point out, this was intended as a buffer zone against future attack as much as anything else. Once the English took over, they subjected their slaves to the "closing vise" of increasingly harsh restrictions, such as the 1683 declaration that "no slaves shall gather on the Sabbath, in any number greater than four."
The exhibit casts the American Revolution as a turning point in the history of slavery in New York, in large part because three thousand New York slaves took the British up on their offer of freedom. Royal control over the city made it a haven for free black people during the conflict, many of whom left for Canada after the war. (When George Washington asked for his slaves back, the British gleefully refused.) Units of freemen and former slaves fought gallantly on the losing side, and parallel timelines along one wall show how the progress of the war coincided with the battles waged, both legally and on the field, by former slaves. During the war, Vermont and Pennsylvania began the process of emancipation, and in New York, John Jay's Manumission Society managed to get a gradual emancipation act enacted in 1799.
The final part of the exhibit, entitled "Freedom's Prospects," is devoted to chronicling the importance of freedmen and women in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Politically, in 1795 the first group of African-Americans petitioned the city council, and by 1813 they held the balance of power between the Federalists and their opponents. Full emancipation took effect on July 4, 1827, but long before that the former slaves had become integral parts of the city's economy and life, despite increasing tensions with newer immigrant groups. The biggest flaw in the production is probably the degree to which the final decades covered here are presented as increasingly positive for the African-American community; whether the community itself saw the period that way is less certain. The 1820s may have witnessed legal abolition in New York State, but African-Americans still lived in a very racist nation.
The Society advertises that this exhibit is the largest and most expensive in its history. It is certainly the best advertised, and the many first-time visitors will be impressed by its scale. The displays sprawl over five increasingly large galleries, and the depth and breadth of the story to be told is even more astonishing when one recognizes that this exhibit does not even try to follow the entire history of slavery in the city. The current show extends from the city's founding only to 1827, and it is just the first of several productions, which will continue the macroscopic story of slavery through the Civil War and will also tell the story of one specific well-documented family.
Anyone who has taken an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century American history class will know how important slavery was to the basic functioning of economy and society. But few others will, and so the achievement of this exhibit is the quality and thought that have gone into it and the curators' ambitious goal of filling the biggest gap in Americans' and New Yorkers' knowledge of their own history. The visitors around me seemed genuinely affected by what they were learning, and every one of the recorded reactions includes statements such as "I'll never look at the city the same way again." There is probably only so much difference that one museum exhibit can make, but we should laud the NYHS and its director for their conscientious and remarkable effort.
But any informed viewer understands how "they" built those monuments: slaves. Publicly accepted (i.e., Disneyfied) versions of American history have always ignored the part played by slaves in the opening acts. Whether brought from Africa, from the Caribbean sugar colonies, or born into servitude on these shores, slaves literally laid the foundations of America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The White House and the Capitol were built by unfree labor, a fact of which murals in the latter's rotunda shamefully boast. And if Disney's cavern under Trinity Church actually existed, slaves would have dug it too.
This is why "Slavery in New York," the current exhibit at the New York Historical Society, is so important. Louise Mirren, the Society's director, is not as hyperbolic as one might think when she tells us that the Society is "breaking the silence" about human bondage. The most valuable museums challenge the history we learn in elementary school, but few tackle an issue as important or as difficult as does the NYHS with this exhibit. The curators never allow themselves to forget that their goal is to change the public perception of slavery's role in America's past.
Nor do they forget that visitors of all ages comprise their target audience. Monitors spread throughout play the reactions of a diverse group of people to the exhibit. While adults may find themselves drawn to the paintings that show how Europeans saw or ignored the Africans in their midst, there are well-designed displays geared towards all ages. A bank of arcade terminals beckons kids to rescue free citizens kidnapped into slavery. The graphics are amazingly similar to those of online comics and games, and I had to wait twenty minutes before a fourth grader would let me put on a set of headphones. Except for a bizarrely warped screen in the atrium that reflects moving letters on the floor, the curators have wisely used flashy new media only when they amplify the exhibit's message.
The message of the exhibit—that slavery was ubiquitous in New York and America— is among the hardest ideas for the 21st-century mind to wrap itself around, but the curators have succeeded in demonstrating how early Americans wove slavery into all aspects of life. This was especially true in New York, which, as an early video display points out, never had any pretensions of being a "shining city on a hill." Instead, the city devoted itself to the gods of trade and commerce, and an enormous chart in the second room explains that, "slavery was the lifeline of hundreds of colonial New York businesses." That list includes trades in which manual labor was obviously essential, like slave trading, shipbuilding, and craft manufacturing, in addition to industries which sound eerily familiar—like advertising (of auctions), financing (of voyages), and insurance (of the ships and their human "cargo"). That same chart makes the less obvious point that the proportion of slaves in the labor force was much higher than their proportion of the general population, because, of course, all slaves worked.
As the slick introductory film points out, European colonists in the seventeenth century came up with the idea of captivity on the basis of "race"–a concept they invented out of whole cloth. The curators never let their audience forget that the exhibit's subject is not just "slavery" but the active enslavement of one group of people by another. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the documents the slave owners left for future historians, and the exhibit effectively uses the cargo lists and auction notices that were daily features in newspapers of the age. (For a few weeks the exhibit was even lucky enough to possess the original Emancipation Proclamation.) The most moving documents by far are the "wanted" ads for runaways posted by their masters, in which, as the curators explain, "slave owners served as witnesses despite themselves" to the "names, lives, personal histories, skills, character traits, and modes of dress" of African-Americans.
Visitors to the exhibit, like Americans of the Revolutionary period, cannot help but be surrounded by slaves. In one room, the narrative of a captive is told in his native Akan; in another, a replica of a well produces the voices of slave women, who took the opportunity to congregate there, away from the supervision of their owners; and in the final section, museum-goers mingle with full-size models of freemen and -women, dressed to demonstrate the multitude of vocations they found for themselves. Where most exhibits on early America have a glass case of the "ordinary objects" of life in that era, the NYHS has put a twist on that iconic display by explaining how each chair, mirror, or book was crafted, polished, or bound by slaves. Just around the corner is a starkly contrasting display of the rougher furniture, clothes, and utensils of slave life, made by their hands as well.
The curators properly contrast the story of slaves with triumphalist narratives of American goodness and progress. While the Netherlands governed the colony, slavery had not yet taken its fully awful shape. Many Africans in New Amsterdam were granted their freedom after defending the colony from attack by indigenous peoples, and they were given land of their own on the outskirts of the colony—but, as the displays point out, this was intended as a buffer zone against future attack as much as anything else. Once the English took over, they subjected their slaves to the "closing vise" of increasingly harsh restrictions, such as the 1683 declaration that "no slaves shall gather on the Sabbath, in any number greater than four."
The exhibit casts the American Revolution as a turning point in the history of slavery in New York, in large part because three thousand New York slaves took the British up on their offer of freedom. Royal control over the city made it a haven for free black people during the conflict, many of whom left for Canada after the war. (When George Washington asked for his slaves back, the British gleefully refused.) Units of freemen and former slaves fought gallantly on the losing side, and parallel timelines along one wall show how the progress of the war coincided with the battles waged, both legally and on the field, by former slaves. During the war, Vermont and Pennsylvania began the process of emancipation, and in New York, John Jay's Manumission Society managed to get a gradual emancipation act enacted in 1799.
The final part of the exhibit, entitled "Freedom's Prospects," is devoted to chronicling the importance of freedmen and women in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Politically, in 1795 the first group of African-Americans petitioned the city council, and by 1813 they held the balance of power between the Federalists and their opponents. Full emancipation took effect on July 4, 1827, but long before that the former slaves had become integral parts of the city's economy and life, despite increasing tensions with newer immigrant groups. The biggest flaw in the production is probably the degree to which the final decades covered here are presented as increasingly positive for the African-American community; whether the community itself saw the period that way is less certain. The 1820s may have witnessed legal abolition in New York State, but African-Americans still lived in a very racist nation.
The Society advertises that this exhibit is the largest and most expensive in its history. It is certainly the best advertised, and the many first-time visitors will be impressed by its scale. The displays sprawl over five increasingly large galleries, and the depth and breadth of the story to be told is even more astonishing when one recognizes that this exhibit does not even try to follow the entire history of slavery in the city. The current show extends from the city's founding only to 1827, and it is just the first of several productions, which will continue the macroscopic story of slavery through the Civil War and will also tell the story of one specific well-documented family.
Anyone who has taken an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century American history class will know how important slavery was to the basic functioning of economy and society. But few others will, and so the achievement of this exhibit is the quality and thought that have gone into it and the curators' ambitious goal of filling the biggest gap in Americans' and New Yorkers' knowledge of their own history. The visitors around me seemed genuinely affected by what they were learning, and every one of the recorded reactions includes statements such as "I'll never look at the city the same way again." There is probably only so much difference that one museum exhibit can make, but we should laud the NYHS and its director for their conscientious and remarkable effort.
//David Singerman is a Columbia College senior majoring in American history. He'd like to thank the faculty of the department for its three years of wonderful teaching that, fortunately, made him immune to the effects that the exhibit has on ordinary people.